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My Updates God, Life & Peace. By: Nabil Zegord Konz Kurt Polaski ADVICE FOR VICTIMS Live as normal a life as possible; work, play, socialise, pray. By doing this you partially thwart their monstrous remote control experiments. Maintain the rage; continue to speak out and write about their crimes especially the hellish mistreatment they force people to endure. By doing this you defeat their attempts to silence and discredit you. Speak only to honest, intelligent, courageous people about your own situation; to avoid frustration. Cope and survive. Contact the Federation Resistance Global Electronic Harassment Opposition Party see http://www.federationresistance.weebly.com See also: http://polaskilove.angelfire.com http://polaskilove2.angelfire.com How life been created? Lets assume, in now a days war is covering some regions in the middle east, such war takes time to heal up for peaceful life to take over again after earning form previous pasts & history to call. The question is why there has to be a war once there is history? 1st world war, then 2nd & let's assume the 3rd on the way! In this time with so much new modern technologies can make nations to disappear & many nationalities to evacuate to survived nations & to live with. Let's assume this what has already happened. Some nation's remains, then another war starts & few nations remain. Then another war for 2 nations to remain. Then to bring more population (reproduction) to start newer generations & so on till war starts again. Just imagine Adam & Eve. And life to go on. Keep in mind that there is natural & artificial for almost everything. Death caused by any of them too. Natural is always & much better than artificial. But the good natural is much better than the bad natural. Good or bad artificial is not logic in-compare to natural. Huge explosion that took over to create this galaxy of our & us to live on earth is how life was created. Let's assume this explosion is war between galaxies & our galaxy survived for us to remain on this planet earth. Space Explorations of NASA has a point that something might go wrong in the universe or some space invasion from another planet. God knows what's there in deep space. For some reason, life was created for this entire universe, galaxies, planets, mankind & creatures. The reason is, all are living on each others. Believe it or not! & beyond all is the inventor creator. For life is to go on. Explosions of planets (SUN) & new born planets. Think about GOD always. God is the secret for all living beings. Where is the administration system of control to stop wars, terrorists & control number of population in a single nation or nations to have a better way of livings & peace? At first God is there, Start from there please. By: Nabil Z.K.K Polaski Background Globally, the 20th century was marked by: (a) two devastating world wars; (b) the Great Depression of the 1930s; (c) the end of vast colonial empires; (d) rapid advances in science and technology, from the first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina (US) to the landing on the moon; (e) the Cold War between the Western alliance and the Warsaw Pact nations; (f) a sharp rise in living standards in North America, Europe, and Japan; (g) increased concerns about the environment, including loss of forests, shortages of energy and water, the decline in biological diversity, and air pollution; (h) the onset of the AIDS epidemic; and (i) the ultimate emergence of the US as the only world superpower. The planet's population continues to explode: from 1 billion in 1820, to 2 billion in 1930, 3 billion in 1960, 4 billion in 1974, 5 billion in 1988, and 6 billion in 2000. For the 21st century, the continued exponential growth in science and technology raises both hopes (e.g., advances in medicine) and fears (e.g., development of even more lethal weapons of war). Overview Global output rose by 3.7% in 2003, led by China (9.1%), India (7.6%), and Russia (7.3%). The other 14 successor nations of the USSR and the other old Warsaw Pact nations again experienced widely divergent growth rates; the three Baltic nations continued as strong performers, in the 5%-7% range of growth. Growth results posted by the major industrial countries varied from a loss by Germany (-0.1%) to a strong gain by the United States (3.1%). The developing nations also varied in their growth results, with many countries facing population increases that erode gains in output. Externally, the nation-state, as a bedrock economic-political institution, is steadily losing control over international flows of people, goods, funds, and technology. Internally, the central government often finds its control over resources slipping as separatist regional movements - typically based on ethnicity - gain momentum, e.g., in many of the successor states of the former Soviet Union, in the former Yugoslavia, in India, in Iraq, in Indonesia, and in Canada. Externally, the central government is losing decision-making powers to international bodies. In Western Europe, governments face the difficult political problem of channeling resources away from welfare programs in order to increase investment and strengthen incentives to seek employment. The addition of 80 million people each year to an already overcrowded globe is exacerbating the problems of pollution, desertification, underemployment, epidemics, and famine. Because of their own internal problems and priorities, the industrialized countries devote insufficient resources to deal effectively with the poorer areas of the world, which, at least from the economic point of view, are becoming further marginalized. The introduction of the euro as the common currency of much of Western Europe in January 1999, while paving the way for an integrated economic powerhouse, poses economic risks because of varying levels of income and cultural and political differences among the participating nations. The terrorist attacks on the US on 11 September 2001 accentuate a further growing risk to global prosperity, illustrated, for example, by the reallocation of resources away from investment to anti-terrorist programs. The opening of war in March 2003 between a US-led coalition and Iraq added new uncertainties to global economic prospects. After the coalition victory, the complex political difficulties and the high economic cost of establishing domestic order in Iraq became major global problems that continue into 2004. Now a day's with new modern technology, there are different types of telescopes invented to scan the universe which has billions of living stars & galaxies. Scanning from earth & from space. Such telescopes have reached to many stars that are so much far from our planet with thousand lighting years. Telescopes with different ray's & different waves (secret weapons) Some used over a human body & brain. Some used over a location. Different Gas with different ray's & mainly gamma are also there. Such weapons can start a massive biological war other than an Electronic or Chemical ones. Ozone layer also infected by such natural & artificial different rays other than the moving air from country to country that can carry viruses from location to another. Science has approached to this already in our existing time & invented fields of magnetic radiation over living beings that have living brains to suffer. Nation can fall as Babylon people before when they starts so much different thinking with brains attached to each others in one time which makes lot of talk unnecessarily to have an existence (brains in a circle that learning from each others other than amusing or blaming or abusing or opening each others secrets to the public & to pick victims to victimize more victims & madness to take over in a social life of families. Those who whishes to understand suffers from limited miner brains & have hard tuff time even to concentrate on a normal living & to feel under attack from neighbors that scans & sucks information's from a suffering brain. They take what they want from & give so much pain in return. All of this caused by satellites & who's using such satellites in space? Satellite station people on ground from different locations on earth. Those I call behind the shadows are Satanism, Zionism, thieves, murderers, killers, terrorists & corrupting all believes assuming that they are the law & forgetting human rights & giving nothing in return but shit to all since the year of 2000 & still running over man kind & giving no medical insurance or a peace home or a peace mind to live at home. Slavery time to inner conscious to mankind & they are hunting to make budgets out of human suffering). Such technology sold to terrorists. Nice international business between many satellites. Where is justice? Or God? United international case 11th sept, 2001 between Al Qeada & America Transport Information Technology. This what terror is. Some telescopes can also have waves of rays which can vibrate an entire location, building, or human skull (knock knock system) other than radiation entering the human body which cause pain & sickness. & there are different types of waves. (Artificial Tsunami & Artificial Earth Quakes for an example). God, a being in a religion. Especially in monotheisms, a single God is considered the creator or source of everything that exists and is spoken of in terms of perfect attributes-for instance, infinitude, immutability, eternity, goodness, knowledge (omniscience), and power (omnipotence). Most religions traditionally ascribe to God certain character traits that can be understood either literally or metaphorically, such as will, love, anger, and forgiveness. Conceptions of God Many religious thinkers have held that God is so different from finite beings that he must be considered essentially a mystery beyond the powers of human conception. Nevertheless, most philosophers and theologians have assumed that a limited knowledge of God is possible and have formulated different conceptions of him in terms of divine attributes and paths of knowledge. Philosophical and Religious Approaches The philosophical and religious conceptions of God have at times been sharply distinguished. In the 17th century, for instance, the French mathematician and religious thinker Blaise Pascal unfavourably contrasted the "God of the philosophers", an abstract idea, with the "God of faith", an experienced, living reality. In general, mystics, who claim direct experience of the divine being, have asserted the superiority of their knowledge of God to the rational demonstrations of God's existence and attributes propounded by philosophers and theologians. Some theologians have tried to combine philosophical and experiential approaches to God, as in the 20th-century German theologian Paul Tillich's twofold way of speaking of God as the "ground of being" and "ultimate concern". A certain tension is probably inevitable, however, between the way that theologians speak of God and the way most believers think of and experience him. Primary Attributes God may be conceived as transcendent ("above" the world), emphasizing his otherness, his independence from and power over the world order; or as immanent ("indwelling" in the world), emphasizing his presence and participation within the world's process. He has been thought of as personal, by analogy with human individuals; some theologians, on the other hand, have maintained that the concept of personality is inadequate to God and that he must be conceived as impersonal or suprapersonal. In the great monotheistic religions, God is worshipped as the One, the supreme unity that embraces or has created all things; but polytheism, the belief in many gods, has also flourished throughout history. These contrasts are sometimes dialectically combined. Thus, while theism emphasizes divine transcendence and pantheism identifies God with the world order, in panentheism God is understood as both transcendent and immanent. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity and similar doctrines in other religions acknowledge both the unity and the inner diversity of God. Christianity is a form of monotheism in which the stark unity of God has been modified. It has also been argued that God has both personal and impersonal aspects, or even that he alone is truly personal and that at the finite level there is only an imperfect approximation of personal being. These attempts to unite dialectically in God seemingly opposite characteristics are common in religious and mystical writers and are intended to do justice to the variety and complexity of religious experience. The 15th-century German philosopher Nicholas of Cusa, for instance, believing that God can be apprehended only through mystical intuition, stressed the "coincidence of opposites" in God; the 19th-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard insisted on the parodoxical nature of religious faith. These formulations suggest that the logic of discourse about God is necessarily different from the logic that applies to finite entities. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the three religions rooted in the biblical tradition, God is conceived primarily in terms of his transcendence, personality, and unity. The Jewish Idea of God The idea of transcendence is introduced in the opening verses of the Hebrew Scriptures, in which God is presented as creator, and this conception impresses itself on all Jewish discourse about God. To say the world is created means that it is not independent of God or an emanation of God, but external to him, a product of his will, so that he is Lord of all the Earth. This explains the Jewish antipathy to idolatry-no creature can represent the Creator, so it is forbidden to make any material image of him. Nonetheless, it is also part of the teaching regarding creation that the human being is made in the image of God. Thus, the Hebrew understanding of God was frankly anthropomorphic. He promised and threatened, he could be angry and even jealous; but his primary attributes were righteousness, justice, mercy, truth, and faithfulness. He is represented as king, judge, and shepherd. He binds himself by covenants to his people and thus limits himself. Such a God, even if anthropomorphic, is a living God. It is true that the name of God, Yahweh, was understood as "I am who I am", but this was not taken by the Hebrews of biblical times in the abstract, metaphysical sense in which it was interpreted later. The Hebrew God was unique, and his command was, "You shall have no other gods beside me!" (although in some biblical passages the Spirit of the Lord and the angel of the Lord and, in later Jewish speculation, the divine wisdom appear to be almost secondary divine beings). Christian Conceptions Christianity began as a Jewish sect and thus took over the Hebrew God, the Jewish Scriptures eventually becoming, for Christians, the Old Testament. During his ministry, Jesus was probably understood as a holy man of God, but by the end of the 1st century Christians had exalted him into the divine sphere, and this created tension with the monotheistic tradition of Judaism. The solution of the problem was the development of the doctrine of the triune God, or Trinity, which, although it is suggested in the New Testament, was not fully formulated until the 4th century. The God of the Old Testament became, for Christians, the Father, a title that Jesus himself has applied to him and that was meant to stress his love and care rather than his power. Jesus himself, acknowledged as the Christ, was understood as the incarnate Son, or Word (Logos), the concrete manifestation of God within the finite order. Both expressions, Son and Word, imply a being who is both distinct from the Father and yet so closely akin to him as to be "of the same substance" (Greek, homoousios) with him. The Holy Spirit-said in the West to proceed from the Father and the Son, in the East to proceed from the Father alone (after the filioque controversy)-is the immanent presence and activity of God in the creation, which he strives to bring to perfection. Although Christian theology speaks of the three "persons" of the Trinity, these are not persons in the modern sense, but three ways of being of the one God. Islam Islam arose as a powerful reaction against the ancient pagan cults of Arabia, and as a consequence it is the most starkly monotheistic of the three biblically rooted religions. The name Allah means simply "the God". He is personal, transcendent, and unique, and Muslims are forbidden to depict him in any creaturely form. The primary creed is that "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the apostle of Allah". Allah has seven basic attributes: life, knowledge, power, will, hearing, seeing, and speech. The last three are not to be understood in an anthropomorphic sense. His will is absolute, and all that happens depends on it, even to the extent that believers and unbelievers are predestined to faith or unbelief. Asian and Other Religions Despite the differences, the conceptions of God in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam bear an obvious "family resemblance". The great religions of Asia, however, belong to a quite different realm. Even to use the word God in an Asian religious context may be misleading, because it generally carries the connotation of personality. A broader expression that would include both the idea of a personal God and the idea of an impersonal or suprapersonal absolute is Holy Being. Hinduism In Hinduism, Holy Being can be understood in several ways. Philosophically, it is understood as Brahma, the one eternal, absolute reality embracing all that is, so that the world of change is but the surface appearance (maya). In popular religion, many gods are recognized, but, properly understood, these are manifestations of Brahma. Each god has his or her own function. The three principal gods, charged respectively with creating, preserving, and destroying, are joined as the Trimurti, or three powers, reminiscent of the Christian Trinity. Strictly speaking, the creator god does not create in the Judaeo-Christian sense, for the world is eternal and he is simply the god who has been from the beginning. In bhakti Hinduism, the way of personal devotion, the god Isvara is conceived as personal and is not unlike the Judaeo-Christian God. Buddhism and Chinese Religion It is sometimes said that Buddhism, in its Hinayana form, is atheistic, but this is not so. The gods are real, but they are not ultimate. The ultimate reality, or Holy Being, is the impersonal cosmic order. A similar concept is found in ancient Greek religion, in which cosmic destiny seems to have been superior to even the high gods. In the Mahayana Buddhism of China and Japan, the Buddha himself was transformed into a divine being, although the connection with the historical Buddha became very tenuous or even ceased, and these Buddha figures of the Far East are cosmic beings. In the indigenous Chinese religions, the pure polytheism of the popular cults was modified by contact with the philosophical traditions developed by the scholarly elite. In these philosophies, the ultimate Holy Being also seems to have been conceived as an impersonal order. In Daoism, it is the rhythm of the universe; in Confucianism, it is the moral law of heaven. Polytheism and Animism In polytheism, there are many holy beings, each manifesting some particular divine attribute or caring for some particular aspect of nature or of human affairs. Polytheism was the most common form of religion in the ancient world and was well developed in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, and elsewhere. It tends, however, to develop into a form of religion that has a unitary conception of the divine (as demonstrated by Hinduism), either through philosophical criticism or through one of the deities in the polytheistic pantheon acquiring an overwhelming superiority over the others. The gods of a pantheon were usually conceived in some family relationship, which ensured from the beginning a sense of their unity. Polytheism probably developed out of a more traditional form of religion (still practised in many parts of the world) called animism, the belief in a multitude of spiritual forces, localized and limited in their powers, some friendly and some hostile. In animism the sense of Holy Being is diffused throughout the environment. Summary of Major Types A range of types, each shading into the other, can be abstracted from this survey. In the monotheism of Judaism and Islam, Holy Being is conceived at its most transcendent and personal level. In Christian Trinitarianism, an attempt is made to synthesize transcendence and immanence. In the Asian religions considered, the immanence and impersonal nature of Holy Being are stressed (although some forms of Hinduism and Buddhism do not exclude personal aspects of the divine). Grounds for Belief Although conceptions of God have varied considerably, depending on historical period, culture, and sect, a belief in Holy Being in some sense has been predominant in almost all societies throughout history. This belief has been challenged, however, since ancient times by scepticism, materialism, atheism, and other forms of disbelief, and the proportion of unbelievers is higher in modern societies than in most societies of the past. Varieties of Disbelief Arguments against belief in God are as numerous as arguments for it. Atheists absolutely deny the existence of God. Some, for instance, believe the material universe constitutes ultimate reality; others argue that the prevalence of suffering and evil in the world precludes the existence of a sacred being. Agnostics believe that the evidence for and against the existence of God is inconclusive; they therefore suspend judgement. Positivists believe that rational inquiry is restricted to questions of empirical fact, so that it is meaningless either to affirm or deny the existence of God. The Nature of Belief If God is the ground or source of being and not simply another being, even the highest or supreme being, then he does not exist in the sense in which things exist within the world. It may even be misleading to say, "God exists", although this is the traditional way of speaking. To believe in God is to have faith in the ultimate ground of being, or to trust in the ultimate rationality and righteousness of the whole scheme of things. This way of expressing the matter also leaves open the questions of transcendence and immanence, personal being and impersonal being, and so on. The primary basis for belief in God is to be found in experience, especially religious experience. There are many experiences in which people have become aware of Holy Being impinging on their lives-mystical experiences, conversion, a sense of presence, sometimes visions and locutions-which may come with the force of a revelation. Besides specifically religious experiences, there are others in which people become aware of a depth or an ultimacy that they call God-moral experiences, interpersonal relations, the sense of beauty, the search for truth, the awareness of finitude, even confrontation with suffering and death. These are sometimes called limit situations (a term used by the 20th-century German philosopher Karl Jaspers), because those who undergo such experiences seem to strike against the limits of their own being. In so doing, however, they become aware of a being that transcends their own, yet with which they sense both difference and affinity. They become aware of what the 20th-century German Protestant theologian Rudolf Otto, in a classic description, called mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the mystery that at once produces both awe and fascination. Formal Arguments For the Existence of God To many people these experiences of Holy Being are self-authenticating, and they feel no need to inquire further. All human experience, however, is fallible. Mistakes of perception are everyday experiences, and false conceptions of the natural world, the Earth, the heavenly bodies, and so forth have prevailed for thousands of years. It is therefore possible that the experience of Holy Being is illusory, and this possibility has led some believers to look for a rational basis for belief in God that will confirm the experiential basis. Numerous attempts have been made to prove the reality of God. The medieval Scholastic theologian St Anselm argued that the very idea of a being than whom no more perfect can be conceived entails his existence, for existence is itself an aspect of perfection. Many philosophers have denied the logical validity of such a transition from idea to factual existence, but this ontological argument is still discussed. The 13th-century theologian St Thomas Aquinas rejected the ontological argument but proposed five other proofs of God's existence that are still officially accepted by the Roman Catholic Church: (1) the fact of change requires an agent of change; (2) the chain of causation needs to be grounded in a first cause that is itself uncaused; (3) the contingent facts of the world (facts that might not have been as they are) presuppose a necessary being; (4) one can observe a gradation of things as higher and lower, and this points to a perfect reality at the top of the hierarchy; (5) the order and design of nature demand as their source a being possessing the highest wisdom. The 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant rejected Aquinas's arguments but argued the necessity of God's existence as the support or guarantor of the moral life. These arguments for the reality of God have all been submitted to repeated and searching criticism, and they continue to be reformulated to meet the criticisms. It is now generally agreed that none of them constitutes a proof, but many believers would say that the arguments have a cumulative force, which, although still short of proof, amounts to a strong probability, especially in conjunction with the evidence of religious experience. Ultimately, however, belief in God is, like many other important beliefs, an act of faith-one that must be rooted in personal experience. Secrets in our life: Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle and the Limbo of the Lost, a geographical area of about 3,900,000 sq km (1,500,000 sq mi), between Bermuda, Puerto Rico, and Melbourne in Florida (located 55°W to 85°W and 30°N to 40°N), in which there have been numerous unexplained disappearances of ships and aircraft. The mystery dates back as far as the mid-19th century, with a total of more than 50 ships and 20 aeroplanes having been lost in the Triangle. One of the more notorious cases was the disappearance of Flight 19. Five United States torpedo bombers left Fort Lauderdale on December 5, 1945, on a routine training flight in good conditions. None of them returned. Even the seaplane that was sent out to find them vanished. Other stories about the region include ships found abandoned with warm food left on the tables and planes that disappear without even making a distress call. The absence of wreckage is often cited as proof of the mysterious power of the Triangle. Explanations are legion, and include death rays from Atlantis and UFO kidnappings. Less fantastic analyses suggest that fierce currents and deep water could explain the lack of wreckage, and point out that several of the losses attributed to the Bermuda Triangle actually occurred as far as 1,000 km (600 mi) outside it. Furthermore, military and civil craft pass through the region every day without mishap. As deep sea diving techniques improve it is likely that more of the lost vessels will be recovered, but it is equally likely that the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle will linger in the imagination for a long while yet. Unidentified Flying Object (UFO), any object or light in the sky that cannot be immediately explained by the observer. Sightings of unusual aerial phenomena date back to ancient times, but UFOs (sometimes called flying saucers) became widely discussed only after the first widely publicized American sighting in 1947. Many thousands of such observations have since been reported worldwide. At least 90 per cent of UFO sightings can be identified as conventional objects, although time-consuming investigations are often necessary for such identification. UFOs most often turn out to be bright planets or stars, aircraft, birds, balloons, kites, aerial flares, peculiar clouds, meteors, and satellites. The remaining sightings can probably be attributed to other mistaken sightings or to inaccurate reporting, hoaxes, or delusions, although to disprove all claims made about UFOs is impossible. From 1947 to 1969 the United States Air Force (USAF) investigated UFOs as a possible threat to national security. A total of 12,618 reports was received, of which 701 reports, or 5.6 per cent, were listed as unexplained. The USAF concluded that “no UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security”. Some people nevertheless believe that UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft, even though no scientifically valid evidence supports that belief. The possibility of extraterrestrial civilizations is not the stumbling block; most scientists grant that intelligent life may well exist elsewhere in the universe. A fully convincing UFO photograph of a craft-like object has yet to be taken, however, and the scientific method requires that highly speculative explanations should not be adopted unless all of the more ordinary explanations can be ruled out. UFO enthusiasts persist, however, and some people even claim to have been abducted and taken aboard UFOs. (A close encounter of the third kind is UFO terminology for an alleged encounter between human beings and visitors from outer space.) No one has produced scientifically acceptable proof of these claims.

Black Hole, a hypothetical body with a gravitational field so strong that nothing, including electromagnetic radiation, can escape from its vicinity. The body is surrounded by a spherical boundary, called a horizon, through which light can enter but not escape; it therefore appears totally black. Such a field can belong to a high-density body, of relatively small mass-equal to the Sun's or less-that is compressed into a very small volume; or to a low-density body of very great mass, such as a collection of millions of stars at a galaxy's centre. Properties The black-hole concept was developed by the German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild in 1916 on the basis of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. The radius of the horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole depends only on the mass of the body: in kilometres it is 2.95 times the mass of the body in solar units-that is, the mass of the body divided by the mass of the Sun. (For the radius in miles, the corresponding factor is 1.83). If a body is electrically charged or rotating, Schwarzschild's results are modified. An "ergosphere" forms outside the horizon, within which matter is forced to rotate with the black hole; in principle, energy can be emitted from the ergosphere. According to general relativity, gravitation severely modifies space and time near a black hole. As the horizon is approached from outside, time slows down relative to that of distant observers, stopping completely on the horizon. Once a body has contracted within its Schwarzschild radius, it would theoretically collapse to a singularity, that is, a dimensionless object of infinite density. Formation Black holes may form during the course of stellar evolution. As nuclear fuels are exhausted in the core of a star, the pressure associated with the heat they produce is no longer available to resist contraction of the core to ever higher densities. Two new types of pressure arise at densities a million and a million billion (1015) times that of water, respectively, and a compact white dwarf or a neutron star may form. If the core mass exceeds about 1.7 solar masses, however, neither of these types of pressure is sufficient to prevent collapse to a black hole. Astronomers have discovered X-ray emissions from a binary star system, Cygnus X-1, in which the primary is a normal star of about 30 solar masses. Doppler shifts in its spectrum show that a companion object of 10 to 15 solar masses must be in orbit around it; evidence exists that the X-rays originate near the companion (see Doppler Effect). Normally such X-rays are produced by an "accretion disc", a dense, hot disc of gas that forms as the gas from a normal star spirals into a compact object. The companion in Cygnus X-1, because of its massiveness, is thought likely to be a black hole rather than a white dwarf or neutron star. Other potential candidates for a black hole are an X-ray source in a galaxy neighbouring our own, the Large Magellanic Cloud, and another X-ray source located in the constellation Monoceros. Astrophysicists conjecture that many, if not all, galaxies of substantial size may contain black holes at their centres. In 1994 the Hubble Space Telescope provided strong evidence that a black hole exists at the centre of the galaxy M87. The high acceleration of gases in this region indicates that an object, or group of objects, of 2.5 billion to 3.5 billion solar masses must be present. The English physicist Stephen Hawking has suggested that many black holes may have formed in the early universe. If this is so, many of these black holes could be too far from other matter to form detectable accretion discs, and they could even compose a significant fraction of the total mass of the universe. In reaction to the concept of singularities, Hawking has also proposed that black holes do not collapse in this manner but instead form "wormholes" to other universes besides our own. A black hole of sufficiently small mass can capture one member of an electron-positron pair near the horizon, the other escaping (see X Ray: Pair Production). The resulting radiation carries off energy, in a sense evaporating the black hole. Any primordial black holes weighing less than a few billion tonnes would already have evaporated, but heavier ones may remain. The questions multiply. What will be the next stages? Will old media disappear? For example, what will happen to the book or to the compact disc? How will the newspaper change? Will it ever become completely electronic? Can public broadcasting survive? What is the future of digital terrestrial television? Will we have new business alliances and consortia? They are already forming. At the individual level will E-mail displace letters or fax? Will the relationship between media producers and editors and users (or customers) become more interactive? At the more fundamental level will digitalization divide the world even more than at present into “haves” and “have nots”—those countries that have the capacity and ability to develop new digitalized networks and those that do not? Will the concentration of economic power in the hands of those who now own quite different segments of media—from books to motion pictures and from cable to satellite—endanger individual freedom? Will the opportunity of choice, offered to individuals, mean that the field of choice will be genuinely widened? May we not have more and more of the same thing? It is logical to separate out questions relating to technological developments from questions relating to ownership and control, but, in practice, visions of the future world involve bringing them together. It is difficult in present circumstances to avoid the blurring of “image” (seeing the world as it is presented to us or as we present it to ourselves) and “reality.” Can “truth” survive? The media in their mediation can create what has come to be called “virtual reality”; and Internet can offer fantasy ways of escaping from the restraints of life as it is lived to a world of cyberspace. Cyber words have multiplied during the 1980s and 1990s—from “cybernaut” to “cyborg” through a whole new vocabulary. It may well be that through an effort to chart the words that we use, and the dates when they were first used, we can achieve a greater understanding of a continuing historical process that encompasses the future as well as the past. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. DANGERS TO EARTH FROM GAMMA-RAY BURSTS: If a GRB occurred close to our solar system, it could pose a major threat to life on Earth. One likely effect would be to strip away our planet’s ozone layer, exposing Earth to dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Some scientists think such events may have happened in the past and could explain some mass extinctions recorded in the history of life on Earth. However, a powerful enough GRB might blast away the atmosphere entirely and scorch Earth’s surface, ending all life forever. Astronomers think that the huge star Eta Carinae is preparing to explode as a supernova sometime in the future, possibly unleashing a GRB. The star appears to be far enough away at 7,500 light-years that only astronauts and spacecraft would be severely affected, but the gamma rays would damage Earth’s ozone layer. Astronomers are also looking for nearby pairs of neutron stars that might collide in the future. SHORT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS: Scientists theorize that short-duration bursts result from the collision of two neutron stars or the collision of a neutron star and a black hole. Such events may occur as the catastrophic end of a double-star system in which two very massive stars once orbited together. As each star reached the end of its life cycle and nuclear fusion no longer released energy from the core, the core collapsed and the star exploded as a supernova. In each case the supernova left behind either a neutron star or a black hole. The two objects in the system continued to orbit a common center of gravity, drawing closer together. In a final act, the two neutron stars collided, forming a black hole, or the neutron star and the black hole collided to create a larger black hole. Both of these events would release an intense, short flash of gamma rays. A system that had two black holes that merged into a single black hole would not give off a similar burst of gamma rays, however. Scientists think that the merger of two black holes would give off gravitational waves, as would the collision of two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole. Gravitational waves are ripples in space-time predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity. LONG GAMMA-RAY BURSTS: Long-duration gamma-ray bursts are thought to occur when a star at least 30 times as massive as the Sun reaches the end of its life and the core collapses. A narrow jet of high-energy gamma rays is emitted by the formation of a black hole in the core just before the star explodes as a hypernova. Hypernovas are extremely powerful supernovas. In some cases the star may be so massive that it collapses entirely into a black hole and does not explode. If the jet of energy is directed toward Earth, it is seen as a long-duration gamma-ray burst. According to some theories, another type of long-duration GRB may result from the collision of a white dwarf star and a black hole, similar to the events thought to cause short-duration gamma-ray bursts. Gamma-ray bursters are staggeringly powerful but short-lived events which astronomers detect regularly from earth. In 1997 astronomers first determined the location of such an event, finding that it originated well outside our galaxy. The following article from the Encarta Yearbook relates how astronomers made this discovery. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Electromagnetic Radiation, waves produced by the oscillation or acceleration of an electric charge. Electromagnetic waves have both electric and magnetic components. Electromagnetic radiation can be arranged in a spectrum that extends from waves of extremely high frequency and short wavelength to extremely low frequency and long wavelength. Visible light is only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. In order of decreasing frequency, the electromagnetic spectrum consists of gamma rays, hard and soft X-rays, ultraviolet radiation, visible light, infrared radiation, microwaves, and radio waves. Properties Electromagnetic waves need no material medium for their transmission. Thus, light and radio waves can travel through interplanetary and interstellar space from the Sun and stars to the Earth. Regardless of their frequency and wavelength, electromagnetic waves travel at the same speed in a vacuum. The value of the metre has been defined so that the speed of light is exactly 299,792.458 km (approximately 186,282 mi) per second in a vacuum. All the components of the electromagnetic spectrum also show the typical properties of wave motion, including diffraction and interference. The wavelengths range from billionths of a centimetre to many kilometres. The wavelength and frequency of electromagnetic waves are important in determining their heating effect, visibility, penetration, and other characteristics. Theory The British physicist James Clerk Maxwell laid out the theory of electromagnetism in a series of papers published in the 1860s. He deduced that electromagnetic waves must exist and stated that visible light consisted of such waves. Physicists had known since the early 19th century that light travels as a transverse wave (a wave in which the vibrations move in a direction perpendicular to the direction of the advancing wave front). They assumed, however, that the wave required some material medium for its transmission, so they thought that there was an extremely diffuse substance, called ether, which was the unobservable medium. Maxwell's theory made such an assumption unnecessary, but the ether concept was not abandoned immediately, because it fitted in with the Newtonian concept of an absolute space-time frame for the universe. A famous experiment conducted by the American physicist Albert Abraham Michelson and the American chemist Edward Williams Morley in the late 19th century undermined the ether concept and was important in the development of the theory of relativity. This work led to the realization that the speed of electromagnetic radiation in a vacuum is the same, regardless of the velocity of the source or the observer. Quanta of Radiation At the beginning of the 20th century, however, physicists found that the wave theory did not account for all the properties of radiation. In 1900 the German physicist Max Planck demonstrated that the emission and absorption of radiation occur in finite units of energy, known as quanta. In 1905, Albert Einstein was able to explain some puzzling experimental results concerning the photoelectric effect by suggesting that electromagnetic radiation can behave like a particle. Other phenomena that occur in the interaction between radiation and matter can also be explained only by the quantum theory. Thus, modern physicists were forced to recognize that electromagnetic radiation can behave sometimes like a particle and sometimes like a wave. The parallel concept-that matter also exhibits particle-like and wave-like characteristics-was developed in 1925 by the French physicist Louis de Broglie. See Wave-Particle Duality. Electromagnetic Radiation, energy waves produced by the oscillation or acceleration of an electric charge. Electromagnetic waves have both electric and magnetic components. Electromagnetic radiation can be arranged in a spectrum that extends from waves of extremely high frequency and short wavelength to extremely low frequency and long wavelength (see Wave Motion). Visible light is only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. In order of decreasing frequency, the electromagnetic spectrum consists of gamma rays, hard and soft X rays, ultraviolet radiation, visible light, infrared radiation, microwaves, and radio waves. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Radiation Effects, Biological, effects observed when ionizing radiation interacts with living tissue by transferring energy to molecules of cellular matter. Cellular function may be temporarily or permanently impaired as a result of such interaction, or the cell may be destroyed. The severity of the injury depends on the type of radiation, the absorbed dose, the rate at which the dose was absorbed, and the radiosensitivity of the tissues involved. The effects are the same, whether from a radiation source outside the body or from material within. The biological effects of a large dose of radiation delivered rapidly differ greatly from those of the same dose delivered slowly. The effects of rapid delivery are due to cell death, and they become apparent within hours, days, or weeks. Protracted exposure is better tolerated because some of the damage is repaired while the exposure continues, even if the total dose is relatively high. If the dose is sufficient to cause acute clinical effects, however, repair is less likely and may be slow even if it does occur. Exposure to doses of radiation too low to destroy cells can induce cellular changes that may be detectable clinically only after some years. Acute Effects High whole-body doses of radiation produce a characteristic pattern of injury. Doses are measured in grays, 1 gray (Gy) being equal to an amount of radiation that releases 1 joule of energy per kilogram of matter. Doses of more than 40 Gy severely damage the human vascular system, causing cerebral oedema, which leads to profound shock and neurological disturbances; death occurs within 48 hours. Whole-body doses of 10 to 40 Gy cause less severe vascular damage, but they lead to a loss of fluids and electrolytes into the intercellular spaces and the gastrointestinal tract; death occurs within ten days as a result of fluid and electrolyte imbalance, severe bone-marrow damage, and terminal infection. Absorbed doses of 1.5 to 10 Gy cause destruction of human bone marrow, leading to infection and haemorrhage; death, if it occurs, can be expected about four to five weeks after exposure. Currently only the effects of these lower doses can be treated effectively; but if untreated, half the people receiving as little as 3 to 3.25 Gy to the bone marrow will die. Exposure of small areas of the body—the most frequent kind of radiation accident—leads to localized tissue damage. Damage to the blood vessels in exposed areas causes disturbed organ function and, at higher doses, necrosis (localized tissue death) and gangrene. Injury from internally deposited radiation sources is not likely to cause acute effects but, rather, delayed phenomena, depending on the target organ and on the half-life, radiation characteristics, and biochemical behaviour of the radiation source. Consequences may include degeneration or destruction of the irradiated tissue and the initiation of cancer. Late Effects Nonmalignant delayed effects of ionizing radiation are manifested in many organs—particularly bone marrow, kidneys, lungs, and the lens of the eye—by degenerative changes and impaired function; these are largely secondary to radiation-induced damage to blood vessels. The most important late effect of radiation exposure, however, is an increased incidence of cancers and leukaemia of the types that occur naturally in unexposed individuals. Statistically significant increases in leukaemia and of cancers of the thyroid, the lung, and the female breast have been demonstrated unequivocally only in populations exposed to relatively high doses (greater than 1 Gy). Non-specific life-shortening effects suggested by animal experiments have not been demonstrated in humans as yet, however. Nonionizing Radiation The radio-frequency radiation from sources such as power lines, radar, communications networks, and microwave ovens is nonionizing, and for many years only high doses of such radiation were known to be harmful, causing burns, cataracts, temporary sterility, and other effects. In recent years, however, with the proliferation of such devices, the possible effects of long-term exposure to low levels of nonionizing radiation began to be a matter of scientific concern. Subtle biological effects have been observed, but their health significance is thus far not certain. Radiation Sickness, illness caused by exposure of the body or part of the body to high doses of ionizing radiation (radiation that alters atoms that it strikes). The symptoms normally arise from high exposure to external radiation, such as that from X-rays or gamma rays, but may arise from internal absorption of radioactive materials (such as radiocaesium) or from both. Radiation sickness is characterized by a sudden sensation of anorexia (loss of appetite) or nausea and is soon followed by vomiting and sometimes diarrhoea. It extends beyond these early symptoms to more serious conditions, as damage to other tissues, such as the bone marrow, progressively causes lowering of blood cell counts, thereby leaving the body vulnerable to infections. High radiation doses can also lead to permanent sterility resulting from damage to reproductive organs; to serious damage to other organs of the body; and to death-with or without medical treatment. Many other symptoms may arise which depend on the dose, the dose rate, and the area of the body affected. These may include, in the short term, loss of hair, skin burns, or haemorrhages, and, in the long term, increased risk of cancer. Acute Radiation Sickness In an acute exposure (measured in seconds, minutes, hours) death may occur; the main biological effect is cell damage, the severity depending on the tissue type. In the sensitive lining stem cells of the gastrointestinal tract, in particular in the stomach and small intestine, the compound serotonin, or 5-hydroxytryptamine (5HT3) is released into the bloodstream. This stimulates the nausea and vomiting centres in the brain and other 5HT3 receptors in the body. There is an accompanying increase in bowel motility (movement) which may be caused by bile salts acting on the damaged mucosa. These symptoms may vary according to individual susceptibility, and because in most uncontrolled situations not everyone is exposed to equal amounts of radiation. In radiotherapy, where exposures are controlled and planned in sessions to enable normal sensitive tissues to recover between treatments, nausea and vomiting usually occur only where there is a high-dose total-body irradiation, for example, in the ablation (surgical removal) of bone marrow for subsequent bone marrow transplantation. It is normal for patients to be given anti-emetics such as ondansetron, which, by counteracting the effects of 5HT3, reduce such side effects. All these effects are exacerbated by radiation damage to other cell types, particularly the bone marrow. The gray (Gy) is the unit of absorbed dose, when the energy per unit mass imparted to matter by ionizing radiation is 1 joule per kilogram. The previously used unit, the rad, is equivalent to 10-2 Gy. At doses greater than 1 Gy significant reductions in blood cell counts follow depletion of the bone marrow, and can lead to reduced resistance to infections, haemorrhages, and anaemia. Where there is significant direct exposure or surface contamination with radioactive materials, skin burns may occur, leading to further fluid loss and danger of infections. The acute symptoms are sometimes grouped together and known as acute radiation syndrome. Combined injuries have a worse prognosis and this is important in medical management. Without medical treatment an acute dose of approximately 4 Gy is likely to lead to death within 60 days in 50 per cent of those exposed. Doses in excess of 10 Gy are likely to result in earlier death even with treatment. Similar doses over longer periods (days, weeks) may cause a variety of symptoms, but death is less likely as the cells and tissues have time to repair damage. Experience from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb explosions, and from other accidents with radiation sources, nuclear weapon tests, and nuclear power plants, has provided important findings. The time from exposure to onset of symptoms, the incidence rates, and the duration of radiation sickness can now be estimated. However, in most situations it has been extremely difficult to reconstruct the doses accurately. The following figures are given as guidelines for adults. Anorexia may be seen in 5 per cent of those exposed at 0.4 Gy and 95 per cent at 3 Gy; nausea in 5 per cent at 0.5 Gy and 95 per cent at 4.5 Gy; vomiting in 5 per cent at 0.6 Gy and 100 per cent at 7 Gy; and diarrhoea in 5 per cent at 1 Gy and over 20 per cent at 8 Gy. If the time from exposure to onset of any of the above symptoms is less than one hour, the dose is likely to be more than 3 Gy; if more than three hours, less than 1 Gy; and if more than 24 hours, the dose is likely to be more than 6 Gy. These general findings can be helpful to doctors as an aid to medical triage (prioritizing treatment for different casualty levels) before more refined estimates can be made. Fall-out from a thermonuclear test explosion carried out by the United States in the Marshall Islands in 1954 drifted over local inhabitants, who received estimated average whole-body doses of 1.75 Gy. There were no deaths, but there was a degree of illness, with early sickness and diarrhoea in some 10 per cent of the inhabitants, and a fall in blood cell counts. Body surface contamination from the fallout caused skin ulceration in about 20 per cent of those affected. At the nuclear plant disaster which took place at Chernobyl' in Ukraine in 1986, a total of 203 people involved with the accident were found to be suffering from acute radiation sickness. In the highest exposure group (6 to 16 Gy) the first symptom was vomiting, occurring within 15 to 30 minutes of exposure, followed by profuse diarrhoea. This group, which included firemen, was also affected acutely by inhalation of radioactive materials and toxic substances, as well as being victims of conventional injuries. Despite sophisticated treatment at specialist centres, 20 of 22 members of this group died. The other radiation effects on the bone marrow and the external radiation burns resulting from skin contamination with beta-emitting radioactive isotopes also contributed to these deaths. As doses decreased, the symptoms and signs were less severe. In those victims with doses in the 1 to 2 Gy range vomiting occurred later and, although some individuals also suffered skin contamination, none in this group died. Chronic Radiation Sickness Following a chronic exposure (measured in days, weeks, months) the symptoms are usually more subtle. The usual feature is of general malaise, with symptoms similar to flu, fever, and possibly diarrhoea and vomiting. These cases are extremely difficult to unravel and have arisen from inadvertent exposure to an industrial radiation source or to medical therapy equipment, sometimes discarded or procured illegally. In a case in Estonia, where a radiation source had been taken into a house, it was only after an elderly member of the household died and others started to suffer from general malaise that radiation exposure was suspected. Dose Controls at Work In Britain, companies and organizations which employ people to work with radiation (hospital radiologists, industrial radiographers, and nuclear industry workers) are required to comply with statutory requirements under the Ionising Radiations Regulations passed in 1985. These regulations set a maximum dose limit for radiation workers of 50 millisievert (mSv) per annum. (The sources of radiation, gamma rays and X-rays, are about equal numerically to the exposure measurement units, sievert and gray.) This maximum dose limit may be compared with the average background radiation dose in Britain of 2.4 mSv per annum. The National Radiological Protection Board has recommended that the occupational dose limit should be reduced to 20 mSv per annum. Any worker deemed likely to exceed a 15 mSv dose is subjected to medical surveillance and dose assessment by dosimetry (constant dose monitoring) and are required to wear film badges. Most radiation workers in Britain receive an average dose of 1.4 mSv and annual doses well below 15 mSv. Employers are required to keep doses as low as reasonably achievable and to report any cases of overexposure to the Health and Safety Executive, the statutory body enforcing the regulations. These and other regulations also impose strict controls on the procurement, use, storage, and disposal of all radioactive sources or materials. ABSORPTION OF ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION Electromagnetic radiation is the transfer of energy by waves travelling at the speed of light (300,000km/s) in a vacuum. These waves are transverse waves and have both and electric and a magnetic component to them. There is a spectrum of electromagnetic radiation from high energy waves (short wave lengths) such as gamma rays and x-rays, through ultraviolet, visible light and infra-red radiation to lower energy waves such as microwaves and radio waves (long wavelengths). Radiation may be absorbed by many types of materials. It turns out that all objects are able to emit radiation at all wavelengths and similarly absorb all types of radiation. In fact good emitters are also good absorbers of radiation. However, the intensity of the radiation emitted or absorbed will vary enormously with different wavelengths of radiation. Dark coloured objects tend to absorb the thermal energy from radiation more efficiently than light coloured or white objects. Light coloured materials are more likely to reflect the radiation away from them. The rate of absorption of radiation depends strongly on the temperature difference between the absorbing material and the emitter of the radiation. In fact it varies with the fourth power of T, where T is the temperature difference (T4). The rate of absorption is also dependent on the amount of exposed surface area – the larger the area, the greater the absorption. As radiation is absorbed, its energy is transferred to the materials constituent atoms and molecules. This energy transfer depends on the wavelength or energy of the incoming radiation. Microwave radiation, for example, will be absorbed in such a way that the bonds between molecules in the material will vibrate and the temperature of the body will rise. Some of the energy, however, may be re-emitted. For example when a poker is placed in a fire, it absorbs infrared radiation and stores part of it as heat and re-emits part as light as it glows. III. SOUND ABSORPTION Energy can take the form of sound. A sound wave is produced from a vibrating object such as a string or a drill where the energy of some of the vibrations is transmitted to its surroundings. The molecules of the surrounding medium (such as the air) then start vibrating. This leads to a series of compressions and expansions in the medium- a sound wave. The frequency of the wave is given by the number of compressions and expansions passing a given point per second. Sound waves will be gradually absorbed by the medium through which they are travelling. This is because the wave causes several types of vibrations in the material, including rotation of the molecules. This rotation means that the material has an increase in its internal energy, which is not given back to the travelling sound wave and so the sound is absorbed. The amount of absorption is dependent on the frequency of the sound wave, with higher frequencies being absorbed faster than lower sounds. The humidity and temperature of the material also plays a part – in a fog, sound will diminish rapidly. Warning fog horns use a low frequency sound for transmission as this will be absorbed less than a high frequency siren. Sound absorption is much less in water than in air. This is because the molecules are closer together and so the vibrational sound wave is able to pass faster through water than in air and so the fall off in sound intensity is not so apparent. In solids sound absorption varies greatly. Carpets, for example, absorb sound well because they have many pockets of trapped air effectively absorbing noise. Other surfaces such as ceramic tiles, will reflect sound waves back into the atmosphere and will not muffle or absorb sound well. Remote Sensing, process of obtaining information about land, water, or an object, without any physical contact between the sensor and the subject of analysis. The term remote sensing most often refers to the collection of data by instruments carried aboard aircraft or satellites. Remote sensing systems are commonly used to survey, map, and monitor the resources and environment of Earth. They also have been used to explore other planets (see Space Exploration). Global Greenness Image The United States NOAA-11 meteorological satellite carries an instrument called the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) that senses the earth’s environmental makeup. Scientists use AVHRR images to observe the entire globe, and they analyze images compiled over the years for evidence of global climate changes. This AVHRR chart integrates images acquired between June 21 and 30, 1992, and transforms the data into a “greenness index.” Colors on the map signify areas of differing photosynthetic activity, including dense vegetation (dark green); less vegetation (lighter green and yellow); snow, ice, or clouds (white); water (blue); and barren terrain (brown). There are several different types of remote sensing devices. Many systems take photographs with cameras, recording reflected energy in the visible spectrum. Other systems record electromagnetic energy beyond the range of human sight, such as infrared radiation and microwaves (see Electromagnetic Radiation). Multispectral scanners produce images across both the visible and the infrared spectrum.

II. SENSORS The most familiar form of electromagnetic energy is visible light, which is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum to which human eyes are sensitive (see Color). When film in a camera is exposed to light, it records electromagnetic energy. For more than 50 years, photographic images obtained from airborne cameras have been used in urban planning, forest management, topographic mapping, soil conservation, military surveillance, and many other applications (see Aerial Survey; Photogrammetry; Photography). Infrared sensors and microwave sensors record invisible electromagnetic energy. The heat of an object, for example, can be measured by the infrared energy it radiates. Infrared sensors create images that show temperature variations in an area—a difficult or impossible task using conventional photography. Thermal infrared sensors can be used to survey the temperatures of bodies of water, locate damaged underground pipelines, and map geothermal and geologic structures. Microwave sensors, such as radar, transmit electromagnetic energy toward objects and record how these objects reflect the energy. Microwave sensors operate at very long electromagnetic wavelengths capable of penetrating clouds, a useful feature when cloud cover prohibits imaging with other sensors. By scanning an area with radar and processing the data in a computer, scientists can create radar maps. The surface of Venus, which is entirely shrouded by dense clouds, has been mapped in this way. Radar imagery is also used in geologic mapping, estimating soil moisture content, and determining sea-ice conditions to aid in ship navigation. Multispectral scanners provide data electronically for multiple portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Scientists often use computers to enhance the quality of these images or to assist in automated information-gathering and mapping. With computers, scientists can combine several images obtained by multispectral scanners operating at different frequencies. III. SATELLITES Satellites have proved extremely useful in the development of remote sensing systems. In 1972 the United States launched Landsat 1, the first in a series of satellites designed specifically for remote sensing. Beginning in 1999, Landsat 7 produced images of most of Earth’s surface every 16 days. Each Landsat image covers more than 31,000 sq km (11,970 sq mi). Objects as small as 230 sq m (2,500 sq ft) can be seen in the images produced by Landsat's Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus, a type of multispectral scanner. Landsat data are used for applications such as mapping land use, managing forested land, estimating crop production, monitoring grazing conditions, assessing water quality, and protecting wildlife. Between 1990 and 1996 almost 50 remote sensing satellites were placed into orbit. Since 1986 France's SPOT satellites have provided images showing objects as small as 100 sq m (1,076 sq ft) and have produced stereoscopic images useful for topographic mapping. Earth-observing satellites have also been launched by the European Space Agency and by Japan, Russia, India, and other nations. Meteorological satellites, such as those operated by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, provide images for use in weather forecasting (see Meteorology), as well as in oceanic and terrestrial applications. Remote sensors on weather satellites can track the movement of clouds and record temperature changes in the atmosphere. IV. OUTLOOK Remote sensing is changing rapidly. Some satellites carry instruments that can provide images of objects as small as an automobile and constantly improving technology promises even better resolution in the near future. Computer-assisted image-analysis techniques are leading to many new applications for remote sensing. In the late 1990s and the early 21st century, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration was scheduled to launch the Earth Observing System, a key program in its Mission to Planet Earth, which involves launching a series of satellites to study environmental changes on the planet. Interference (wave motion), effect that occurs when two or more waves overlap or intersect. When waves interfere with each other, the amplitude of the resulting wave depends on the frequencies, relative phases (relative positions of the crests and troughs), and amplitudes of the interfering waves (see Wave Motion). For example, constructive interference occurs at a point where two overlapping or intersecting waves of the same frequency are in phase—that is, where the crests and troughs of the two waves coincide. In this case, the two waves reinforce each other and combine to form a wave that has an amplitude equal to the sum of the individual amplitudes of the original waves. Destructive interference occurs when two intersecting waves of the same frequency are completely out of phase—that is, when the crest of one wave coincides with the trough of the other. In this case, the two waves cancel each other out. Intersecting or overlapping waves that have different frequencies or that are not entirely in or out of phase with each other have more complex interference patterns. Visible light is made up of electromagnetic waves that can interfere with each other. For example, interfering light waves are responsible for the colors occasionally seen in soap bubbles. White light is made up of light waves of different wavelengths; the light waves that reflect off the inner surface of the bubble interfere with light waves of the same wavelength that reflect off the outer surface of the bubble. Some of the wavelengths interfere constructively, and other wavelengths interfere destructively. Since different wavelengths of light correspond to different colors, the light reflecting off the soap bubble appears colored. The phenomenon of interference between visible light waves is exploited in holography and in interferometry (see Interferometer). Interference can occur with all types of waves, not only with light waves. Radio waves interfere with each other when they bounce off buildings in cities, distorting radio signals. Sound-wave interference must be taken into account when constructing concert halls, so that destructive interference does not result in areas in the hall where the sounds produced on stage cannot be heard. The interference of water waves can be observed by dropping objects in a still pool of water and watching how the overlapping waves interfere constructively at some points and destructively at others. Holography, method of obtaining three-dimensional photographic images. These images are obtained without a lens, so the method is also called lensless photography. The records are called holograms (Greek holos, “whole”; gram, “message”). The theoretical principles of holography were developed by the British physicist Dennis Gabor in 1947. The first actual production of holograms took place in the early 1960s, when the laser became available. By the late 1980s the production of true-color holograms was possible, as well as holograms ranging from the microwave to the X-ray region of the spectrum. Ultrasonic holograms were also being made, using sound waves. Microwave Relay Transmission Microwave relay stations are tall towers that receive television signals, amplify them, and retransmit them as a microwave signal to the next relay station. Microwaves are electromagnetic waves that are much shorter than normal television carrier waves and can travel farther. The stations are placed about 50 km (30 mi) apart. Television networks once relied on relay stations to broadcast to affiliate stations located in cities far from the original source of the broadcast. The affiliate stations received the microwave transmission and rebroadcast it as a normal television signal to the local area. This system has now been replaced almost entirely by satellite transmission in which networks send or uplink their program signals to a satellite that in turn downlinks the signals to affiliate stations. Satellite Transmission Communications satellites receive television signals from a ground station, amplify them, and relay them back to the earth over an antenna that covers a specified terrestrial area. The satellites circle the earth in a geosynchronous orbit, which means they stay above the same place on the earth at all times. Instead of a normal aerial antenna, receiving dishes are used to receive the signal and deliver it to the television set or station. The dishes can be fairly small for home use, or large and powerful, such as those used by cable and network television stations. Satellite transmissions are used to efficiently distribute television and radio programs from one geographic location to another by networks; cable companies; individual broadcasters; program providers; and industrial, educational, and other organizations. Programs intended for specific subscribers are scrambled so that only the intended recipients, with appropriate decoders, can receive the program. Direct-broadcast satellites (DBS) are used worldwide to deliver TV programming directly to TV receivers through small home dishes. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensed several firms in the 1980s to begin DBS service in the United States. The actual launch of DBS satellites, however, was delayed due to the economic factors involved in developing a digital video compression system. The arrival in the early 1990s of digital compression made it possible for a single DBS satellite to carry more than 200 TV channels. DBS systems in North America are operating in the Ku band (12.0-19.0 GHz). DBS home systems consist of the receiving dish antenna and a low-noise amplifier that boosts the antenna signal level and feeds it to a coaxial cable. A receiving box converts the superhigh frequency (SHF) signals to lower frequencies and puts them on channels that the home TV set can display. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), independent agency of the United States government created in 1934, with jurisdiction over communications in the 50 states, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. The function of the commission is to regulate interstate and foreign radio, television, wire, and cable communications; to provide for orderly development and operation of broadcasting services; to provide for rapid, efficient nationwide and worldwide telegraph and telephone service; to promote the safety of life and property through the use of wire and radio communications; and to employ communications facilities for strengthening national defense. In the field of radio, the FCC regulates amplitude modulation (AM) and frequency modulation (FM) broadcasting and other kinds of radio services. It issues construction permits and licenses for all nongovernmental radio stations. It also assigns frequencies, operating power, and call signs; inspects transmitting equipment, and regulates the use of such equipment. Television broadcasting is regulated by the FCC in the same manner. The commission also regulates the use of cable channels and the quality of service delivered by cable television. In common-carrier operations, which include telephone, telegraph, radio, and satellite communications, the FCC issues regulations and supervises service. The FCC is responsible for domestic administration of the telecommunications provisions of treaties and international agreements, and licenses radio and cable circuits from the United States to foreign points. The Emergency Broadcast System, which alerts and instructs the public in the event of enemy attack, is supervised by the FCC; the system is regularly used for broadcasting weather warnings and may also be used in local emergencies. The FCC is administered by five commissioners appointed by the president, with approval of the Senate, to five-year terms. Wave Aspect of Electrons This pattern is produced when a narrow beam of electrons passes through a sample of titanium-nickel alloy. The pattern reveals that the electrons move through the sample more like waves than particles. The electrons diffract (bend) around atoms, breaking into many beams and spreading outward. The diffracted beams then interfere with one another, cancelling each other out in some places and reinforcing each other in other places. The bright spots are places where the beams interfered constructively, or reinforced each other. The dark spots are areas in which the beams interfered destructively, or cancelled each other out. Electron, negatively charged particle found in an atom. Electrons, along with neutrons and protons, comprise the basic building blocks of all atoms. The electrons form the outer layer or layers of an atom, while the neutrons and protons make up the nucleus, or core, of the atom. Electrons, neutrons, and protons are elementary particles—that is, they are among the smallest parts of matter that scientists can isolate. The electron carries a negative electric charge of –1.602 x 10-19 coulomb and has a mass of 9.109 x 10-31 kg. Scientists cannot simultaneously measure both the exact location of an electron and its precise speed and direction, so they cannot measure the path a specific electron takes as it orbits the nucleus. The law of physics governing this phenomenon is called the uncertainty principle. Scientists can, however, determine the area an electron will probably occupy, and the probability of finding the electron at some place inside this area. A map of this area and its probabilities forms a cloud like pattern known as an orbital. Each orbital can contain two electrons, but these electrons can not have identical properties, so they must spin in opposite directions. Orbitals are grouped into shells, like the layers of an onion, around the nucleus. Each shell can contain a limited number of orbitals, which means that each shell can contain a limited number of electrons. Each shell corresponds to a certain level of energy, and all the electrons in the shell have this same level of energy. As the shells get farther from the nucleus, they can contain more electrons, and the electrons in the shells have higher energy. The Electron Cloud Electron Density and Orbital Shapes Atomic orbitals are mathematical descriptions of where the electrons in an atom (or molecule) are most likely to be found. These descriptions are obtained by solving an equation known as the Schr?dinger equation, which expresses our knowledge of the atomic world. As the angular momentum and energy of an electron increases, it tends to reside in differently shaped orbitals. The orbitals corresponding to the three lowest energy states are s, p, and d, respectively. The illustration shows the spatial distribution of electrons within these orbitals. The fundamental nature of electrons prevents more than two from ever being in the same orbital. The overall distribution of electrons in an atom is the sum of many such pictures. This description has been confirmed by many experiments in chemistry and physics, including an actual picture of a p-orbital made by a Scanning Tunneling Microscope. Most of the physical and chemical properties of atoms, and hence of all matter, are determined by the nature of the electron cloud enclosing the nucleus. The nucleus of an atom, with its positive electric charge, attracts negatively charged electrons. This attraction is largely responsible for holding the atom together. The revolution of electrons about a nucleus is determined by the force with which they are attracted to the nucleus. The electrons move very rapidly, and determination of exactly where any particular one is at a given time is theoretically impossible (see Uncertainty Principle). If the atom were visible, the electrons might appear as a cloud, or fog, that is dense in some spots, thin in others. The shape of this cloud and the probability of finding an electron at any point in the cloud can be calculated from the equations of wave mechanics (see Quantum Theory). The solutions of these equations are called orbitals. Each orbital is associated with a definite energy, and each may be occupied by no more than two electrons. If an orbital contains two electrons, the electrons must have opposite spins, a property related to the angular momentum of the electrons. The electrons occupy the orbitals of lowest energy first, then the orbitals next in energy, and so on, building out until the atom is complete (see Atom). The orbitals tend to form groups known as shells (so-called because they are analogous to the layers, or shells, around an onion). Each shell is associated with a different level of energy. Starting from the nucleus and counting outward, the shells, or principal energy levels, are numbered 1, 2, 3, … , n. The outer shells have more space than the inner ones and can accommodate more orbitals and therefore more electrons. The nth shell consists of 2n-1 orbitals, and each orbital can hold a maximum of 2 electrons. For example, the third shell contains five orbitals and holds a maximum of 10 electrons; the fourth shell contains seven orbitals and holds a maximum of 14 electrons. Among the known elements, only the first seven shells of an atom contain electrons, and only the first four shells are ever filled. Each shell (designated as n) contains different types of orbitals, numbered from 0 to n-1. The first four types of orbitals are known by their letter designations as s, p, d, and f. There is one s-orbital in each shell, and this orbital contains the most firmly bound electrons of the shell. The s-orbital is followed by the p-orbitals (which always occur in groups of three), the d-orbitals (which always occur in groups of five), and finally the f-orbitals (which always occur in groups of seven). The s-orbitals are always spherically shaped around the nucleus; each p-orbital has two lobes resembling two balls touching; each d-orbital has four lobes; and each f-orbital has eight lobes. The p-, d-, and f-orbitals have a directional orientation in space, but the spherical s-orbitals do not. The three p-orbitals are oriented perpendicular to one another along the axis of an imaginary three-dimensional Cartesian (x, y, z) coordinate system. The three p-orbitals are designated px, py, and pz, respectively. The d- and f-orbitals are similarly arranged about the nucleus at fixed angles to one another. When elements are listed in order of increasing atomic number, an atom of one element contains one more electron than an atom of the preceding element (see Chemical Elements). The added electrons fill orbitals in order of the increasing energy of the orbitals. The first shell contains the 1s orbital; the second shell contains the 2s orbital and the 2p orbitals; the third shell contains the 3s orbital, the 3p orbitals, and the 3d orbitals; the fourth shell contains the 4s orbital, the 4p orbitals, the 4d orbitals, and the 4f orbitals. After the two innermost shells, certain orbitals of outer shells have lower energies than the last orbitals of preceding shells. For this reason, some orbitals of the outer shells fill before the previous shells are complete. For example, the s-orbital of the fourth shell (4s) fills before the d-orbitals of the third shell (3d). Orbitals generally fill in this order: 1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 4s, 3d, 4p, 5s, 4d, 5p, 6s, 4f, 5d, 6p, 7s. In a notation frequently used to describe the electron configuration of an element, a superscript after the orbital letter gives the number of electrons in that orbital. Thus, 1s22s22p5 means that the atom has two electrons in the 1s orbital, two electrons in the 2s orbital, and five electrons in the 2p orbitals. Neutral atoms with exactly eight electrons in the outer shell (meaning the s- and p-orbitals of the outer shell are filled) are exceptionally stable. These neutral atoms are atoms of the noble gases, which are so stable that getting them to chemically react with other elements is very difficult. The unusual stability of the noble-gas electron structures is of great importance in chemical bonding and reactivity. All other elements tend to combine with each other in such a way as to imitate this stable structure. The structure of helium is 1s2; neon adds another stable shell, 2s22p6, to this; argon adds the orbitals 3s23p6; krypton adds the orbitals 4s23d104p6; and xenon adds the orbitals 5s24d105p6 (the s-orbital fills before the d-orbital of the previous shell). Electron Density and Orbital Shapes Atomic orbitals are mathematical descriptions of where the electrons in an atom (or molecule) are most likely to be found. These descriptions are obtained by solving an equation known as the Schr?dinger equation, which expresses our knowledge of the atomic world. As the angular momentum and energy of an electron increases, it tends to reside in differently shaped orbitals. The orbitals corresponding to the three lowest energy states are s, p, and d, respectively. The illustration shows the spatial distribution of electrons within these orbitals. The fundamental nature of electrons prevents more than two from ever being in the same orbital. The overall distribution of electrons in an atom is the sum of many such pictures. This description has been confirmed by many experiments in chemistry and physics, including an actual picture of a p-orbital made by a Scanning Tunneling Microscope. In 1995 American physicists used particle traps to cool a sample of rubidium atoms to a temperature near absolute zero (-273°C, or –459°F). Absolute zero is the temperature at which all motion stops. When the scientists cooled the rubidium atoms to such a low temperature, the atoms slowed almost to a stop. The scientists knew that the momentum of the atoms, which is related to their speed, was close to zero. At this point, a special rule of quantum physics, called the uncertainty principle, greatly affected the positions of the atoms. This rule states that the momentum and position of a particle both cannot have precise values at the same time. The scientists had a fairly precise value for the atom’s momentum (nearly zero), so the positions of the atoms became very imprecise. The position of each atom could be described as a large, fuzzy cloud of probability. The atoms were very close together in the trap, so the probability clouds of many atoms overlapped one another. It was impossible for the scientists to tell where one atom ended and another began. In effect, the atoms formed one huge particle. This new state of matter is called a Bose-Einstein condensate. Spectroscopes Electric Discharge in Nitrogen In this discharge tube filled with nitrogen, an electric current excites the nitrogen atoms. Almost instantaneously, these excited atoms shed their excess energy by emitting light of specific wavelengths. This phenomenon of discrete emission by excited atoms remained unexplained until the advent of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century. Encarta Encyclopedia Yoav Levy/Phototake NYC Spectroscopy is the study of the radiation, or energy, that atoms, ions, molecules, and atomic nuclei emit. This emitted energy is usually in the form of electromagnetic radiation—vibrating electric and magnetic waves. Electromagnetic waves can have a variety of wavelengths, including those of visible light. X rays, ultraviolet radiation, and infrared radiation are also forms of electromagnetic radiation. Scientists use spectroscopes to measure this emitted radiation. Radiation Released by Radioactivity Atomic nuclei emit radiation when they undergo radioactive decay, as discussed in the Radioactivity section above. Nuclei usually emit radiation with very short wavelengths (and therefore high energy) when they decay. Often this radiation is in the form of gamma rays, a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths even shorter than X rays. Once again, nuclei of different elements emit radiation of characteristic wavelengths. Scientists can identify nuclei by measuring this radiation. This method is especially useful in neutron activation analysis, a technique scientists use for identifying the presence of tiny amounts of elements. Scientists bombard samples that they wish to identify with neutrons. Some of the neutrons join the nuclei, making them radioactive. When the nuclei decay, they emit radiation that allows the scientists to identify the substance. Environmental scientists use neutron activation analysis in studying air and water pollution. Forensic scientists, who study evidence related to crimes, use this technique to identify gunshot residue and traces of poisons. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

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Ozone Layer, a region of the atmosphere from 19 to 48 km (12 to 30 mi) above Earth's surface. Ozone concentrations of up to 10 parts per million occur in the ozone layer. The ozone forms there by the action of sunlight on oxygen. This action has been taking place for many millions of years, but naturally occurring nitrogen compounds in the atmosphere apparently have kept the ozone concentration at a fairly stable level. The ozone layer of the atmosphere protects life on Earth by absorbing harmful ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. If all the ultraviolet radiation given off by the Sun were allowed to reach the surface of Earth, most of the life on Earth’s surface would probably be destroyed. Short wavelengths of ultraviolet radiation, such as UV-A, B, and C, are damaging to the cell structure of living organisms. Fortunately, the ozone layer absorbs almost all of the short-wavelength ultraviolet radiation and much of the long-wavelength ultraviolet radiation given off by the Sun. In the 1970s scientists became concerned when they discovered that chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs (see Fluorine)—long used as refrigerants and as aerosol spray propellants—posed a possible threat to the ozone layer. Released into the atmosphere, these chlorine-containing chemicals rise into the upper stratosphere and are broken down by sunlight, whereupon the chlorine reacts with and destroys ozone molecules—up to 100,000 per CFC molecule. The use of CFCs in aerosols has been banned in the United States and elsewhere. Other chemicals, such as bromine halocarbons, as well as nitrous oxides from fertilizers, may also attack the ozone layer. Thinning of the ozone layer is predicted to cause increases in skin cancer and cataracts, damage to certain crops and to plankton and the marine food web, and an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (see Global Warming) due to the decrease in plants and plankton. Beginning in the early 1980s, research scientists working in Antarctica began to detect a periodic loss of ozone in the atmosphere high above that continent. The so-called ozone “hole,” a thinned region of the ozone layer, develops in the Antarctic spring and continues for several months before thickening again. Studies conducted with high-altitude balloons and weather satellites indicated that the overall percentage of ozone in the Antarctic ozone layer is actually declining. Measurements over the Arctic regions indicated that a similar problem was developing there. In 1985 the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer was adopted. In 1987 a protocol under the Vienna Convention, known as the Montréal Protocol, was signed and later ratified by 36 nations, including the United States. A total ban on the use of CFCs during the 1990s was proposed by the European Community (now called the European Union) in 1989, a move endorsed by U.S. President George H. W. Bush. In December 1995 over 100 nations agreed to phase out developed countries' production of the pesticide methyl bromide by the year 2000. The pesticide was estimated to cause about 15 percent of the ozone depletion. Production of CFCs in developed countries ceased at the end of 1995 and was to be phased out in developing countries by 2010. Hydrochlorofluorocarbons, or HCFCs, which cause less damage to the ozone layer than CFCs do, began to be used as substitutes for CFCs following the adoption of the Montréal Protocol. HCFCs were to be used on an interim basis until 2030 in developed countries and until 2040 in developing countries. In addition, the United States passed legislation that would ban the production of the refrigerant HCFC-22, widely used in air conditioners, by 2010. Other industrialized nations also adopted measures to end HCFC-22 production prior to 2020. But production of HCFC-22 in developing nations was estimated in 2007 to be increasing at a rate of 20 to 35 percent each year. Concerned about the increasing use of HCFCs, the United Nations Environment Program met again in September 2007 in Montréal, where more than 200 countries agreed to speed up the timetable for phasing out the use of HCFCs. Under the new agreement, developing countries would end all use of HCFCs by 2030, ten years earlier than previously agreed, and developed countries would end all use by 2020. To monitor ozone depletion on a global level, in 1991 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched the 7-ton Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite. Orbiting Earth at an altitude of 600 km (372 mi), the spacecraft measures ozone variations at different altitudes and provides thorough measurements of upper atmosphere chemistry. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN), helps support the implementation of the Vienna Convention to protect the ozone layer. During the winter of 1995-1996 the WMO observed a 45 percent depletion of the ozone layer over one-third of the northern hemisphere, from Greenland to western Siberia, for several days. The deficiency was believed to have been caused by chlorine and bromine compounds combined with polar stratospheric clouds formed under unusually low temperatures. The ozone hole over Antarctica reached a record size in 2001, the same year that the presence of CFCs in the atmosphere was thought to have peaked. Due to the international treaty to phase out production of CFCs, many scientists expected the ozone layer would begin to recover after the record thinning of 2001. To their surprise, however, measurements in 2006 indicated that the ozone hole had once again reached a record size. Most scientists attributed the increase in the ozone hole in 2006 to an unusually cold Antarctic winter. A study the same year by the WMO and the United Nations Environment Program, however, found that the ozone layer was recovering more slowly than predicted. This finding was expected to trigger an effort in 2007 to phase out the production of HCFC-22 more rapidly than previously planned. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Black holes. It has yet to be proved that black holes—hypothetical bodies with gravitational fields so powerful that nothing, not even light, can escape from them—actually exist. But evidence continues to mount that these bizarre products of theoreticians' minds are real features of our universe. Since star-size black holes, if they exist, cannot be seen, they can only be detected by their gravitational effects on visible bodies. Perhaps the only way of hunting for a black hole is to look for a binary (double) star system in which a visible star has an unaccountably massive, unseen companion. (According to theory, any stellar object with a mass greater than about twice the sun's must either shed its excess mass in some way or eventually become a black hole.) In 1983 a scientific team found the best black-hole candidate yet, in the binary star LMC X-3 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The scientists concluded that the unseen companion of LMC X-3's visible component has a mass of more than nine suns, and thus is very likely a black hole. In 1994 astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to uncover the first convincing evidence that a black hole exists. They detected an accretion disk (disk of hot, gaseous material) circling the center of the galaxy M87 with an acceleration that indicated the presence of an object 2.5 to 3.5 billion times the mass of the Sun. By 2000, astronomers had detected supermassive black holes in the centers of dozens of galaxies and had found that the masses of the black holes were correlated with the masses of the parent galaxies. More massive galaxies tend to have more massive black holes at their centers. Learning more about galactic black holes will help astronomers learn about the evolution of galaxies and the relationship between galaxies, black holes, and quasars. In other cases of massive stars collapsing, pressure or a nuclear explosion does not halt the final collapse. As the radius of such a star decreases, the gravitational force at its surface increases. Eventually the radius of the star is so small and its mass so dense that not even light can escape its gravitational pull. The star is then no longer visible from the outside and has become a black hole. The size of the black hole is proportional to the mass inside it. A black hole containing the mass of our sun would be about 1.5 km (0.93 mi) in radius. The matter inside the black hole continues to collapse. Scientists are not sure what happens to this matter, but it must remain inside the black hole. There may be many black holes in our galaxy, the Milky Way, but none have been discovered with certainty. Astronomers do believe they have found galactic black holes in other galaxies, including NGC 4258, NGC 4621, and M 87. object in space: an area in space with such a strong gravitational pull that no matter or energy can escape from it. Black holes are believed to form when stars collapse in on themselves. place where things get lost: a place or thing into which objects disappear and are not expected to be seen again Black Hole, an extremely dense celestial body that has been theorized to exist in the universe. The gravitational field of a black hole is so strong that, if the body is large enough, nothing, including electromagnetic radiation, can escape from its vicinity. The body is surrounded by a spherical boundary, called a horizon, through which light can enter but not escape; it therefore appears totally black. Electromagnetic Radiation, energy waves produced by the oscillation or acceleration of an electric charge. Electromagnetic waves have both electric and magnetic components. Electromagnetic radiation can be arranged in a spectrum that extends from waves of extremely high frequency and short wavelength to extremely low frequency and long wavelength (see Wave Motion). Visible light is only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. In order of decreasing frequency, the electromagnetic spectrum consists of gamma rays, hard and soft X rays, ultraviolet radiation, visible light, infrared radiation, microwaves, and radio waves. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Tsunami, Japanese word used as the scientific term for a seismic sea wave, a large ocean wave generated by an undersea earthquake. The wave is thought to be triggered when the ocean floor is tilted or offset during the quake. Another possible cause is an undersea landslide or volcanic eruption. Most tsunamis originate along the so-called Ring of Fire, a zone of volcanoes and seismic activity, 32,500 km (24,000 mi) long, that encircles the Pacific Ocean. Since 1819, for example, about 40 tsunamis have struck the Hawaiian Islands. A tsunami may travel hundreds of kilometres across the deep ocean, reaching speeds of about 725 to 800 km/h (450 to 500 mph). On entering shallow coastal waters, the wave, which may have been only about half a metre (a foot or two) high out at sea, suddenly begins growing rapidly. By the time it reaches the shore, it may become a towering wall of water 15 m (50 ft) high or more, capable of destroying entire coastal settlements. Tsunamis have erroneously been called tidal waves, but they have nothing to do with the diurnal pattern of high and low tides. Such waves, however, in combination with meteorological phenomena, can also sometimes be destructive. Earthquake, vibrations produced in the Earth's crust when rocks in which elastic strain has been building up suddenly rupture, and then rebound. The vibrations can range from barely noticeable to catastrophically destructive. Earthquakes can release energy thousands of times greater than the world's first atomic bomb. Six kinds of shock waves are generated in the process. Two are classified as body waves—that is, they travel through the Earth's interior—and the other four are surface waves. The waves are further differentiated by the kinds of motions they impart to rock particles. Primary or compressional waves (P waves) send particles oscillating back and forth in the same direction as the waves are travelling, whereas secondary or transverse shear waves (S waves) impart vibrations perpendicular to their direction of travel. P waves always travel at higher velocities than S waves, so whenever an earthquake occurs, P waves are the first to arrive and be recorded at geophysical research stations throughout the world. Volcano, fissure or vent through which molten rock material, or magma, and gases from the interior of the Earth erupt on to its surface, and the landform which is produced as a result of this eruption. The word “volcano” derives from Vulcano, one of the volcanic Lipari Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, and the place where, according to Roman mythology, Vulcan, the god of fire, kept his forge. The processes that create volcanoes and other volcanic structures are called volcanism or vulcanism. As landforms, volcanoes are formed by the deposition of the magma that flows or is ejected, normally from one or several circular vents, as molten or solid material. Molten magma is known as lava when it reaches the Earth's surface; the solid material—classified as dust, ash, cinders, and bombs depending on size and shape—is called tephra. Volcanoes which form round circular vents are known as central volcanoes; the basin-like mouth of the vent is known as the crater. Most volcanoes tend to be conical in shape; some, however, are much larger structures with very gentle slopes. Often covering many square kilometres, they are known as shield volcanoes. This Scientific American article discusses what happens in the time between the infection of a cell and the appearance of new viruses. The behaviour of bacteriophages suggests that this stage involves a new concept: the provirus. Life Cycle of a Virus Close your eyes and look. What you saw at first is there no more; and what you will see next has not yet come to life.—Leonardo da Vinci We can apply these words very aptly to a virus—of the bacteria-infecting kind known as bacteriophage. When a phage particle enters a cell, it loses its infective power and its identity as a particle. Generally its entrance into the cell is followed within 15 minutes to an hour by the emergence of a new generation of infectious virus particles. Sometimes, however, there is no immediate pathological event. The genetic material of the virus that has passed into the cell combines with the genetic material of the cell itself. In doing so it is converted into something that has been named a “provirus,” meaning before virus. Days or years afterward the provirus may suddenly develop into virus and the bacterium give rise to a group of virus particles. The term provirus needs some explanation. The expression “proman” would certainly not evoke the idea of a human egg, from which Homo sapiens always develops, but rather that of an evolutionary ancestor of man which would have to undergo a genetic transformation to become man. A provirus may perhaps correspond to an evolutionary ancestor of a virus. But it is also much more than that. Before attacking the question of the nature of proviruses, we must know something about viruses themselves. What is a virus? We shall leave out of the discussion the much debated issue as to whether viruses are living organisms or not; our concern is to find out how they differ from “normal” organisms of the microbiologist’s world. The two attributes that are usually thought to define viruses are their very small size and the fact that they can multiply only inside living cells—usually requiring a specific kind of cell host. But to learn more about their peculiarities let us go beyond this definition and compare viruses with other small biological units. First of all, how does a virus differ from a cell? Most cells are capable of reproducing themselves: they possess the genetic material which is the basis of heredity and the tools necessary to synthesize the essential building blocks and to organize these into a structure just like themselves. We can see three important differences between a cell and a virus, taking bacteriophage as a typical virus: (1) whereas cells contain both desoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA), the phage contains only DNA; (2) whereas cells are reproduced from essentially all their constituents, bacteriophage is reproduced from its nucleic acid; (3) whereas cells are able to grow and to divide, the virus particle as such is unable to grow or to undergo fission. Bacterial viruses are never produced directly by division of an existing virus; invariably they are formed by organization of material produced in the host cell. Next we must consider whether viruses bear any likeness to the particles within a cell, particularly the particles called plasmagenes. Here differences are less easy to find. The theory has been proposed that viruses may originate as mutated plasmagenes. But we know that some plasmagenes (e.g., the chloroplasts of green plants) can grow and divide. Furthermore, plasmagenes are not pathogenic or lethal to the cell, as virus particles are. Let us just note, for the time being, that nothing which resembles a bacteriophage in its properties, life cycle, shape or organization has been found in normal cells. Let us now consider the peculiar behavior of the virus. The virus particle as such is only the beginning and the end of a life cycle. Its only physiological function is to obtain entry of the virus' genetic material into the host cell. After this occurs, what remains of the virus is devoid of infectious power. There follows a vegetative phase in which the specific constituents for new viruses are produced. Finally these constituents are organized into virus particles, which are liberated by lysis (dissolution) of the cell. The whole process usually takes from 15 to 60 minutes. But a bacterial virus may multiply in another way, and this is where the provirus enters the picture. Ordinarily the virus nucleic acid passed into a cell proceeds promptly to multiply and to synthesize specific protein material for new phage particles. Sometimes, however, the nucleic acid may anchor onto a bacterial chromosome and act as if it were a normal constituent of the cell. It behaves as a bacterial gene, being replicated at each bacterial division and transmitted to each daughter bacterium. This is what we call a provirus. It is a potential virus; it may eventually give rise to virus particles. In the meantime the bacterial offspring go on growing and dividing as normal bacteria, and each daughter bacterium yields progeny capable of producing viruses. In other words, the ability to produce viruses is perpetuated inside the bacterium; no new infection from outside is needed. Bacteria containing proviruses are called lysogenic. When a small number of such bacteria are broken down, no infectious particles can be found. This means that the provirus is not infectious. And yet in every large population of these bacteria some mature bacteriophage particles appear. From time to time a bacterium in such a culture suddenly disappears, and about 100 phage particles emerge. The probability of a lysogenic bacterium spontaneously giving rise to viruses varies from 1/100 to 1/100,000. In some systems the probability is apparently independent of external factors; it cannot be modified. In other lysogenic systems phage production may be initiated at will by inducing agents, such as X-rays, ultraviolet rays, nitrogen mustard and other substances—all of which are known to be capable of producing mutation. Within 30 to 60 minutes after exposure to one of these agents, practically all of the bacteria produce viruses and lyse. How do lysogenic bacteria produce viruses? Before discussing this question we must know more about the proviruses. We are inclined to think that proviruses originally arose as mutants of normal bacterial genes. Whatever their origin, the reservoir of bacterial viruses seems to be the provirus-carrying bacteria. These bacteria may have perpetuated provirus, that is to say, the hereditary ability to produce virus, for many thousands of years. The study of lysogenic bacteria has led to a clear picture of the provirus. Apparently it does not contain virus protein, for lysogenic bacteria do not cause the production of specific antibodies to phage protein in experimental animals. It is therefore tempting to visualize the provirus as a large molecule of nucleic acid. Secondly, the provirus is associated with a certain genetic character of bacteria and is located at a specific site on a bacterial chromosome. Thirdly, two genetically related proviruses in a bacterium may cross over and recombine. Fourth, a lysogenic bacterium is immune to infection by a phage particle related genetically to its provirus, though it can be killed by an unrelated phage. As long as the provirus remains in that state, a genetically related superinfecting phage is unable to develop into phage. Finally, the mere presence of the provirus may modify the properties of a bacterium: it may endow certain bacteria with the ability to produce a toxin they could not otherwise make, or it may change the typical appearance of bacterial colonies. Things happen as if the provirus either carries a specific gene or modifies the neighboring bacterial genes. From all these data it may be concluded that provirus is the bacterial virus’ genetic material, bound to a specific site in the bacterium and responsible for a specific bacterial immunity. Now it is difficult to imagine that this immunity is due only to the presence of the provirus. A particle cannot exert a specific action by its mere presence. The only way the provirus can make the bacterium immune—that is, prevent multiplication of a virus invader—is by modifying or blocking a specific activity of the bacterium necessary for that reproduction. And the provirus can do this only if it is present at a specific site. As a matter of fact, we can account for all the properties of proviruses and of lysogenic bacteria by the hypothesis that the provirus is the genetic material of the virus anchored at a given site in the bacterium. The genetic material of an infecting virus becomes a provirus when and because it becomes bound at that site to a specific receptor, which modifies the material. It then gives the bacterium immunity against genetically related infecting particles. An inducing agent such as ultraviolet rays destroys the immunity because it displaces the genetic material of the virus from its specific site. For a long time virologists have concentrated on the virus particle itself. Yet the particle is only a prelude to the infection. During the longest and most important part of the life cycle, the pathogenic phase in a cell, no virus particle is present. As a matter of fact, disappearance of the virus particle is the sine qua non for the development of the cellular lesion. Indeed, there are cases in which all the bacteria in a lysogenic population die although very few of them produce bacteriophage particles; the cells are killed by a defective development of proviruses initiated by an inducing agent. One could even conceive of a condition in which the probability of the virus ever appearing would be infinitely small, that is to say, practically absent. Some bacteria actually carry a gene which can initiate the synthesis of a protein lethal to themselves. But that is another story. Biologists have long been accustomed to think of death in terms of the destruction or alteration of some vital structure. We have been less inclined to think of living cells as carrying the seeds of their own destruction, or of the possibility that lethal agents may kill in more than one way. For example, X-rays sometimes kill by destroying essential structures, but they may also destroy a cell by inducing a gene to express its lethal potentiality. This potentiality is sometimes the power to start a new synthesis which may or may not end in virus particles. To what extent are the phenomena disclosed in bacteria valid for higher organisms? May animal or plant cells perpetuate proviruses? Are some viral diseases of man the result of the activation of a provirus? May immunity to virus diseases be explained in terms of proviruses? Do the findings concerning lysogeny have any bearing on cancer? Let us recall that the inducing agents which can trigger proviruses to give rise to viruses are all not only mutagenic but also carcinogenic—radiations, nitrogen mustard and so on. It is indeed tempting to theorize that carcinogens may induce malignancy by initiating the formation of a pathological structure from a proviruslike material. Many facts are in favor of the hypothesis that proviruses originate some animal diseases, but the problem cannot be discussed within the limits of this article. Suffice it to say that this is, at any rate, a working hypothesis.

I have tried to outline the concept of the provirus, to analyze its relations with the concept of the cell and of the virus and to show the impact of the newly acquired knowledge on our conceptions of cellular disease. The common denominator of the various phases of the life cycle of a virus is the genetic material—the nucleic acid—which may exist in three states: infectious, proviral and vegetative. Throughout these three states the genetic material apparently remains cssentially the same in structure, but it changes radically in dynamic potentialities and behavior. The virus particle, the end product of the vegetative phase, is a quiescent nucleoprotein particle, unable to grow or to divide. The provirus is an integrated nucleic acid, which behaves like a gene and is replicated like the host genes. Neither the virus particle nor the provirus is pathogenic per se; their pathogenic property is only potential. The only pathogenic phase of the virus is the vegetative phase, during which the specific viral nucleic acid multiplies and during which the specific viral protein is synthesized. Things happen as if the synthesis of the protein is responsible for pathogenicity. The provirus produces provirus; it is order. The vegetative particle produces virus particles and a disease of the host; it is disorder. The virus particle does not produce anything; it is an extremely conservative particle—the absence of any activity, that is to say, a kind of order. Thus the virus is an alternation of order and disorder. As a result, my presentation of the subject may seem somewhat disordered. For this I had decided to apologize, when I came across an unpublished letter which Martin de Barcos, Abbot of Saint-Cyran, wrote to Mother Angélique in 1652: “Allow me to tell you that you would be wrong to apologize for the disorder of your discourse and of your thoughts, because, if they were otherwise, things would not be in order, especially for a person belonging to your profession. As there is a wisdom which is folly before God, there is also an order which is disorder, and in consequence, there is a folly which is wisdom and a disorder which is the true rule.” This being exactly the case of the virus, I decided not to apologize. Virus (biology) (Latin, “poison”), any of a number of organic entities consisting simply of genetic material surrounded by a protective coat. The term “virus” was first used in the 1890s to describe agents that caused diseases but were smaller than bacteria. By itself a virus is a lifeless form, but within living cells it can replicate many times and harm its host in the process. The hundreds of known viruses cause a wide range of diseases in humans, other animals, insects, bacteria, and plants (see Diseases of Animals). The existence of viruses was established in 1892, when Russian scientist Dmitry I. Ivanovsky discovered microscopic particles later known as the tobacco mosaic virus. The name virus was applied to these infectious particles in 1898 by the Dutch botanist Martinus W. Beijerinck. A few years later, viruses were found growing in bacteria; these viruses were dubbed bacteriophages. Then, in 1935, the American biochemist Wendell Meredith Stanley crystallized tobacco mosaic virus and showed that it is composed only of the genetic material called ribonucleic acid (RNA) and a protein covering. In the 1940s development of the electron microscope made visualization of viruses possible for the first time. This was followed by development of high-speed centrifuges used to concentrate and purify viruses. The study of animal viruses reached a major turning point in the 1950s with the development of methods to culture cells that could support virus replication in test tubes. Numerous viruses were subsequently discovered, and in the 1960s and 1970s most were analysed to determine their physical and chemical characteristics. Characteristics Viruses are submicroscopic intracellular parasites that consist of either RNA or deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)—never both—plus a protective coat of protein or of protein combined with lipid or carbohydrate components. The nucleic acid is usually a single molecule, either singly or doubly stranded. Some viruses, however, may have nucleic acid that is segmented into two or more pieces. The protein shell is termed the capsid, and the protein subunits of the capsid are called capsomeres. Together these form the nucleocapsid. Other viruses have an additional envelope that is usually acquired as the nucleocapsid buds from the host cell. The complete virus particle is called the virion. Viruses are obligate intracellular parasites; that is, their replication can take place only in actively metabolizing cells. Outside living cells, viruses exist as inert macromolecules (very large molecules). Viruses vary considerably in size and shape. Three basic structural groups exist: isometric; rod shaped or elongated; and tadpole-like, with head and tail (as in some bacteriophages). The smallest viruses are icosahedrons (20-sided polygons) that measure about 18 to 20 nanometres wide (one-millionth of a millimetre = 1 nanometre). The largest viruses are rod shaped. Some rod-shaped viruses may measure several microns in length, but they are still usually less than 100 nanometres in width. Thus, the widths of even the largest viruses are below the limits of resolution of the light microscope, which is used to study bacteria and other large micro-organisms. Many of the viruses with helical internal structure have outer coverings (also known as envelopes) composed of lipoprotein or glycoprotein, or both. These viruses appear roughly spherical or in various other shapes, and they range from about 60 to more than 300 nanometres in diameter. Complex viruses, such as some bacteriophages, have heads and a tubular tail, which attaches to host bacteria. The pox viruses are brick shaped and have a complex protein composition. Complex and pox viruses are exceptions, however; most viruses have a simple shape. Replication Viruses do not contain the enzymes and metabolic precursors necessary for self-replication. They have to get these from the host cells that they infect. Viral replication, therefore, is a process of separate synthesis of viral components and assembly of these into new virus particles. Replication begins when a virus enters the cell. The virus coat is removed by cellular enzymes, and the virus RNA or DNA comes into contact with ribosomes (cell organs that synthesize proteins) inside the cell. There the virus RNA or DNA directs the synthesis of proteins specified by the viral nucleic acid. The nucleic acid replicates itself, and the protein subunits constituting the viral coat are synthesized. Thereafter, the two components are assembled into a new virus. One infecting virus can give rise to thousands of progeny viruses. Some viruses are released by destruction of the infected cell. Others are released by budding through cell membranes and do not kill the cell. In some instances, infections are “silent”—that is, viruses may replicate within the cell but cause no obvious cell damage. The RNA-containing viruses are unique among replicative systems in that the RNA can replicate itself independently of DNA. In some cases, the RNA can function as messenger RNA (see Genetics), indirectly replicating itself using the cell's ribosomal and metabolic precursor systems. In other cases, RNA viruses carry within the coat an RNA-dependent enzyme that directs the synthesis of virus RNA. Some RNA viruses, which have come to be known as retroviruses, may produce an enzyme that can synthesize DNA from the RNA molecule. The DNA thus formed then acts as the viral genetic material. Bacterial viruses and animal viruses differ somewhat in their interaction with the cell surface during infection. The “T even” bacteriophage that infects the bacterium Escherichia coli, for instance, first attaches to the surface and injects its DNA directly into the bacterium. No absorption and uncoating take place. The basic events of virus replication, however, are the same after the nucleic acid enters the cell. Viruses in Medicine Viruses represent a major challenge to medical science in combating infectious diseases. Many cause diseases that are of major importance to humans and that are extraordinary in their diversity. Included among viral diseases is the common cold, which affects millions of people every year. Other viral diseases are important because they are frequently fatal. These diseases include rabies, haemorrhagic fevers, encephalitis, poliomyelitis, and yellow fever. Most viruses, however, cause diseases that usually only create acute discomfort unless the patient develops serious complications from the virus or from a bacterial infection. Some of these diseases are influenza, measles, mumps, cold sores (also known as herpes simplex), chicken pox, shingles (also known as herpes zoster), respiratory diseases, acute diarrhoea, warts, and hepatitis. Still others, such as rubella (also known as German measles) virus and cytomegalovirus, may cause serious abnormalities or death in unborn infants. Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is caused by a retrovirus. Only two retroviruses are unequivocally linked with human cancers (see Leukaemia and HTLV), but some papilloma virus forms are suspected. Increasing evidence also indicates that other viruses may be involved in some types of cancer and in chronic diseases such as multiple sclerosis and other degenerative diseases. Some of the viruses take a long time to cause disease; kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, both of which gradually destroy the brain, are slow virus diseases. Viruses that cause important human disease are still being discovered. Most can be isolated and identified by laboratory methods, but these usually take several days to complete. One of the most recently discovered viruses is rotavirus, the causal agent of infant gastroenteritis. Spread To cause new cases of disease, viruses must be spread from person to person. Many viruses, such as those causing influenza and measles, are transmitted by the respiratory route when virus-containing droplets are put into the air by people coughing and sneezing. Other viruses, such as those that cause diarrhoea, are spread by the faecal-oral route. Still others, such as yellow fever and viruses called arboviruses, are spread by biting insects. Viral diseases are either endemic (present most of the time), causing disease in susceptible people, or epidemic—that is, they come in large waves and attack thousands of people. An example of an epidemic viral disease is the worldwide occurrence of influenza almost every year. Treatment Currently, no completely satisfactory treatments exist for viral infections, because most drugs that destroy viruses also damage the cell. The drug amantadine is used extensively in some countries for treatment of respiratory infections caused by influenza-A viruses, and the drug AZT is used in the treatment of HIV. One promising antiviral agent, interferon, is produced by the cell itself. This non-toxic protein, which is produced by some animal cells infected with viruses, can protect other cells against such infection. The use of interferon for treating cancer is under intensive study. Until recently, study of the use of interferon has been restricted by its limited availability in pure form. However, new techniques of molecular cloning of genetic material (see Genetic Engineering) now make it possible for scientists to obtain the protein in larger quantities. Its relative value as an antiviral agent has already been established. The only effective way to prevent viral infection is by the use of vaccines. For example, vaccination for smallpox on a worldwide scale in the 1970s eradicated this disease. Many antiviral vaccines have been developed for humans and other animals. Those for humans include vaccines for rubeola (also known as measles), rubella, poliomyelitis, and influenza. Immunization with a virus vaccine stimulates the body's immune mechanism to produce a protein—called an antibody—that will protect against infection with the immunizing virus. The viruses are always altered before they are used for immunization so that they cannot themselves produce disease. Plant Infections Viruses cause a wide variety of diseases in plants and frequently cause serious damage to crops. Common plant-disease viruses are turnip yellow mosaic virus, potato leaf roll virus, and tobacco mosaic virus. Plants have rigid cell walls that plant viruses cannot penetrate, so the most important means of plant-virus spread is provided by animals that feed on plants. Often, healthy plants are infected by insects that carry on their mouthparts viruses acquired while feeding on other infected plants. Nematodes (also known as roundworms) may also transmit viruses while feeding on the roots of healthy plants. Plant viruses can accumulate in enormous quantities within infected cells. For instance, tobacco mosaic virus may represent as much as 10 per cent of the dry weight of infected plants. Studies on the interaction of plant viruses with plant cells are limited, because plants often cannot be infected directly, but only by means such as an insect vector. Cell cultures in test tubes, which can be infected with plant viruses, are not generally available. Role in Research The study of viruses and their interaction with host cells has been a major motivation for the host of fundamental biological studies at a molecular level. For example, the existence of messenger RNA, which carries the genetic code from DNA to define what proteins are made by a cell, was discovered during studies of bacteriophages replicating in bacteria. Studies of bacteriophages have also been instrumental in delineating the biochemical factors that start and stop the utilization of genetic information. Knowledge of how virus replication is controlled is fundamental to understanding biochemical events in higher organisms. The reason that viruses are so useful as model systems for studying events that control genetic information is that viruses are, in essence, small pieces of genetic information that is different from the genetic information of the cell. This allows scientists to study a smaller and simpler replicating system, but one that works on the same principle as that of the host cell. Much of the research on viruses is aimed at understanding their replicative mechanism in order to find ways to control their growth, so that viral diseases can be eliminated. Studies on viral diseases have also contributed greatly to understanding the body's immune response to infectious agents. Antibodies in blood serum, as well as secretions of the mucous membranes, all of which help the body eliminate foreign elements such as viruses, have been more thoroughly characterized by studying their responses to viral infection. Intense scientific interest is now concentrated on studies designed to isolate certain viral genes. These genes can be used in molecular-cloning systems to produce large amounts of particular virus proteins, which can in turn be used as vaccines. Severe Acute Respiratory (SARS Fear): Syndrome (SARS), contagious respiratory illness that can cause a fatal form of pneumonia. The illness first appeared in November 2002 in people living in Guangdong province in southern China. Its cause was unknown and available treatments were ineffective. By February 2003 new cases of the illness were reported in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Singapore, and Canada. The fast spread of the disease, its deadly nature, and its unknown cause prompted the World Health Organization (WHO), an agency of the United Nations, to issue a global alert in March 2003 designating SARS as a worldwide health threat. The alert triggered governments around the world to establish infection-control procedures to prevent the illness from reaching epidemic proportions. Despite these public-health measures, more than 8,000 SARS cases were reported in 32 countries and the disease caused 800 deaths by the time the outbreak was declared contained in July 2003. SYMPTOMS AND TREATMENT SARS symptoms begin with a fever about 38°C (about 100.4°F) or higher, chills, headache, and malaise. Two to seven days later some people develop a dry cough and difficulty breathing. Symptoms may progress to a severe form of pneumonia, in which air sacs in the lungs fill with fluid, preventing oxygen from reaching blood cells and nourishing the other cells of the body. Aside from regular nursing care and the use of a respirator to help breathing in severe cases, there is no effective treatment for SARS. Recovery seems to depend on the health of the patient’s immune system. Epidemiologists (scientists that study the cause and spread of diseases) have found that those most susceptible to the fatal form of the illness are aged 40 or older and have a history of a chronic disease. HOW THE ILLNESS SPREADS nfection with SARS results from close contact with an infected person. SARS can spread if a person inhales droplets sprayed into the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes. SARS may also spread when a person touches an object that has been contaminated. Scientists are investigating if the infection can spread in other ways. Symptoms typically develop two to seven days after exposure, so someone may unknowingly become infected and spread the illness before developing symptoms. In Asia, before infection-control measures were established, many SARS cases occurred among hospital workers who cared for SARS patients. These infected hospital workers, in turn, spread the illness to people living in their households. Most SARS cases reported in Canada were in people who became infected with the illness while traveling abroad or people who were exposed to infected travelers from abroad. CAUSE Although studies are incomplete, scientists suspect that a newly discovered virus from the coronavirus family causes SARS. Until now coronaviruses have been known to cause only minor illnesses in humans, such as colds or diarrhea. Scientists theorize that the SARS virus may have passed to humans from an animal. The virus then underwent a series of genetic mutations (changes) to acquire properties that cause severe illness in humans. Researchers have developed laboratory tests that identify the SARS virus in infected people. These tests can help epidemiologists determine how long someone infected with SARS remains contagious and if those infected develop long-term immunity to the disease. PREVENTION Researchers in Hong Kong have identified chemicals that may prevent the virus from replicating once it infects a human body. Other researchers are investigating if genetically engineered antibodies are effective in blocking the virus. In addition, efforts to develop a vaccine that would prevent SARS are underway. Until effective treatments can be developed, public-health officials have established infection-control measures to contain the spread of SARS. Those people diagnosed with SARS or suspected of having the illness are treated in isolation in their homes, in hospitals, or in other designated health-care settings. Caregivers follow strict procedures to lessen their own risk of infection. The WHO also issues travel advisories recommending against nonessential travel to certain countries where the risk of infection is high. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. September 11, 2001 Terrorists Strike United States In a coordinated strike on the United States, terrorists crash hijacked commercial jetliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, in New York City, and the Pentagon, outside Washington, D.C. A fourth hijacked airliner crashes in Pennsylvania. The unprecedented terrorist attack destroys the World Trade Center, kills more than 3,000 people, and shakes the nation to its core. United States authorities soon identify the al-Qaeda terrorist network of Saudi Arabian exile Osama bin Laden as the group responsible for the attack. Within weeks, a U.S.-led coalition would launch a war on terrorism aimed at destroying al-Qaeda and preventing future terrorist attacks. Terrorists Destroy World Trade Center A fireball erupts from the south tower of the World Trade Center in New York City after a hijacked passenger jet crashed into it on September 11, 2001. Another hijacked jet had crashed into. The first two planes, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, left Boston within minutes of each other, around 8 am. Both were Boeing 767s bound for Los Angeles, and they carried between them 137 passengers and 20 crew members. The first indication of trouble came at about 8:25 am, when air traffic controllers in Boston heard a strange voice from the Flight 11 cockpit saying, “We have some planes. Just stay quiet, and you will be OK. We are returning to the airport.” A few minutes later the plane turned off course, heading south toward New York City. Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center north tower at 8:46 am, hitting the 110-story building between the 93rd and 99th floors. The hijackers of United Flight 175 followed a similar route. Flying much faster, they slammed their airplane into the World Trade Center south tower, also 110 stories tall, between the 77th and85th floors 16 minutes later, at 9:03 am. New York firefighters rushed to the scene from stations across the metropolitan area and helped thousands of people evacuate the towers and buildings nearby. Nearly all of the World Trade Center workers caught in offices above the floors where the planes hit had no means of escape. Many, realizing they were doomed, jumped from their office windows rather than waiting to suffocate or burn to death. The tower structures, built from 1966 to 1973, were designed to withstand the impact of a jetliner crash, and initially remained intact. However, Boeing 767s are much larger than 1960s-era jetliners, and carry much more fuel. In both towers the intense heat from the burning jet fuel eventually melted their interior steel supports. At 9:58:59 am the south tower collapsed: The steel supports gave way in the burning part of the tower, the floors above fell into the lower portion of the building, and the weight of the falling sections swiftly caused the lower floors to pancake. The north tower fell in a similar fashion 29 minutes later, at 10:28 am. More than 400 rescue workers, including more than 300 New York firefighters, were crushed in the ash and rubble. Including the World Trade Center workers who died and the aircraft crews and passengers, the total death toll in the New York attack was about 2,750. American Airlines Flight 77, meanwhile, took off from Washington Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C., at about 8:20 am with 6 crew members and 58 passengers. Like the Boston flights, the airplane was bound for Los Angeles, and its fuel tanks were full. About 40 minutes later, the hijackers turned the Boeing 757 around and flew it back toward Washington, D.C. Flying low and fast, the airplane hit the Pentagon at 9:37 am. In a bit of good fortune, the plane crashed into the west side of the building, which had recently been reinforced with stronger construction and blast-resistant windows in order to withstand a terrorist attack. Even so, the plane penetrated three of the Pentagon’s five concentric rings, taking a chunk out of the building and incinerating dozens of offices and the people who worked in them. The plane’s burning fuel spilled through the ruins as military and civilian workers groped their way through smoky and burning offices to rescue colleagues. In all, 184 people died at the Pentagon, including everyone aboard the plane. My Wife From Missouri! Missouri Compromise: Under the Constitution of the United States, the federal government had no authority to interfere with slavery within the states. Northern opponents of slavery could hope only to prevent it from spreading. They tried to do this in 1818, when Missouri sought admission to the Union with a constitution permitting slavery. After two years of bitter controversy a solution was found in the Missouri Compromise. This compromise admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state and admitted Maine as a free state to keep the balance in the Senate. It also provided that slavery would be excluded from the still unorganized part of the Louisiana Territory. A line was drawn from Missouri’s southern boundary, at the latitude of 36°30’, and slavery would not be allowed in the territory north of that line,with the exception of Missouri. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), United States military research program for developing an antiballistic missile (ABM) defense system, first proposed by President Ronald Reagan in March 1983. The Reagan administration vigorously sought acceptance of SDI by the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies. As initially described, the system would provide total U.S. protection against nuclear attack. The concept of SDI marked a sharp break with the nuclear strategy that had been followed since the development of the armaments race. This strategy was based on the concept of deterrence through the threat of retaliation (see Arms Control). More specifically, the SDI system would have contravened the ABM Treaty of 1972 (see Strategic Arms Limitation Talks). For this reason and others, the SDI proposal was attacked as a further escalation of the armaments race. Many experts believed the system was impractical. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the signing of the START I and II treaties, and the election in 1992 of Bill Clinton as president, the SDI, like many other weapons programs, was given a lower budgetary priority. In 1993 U.S. secretary of defense Les Aspin announced the abandonment of SDI and the establishment of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) to oversee a less costly program known as National Missile Defense that would make use of ground-based antimissile systems. The SDI system was originally planned to provide a layered defense employing advanced weapons technologies, several of which were only in a preliminary research stage. The goal was to intercept incoming missiles in midcourse, high above the earth. The weapons required included space- and ground-based nuclear X-ray lasers, subatomic particle beams, and computer-guided projectiles fired by electromagnetic rail guns—all under the central control of a supercomputer system. (The space-based weapons and laser aspects of the system gained it the media name “Star Wars,” after the popular 1977 science-fiction film.) Supporting these weapons would have been a network of space-based sensors and specialized mirrors for directing the laser beams toward targets. Some of these weapons were in development, but others—particularly the laser systems and the supercomputer control—were not certain to be attainable. The total cost of such a system was estimated at between $100 billion and $1 trillion. Actual expenditures for SDI amounted to about $30 billion. The initial annual budget for BMDO was $3.8 billion. Cost was not the only controversial issue surrounding SDI. Critics of SDI, including several former government officials, leading scientists, and some NATO members, maintained that the system—even if it had proved workable—could have been outwitted by an enemy in many ways. Also, other nations feared that the SDI system could have been used offensively. The administration of President George W. Bush gave missile defense a high priority when Bush took office in January 2001. The September 11 terrorist attacks that year gave further impetus to a missile defense system. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said such a system was needed to protect the United States from possible attacks by terrorist groups or rogue states. In 2002 the Bush administration withdrew from the ABM Treaty so that it could pursue more vigorous testing of a missile defense program. Criticism of a missile defense system persisted. The Union of Concerned Scientists said the technology did not yet exist to deploy a reliable missile defense system. The group also argued that countermeasures could easily be taken against such a defense system. Other critics noted that terrorists would be unlikely to use missiles and could conceal nuclear weapons, if they obtained them, in a ship or van. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Missile Defense Test A U.S. interceptor missile lifts off from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean in December 2001 in a test of a missile defense system. The interceptor successfully destroyed a Minuteman II missile in space, but officials with the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense Organization said the test was not carried out under realistic conditions. Defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles has long been controversial because of its costs, doubts about its reliability, and its effect on arms control agreements.Encarta EncyclopediaReuters Many experts believe that nations such as Iraq and North Korea may have acquired stocks of smallpox virus that they intend to use as biological weapons (see Chemical and Biological Warfare). Some experts fear that, in addition to the threat from belligerent nations, a terrorist or extremist group might illegally gain access to stocks of smallpox virus and release it into the air in aerosol form in a crowded public place, such as an airport. The effects of such smallpox exposure would be devastating—with the halt of regular smallpox vaccinations worldwide, many people have no immunity to smallpox. With the intentional distribution of anthrax through the United States mail in 2001, government officials became even more concerned about the threat of smallpox as a bioterrorist weapon. In December 2002 U.S. president George W. Bush announced a plan to protect Americans from the threat of smallpox attack from terrorists or hostile governments. The plan called for state and local governments to form volunteer smallpox response teams made up of people who, in the event of an attack, will implement emergency mass vaccination programs, investigate and evaluate suspected cases of smallpox, and initiate measures to control an outbreak. Health-care workers and other members of the teams will be asked to volunteer to receive the smallpox vaccine. This will ensure that team members can vaccinate others without fear of becoming sick themselves and provide critical emergency services in the days following a smallpox attack. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

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Many military satellites are similar to commercial ones, but they send encrypted data that only a special receiver can decipher. Military surveillance satellites take pictures just as other earth-imaging satellites do, but cameras on military satellites usually have a higher resolution. The U.S. military operates a variety of satellite systems. The Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS) consists of five spacecraft in geostationary orbit that transmit voice, data, and television signals between military sites. The Defense Support Program (DSP) uses satellites that are intended to give early warning of missile launches. DSP was used during the Persian Gulf War (1991) to warn of Iraqi Scud missile launches. Some military satellites provide data that is available to the public. For instance, the satellites of the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) collect and disseminate global weather information. The military also maintains the Global Positioning System (GPS), described earlier, which provides navigation information that anyone with a GPS receiver can use. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. The majority of space shuttle missions in the early 2000s were devoted to construction of the ISS. In 1998 the orbiter Atlantis was overhauled to make it more compatible with the ISS. Atlantis received new displays, navigation equipment, and an airlock with which to connect to the station. Its power and cooling systems were also improved. In February 2000 Endeavour completed a mission that focused on mapping Earth’s terrain. Scientists used two antennas—one located at the end of a long mast and the other in the shuttle’s payload bay—to obtain high-quality, three-dimensional images that give information about topography (features such as mountains and rivers). In February 2000 Endeavour completed a mission that focused on mapping Earth’s terrain. Scientists used two antennas—one located at the end of a long mast and the other in the shuttle’s payload bay—to obtain high-quality, three-dimensional images that give information about topography (features such as mountains and rivers). European Space Agency (ESA), organization formed in 1975 from the merger of the European Space Research Organization and the European Launcher Development Organization. The purpose of ESA is to promote European cooperation in the development of space research and technology. Its members include Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. In addition to the official member states, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Poland participate in ESA’s Plan for European Cooperating States (PECS). Outside Europe, the ESA collaborates on research and on space missions with the United States, Canada, Japan, and Brazil. ESA’s headquarters is in Paris, and major facilities exist in several nations. It owns a major share in Arianespace, the marketing company for the Ariane rocket designed by ESA and first successfully flown in 1983. The ESA founded the European Center for Space Law in 1989. The ESA participates in both manned and unmanned space missions. The ESA has its own astronaut corps. Members have flown into space on the U.S. space shuttle and in Russian capsules. In addition to providing astronauts, the ESA has developed hardware and technology for manned space missions. It built Spacelab, which first flew in 1983 on the ninth mission of the space shuttle and had its last flight in 1998. ESA is one of the participants in the International Space Station (ISS), the first parts of which were sent into orbit in late 1998. Columbus, ESA’s main contribution, is a scientific laboratory that will be permanently attached to the ISS for carrying out experiments in weightlessness. In addition, starting in 2007, ESA’s Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) will ferry up supplies to the ISS at yearly intervals. In 1985 ESA launched the Giotto space probe to Halley’s comet. The ESA was involved in the development of the Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched in 1990. Other major spacecraft include the solar probes Ulysses (launched in 1990) and SOHO (launched in 1995), and the lunar probe SMART 1 (launched in 2003), which orbited the Moon. Planetary probes include the Huygens (launched aboard NASA’s Cassini in 1997), which landed on Saturn’s largest satellite, Titan, in 2005, and Mars Express orbiter (launched in 2003), which early in 2004 confirmed the presence of water in some form on Mars. Ongoing missions include the Rosetta comet-rendezvous mission (launched in 2004), and the Venus Express orbiter (launched in 2005). Space telescopes include the XMM-Newton X-ray observatory (launched in 1999) and the INTEGRAL gamma-ray observatory (launched in 2002). Other projects of the ESA include the Herschel far-infrared and submillimeter wavelength observatory, scheduled for launch in 2007. The same rocket also carries the Planck mission to study the cosmic background radiation. Further development is also planned for telecommunications satellites (Telecommunications), weather forecasting using the widely accepted Meteosat system, and the provision of a satellite navigation system. A long-term plan for solar system exploration called Aurora has also been announced. (Space Exploration) Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Who did come from the future? Is there something called a time machine (time travel)? There is an only satellite that has Nasa Package to scan a human brain & to use as wishing! Plus electro magnetic radiation field for other brains to be connected. With this all is shit. Brain connections & all are in a mixer of blab la bla. Stop playing shit satellites with human souls & destinies. Stop fucking around with people lives. To use people as machines, apps or animals! For how long? Stop doing so, in whose law satellites doing so & who behind those satellites? Stop miss using us all, Sky nets is the virus (Satan work). To all man kind please cover your ceilings & walls with aluminum foil papers. NASA Package: Rain brain scan, dynamic eyes & tele transport. = Mental Hospital. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) For centuries humanity has studied the universe, speculating about its origins and our place in it. Until the 16th century, when the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus revived the ancient idea that the Earth revolved around the Sun, it was widely believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe. Since then, human beings have reached towards the stars, first with telescopes and most recently with spacecraft. Humanity has taken its first steps into the heavens, but the universe is far from yielding all of its mysteries, and our exploration of space continues as we seek more answers. In 1969 human beings landed on the moon for the first time. The United States launched Apollo 11 towards the moon on July 16. On July 20, astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. walked on the moon's surface. As Armstrong took his first step, he radioed a message to the world: “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Solar Maximum Mission Satellite The Solar Maximum Mission Satellite was a scientific satellite designed to study solar radiation. Launched in early 1980, the craft failed later in the year. It was repaired and re-launched by a space shuttle crew in 1984, collecting information until 1989, when its instruments were damaged by a solar flare. Information collected by the satellite indicated that the sun’s corona experiences unexpectedly violent activity related to sunspot cycles. Data also showed that sunspots reduce the amount of solar energy reaching the earth’s atmosphere. Space Exploration, science and engineering of manned and unmanned space travel. Space exploration, or astronautics, is interdisciplinary in that it draws upon the findings of such fields as physics, astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, biology, medicine, electronics, and meteorology. Manned and unmanned space probes have provided a vast new source of scientific data on the nature and origin of the solar system and the universe (see Cosmology); Earth-orbiting satellites have improved global communications, weather forecasting, navigational aids, and reconnaissance of the Earth’s surface for the location of mineral resources and for military purposes. The space age and practical astronautics commenced with the launching of Sputnik 1 by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in October 1957 and of Explorer 1 by the United States in January 1958. In October 1958 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was created in the United States. Since then, there have been over 3,000 launches of spacecraft of all varieties, mostly into Earth orbit. Twelve men have walked on the Moon’s surface and returned to Earth. Several thousand objects—mostly spent, upper stages of space-launch vehicles and inert spacecraft—are circling the Earth. The Physics of Space The boundary between the atmosphere of the Earth and space is diffuse rather than sharp. Because the density of air diminishes gradually with increasing altitude, the air in the upper atmosphere is so thin that it merges almost imperceptibly with space. At 30 km (19 mi) above sea level, the barometric pressure is one-eightieth of that at sea level; at 60 km (37 mi), it is 1/3,600; at 90 km (56 mi) it is 1/400,000. Even at an altitude of 200 km (124 mi), sufficient residual atmosphere remains to slow down artificial satellites by aerodynamic drag; thus long-duration satellites must have a higher orbital altitude. Matter and Radiation in Space By ordinary standards, space is a vacuum. Space, however, does contain very minute quantities of gases such as hydrogen and small quantities of meteoroids and meteoric dust (see Meteor; Meteorite). X-rays, ultraviolet radiation, visible light, and infrared radiation from the Sun all traverse space. Cosmic rays, consisting mainly of protons, alpha particles, and heavy nuclei, are also present. See also Astronomy. Gravitation The law of universal gravitation states that every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with a force directly proportional to the products of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Consequently, the gravitational pull exerted by the Earth upon all other bodies (including spacecraft) diminishes with distance from the Earth. The gravitational field, however, extends to an infinite distance; gravity does not cease to act at any altitude. Objects in a spacecraft are said to be weightless when it is in orbit around the Earth (or around any other celestial body) because they do not experience the normal effects of weight, since all are moving in the same way under the influence of gravity. Under these conditions, the objects float freely in the craft. Aerodynamic forces on the lifting surfaces (for example, the wings) of an aircraft keep it up against the force of gravity, but a space vehicle cannot stay aloft in this way because of the absence of air in space. The spacecraft, therefore, must orbit if it is to remain in space. Aircraft flying in the Earth’s atmosphere can use propellers and wings for propulsion and manoeuvring, but spacecraft cannot do so because of the lack of air. A space vehicle must rely on the reaction of rockets for propulsion and manoeuvres, using Newton’s laws of motion. When a spacecraft fires a rocket blast in one direction, the reaction imparts momentum to the spacecraft in the opposite direction. Human Beings in Space Space is a hostile environment for human beings in a number of ways. It contains neither air nor oxygen, so human beings are unable to breathe. The vacuum of space can destroy an unprotected human body in a few seconds by explosive decompression. Temperatures in space in the shadow of a planet approach absolute zero; on the other hand, temperatures can become fatally high under direct solar radiation. Energetic solar and cosmic radiations in space may also be fatal to an unshielded person who is not protected by the atmosphere of the Earth. These environmental conditions can also affect the instruments and devices used in spacecraft, so the design and construction of these materials are dictated by the space environment. Experiments in weightlessness for long periods of time have been studied intensively to discover what adverse effects this condition will have on travellers in space (see Aerospace Medicine). People can be protected against the space environment in several ways. At present, they are enclosed inside a hermetically sealed cabin or space suit, with a supply of pressurized air or oxygen to approximate conditions on Earth. Air conditioning controls the temperature and humidity. Absorbing and reflecting surfaces on the outside of the spacecraft regulate the amount of heat radiation affecting the craft. Furthermore, space journeys are carefully planned to avoid the intense radiation belts around the Earth. On long interplanetary voyages of the future, heavy shielding might be necessary to protect against solar radiation storms; or crews might be sheltered in a central position within the spacecraft with supplies and equipment to surround and shield them. For lengthy space journeys, or for prolonged stays in an Earth-orbiting satellite, the effects of weightlessness might be reduced by spinning the craft to provide artificial gravity. For this purpose, the spacecraft might be shaped like a large wheel that spins slowly around its own axis, or like a dumbbell, rotating end over end. History People dreamed of spaceflight for millennia before it became reality. Evidence of the dream exists in myth and fiction as far back as Babylonian texts of 4000 BC. The ancient Greek myths of Daedalus and Icarus also reflect the universal desire to fly. As early as the 2nd century AD, the Greek satirist Lucian wrote about an imaginary voyage to the Moon. In the early 17th century the German astronomer Johannes Kepler wrote Somnium (Sleep), which might be called a scientific satire of a journey to the Moon. The French writer and philosopher Voltaire, in Micromégas (1752), told of the travels of certain inhabitants of Sirius and Saturn; and in 1865 the French author Jules Verne depicted space travel in his popular novel From the Earth to the Moon. The dream of flight into space continued unabated into the 20th century, notably in the works of the English writer H. G. Wells, who published The War of the Worlds in 1898 and The First Men in the Moon in 1901. More recently, fantasies of spaceflight have been nourished by science fiction. Early Developments During the centuries when space travel was only a fantasy, researchers in the sciences of astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, meteorology, and physics developed an understanding of the solar system, the stellar universe, the atmosphere of the Earth, and the probable environment in space. In the 7th and 6th centuries BC, the Greek philosophers Thales and Pythagoras noted that the Earth is a sphere; in the 3rd century BC the astronomer Aristarchus of Samos asserted that the Earth moved around the Sun. Hipparchus, another Greek, prepared information about stars and the motions of the Moon in the 2nd century BC. In the 2nd century AD Ptolemy of Alexandria placed the Earth at the centre of the solar system in his cosmic scheme, now called the Ptolemaic system. Scientific Discoveries Not until some 1,400 years later did the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus systematically explain that the planets, including the Earth, revolve about the Sun (see Copernican System). Later in the 16th century the observations of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe greatly influenced the laws of planetary motion set forth by Kepler. Galileo, Edmund Halley, Sir William Herschel, and Sir James Jeans were other astronomers who made contributions pertinent to astronautics. Physicists and mathematicians also helped to lay the foundations of astronautics. In 1654 the German physicist Otto von Guericke proved that a vacuum could be maintained, refuting the old theory that nature “abhors” a vacuum. In the late 17th century Newton formulated the laws of universal gravitation and motion. Newton’s laws of motion established the basic principles governing the propulsion and orbital motion of modern spacecraft. Despite the scientific foundations laid in earlier ages, however, space travel did not become possible until the advances of the 20th century provided the actual means of rocket propulsion, guidance, and control for space vehicles. Rocket Propulsion The techniques of rocket propulsion also originated long ago. Ancient rockets used gunpowder as fuel, very much as in fireworks today. In AD 1232 in China, the city of Kaifeng was reportedly defended against the Mongols by the use of rockets. From the Renaissance onwards, references were made to the proposed or actual military use of rockets in European warfare. As early as 1804 the British army established a rocket corps equipped with rockets that had a range of about 1,830 m (6,000 ft). In the United States, the foremost pioneer in rocket propulsion was Robert Goddard, a Professor of Physics at Clark College (now Clark University). He began experimenting with liquid fuels for rocketry in the early 1920s. He launched the first successful liquid-propelled rocket on March 16, 1926. During the same general period, studies on spaceships and rocket propulsion were being conducted in several parts of the world. About 1890 Herman Ganswindt, a German law student, conceived of a solid-propellant spaceship that demonstrated his marked awareness of the stability problem. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian schoolteacher, published in 1903 A Rocket into Cosmic Space, which proposed the use of liquid propellants for spaceships. In 1923 a German mathematician and physicist, Hermann Oberth, published Die Rakete zu den Planetenrنumen (The Rocket into Interplanetary Space). The book was supplemented by Walter Hohmann, a German architect, who published in 1925 Die Erreichbarkeit der Himmelskِrper (The Possibility of Reaching Celestial Bodies), which contained the first detailed calculation of interplanetary orbits. World War II provided the impetus and motivation for the development of long-range sub-orbital rockets. The United States, the USSR, Great Britain, and Germany simultaneously developed rockets for military purposes. The most successful were the Germans, who developed the V-2 (a liquid-propellant rocket used in the bombardment of London) at Peenemünde, a village near the Baltic coast. At the close of the war, the US Army brought back a number of the V-2s, which were then used in the United States, in vertical flights, for experimental research. Some German engineers went to the USSR after the war, but the leading rocket experts went to the United States, including Walter Dornberger, and Wernher von Braun. See Guided Missiles. Spacecraft Spacecraft that do not have to carry human beings can be of a great variety of sizes, from a few centimetres to several metres in diameter, and of many shapes, depending on the purposes for which they are designed. Spacecraft that do not carry a crew have radio-transmitting equipment, both to relay information back to Earth and to signal the position of the spacecraft. Manned spacecraft must fulfil more exacting requirements than unmanned vehicles because of the needs of the human occupants. A manned space vehicle is designed to provide air for the astronauts, food and water, navigation and guidance equipment, seating and sleeping accommodation, and communication equipment, so that the astronauts can send and receive information. A distinctive feature of manned spacecraft is the heat shield that protects the vehicle as it re-enters the atmosphere (see “Launching and Re-entry” below). Propulsion The rocket engines that launch and propel spacecraft are of two main types: solid-propellant rockets, which use chemicals that burn in a fashion similar to gunpowder, and liquid-propellant rockets, which use liquid fuels and oxidizers carried in separate tanks. Most of the rockets that have launched American spacecraft have had several separate rocket stages; each stage is separately powered with its own fuel. After the fuel in each stage has been consumed, the empty stage drops away from the spacecraft. Because the technology to build space-launch vehicles is closely akin to that for long-range ballistic missiles, the United States and the USSR were the only two countries that had the ability to launch satellites from 1957 to 1965. In subsequent years France, Japan, India, and China launched Earth satellites of ever-increasing sophistication, and in May 1984 the 13-member European Space Agency began its own launch programme from a space centre at Kourou in French Guiana. The United States and the USSR, however, remained the only nations with launch vehicles capable of placing in orbit payloads of many tonnes—the prerequisite for manned spaceflight. Launching and Re-entry A space vehicle is launched from a specially constructed launchpad, where the space vehicle and the rocket that propels it are set up and carefully inspected before launching. The operation is supervised by engineers and technicians in the nearby control centre. When all preparations are complete, the rocket engines are fired and the rocket and spacecraft lift off. Re-entry poses the problem of slowing down a returning spacecraft so that it lands on Earth without being destroyed by aerodynamic heating. The spaceflights of the US Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programmes overcame the problem of re-entry by protecting the leading surface of the returning capsule with a specially developed heat shield, made of metals, plastics, and ceramic materials that melt and vaporize during re-entry, thereby carrying off or dissipating the heat without damage to the capsule or the astronauts. The heat shield developed to protect the space shuttle during re-entry consists of a covering of ceramic tiles individually cemented to the shuttle’s hull. Before the development of the space shuttle, which lands on a runway (see “Space Shuttle” below), all American manned spacecraft used the ocean to cushion the impact of landing; the astronauts and the capsules were retrieved quickly by helicopter and taken aboard waiting naval vessels. Soviet cosmonauts have landed on solid ground in various sites in Siberia. Orbiting the Earth The orbit of a spacecraft around the Earth can be in the shape of a circle or an ellipse. An artificial satellite in a circular orbit travels at a constant speed. The higher the altitude, however, the lower the speed relative to the surface of the Earth. Maintaining an altitude of 35,800 km (22,300 mi) over the equator, a satellite is geostationary. It moves in geosynchronous orbit, at exactly the same speed as the Earth, so that it remains in a fixed position over some particular spot on the equator. Most communications satellites are placed in such orbits. In an elliptical orbit, the speed varies and is greatest at perigee (minimum altitude) and least at apogee (maximum altitude). Elliptical orbits can lie in any plane that passes through the Earth’s centre. A polar orbit lies in a plane passing through the North and South Poles—that is, it passes through the axis of rotation of the Earth. An equatorial orbit is one that lies in a plane passing through the equator. The angle between the orbital plane and the equatorial plane is called the inclination of the orbit. The Earth rotates once every 24 hours under a satellite in a polar orbit. A polar-orbit weather satellite, carrying television and infrared cameras, can thus observe meteorological conditions over the entire globe from pole to pole in a single day. An orbit at another inclination covers a smaller portion of the Earth, omitting areas around the poles. As long as the orbit of an object keeps it in the vacuum of space, the object will continue to orbit without propulsive power because no frictional force slows it down. If part or all of the orbit passes through the atmosphere of the Earth, however, the body is slowed by aerodynamic friction with the air. This causes the orbit to decay gradually to lower and lower altitudes until the object has fully re-entered the atmosphere and burns up, like a meteor. Space Programmes—Unmanned The long history of myths, dreams, fiction, science, and technology culminated in the dramatic launching of the first artificial orbiting Earth satellite, Sputnik 1, by the USSR on October 4, 1957. Sputnik Zemli, meaning “travelling companion of the world” is the full Russian name for an artificial satellite, a companion of the Earth as it travels around the Sun. Early Artificial Satellites Sputnik 1 was an aluminium sphere, 58 cm (23 in) in diameter, weighing 83 kg (184 lb). It orbited the Earth in 96.2 minutes. The elliptical orbit of the satellite carried it to an apogee of 946 km (588 mi) and a perigee of 227 km (141 mi). The sphere contained instruments which, for 21 days, radioed data concerning cosmic rays, meteoroids, and the density and temperature of the upper atmosphere. At the end of 57 days the satellite re-entered the atmosphere of the Earth and was destroyed by aerodynamic frictional heat. The second artificial Earth satellite was also a Soviet space vehicle, called Sputnik 2. It was sent aloft on November 3, 1957, with a dog named Laika aboard, and it relayed the first biomedical measurements in space. Sputnik 2 re-entered the atmosphere of the Earth and was destroyed after 162 days aloft. While Sputnik 2 was still in orbit, the United States successfully launched its first Earth satellite, Explorer 1, from Cape Canaveral (named Cape Kennedy 1963-1973), Florida, on January 31, 1958. The 14-kg (31-lb) cylindrical spacecraft, 15 cm (6 in) in diameter and 203 cm (80 in) long, transmitted measurements of cosmic rays and micrometeoroids for 112 days and gave the first satellite-derived data leading to the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts. On March 17, 1958, the United States launched its second satellite, Vanguard 2; a precise study of variations of its orbit showed that the Earth is slightly pear-shaped. Using solar power, the satellite transmitted signals for more than six years. Vanguard 2 was followed by the American satellite Explorer 3, launched on March 26, 1958, and by the Soviet satellite Sputnik 3, launched on May 15. The 1,327-kg (2,925-lb) Soviet spacecraft measured solar radiation, cosmic rays, magnetic fields, and other space phenomena until the craft’s orbit decayed in April 1960. Unmanned Lunar Missions As the closest neighbour of the Earth, the Moon has been the objective of many space missions. In 1958 the first attempts by the United States and the USSR at lunar probes failed. The Russian Luna 2, launched on September 12, 1959, hit the Moon 36 hours later. Since that date, many moon shots have been made by both countries, with mixed results. The first photographs of the far side of the Moon were taken by Luna 3, which was launched by the USSR on October 4, 1959. One of the most dramatically successful moon shots was the mission accomplished by Ranger 7, launched by the United States on July 28, 1964. Just before hitting the side of the Moon that faces the Earth, it transmitted 4,316 television pictures of the lunar surface from altitudes of about 1,800 km (1,120 mi) to about 300 m (1,000 ft), giving Earth-bound human beings their first close-up view of the Moon. On January 31, 1966, the USSR launched Luna 9, which made the first soft landing on the Moon—that is, it landed without being destroyed. The United States followed with Surveyor 1 on May 30, which also made a soft landing on the lunar surface. It sent back to Earth 11,150 close-up photographs of the Moon. Aside from the scientific information that was gathered, much of the interest of the lunar missions centred on the American programme to land a man on the Moon. To this end, a number of further unmanned moon flights were undertaken, among which were two soft landings made by Surveyors 3 and 5 in 1967. Both craft, after taking about two days for their journeys, sent back to Earth a large number of television pictures of the lunar surface. Surveyor 3 picked up samples of lunar soil and examined them by television camera. Surveyor 5 chemically analysed the lunar surface, using an alpha-particle scattering technique; this was the first on-site analysis of an extraterrestrial body. Another spacecraft supporting lunar landings was the Lunar Orbiter. In 1966 and 1967, five Lunar Orbiters circled the Moon, relaying thousands of photographs to Earth. From these photographs, landing sites were selected for the Apollo moon-landing programme. Two other unmanned, automated lunar projects by the USSR are noteworthy. The Luna 16 spacecraft, launched on September 12, 1970, landed on the Moon and placed about 113 g (4 oz) of lunar soil in a sealed container that was then launched from the Moon and recovered in the USSR. Luna 17, launched on November 10, 1970, soft-landed an automated lunar-roving vehicle, Lunokhod 1, equipped with a television camera and solar batteries. Over a period of 321 Earth days the vehicle, controlled from the Earth, travelled 10.5 km (6.5 mi) on the Moon, relaying television pictures and scientific data. Luna 21 in 1973 repeated this performance, placing Lunokhod 2 on the Moon.

Scientific Satellites As space-launch vehicles (rocket boosters) and scientific measuring devices became more reliable, a wide variety of satellites was developed. Scientists were eager to obtain data and make accurate studies of the Sun, other stars, the Earth, and space itself. The enveloping atmosphere of the Earth prevents such data from being obtained from the Earth’s surface, except in a limited way through the use of high-altitude balloons. In the United States, many astronomical satellites have been launched. Since 1962, for example, the Orbiting Solar Observatories (OSO) have studied the Sun’s ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma radiation. Pioneer satellites have studied cosmic radiation, the solar wind, and the electromagnetic characteristics of space. The Orbiting Astronomical Observatories (OAO) have observed stellar radiation, and Orbiting Geophysical Observatories (OGO) have studied the relationships between the Sun, the Earth, and their space environment. The Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS), an Anglo-American project launched in 1983, has probed the hidden reaches of our galaxy. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched by the space shuttle Discovery in 1990. Although scientists discovered soon after the space telescope began operating that the telescope’s main mirror was flawed, astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour repaired the Hubble Space Telescope in December 1993. Even before the repair, however, the telescope was able to transmit valuable images—some of never-before-observed phenomena—back to astronomers on Earth. Applications Satellites This class of unmanned spacecraft also performs useful functions for the earthbound scientist. The three general classifications of such satellites are communications, environmental, and navigation satellites. Environmental satellites observe the Earth and atmosphere, and transmit images for a variety of purposes. Weather satellites provide daily transmissions of temperatures and cloud patterns. One example is the Synchronous Meteorological Satellite (SMS). From stationary orbit, it sends pictures of a large area of the Earth’s surface at 30-minute intervals. Two SMS’s can cover an entire continent and adjacent ocean areas. The US Landsats observe the Earth with multispectral optical scanners and transmit the data to ground stations. Processed into colour images, these pictures reveal data of great range and great potential value. Information on soil characteristics, water and ice quantities, coastal-water pollution, salinity, and insect blights of crops and forests are obtained. Even forest fires can be detected from Earth orbit. Study of folds and fractures in the Earth’s crust helps geologists to identify deposits of oil and minerals. SPOT (Système Probatoire pour Observation de la Terre), a European satellite launched in 1985, transmits images that show the Earth in even greater detail than Landsats can. See also Remote Sensing. Earth observation satellites are used by the United States and other countries to obtain images of military value, as of nuclear explosions in the atmosphere and in space, ballistic-missile launch sites, and ship and troop movements. In the 1980s, controversy was aroused by the American proposal to develop a satellite antiballistic missile defence system making use of laser technology (see Strategic Defense Initiative). Navigation satellites provide a known observation point orbiting the Earth that, when observed by ships and submarines, can fix the vessel’s position within a few yards. The United States has developed a Global Positioning System employing 24 satellites, capable of providing location information to ships and aircraft, and even to drivers and walkers. Planetary Studies Beyond the Moon, spacecraft have landed on Mars and Venus, have flown by every planet except Pluto, and have made comet studies. Mars The USSR launched Mars 2 and 3 in May 1971, two probes that crash-landed on Mars but transmitted data briefly. In August 1973, the USSR launched Mars 4, 5, 6, and 7; but various technical malfunctions plagued all the missions. In 1988 the USSR sent two probes, Phobos 1 and 2, to land on the Martian moon Phobos; the first was lost through human error, and the second dropped out of radio contact. In the US programme, Mariner 9 was launched in May 1971, orbited Mars from November 1971 to October 1972, and transmitted enough photographs for an almost complete map of the planet. In August and September 1975, Viking 1 and 2 began an 11-month journey to Mars. Each spacecraft carried a lander equipped with life-detecting and chemical laboratories, two colour television cameras, weather and seismographic instruments, and a 3-m (10-ft) retractable claw designed to be manipulated from the Earth. Both functioned well for several years. Venus The USSR’s programme to penetrate the dense, cloud-covered atmosphere of Venus met with great success. Venera 7 was launched in August 1970 and survived long enough to transmit 23 minutes of temperature data. Venera 8, launched in 1972, transmitted surface data that included soil analysis. In October 1975, Veneras 9 and 10 placed landers on the surface; both survived for an hour and relayed the first photographs of the Venusian surface. In 1978, Veneras 11 and 12 released probes that landed on Venus on December 25 and 21, respectively. Both probes recorded a pressure of 88 atmospheres and a surface temperature of 460° C (860° F). On March 1 and 5, 1982, Veneras 13 and 14 landed on Venus. The craft relayed photographs of the planet’s surface and analysed the chemical composition of the atmosphere and soil. On October 10 and 14, 1983, Veneras 15 and 16 entered orbit around Venus and returned radar images; and in June 1985, Vegas 1 and 2, en route to Halley’s comet, released four probes into the Venusian atmosphere. The US Pioneer Venus 1, an orbiter, and 2, consisting of five atmospheric probes, were launched on May 20 and August 8, 1978, and they reached Venus on December 5 and 9, 1978. The orbiter mapped nearly the entire surface of Venus, and the probes analysed the composition and movement of the atmosphere and its interaction with the solar wind. The Magellan probe was launched towards Venus from a space shuttle in 1989 and began transmitting radar images of the planet’s surface in August 1990. Mercury The planet nearest the Sun came under scrutiny when the United States sent Mariner 10 on a journey through the inner solar system in October 1973, en route to Mercury. The spacecraft passed Venus in February 1974 and used the planet’s gravity to enter a solar orbit. In March it came within 692 km (430 mi) of Mercury, providing the first views of the planet’s moon-like, cratered surface. On its second encounter with Mercury in September, the spacecraft detected a totally unsuspected magnetic field. On its third and final encounter in March 1975, Mariner 10 came within 317 km (197 mi). Jupiter and Saturn The US Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft, launched in 1972 and 1973, passed safely through the unexplored asteroid belt beyond the orbit of Mars and flew by Jupiter in December 1973 and December 1974. The two 258-kg (570-lb) spacecraft passed the planet at a distance of 130,400 km (81,000 mi) and 46,700 km (29,000 mi), and Pioneer 10 continued on its way out of the solar system, the first craft ever sent into interstellar space; it is expected to encounter its first star in about 80,000 years. Pioneer 11 travelled by Saturn in September 1979, preparing the way for Voyagers 1 and 2. Launched in 1977, the spectacularly successful Voyagers 1 and 2 encountered the Jovian system in March and July 1979 and took a variety of measurements and photographs. The spacecraft then flew by the Saturnian system in November 1980 and August 1981. Uranus After flying past Saturn, Voyager 2 was directed towards Uranus. It passed within 80,000 km (50,000 mi) of the cloud-covered planet in January 1986, discovering four more rings as well as ten new moons. The spacecraft came even closer to one of the moons, Miranda, transmitting startling pictures of that icy body. Voyager 2 then headed for Neptune, flying within 5,000 km (3,100 mi) of the planet in August 1989 and discovering six additional Neptunian moons before it finally left the solar system. Gravity Assist All interplanetary flights by space probes now rely on the technique called gravity assist. It involves using the gravitational field and orbital motion of a planet or natural satellite to alter the course and speed of the spacecraft, reducing the amount of fuel that needs to be carried. A space probe’s direction of travel is changed as it passes through the gravitational field of a planet. The angle it is swung through will depend on how closely it approaches the planet. The probe’s speed of travel will also be changed, because some of the energy from the planet’s orbital motion around the Sun is imparted to the space probe during its fly-by. The first space probe to use a gravity assist was Mariner 10, which in 1974 flew past Venus on the way to Mercury. Gravity assist made possible the epic voyages of the Pioneer and Voyager probes past the outer planets and out of the solar system. The Galileo space probe, launched in 1989, used a highly convoluted gravity-assist trajectory to reach Jupiter, involving one fly-by of Venus, in 1990, and two of the Earth, in 1990 and 1992. As a result of the energy lost to Galileo during these fly-bys, Venus will be 4 cm (11 in) behind where it would otherwise have been in a billion years from now, and the Earth will be 13.2 cm (54 in) behind. Having entered orbit around Jupiter, Galileo continued to use gravity assists, now from Jupiter’s satellites, to adjust its path. Space Programmes—Manned Within a year after the successes of the first small artificial satellites in 1957 and 1958, both the United States and the USSR were developing programmes to place people in Earth orbit. Both countries sent carefully monitored dogs and primates into orbit to study the effects of weightlessness on living creatures. Vostok and Mercury Programmes The USSR was first into space with a man, cosmonaut Yury A. Gagarin, who made one orbit of the Earth in Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. During his flight time of 1 hour, 48 minutes, he reached an apogee of 327 km (203 mi) and a perigee of 180 km (112 mi). He landed safely in Siberia. In the next two years five more Vostok flights were made. The pilot of Vostok 6 was Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to fly in space. Launched on June 16, 1963, she orbited the Earth 48 times. Meanwhile, a similar US programme, called Mercury, was taking shape. On May 5, 1961, Commander Alan B. Shepard, Jr., of the US Navy, became the first American in space. The Mercury spacecraft, named Freedom 7, flew a ballistic trajectory and made a 15-minute sub-orbital flight. A similar flight followed on July 21, flown by Captain Virgil I. Grissom of the US Air Force. On February 20, 1962, Lieutenant Colonel John H. Glenn, Jr. of the US Marine Corps became the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth, in a flight of three orbits. Three additional Mercury flights were made in 1962 and 1963 by Lieutenant Colonel M. Scott Carpenter of the navy, Commander Walter M. Schirra, Jr., also of the navy, and Major Leroy Gordon Cooper, Jr., of the air force. Voskhod and Gemini Programmes The Voskhod was an adaptation of the Vostok spacecraft, modified to accommodate two or three cosmonauts. On October 12, 1964, cosmonauts Vladimir M. Komarov, Boris B. Yegorov, and Konstantin P. Feoktistov made a 15-orbit flight in Voskhod 1. This was the only piloted flight that year and brought the total cumulative man-hours of Soviet cosmonauts in space to 455. The American astronauts then had a total of 54 man-hours in space. On March 18, 1965, cosmonauts Pavel I. Belyayev and Aleksei A. Leonov were launched in Voskhod 2. During this 17-orbit flight, Leonov performed the first walk in space, or extravehicular activity (EVA), leaving the spacecraft and drifting out on an umbilical tether. The US Gemini programme was designed to develop the technology required to go to the Moon. In May 1961, US President John F. Kennedy had instituted the Apollo programme, designed to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth “before the decade is out”. This national commitment resulted in an intensive, large-scale, piloted flight programme. The Gemini spacecraft carried two astronauts and was designed to operate for extended periods of time and to develop rendezvous and docking techniques with another orbiting spacecraft. Ten manned Gemini flights were made in 1965-1966. During the Gemini 4 flight, Major Edward H. White II of the air force became the first US astronaut to perform an EVA. Using a pressurized-gas, jet-manoeuvring device, he spent 21 minutes in space. While Gemini 6 and 7 were in orbit together in December 1965, they rendezvoused within a few feet of each other. After orbiting for 20 hours with Schirra and Major Thomas P. Stafford of the air force, Gemini 6 landed. Gemini 7, with Lieutenant Colonel Frank Borman of the air force and Commander James A. Lovell, Jr., of the navy, went on to spend a total of 334 hours in orbit. This flight of nearly 14 days provided medical data on human beings in space that was necessary to assure the success of the 10-day Apollo lunar mission. Furthermore, it demonstrated the reliability of systems such as hydrogen-oxygen fuel-cells. On the Gemini 10, 11, and 12 flights, rendezvous and docking were accomplished repeatedly with a target vehicle that had previously been orbited. By the end of the last Gemini flight in November 1966, US astronauts had accumulated nearly 2,000 man-hours in space, which exceeded the Soviet cosmonaut total, and about 12 hours in EVA. Soyuz and Apollo The year 1967 was one of tragedy for both spacefaring nations. On January 27, during a ground test of the Apollo spacecraft at Cape Kennedy, fire broke out in the three-man command module. Because of the pressurized pure-oxygen atmosphere inside the spacecraft, a flash fire engulfed and killed the three astronauts—Grissom, White, and Lieutenant Commander Roger B. Chaffee of the navy. As a result of this tragedy, the Apollo programme was delayed by more than a year while vehicle design and materials underwent a major review. On April 23, 1967, cosmonaut Komarov was launched in the first manned flight of a new Soviet spacecraft, Soyuz. The Soyuz had room for three cosmonauts and a separate working compartment, accessible through a hatch, for experiments. Following re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere and deployment of landing parachutes, the shroud lines became twisted, and Komarov plunged to his death in the spacecraft. The Soviet space programme was set back by nearly two years. In October 1968, the first manned Apollo flight was launched by a Saturn 1B booster. Astronauts Schirra, Major R. Walter Cunningham of the US Marine Reserve Corps, and Major Donn F. Eisele of the air force circled the Earth for 163 orbits, checking spacecraft performance, photographing the Earth, and transmitting television pictures. In December 1968, Apollo 8, a landmark flight carrying astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Major William A. Anders of the air force, circled the Moon ten times and returned to Earth safely. The Apollo 9 flight, with Major James A. McDivitt and Colonel David R. Scott of the air force and a civilian, Russell L. Schweickart, tested undocking, rendezvous, and docking of the Apollo lunar module (LM) landing craft during a 151-orbit mission. The Apollo 10 flight, with astronauts Stafford and Lieutenant Commander John W. Young and Commander Eugene A. Cernan of the navy, made 31 orbits of the Moon in a rehearsal for the lunar landing. As planned, Stafford and Cernan transferred from the Apollo command module (CM) to the LM, separated, and descended to within 16 km (10 mi) of the lunar surface while astronaut Young piloted the CM. Subsequently, rendezvous and docking of the ascent stage of the LM were accomplished; the two astronauts then transferred to the CM, discarded the LM, fired the service module rocket to enter the return trajectory to Earth, and returned safely. Project Apollo was now ready to land astronauts on the Moon (see “Human Beings on the Moon” below). Meanwhile, the USSR launched unmanned Zond spacecraft around the Moon, carrying cameras and biological specimens. Colonel Georgi T. Beregovoi flew a 60-orbit mission in Soyuz 3 in October 1968. Soyuz 4 and 5 rendezvoused and docked in Earth orbit in January 1969. While the spacecraft were linked, cosmonauts Aleksei S. Yeliseyev and Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny V. Khrunov, in space suits, transferred by EVA from Soyuz 5 to Soyuz 4, which was piloted by Colonel Vladimir A. Shatalov. In October 1969, Soyuz 6, 7, and 8, launched a day apart, rendezvoused in orbit but did not dock. Soyuz 9, with a two-cosmonaut crew, set a flight duration record of almost 18 days in June 1970. Human Beings on the Moon In 1969, humankind achieved the long-sought goal of landing on the Moon. The historic flight of Apollo 11 was launched on July 16. After entering lunar orbit, Colonel Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., of the air force and Neil A. Armstrong transferred to the LM. Armstrong, a civilian, was a naval veteran. Lieutenant Colonel Michael Collins of the air force remained in lunar orbit following the separation, piloting the command and service module. The LM descended to the surface of the Moon on July 20, landing at the edge of Mare Tranquillitatis. A few hours later, Armstrong, in his bulky space suit, descended the ladder and, at 10:56 PM (Eastern Daylight Time) stepped on to the surface of the Moon. His first words were, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind”. He was soon joined by Aldrin, and the two astronauts spent more than two hours walking on the lunar surface. They gathered 21 kg (47 lb) of soil samples, took photographs, and set up a solar wind experiment, a laser-beam reflector, and a seismic experiment package. Armstrong and Aldrin also erected an American flag and talked, by satellite communications, with President Richard M. Nixon in the White House. They found that walking and running in one-sixth the gravity of Earth was not difficult. Also via satellite, millions of people watched live television broadcasts from the Moon. Returning to the LM and discarding their space suits, the two astronauts rested for several hours before take-off. They left the Moon in the ascent stage of the LM, using the lower half, which remained on the Moon, as a launchpad. The ascent stage was jettisoned after docking with the command and service module and the transfer of the astronauts to the spacecraft. The return flight of Apollo 11 was without mishap and the vehicle splashed down on July 24 in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii and was recovered. Because of the slight possibility of terrestrial contamination by living lunar organisms, the astronauts put on biological isolation garments before leaving the spacecraft and were placed in quarantine for three weeks. They remained in good health. Apollo 12 The next moon-landing flight began on November 14, 1969, when Apollo 12 was launched with astronauts Pete Conrad, Richard F. Gordon, Jr., and Alan L. Bean, all of the navy, aboard. After entering lunar orbit, command pilot Conrad and Bean, the pilot of the LM, transferred to the LM. They landed north of the Riphaeus Mountains, at a spot just 180 m (600 ft) from where the Surveyor 3 spacecraft had landed two years before. The two astronauts explored their surroundings during two periods, each lasting nearly four hours. They set up scientific experiments, took photographs, collected samples of lunar soil, and removed pieces from Surveyor 3 to be examined on their return to Earth. After take-off from the Moon and rendezvous with the command module piloted by Gordon, successful splashdown and recovery took place on November 24. Quarantine procedures were repeated, but the astronauts emerged in good health on December 10. Apollo 12 demonstrated many improvements over Apollo 11 techniques, particularly in the accuracy of landing guidance. So successful were these changes that Apollo 13 was intended to land on more rugged terrain on the Moon. Apollo 13 On April 11, 1970, Apollo 13 was launched, carrying the veteran astronaut Lovell and the civilian astronauts Fred W. Haise, Jr., and John L. Swigert, Jr. The craft met with disaster during the flight when an oxygen tank ruptured. The astronauts were obliged to cancel their planned landing on the lunar surface. Instead, using the power and survival systems of the LM, they swung behind the Moon and were then brought back to Earth for a splashdown south of Pago Pago in the South Pacific Ocean on April 17. Apollo 14 and 15 The mission of the aborted Apollo 13 was accomplished by the crew of Apollo 14, launched on January 31, 1971, after modifications were carried out in the spacecraft to prevent the malfunctions encountered by Apollo 13. Captain Shepard, who had been promoted after his successful sub-orbital flight in 1961 (see “Vostok and Mercury Programmes” above), and Commander Edgar D. Mitchell, also of the navy, successfully landed the LM in the rugged Fra Mauro region of the Moon, while astronaut Stuart A. Roosa of the air force remained in lunar orbit in the command module. Shepard and Mitchell spent more than 9 hours exploring an area believed to contain some of the oldest rocks yet recovered, collecting about 43 kg (96 lb) of geological samples and deploying scientific instruments. The astronauts returned to Earth without incident on February 9, 1971. Apollo 15 was launched on July 26, 1971, carrying three air force officers: Colonel Scott as flight commander, Lieutenant Colonel James B. Irwin as pilot of the LM, and Major Alfred M. Worden as pilot of the command module. Scott and Irwin spent 2 days, 18 hours on the lunar surface at the edge of Mare Imbrium, close to the 366-m (1,200-ft) deep Hadley Rille and the Apennine mountain range, one of the highest on the Moon. During their 18 hours, 37 minutes of exploration of the lunar surface, the astronauts traversed more than 28.2 km (17.5 mi) in the vicinity of Mount Hadley in an electrically propelled four-wheeled lunar rover. They also deployed an elaborate package of scientific instruments and collected about 91 kg (200 lb) of rocks, including what was believed to be a crystalline piece of the original lunar crust, about 4.6 billion years old. A television camera left on the Moon photographed Scott and Irwin’s departure from the surface, and before the crew left the lunar orbit for their return to Earth, they launched into lunar orbit a 35.6-kg (78.5-lb) “subsatellite” designed to transmit data about gravitational, magnetic, and high-energy fields in the lunar environment. On the return journey, Worden made a 16-minute spacewalk while the spacecraft was about 315,400 km (196,000 mi) from the Earth, a record distance for an EVA. The Apollo 15 astronauts splashed down without incident on August 7, about 530 km (330 mi) north of Hawaii, and were the first moon-landing crew that was not required to undergo a quarantine. Apollo 16 and 17 On April 16, 1972, astronauts Young, Charles Moss Duke, Jr., and Thomas Kenneth (Ken) Mattingly were launched on the Apollo 16 mission to the Moon, to explore the Descartes Highlands and the Cayley Plains regions. While Mattingly remained in orbit, the two other astronauts landed in the assigned area on April 20. They spent 20 hours, 14 minutes on the Moon, setting up a number of experiments powered by a small nuclear station, travelling about 26.6 km (16.5 mi) in the lunar rover, and collecting more than 97 kg (214 lb) of rock samples. The projected missions to the Moon by the United States were concluded with the flight of Apollo 17, December 6-19, 1972. During their smooth 13-day voyage, the veteran astronaut Cernan and the American civilian geologist Harrison H. Schmitt spent 22 hours on the Moon, travelling 35 km (22 mi) in the lunar rover and exploring the Taurus-Littrow Valley region, while Commander Ronald E. Evans of the navy remained in lunar orbit. Space Stations Salyut and Skylab were the first spacecraft designed as space stations, orbiting the Earth for extended periods while crews came and went on other vehicles. Many valuable new experiments and astronomical observations could now be performed. Soviet Stations The Soviet Salyut 1 space station, weighing 18,600 kg (41,000 lb), was launched on April 19, 1971. Three days later Soyuz 10, with a crew of three cosmonauts, rendezvoused and docked. For some unspecified reason, however, the cosmonauts did not enter the Salyut but undocked and returned to Earth. In June Soyuz 11 joined with Salyut 1, and the three-man crew moved into the station to set a manned-flight duration record of 24 days. A large number of Earth-resources and biological experiments were conducted. During the return journey to Earth, however, tragedy struck, and upon landing the three cosmonauts—Georgi T. Dobrovolsky, Vladislav N. Volkov, and Viktor I. Patsayev—were found dead, victims of an air leak in a valve. Because they wore no space suits, the cosmonauts had been killed quickly. The Soviet programme suffered another setback. The Salyut 2 space station was launched in April 1973, but apparently went out of control, shedding various parts in orbit. Thereafter, however, the Soviet Union sent up Salyut 3 (June 1974-January 1975), 4 (December 1974-February 1977), and 5 (June 1976-August 1977). Salyut 6 (September 1977-July 1982) and 7 (April 1982- ) were visited by a large number of international crews, including Cuban, French, and Indian cosmonauts and the first woman to perform extravehicular activity, Svetlana Savitskaya, during the flight of Soyuz T12 on July 17-29, 1984. One of the most notable flights of the Salyut/Soyuz series occurred in 1984 when cosmonauts Leonid Kizim, Vladimir Solovyov, and Oleg Atkov, spent 237 days aboard the Salyut 7 before returning to Earth, the longest space flight to that date. Salyut 7, now abandoned, remains in orbit. The Mir space station, which the Soviets designed as a successor to the Salyut series, was launched on February 19, 1986. Described by the Soviets as the core of the first permanently staffed space station, it features six docking ports and can accommodate two cosmonauts. In 1987, Colonel Yuri Romanenko spent 326 days aboard Mir, the longest space flight then on record. On April 12, 1987, the Soviets succeeded in docking Mir with Kvant, an 18,000-kg (40,000-lb) astrophysics module. Carrying four X-ray telescopes, the Kvant was designed to link with Mir and observe the supernova that had recently exploded in a nearby galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. X-rays from the exploding star, blocked by the Earth’s atmosphere, could not be detected from the Earth. In 1987-1988, Soviet cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov set a new record for time spent in space—366 days. In mid-1997, however, Mir was struck by a series of grave mishaps. On June 25, an unmanned Progress supply vessel collided with the Spektr module, part of Mir, while docking manoeuvres were being practised. There was a loss of power and air pressure on the station, which the crew were able to rectify. On July 17 a power cable was accidentally unplugged, and the station lost attitude control. Since its solar arrays were no longer directed towards the Sun, the station lost power. It took several days to solve this problem. The crew's tiredness and the discovery of an irregularity in the commander's heartbeat led to the planned major repairs being postponed until a relief crew could take over. The future of the ageing space station was thrown into doubt.

US Stations The US Skylab programme was much more extensive and complex than the Soviet Salyut programme. Skylab, launched by the first two stages of a Saturn 5 rocket, weighed 88,900 kg (196,000 lb) compared with the 18,600-kg (41,000-lb) Salyut. In contrast to the estimated 99-cu m (3,500-cu ft) interior space of Salyut, Skylab had 357 cu m (12,600 cu ft), about 3.5 times greater. Skylab served as a laboratory in Earth orbit. It was used to make solar-astronomical studies, long-duration medical studies of the three-person crew, extensive multispectral observations of the Earth, and a variety of scientific and technological experiments, such as metallic-crystal growth in the weightless state. Skylab was damaged during launch on May 25, 1973, but the crew, veteran astronaut Conrad, Commander Joseph P. Kerwin, and Commander Paul J. Weitz, all of the navy, carried out EVA repairs, erected a heat-shielding canopy over the exterior of the spacecraft, and freed a jammed solar panel. Their flight lasted 28 days. A second crew spent 59 days in orbit and the third and final crew, 84 days. The Skylab project was considered completely successful. More than 740 hours were spent in observing the Sun with telescopes, and 175,000 solar pictures were returned to Earth, as were about 64 km (40 mi) of electronic data tape and 46,000 photographs of the Earth’s surface. On July 11, 1979, during orbit number 34,981, Skylab plunged to Earth, raining fiery debris over sparsely populated western Australia and over the Indian Ocean. The US government, in cooperation with Russia, Canada, Japan, and the 13-member European Space Agency, is planning for a permanent space station that is to be assembled in space. The space station, called Alpha, is projected to be complete around 2002. Current and Future Programmes In the early 1980s, the Space Transportation System (STS), better known as the space shuttle, became the major American space programme. Problems with the STS later led to resumption of the use of expendable launch vehicles (ELVs) for launching satellites. The United States had planned to replace the space shuttle with a new spacecraft, the X-30, in the 1990s but, faced with budgetary constraints, decided to rely instead on a mixed fleet of ELVs and space shuttles to place payloads into orbit for the remainder of the decade. Space Shuttle The shuttle, a manned, multi-purpose, orbital-launch spaceplane, was designed to carry payloads of up to about 30,000 kg (65,000 lb) and up to seven crew members and passengers. The upper part of the spacecraft, the orbiter stage, had a planned lifetime of perhaps 100 missions, and the winged orbiter could make unpowered landings on returning to Earth. Because of the shuttle’s intended flexibility and its planned use for satellite deployment and the rescue and repair of previously orbited satellites, its proponents saw it as a major advance in the practical exploitation of space. Others, however, worried that NASA was placing too much reliance on the shuttle, to the detriment of other, unmanned, missions. The first space shuttle mission, piloted by John W. Young and Robert Crippen aboard the orbiter Columbia, was launched on April 12, 1981. It was a test flight flown without a payload in the orbiter’s cargo bay. The fifth space shuttle flight was the first operational mission; the astronauts in the Columbia deployed two commercial communications satellites from November 11 to 16, 1982. Later memorable flights included the seventh, whose crew included the first US woman astronaut, Sally K. Ride; the ninth mission, November 28-December 8, 1983, which carried the first of the European Space Agency’s Spacelabs; the 11th mission, April 7-13, 1984, during which a satellite was retrieved, repaired, and redeployed; and the 14th mission, November 8-14, 1984, when two expensive malfunctioning satellites were retrieved and returned to Earth. Despite such successes, the shuttle was falling behind in its planned launch programme, was increasingly being used for military tests, and was meeting stiff competition from the European Space Agency’s unmanned Ariane programme for the launching of satellites. Then, on January 28, 1986, the shuttle Challenger was destroyed about one minute after launch because of the failure of a sealant ring on one of its solid boosters. The booster nosed into the main propellant tank of liquid hydrogen and oxygen, causing a nearly explosive disruption of the entire system. Seven astronauts were killed in the disaster: commander Francis R. Scobee, pilot Michael J. Smith, mission specialists Judith A. Resnik, Ellison S. Onizuka, and Ronald E. McNair, and payload specialists Gregory B. Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe. McAuliffe had been selected the preceding year as the first “teacher in space”, a civilian representative of the shuttle programme. The tragedy brought an immediate halt to shuttle flights until systems could be analysed and redesigned. A presidential commission headed by a former secretary of state, William Rogers, and the former astronaut, Neil Armstrong, placed much of the blame on NASA’s administrative system and its failure to maintain an efficient system of quality control. In the aftermath of the Challenger disaster, the O-ring seals on the solid rocket booster (SRB) were redesigned to prevent recurrence of the January 28 failure. The shuttle launch programme resumed on September 29, 1988, with the flight of Discovery and its crew of five astronauts. On this mission, a NASA communications satellite, TDRS-3, was placed in orbit and a variety of experiments were carried out. The success of this 26th mission encouraged the United States to resume an active launch schedule. The long-delayed $1.5-billion Hubble Space Telescope was deployed by space shuttle in 1990 but, because of an optical defect, failed to provide the degree of resolution it was designed to have until it was repaired in December 1993. Prospects In addition to the manned space station, goals for the 1990s have included construction of the X-30, designed to take off from a conventional runway and boost itself into orbit using powerful ramjet engines. With setbacks such as the malfunction of the Hubble Space Telescope and leaks in the hydrogen fuel lines of the space shuttle, the US space programme seems less likely to attain all its aims. Although the space station programme is making progress, more ambitious programmes, such as the establishment of a lunar base or the exploration of Mars by astronauts, are years from realization. Saturn 5 Rocket A Saturn 5 rocket rises slowly from its launch pad in the early stages of the Apollo 17 mission. More than 110 m (363 ft) tall, the multi-stage rockets are fuelled by liquid hydrogen. In addition to being used extensively in the Apollo programmed, one of the massive Saturn 5 rockets was used to launch NASA’s Skylab in 1973. In the 1962 flight of the Friendship 7 spacecraft, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth. The success of this mission, part of the space exploration Mercury Program, gave the United States a valuable prestige boost in its ongoing “space race” with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, and sparked the imaginations of millions of people. This account is taken from the Los Angeles Times. Glenn Orbits Earth Three Times Cape Canaveral—Astronaut John H. Glenn Jr. streaked through three orbits of the earth Tuesday in his Friendship 7 spacecraft and was recovered unharmed in the Atlantic. The dramatic flight gripped the nation in intense excitement for 296 minutes as Glenn reported calmly from space and controlled his capsule manually for much of the mission. Breathless televiewers across the country watched the thunderous, long-awaited launch that hurled the titanium capsule into the airless cold of space at 17,545 m.p.h. and three times from Tuesday into Wednesday and back again while Glenn flew weightless and soared to a peak altitude of 162.3 miles near Australia. Friendship 7 flashed over Southern California on its last orbit, beginning its long fall from space that ended with a bullseye parachute descent into the Atlantic just five miles from the destroyer USS Noa in the Atlantic 156 miles east of Grand Turk Island. The capsule splashed gently into the sea at 11:43 a.m. (PST), four hours, 56 minutes after launch at 6:47 a.m. (PST) and was sighted in descent by the Noa which raced to the scene from her position some 50 miles from the main rescue ship, the carrier USS Randolph. The capsule was plucked from the sea and hauled aboard the Noa 21 minutes later and there was some difficulty in clearing a way for Glenn to exit from the top of the spacecraft. While helping in the exit operation, the exuberant astronaut reported from inside the capsule that he was in excellent condition—a report that was verified shortly when he crawled onto the deck with a broad, frecklefaced grin after exploding the capsule’s hatch open to get out of the space craft. Withstands Rigors of Weightlessness The astronaut apparently withstood the rigors of extended weightlessness with ease and there were no adverse physical reports during the flight either from Glenn himself or from military doctors who followed his reactions by means of telemetry during the long mission. [The] Only major problem was a malfunction in the spacecraft’s automatic stabilization and control system that forced Glenn to “fly by wire”—control the capsule manually—for most of the flight instead of relying on his auto-pilot. But he repeatedly reported he was having no difficulty in maintaining the capsule’s attitude as he desired and radioed that the spacecraft handled easily and smoothly under manual control which actuated electronic signals to attitude control jets in the capsule. This malfunction was believed [to be] possibly the same that caused the return of Enos, the chimpanzee, from orbit after two circles of the earth, and Glenn’s handling of the situation emphasized the reason for man in space. Skinned Knuckles Only Injury The only injury he sustained in the hazardous mission—several skinned knuckles—occurred in blowing the hatch. Glenn was transferred by helicopter to the recovery carrier USS Randolph where he was given a preliminary physical checkup. He then was flown to Grand Turk Island for a 48-hour rest and physical examination. Earlier it was indicated he would fly to Washington after the two-day rest for presidential honors, public acclaim and a national press conference. However, the White House indicated late Tuesday that President Kennedy will fly here Friday to honor Glenn. There was no indication whether there will be a press conference at that time or whether this meeting will preclude public honors in the capital. At one point during the flight, through a sunrise area over the Pacific, Glenn reported an unexplained phenomenon—thousands of luminous particles moving through space near the capsule and at about the same speed.

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Could See Lights At another point, he could see the lights of Perth and Rockingham, Australia, and asked that the residents of these cities be thanked for turning them on for him. He remarked about the brilliant blue of the horizon as he swept toward the Canary Islands on his first orbit and frequently, in a calm voice, he assured tense controllers at the world-wide tracking stations, “I feel fine —I’m having no problems at all.” Once he reported seeing the whole state of Florida “like a relief map” and added he could see westward as far as the Mississippi Delta. On one occasion he left off an unfinished conversation with a ground controller with the remark: “See you later on the way back.” And after scorching downward through re-entry with its heavy-G forces and 3,000-deg. heat on the shield at the base of the capsule, he cracked: “Boy, that was a real fireball!” Glenn was busy throughout the mission controlling the spacecraft’s attitude manually, communicating with ground stations, monitoring and managing capsule systems, controlling the spacecraft in pitch, roll and yaw axes, studying the heavens, the earth and global weather patterns, eating and drinking from experimental containers, evaluating capsule performance, and analyzing his own reactions to space flight. Anxious millions followed the astronaut’s dangerous flight by radio reports from space as the capsule rushed Glenn alternately through daylight and darkness at a speed of about five miles a second on a general west-east course high over the tracking networks that plotted his path second by second and checked his every heartbeat. The flawless flight that pitted man and science against gravity and the chill vacuum of space climaxed the U.S. space program to date, openly—win or lose—before all peoples; wrote a brilliant new chapter in American technical achievement, drew immediate praise from President Kennedy, who congratulated Glenn by radiophone aboard the Noa. All Systems Function Riding high atop 125 tons of explosive propellant, Glenn was launched into a sunny sky by a special Atlas ICBM booster that rammed the froth-coated 93-ft vehicle upward into the vault of space on a bellowing shaft of fire that spat out 360,000 lb. of thrust. Except for the malfunctioning automatic control system, all systems apparently functioned throughout the long-delayed flight from the instant the exhaust flared on the launch pad until the 63-ft. main recovery parachute snapped out of the capsule and blossomed 10,000 ft. above the Atlantic to catch Friendship 7’s long fall out of orbit. The gnawing fear that Glenn might, through some malfunction, be locked in orbit for a week to 10 days to die in space within 26 hours vanished with the operation of the many complex systems aboard the black, topshaped spacecraft. Contact by Radio All crucial phases of the mission were accomplished perfectly—launch, staging, escape tower ejection, separation from the booster, injection into orbit, capsule turnaround, establishment of re-entry angle, retro-rocket fire to slow the spacecraft out of orbit, parachute deployment and finally, recovery at sea. Meanwhile, the capsule’s life-support system provided Glenn with oxygen, pressurization, and coolant aloft; radio-voice communication held contact with him for much of the mission. And telemetry returned masses of data on more than 80 vital factors for fast analysis. Five minutes after the launch jammed the tightly-strapped marine down on his contoured couch with a peak 8 Gs in shuddering, roaring acceleration, the rocket sustainer engine cut off in space and Friendship 7 was injected into silent orbit 100 miles above Bermuda to be trailed by the bulky, empty package of its tagalong booster. Blunt-End Forward Thereafter the 3,000-lb. Spacecraft—flying blunt-end forward and tilted up, with Glenn facing backward and down—hurtled the astronaut southeastward: Across the Atlantic and Central Africa, into approaching night over the Indian Ocean, into Wednesday across Australia, through apogee (162.3-mile-high point, then northeast over the long reach of the Pacific, back into Tuesday, out of the night and back into daylight, across the lower part of Baja California, over Mexico and the southeastern United States, into perigee (99.8-mile-low point), and the beginning of a second orbit little more than 94 minutes after liftoff. It was on the third orbit, after retro-rockets had fired over the Pacific to initiate re-entry under [the] watch of the Point Arguello tracking station, that Glenn’s capsule shot high across San Diego into its long coast-to-coast fall, but Friendship 7 was invisible because of sun glare. Then came the dramatic finale when the capsule slammed down from space to be caught up by its parachute and lowered gently into the sea at about 30 feet a second. Space Shuttle Launch Space shuttle orbiters are strapped to a large fuel tank, which supplies the orbiter’s main engines, and two solid rocket boosters that provide extra lift for a vertical launch. This launch of the space shuttle Discovery in September 1988 marked the first space shuttle flight since the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986. Sputnik 1: The Russian Sputnik 1, launched on October 4, 1957, was the first artificial satellite put into orbit around the earth. This historic launch began an era of intensive space programmers by both the Soviet Union and the United States, a surge of interest sometimes called the “space race”. In the next three decades, hundreds of probes, satellites, and other missions were to follow Sputnik on the quest to explore both the wonders and the practical potential of space. NASA's Space Shuttle: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA, was created in 1958. NASA conducts aerospace research and space exploration, including the shuttle programmed. Here, the space shuttle Discovery is poised for its launch in September 1988. The success of Discovery’s mission encouraged the United States to continue the space shuttle programmed energetically, despite the destruction of Challenger. Communications Satellite, any Earth-orbiting spacecraft that provides communication over long distances by reflecting or relaying radio-frequency signals. History and Development The idea of artificial satellites circling the Earth and relaying communications signals dates from October 1945, when the British technology writer (and science-fiction author) Arthur C. Clarke published a magazine article under the title “Extra-Terrestrial Relays” proposing the revolutionary idea. It was another 12 years before the world’s first satellite was launched, by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1957. Named Sputnik, the radio transmitter it carried could qualify it as a communications satellite, although the soul purpose of this transmitter was to act as a beacon. Dedicated communications satellites, on the other hand, act as relay stations spanning distances that could not be covered by terrestrial transmitters. Over the years their function has expanded, and whereas the first satellites acted merely as relay stations for point-to-point messages, many modern satellites carry point-to-multipoint transmissions for applications as varied as direct-to-home broadcasting, data networking between different branches of large enterprises, and wide-area mobile phone systems (see also Cellular Radio). Some of the first communications satellites had no radio equipment aboard and were designed to operate in a passive mode. Instead of actively transmitting radio signals, they served merely to reflect signals that were beamed up to them by transmitting stations on the ground. Signals were reflected in all directions, so they could be picked up by receiving stations around the world, although the utility of such systems was severely limited by the need for powerful transmitters and large ground antennas at the Earth stations. This early period of development coincided with the Cold War, and the majority of early satellite communication experiments were strategic in nature. In one of these experiments, in 1958, the United States launched Score, occasioning the first transmission of a human voice from space. Score was equipped with a tape recorder that stored messages received while passing over a transmitting ground station. These messages were retransmitted when the satellite passed over a receiving station. This did not, however, provide communication in “real time”; telephone and broadcasting organizations (as well as the military) were looking towards the development of a satellite or “bird” that carried equipment for receiving and retransmitting messages on demand. Such developments form the basis of satellite communications today. Telstar 1, launched on behalf of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1962, provided direct television transmission between the United States, Europe, and Japan, and could also relay several hundred telephone calls simultaneously. Launched into an elliptical orbit inclined 45° to the equatorial plane, Telstar could only relay signals between two ground stations for a short period (45 minutes at most) during each revolution, when both stations were in its line of sight. Hundreds of active communications satellites are now in orbit, put there by many different countries. They receive signals from one ground station, amplify them, and then retransmit them at a different frequency to another station. One frequency band used, 500 MHz wide, is divided into repeater channels of various bandwidths (located at 6 GHz for upward, or “uplink”, transmission and 4 GHz for downward, or “downlink”, transmission). A band at 14 GHz (uplink) and 11 or 12 GHz (downlink) is also much in use, mostly with fixed (non-mobile) ground stations. An 80 MHz-wide band at about 1.5 GHz (uplink and downlink) is used with small, mobile ground stations (ships, land vehicles, and aircraft). Solar energy cells mounted on large panels attached to the satellite provide power for reception and transmission. Geostationary (or Geosynchronous) Orbit A satellite in a geosynchronous orbit follows a circular orbit over the equator at an altitude of 35,800 km (22,300 mi), completing one orbit every 24 hours—the time that it takes the Earth to rotate once. Moving in the same direction as the Earth’s rotation, the satellite remains in a fixed position over a point on the equator, thereby providing uninterrupted contact between ground stations in its line of sight. The first communications satellite to be placed in this type of orbit was Syncom 2, launched by NASA in 1963. Most of those that followed were also placed in geosynchronous orbit. Commercial Communications Satellites Deployment and operation of communications satellites on a commercial basis began with the founding of the Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) in 1963. When the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (Intelsat) was formed in 1964, COMSAT became the US member. Based in Washington, D.C., Intelsat is owned by more than 120 nations. Intelsat 1, known as Early Bird, launched in 1965, provided either 2,400 voice circuits or one two-way television channel between the United States and Europe. During the 1960s and 1970s, message capacity and transmission power of the Intelsat 2, 3, and 4 generations were progressively increased by beaming the satellite power only to the Earth and segmenting the broadcast spectrum into transponder units of a certain bandwidth. With the launch of the Intelsat 3 satellites in 1969, full global coverage was achieved for the first time, covering each of the three main oceans. With the Intelsat 5 series (1980), introduction of multiple-beam operation resulted in additional increases in capacity. A satellite’s power could now be concentrated on small regions of the Earth, making possible smaller-aperture (coverage area), lower-cost ground stations. An Intelsat 5 satellite can typically carry 12,000 voice circuits. The Intelsat 6 satellites, which entered service in 1989, can carry 24,000 circuits and feature dynamic on-board switching of telephone capacity among six beams, using a technique called SS-TDMA (satellite-switched time division multiple access). By the early 1990s, Intelsat had 15 satellites in orbit, providing the world’s most extensive telecommunications system. Other systems also provide international service in competition with Intelsat. In 1997 all regulatory restraints to such competition were lifted. The growth of international systems has been paralleled by domestic and regional systems, such as Europe’s Eutalsat and Telecom, and America’s Telstar, Galaxy, and Spacenet programmes. Services Commercial satellites provide a wide range of communications services. Television programmes are relayed internationally, giving rise to the phenomenon known as the “global village”. Satellites also relay programmes to cable television systems as well as to homes equipped with dish antennas (see Satellite Television). In addition, very small aperture terminals (VSATs) relay digital data for a multitude of business services. Intelsat satellites now carry over 100,000 telephone circuits, with growing use of digital transmission. Digital source-coding methods have resulted in a ten-fold reduction in the transmission rate needed to carry a voice channel, thus enhancing the capacity of existing facilities and reducing the size of ground stations that provide telephone service. The International Maritime Satellite Organization (INMARSAT), founded in 1979, is a mobile telecommunications network providing digital data links, telephone, and facsimile transmission (fax) service between ships, offshore facilities, and shore-based stations throughout the world. It is also now extending satellite links for voice and fax transmission to aircraft on international routes. Recent Technical Advances Communications satellite systems have entered a period of transition from the use of point-to-point, high-capacity trunk communications between large, costly ground terminals towards that of multipoint-to-multipoint communications between small, low-cost stations. The development of multiple access methods has both hastened and facilitated this transition. With TDMA, each ground station is assigned a time slot on the same channel for use in transmitting its communications; all other stations monitor these slots and select the communications directed to them. By amplifying a single carrier frequency in each satellite repeater, TDMA ensures the most efficient use of the satellite’s on-board power supply. A technique called frequency reuse allows satellites to communicate with a number of ground stations using the same frequency by transmitting in narrow beams pointed towards each of the stations. Beam widths can be adjusted to cover areas as large as the entire United States or as small as Belgium. Two stations far enough apart can receive different messages transmitted on the same frequency. Satellite antennas have been designed to transmit several beams in different directions, using the same reflector. A new method for interconnecting many ground stations spread over great distances was tested in 1993 with the launch of NASA’s ACTS (Advanced Communications Technology Satellite). Known as the hopping spot beam technique, it combines the advantages of frequency reuse, spot beams, and TDMA. By concentrating the energy of the satellite’s transmitted signal, ACTS can use ground stations that have smaller antennas and reduced power requirements. The concept of multiple spot beam communications was successfully demonstrated in 1991 with the launch of Italsat, developed by the Italian Research Council. With six spot beams operating at 30 GHz (uplink) and 20 GHz (downlink), the satellite interconnects TDMA transmissions between ground stations in all the major economic centres of Italy. It does this by demodulating uplink signals, routing them between uplink and downlink beams, and combining and remodulating them for downlink transmission. The European satellite communications network includes the European Communications Satellite (ECS) network of the European Space Agency (ESA). Each satellite can handle 12,600 telephone circuits and multiple fax transmissions. The Olympus multi-role satellite is the largest 3-axis stabilized communications satellite in Europe and was developed mainly by British aerospace companies. The application of laser technology to satellite communications has been studied for over a decade for potential military use. Laser beams can be used to transmit signals between a satellite and Earth, but the rate of transmission is limited because of absorption and scattering by the atmosphere. Lasers operating in the blue-green wavelength, which penetrates water, have been used for communication between satellites and submarines. Up to now, all communications satellites have operated in high orbit, so as to achieve the widest possible coverage. The next generation will operate in low Earth orbit (LEO); although these orbits are non-geostationary, by employing constellations of satellites, every point on the Earth will always have coverage from one of the satellites. A number of competing consortia have announced plans to offer global telephone service to mobile phones by means of base stations aboard satellites in low Earth orbit, offering the promise of a mobile phone that works anywhere in the world. The Iridium consortium intends to start commercial service in 1998, with Globalstar following in 1999. Teledesic LLC is building a global, broadband “Internet-in-the-Sky” to be opened in the year 2002. Using a constellation of several hundred LEO satellites, Teledesic claims it will create the world’s first network to provide affordable, worldwide access to telecommunications services such as broadband Internet access, videoconferencing, high-quality voice and other digital data needs. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), an agency of the United States government, established by the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. The functions of the organization were to plan, direct, and conduct all US aeronautical and space activities, except those that are primarily military. The administrator of NASA is appointed from civilian life by the president, with the advice and consent of the US Senate. The administration arranges for participation by the scientific community in planning scientific measurements and observations to be made by means of aeronautical and space vehicles, and provides for dissemination of information concerning results. With the advent of the space shuttle programme, NASA more frequently became involved in military activities despite the original intention that it should be a civilian agency. Because of the long delay caused by the 1986 Challenger disaster, however, the US military started expanding its own fleet of booster rockets. My destiny in life been giving me less chances even to support my self. It was bad & still it is, due to EH. Still they are active on me. Pretending all are God's & as if I'm the only human that lives with much of sorrow & pain. Never been given a chance to be me. & all the time to be corrected. Satellites still active on me even taking my dreams & inner thinking. Thief's, murderer, demons & Stan work above human nature even. Knowing what I'm thinking to do for tomorrow. What else to say. Living in fear most of time. People talk never ends & creates more mental problems to us all. So I speak peace most of times. Better than to be trapped all over again by them. I hope this ends. They created hell of a time & took what ever they wanted. Making me to live as they want in a fake life by force. What a national security Taking our secrets from our brains. Did they pay for what they take? Never ever they do that. Faking us all. We stick with facts & logic life much better dear. God Bless us all. My peace mission is accomplished.

I start to try to live my normal life back again. Facts & logic life if I have the chance to do so, trying my best. (waiting) Alisa Arabic songs is there too. All of her songs. I call her an angel voice. Recent songs explains everything as well the old ones. All against EH. Believe me. NANA Songs. Bob Marley Songs. Michael Jackson & most of singers. EH been since a long time. Don't worry, be happy. You know, Face Book can keep a good record of any human history. Can update with what ever goes on a daily bases experiences & events. Can share much of advices & stories to share with friends, relatives & family as well. Can share others with comments, likes & share to own Face Book, combining variety of issues, concepts & believes as well. Can issue a story of past, present & what ever thing to ...do later on "future". Can share own feelings with others by posts, pictures & video clips, can chat with friends from all over. It is a good site for many to interview others over it by questions & answers or messages as well. One thing left, audio/cam video not there. Just imagine, some one dies, leaves a history behind in here for others to recall. Memories remain for good friends & beloved ones. Such (EH) Electronic Harassment creates viruses plus fear in a human brain, not allowing to write or express own feeling or what really going on with. Though it hurts, still doing my best to write what ever I want. Naturally I have the full rights to keep on blaming them for not giving me the chance to be me like even though while I'm alone as if intending to fake what I write. This also faking all mankind history if we want to think about. No privacy, no secrecy & thief what comes to mind plus their comments hurts the nature of a human creation to loose concentration. As if they all are Gods. Satellites from above & all kind people talk from surroundings, other than who ever whispers in brain. Suffering to keep a history of comments under so much pressure. It was like that since a long time back to me. Still Satellites are active knowing what I'm doing. Even from memories, dreams & thinking they sneak to gain for free as if a subject to share, with me or with them selves & with others. This also I call a Babylon virus which might create a civil war of comments & anger. They forgot what SARS virus is (fear) they are creating this virus to them selves as well. Strokes from above http://www.strokeassociation.org/STROKEORG/ plus EH from same source mixing all in one (Media with all brains)! as if a war of extermination of a living beings humans & animals though for having brain stem. Such strokes might create a computer data loss or a virus while typing or writing on this site, I did face such while using mobile a cell phone. What about a human brain that also has electric within brain cells. Danger Life. This type of electro-magnetic radiation field killing us all like. All has to have patient on each others. The question is, is it about me or not? How should I know? Maybe they don't want me to expose any secret! But it's my human rights after all. All are a waste of time, creating sins & mistakes to them selves to carry on with till last moment in their lives. God is best judge. I'm feeling I cant do any type of business due to Sky Nets you know. All are God's. I wish I can help! I'm in Jordan under so much Ray's & Waves. That hurts a lot on a daily bases, day & night. People also scans on me with much of Bla Bla Bla you know more God's. I am a civilian that has so much broken bones in my body that hurts in winter other than what satellites can do. What else to say! God to help. I am a good person & wanting to stay like this for ever. I been trapped so many times, finally I decided to stay home alone even though under so much pressure from above & surroundings. I never was in the Army due to broken bones & lonely to parents. I hate politics & don't like any to force me to any of it even from TV or Satellites. All played a lot with me & people trapped me much, wasted my life time for their fun. Believe it or not, I got nothing to do with the above in the space. Voodoo wheel in the sky. I am a peace full person that cared a lot for peace & wanting to have my normal life back. You know I had much from all, shame & pain to remain in my brain memories about all. Like to stay clean always. Good human is peace in any country. But some say's stupid. I like National Security. Not wanting War & worked so hard for Peace by studding Encarta Encyclopedia during these years while under so much attack. Seek so much information's from every where almost to prove that we all are families & not supposed to trap each others & all to respect a Human. One thing for sure, I am a human. What about you? This what's all about. It's like that. I hate my self when I make mistakes or to be fooled by any! That also hurts Who don't have past or history? Are we living to kill each another's or to live with peace? Jesus didn't have any sin or mistake & what they did to him? That was also history. Memories to recall. This much it is, painful life & danger. God to help us all If we think about it! All are guilty since the day it started. How can I trust any once the above is Satan in the space trapping us all! Slave ring us all even while we are home alone! Judging our dreams, memories & our thinking for tomorrow as well. Expendable Assets. I hate terror activities, I don't belong to any of it & over my dead body. I love God & Peace. All religions & all nationalities. Don't want to hate any. Not all people are good. That what scares me a lot once all acting as God or Satan. I'm not God to judge & non should be. NASA Package: "Rain Brain Scan, Dynamic Eyes & Tele-Transport" is breaking God's law of creation, history, believes & faith. Full of viruses. Living in DANGER. My peace mission is accomplished. I used to say: case is closed since the day it started. Satellites above is still active. You know, that Umbrella. One more thing, they did play with media as well, TV, Radio = Songs, Movies & God knows much more. Human souls is in danger. Since the year of 2000 & even before, they were there. Hands Up, What's Up? (devil) They were fooling us all & some died already. Secret weapon above killing us all. Read about SARS VIRUS (FEAR VIRUS) please. Time passes; we grow old & die later on. Let's keep it natural & normal. Freedom freedom freedom. S.O.S Help Help Help. No one is there! They don't care about us & wasting life's. God to help Seek those songs & listen to all of them: Boney M - Rivers of Babylon -Mary's Boy Child _ Oh My Lord. Bob Marley _Rat Race_ War no more trouble. ENIGMA - WHY- Silent Warrior. Eurhythmics -Sweet Dreams- Angel. Chris de Burgh -A spaceman came traveling. Best Advice to all: It is a wild world. Every body wants more & more. The best is to have a self respect & never let go on your family, stick always together. Traps always there in life. There are lots of victims here & there. Not all to be trusted due to bright & dark side of all brains. Stay calm always & try your best not to be under pressure by any even by your inner brain. God always there for us all & never let go. Try your best not to be involved in any trouble or problem, always set back & give your opinion once asked for. The best answer is to answer with respect & a good behavior. Try to be wise all times even with your own. Don’t cheat, always be smart & honest. Always look in the eyes once communicating with any. Remember not all brains the same. Always stay safe far a way from mind disturbance & study well about everything. Do as what you believe in because it is your life & decision. Each soul lives in its own body & the body to protect its soul. Each soul to protect own body as well. A human has to protect on self from almost everything. It is a human nature & a law of God law of creation of our kind. Mother, father, brother & sister never let go on any of them always be with. Don’t ever regret or blame your self because of others mistakes. God to help us all. It is a good advice for all after all, in spite of tradition, religion, nationality & origin. An advice from my inner believe. Life is too short to live in anger & with danger. Each has a mission in life. Life to go on always. God from or is first & last to remain always. After all we are all humans belonging to families. During a sleep, a human feels that there is something wrong as if the brain is under so much pain! As if in a micro wave. Effects eyes, nerves & concentration other than that whispering voice saying don’t worry! What is it a national duty? Satellites go hell you shit murderers, killing people at home in a cold blood leaving no proof as if they are useless meaningless after taking what ever from their memories to serve whom while they are sleeping? When they get up from fear they start to wonder what is going on! Arab country a Muslim country doing this, is this what Islam all about? Jordan stop fucking around with sols, what about God? I know that satellite has lot of advanced technology Zoom with different rays. There is a story in my brain in 2005 if you want it, I been told that this lady gone to police station shouting & taking her cloths off saying: is this what you want, stop fucking with me. Believe it or not. Day’s before, I saw her yelling & saying what king doing this to us! Shit king to her friends. That was in front of my eyes & a listening ears of mine and others. A Jordanian actress in TV while acting in a theater stating that why to go to have an injection we had enough from government injections. Believe it or not, both ladies are from same family a Muslim one holding same sir name wanting to live a free life & not a slavery one. Is this Islamic movement or to make budgets? In Amman the capital, I had been told that there are 250 night clubs. Believe it or not! They also play with events & law the way they want. Who is good who is bad? I don’t know. In whose law all are still playing? Is this a free country or Zigzag? Satellites stop fucking with our souls. You shit Bedouins from Mohammed an sisters. Is this your roots? Combining with other Arab satellites! As UAE & Kuwait, I lived in those countries as well & they are a part & miss uses their satellites. In Arab TV they said it that Christians are attacking us we Muslims! (Satanic Network) This means what many non Arab people & some are Arabs over the internet stating that: Is Mohammed of Islam a prophet or a terrorist? Lot of corruptions going on in Jordan due to shit families administration & a lake of information or information technology! Or covering the truth creating business out of human sols to trap many persons that each person belong to a family & so on. Today I felt the pain as many times before since the year of 2000 & even before, fighting this shit SATAN from above. Jordan Kingdom of what? What is going on? By: Nabil Zegord Konz Kurt Polaski Final statement - 23 December 2012 Judgment Day: After of what I had gone through since a long time back, I came out with these results & conclusions: Satellites were playing a Satan work since a long time back in the Arabian Gulf countries, Jordan, Israel, Palestinian Authorities, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, India, China, Japan, Europe countries & United States of America. Then other countries were also involved such as 11th, Sept 2001 (America under Attack by Alqeeda from Arab countries) what a diplomatic relations! What it got to do with civilians? World Trade Center! What a fake peace & war!) What a business based on cheatings civilians for many years. Singers, actors & actresses are also involved. Due to above countries different nationalities of civilians & their communications, all embassies in all countries. World wide global Satellites are involved with all types of issues & mixing with digital life by NASA Package: - Rain Brain Scan (Brain Scan + Dreams + Memories + Visions Input – Output)1 2- Dynamic Eye's (Dim light shadow passes, Sparks that causes blindness & Visions Input – Output) 3- Tele – Transport (Narrow & Wide Beaming with Electro Magnetic Radiation Field, Waves with speak voice, opinions, comments, bad words & torturing waves & voices in " Skull, Chest, Air, in any room & mixing with Media such as TV, radio, mobiles & phone speakers, brain sharing with other brains Input – Output ") Satellite Network started to assume Law & Justice, War & Peace. But what about God? Satellite station people those who are behind the shadows playing as wanted with NASA Package forcing Satan to many brains at home or at work places to many victims & shapes the evident as wanted to build their own budgets with evil work that can make Babylon AD, Brains in a mixer from one place to another & so on to create viruses in the air & SARS Virus (Fear Virus) over many nations. Human brain & heart in danger. Should we cover our selves with aluminum pads or aluminum sleeping bags or aluminum wall papers & ceilings? THE TRUTH ABOUT SECRET WEAPONS AND THE INVOLUNTARY TESTING OF THOSE WEAPONS ON CIVILIANS. THE PEOPLE TARGETED INCLUDE MANY WHO CHALLENGE ORGANISED CRIMINAL ACTIVITY WHICH IS CORRUPTLY PROTECTED BY GOVERNMENT / MEDIA INTERESTS. (Victims can experience hearing voices, mind reading, directed energy attacks and more) Please seek: http://www.surveillanceissues.com to understand. This site contains information relating to advanced satellite surveillance and "harassment" technologies which are made available to covert government agencies and organized crime syndicates. No trust to any Satellite, no trust to any un-logic or any non face to face comments, advices, opinions (can cheat) & to stick with facts & logic. It is a wild life & danger with satanic. How to trust? To have a self respect & to treat people with logic & facts, not by thinking, thoughts, idea's, imaginings, dreams or whisperings. Stop the 3rd war from happening, not all people are good (a business & budgets out of human sufferings!). Because of God, Religions, Histories, Original songs & Movies to remain for future, all Satellites to drop this Satan Work. No fortune to any Satan. I've been trapped so many times during many years since the year of 2000 & even before. United Nations with good well only with God. Only God can judge a human brain & stop trapping us all you Sky Nets. Sky Nets is the virus, zooming with rays & waves with cold blood. It is a great Mistake that took over many years in unmentioned human history. Satellites still active. Well, finally I want to say that once a human having a full community a country with all it’s capacity to live with & families all over. No need for brain connections between all & along with family members. We all are families after all. Police is there, fire brigades are there, courts are there, lawyers & advocates are there, judges are there, everything is there for all of us. All have to have a self respect in order all to live in peace. Entertainments also there, TVs. & movies are there, streets & cars are there, hospitals are there, shelters & accommodations are there, schools & universities are there! What is the reason for brain connections? It is a terror activities & nothing good in it. Satan works that play’s with satellites & media’s. NASA package is a virus of all type of shapes ( Rain brain scan, dynamic eye’s & tele- transport over a human brain). Causing shortage of life time, waste of time, making so much corruption to all families & to all countries. Trying to cause a civil war to many families. What about everything that been established as the above mentioned? What about God law of creation? Since when life been like this? Satan goes to hell. Leave us to live our lives. Stop playing with our souls shit umbrella of satellites. This much Satan is big. As if the world is under control of Satan establishing a Danger Rat Race even with brains. Virus in the air & indoors creating us all fear as if it’s endless! Satellites were there since a long time back. Thank you readers read about SARS Virus (fear virus) creating so much pain even in the brain & all to have pain that to remain. Life is too short to live in anger & too short to live with danger. My peace mission in life. What a life journey. Life is going on & we going on with. Destination unknown. I'm like a mirror, what do you see in your mirror? A human. We have to live the facts & logic. Each to blame own self & to have a self control please. Now this Nile Sat serving many channels by broad casting to many countries. How all of those channels to be played with in the same time with EH "Electronic Harassments". News can be faked as well. Satan source serving many a like sources to many countries. (Arab Satanic Networks) + (All countries Satanic Networks) = (Life of Satanic Networks). I dream about something & later they broad caste about such dream in National Geographic Abu Dhabi which belong to UAE. The dream was with whispering about a city under ocean that lived in the past & still exist. Next day they broad cast of something a like. Are they pleasing me? Go to hell shit satellites & stop approaching to our brains & locations. Arab singers & actors are also involved in this Satan work. Making me to suffer from the surrounding hunger brains, as if living in a jungle a zoo life due to a variety different brains that want to hum hum my what ever comes in my brain to share wit many brains. Capitalisms are not caring for all of us. Faking us all to assume that there is price to be given or some more lies for people to believe. They still are playing with their satellites along with secret weapon to hurt a human soul. Making us to feel that all are Gods. Faking us, fooling us, troubling us, shitting us & involving world wide with this fake life! They don’t care about us, making us to lose control & to lose our faith towards our real God. They are Satan network making all are guilty in God's & human law by playing with our destiny & our souls, making us to feel shit about everything in life even about our selves to lose trust & always alert by us all. Arab virus that still spreading world wide. This might lead to war of extermination due to their stupidities of shit satellite administrators that they share with many nations. Umbrella of what? Ask your selves, slaves of what business? Danger life creating on daily bases to accuse us as crazy nations loosing hope to survive. Who can speak peace now, once Satan work forcing us to hell & damaging everything good in life? What is the reason this yet to go on? All are the breakage of God's law of creation, all are guilty. Satan Fucking our life. Earth Planet of what? What about God? What about holly Land? What about future? What about everything? Michel Jackson song, Earth song & They don’t care bout us. What bout NASDAQ? God to curse them & to curse their families as how they did to us all. All families are in danger in the world wide other than viruses taking over in total life & most caused by satellites. Is there anything called a time machine? Satellites with human brain connections creating shame to remain in tomorrow's history, that if there is history for tomorrow. Satan so strong to take much of us to a definite hell. That what makes us feel bad, God to help us all. God best judge in soul life & no one else to judge on any, or there'll be neither God nor human rights. Many brains & souls still suffering not to lose the hope. How many Satellites like this Nile Sat? Arab Sat also the same as well Hot Bird. They have own Satellite to trap us all by interfering with all satellites as well. As if TV, God, Peace & everything is prohibited. To be or not to be that is the question. As if all are not welcomed to survive! We all are living in a digital life mixed with our brains. Life of danger to us all. Stop fucking our brains shit satellite users. U.F.O's with their energy burst as the clip shows to affect our brains, same as Satellites attacking us all, maybe due to the existence of this Satanic Networks. Who is under attack now? When the 3rd world war going to start? Or are we living in it! God knows better. Thank you & God bless 29, June 2013. By a victim: Nabil Zegord Konz Kurt Polaski ACTUAL VIDEO OF US GOVERNMENT BRAIN READING SYSTEMS BEING USED ON PEOPLE-INCREDIBLE FOOTAGE, ONE A DHS DEVICE, ONE A US GOVERNMENT DEVICE-PROOF FINALLY OF GOVERNMENT BRAIN READING http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXmoETkWrx4 http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=WjbK6OE9jaM ABOUT HOW THE FBI ON PUBLIC RECORD HAS PURCHASED BRAIN READING DEVICES http://www.judiciaryreport.com/the_fbi_continues_to_break_the_law.htm AIRPORT MIND READING SCANNERS http://dprogram.net/2010/01/08/tsa-funding-airport-mind-reading-scanners/ TSA FUNDING MIND READING DEVICES http://www.alternet.org/story/145041/the_tsa_is_funding_airport_mind-reading_scanners ACLU OBJECTS TO COMMERCIAL BRAIN READING http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/ACLU_objects_as_two_companies_offer_0628.html MIT DEVELOPS MIND READING http://news.cnet.com/MIT-group-develops-mind-reading-device/2100-1008_3-6057638.html PENTAGON'S USE OF "NON LETHAL" ARMS http://myweb.cableone.net/mtilton/usnews.html DOD INTERNAL REPORT http://myweb.cableone.net/mtilton/nonlethal.html CONGRESSIONAL ADMISSION THAT THIS IS BEING DONE TO PEOPLE http://myweb.cableone.net/mtilton/mckinney.html THE PATENTS THAT ARE USED FOR ELECTRONIC HARASSMENT http://myweb.cableone.net/mtilton/trufaxpatents.html

GOVERNMENT PROJECTS FOR ELECTRONIC HARASSMENT Project Moonstruck, 1952, CIA: Electronic implants in brain and teeth Targeting: Long range Implanted during surgery or surreptitiously during abduction Frequency range: HF - ELF transceiver implants Purpose: Tracking, mind and behavior control, conditioning, programming, covert operations Functional Basis: Electronic Stimulation of the Brain, E.S.B. Project MK-ULTRA, 1953, CIA: Drugs, electronics and electroshock Targeting: Short range Frequencies: VHF HF UHF modulated at ELF Transmission and Reception: Local production Purpose: Programming behavior, creation of "cyborg" mentalities Effects: narcoleptic trance, programming by suggestion Subprojects: Many. Pseudonym: Project Artichoke Functional Basis: Electronic Dissolution of Memory, E.D.O.M. Project Orion, 1958, U.S.A.F: Drugs, hypnosis, and ESB Targeting: Short range, in person Frequencies: ELF Modulation Transmission, and Reception: Radar, microwaves, modulated at ELF frequencies Purpose: Top security personnel debreifing, programming, insure security and loyalty Pseudonym: "Dreamland" MK-DELTA, 1960, CIA: Fine-tuned electromagnetic subliminal programming Targeting: Long Range Frequencies: VHF HF UHF Modulated at ELF Transmission and Reception: Television antennae, radio antennae, power lines, mattress spring coils, modulation on 60 Hz wiring. Purpose: programming behavior and attitudes in general population Effects: fatigue, mood swings, behaviordysfunction and social criminality, mood swings Pseudonym: "Deep Sleep", R.H.I.C. PHOENIX II, 1983, U.S.A.F, NSA: Location: Montauk, Long Island Electronic multi-directional targeting of select population groups Targeting: Medium range Frequencies: Radar, microwaves. EHF UHFmodulated Power: Gigawatt through Terawatt Purpose: Loading of Earth Grids, planetary sonombulescence to stave off geological activity, specific-point earthquake creation, population programming for sensitized individuals Pseudonym: "Rainbow", ZAP TRIDENT, 1989, ONR, NSA: Electronic directed targeting of individuals or populations Targeting: Large population groups assembled Display: Black helicopters flying in triad formation of three Power: 100,000 watts Frequency: UHF Purpose: Large group management and behavior control, riot control Allied Agencies: FEMA Pseudonym: "Black Triad" A.E.M.C RF MEDIA, 1990, CIA: Electronic, multi-directional subliminal suggestion and programming Location: Boulder, Colorado (Location of main cell telephone node, national television synchronization node) Targeting: national population of the United States Frequencies: ULF VHF HF Phasemodulation Power: Gigawatts Implementation: Television and radiocommunications, the "videodrome" signals Purpose: Programming and triggering behavioral desire, subversion of psychic abilities of population, preparatory processing for mass electromagnetic control Pseudonym: "Buzz Saw" E.E.M.C. TOWER, 1990, CIA, NSA: Electronic cross country subliminal programming and suggestion Targeting: Mass population, short-range intervals, long-range cumulative Frequencies: Microwave, EHF SHF Methodology: Cellular telephone system,ELF modulation Purpose: Programming through neural resonance and encoded information Effect: Neural degeneration, DNA resonance modification, psychic suppression Pseudonym: "Wedding Bells" HAARP, 1995, CIA, NSA, ONR: Electromagnetic resonant induction and mass population control Location: Gakona, Alaska Frequencies: Atmospheric phase-locked resonant UHF VHF Potential: DNA code alteration in population and mass behavior modification Power: Giga-watt to Tera-watt range Step-Down reflective frequencies: Approx 1.1 GHz, Human DNA resonant frequency, cellular system phase-lock PROJECT CLEAN SWEEP, 1997,1998, CIA, NSA, ONR: Electromagnetic resonant induction and mass population control Location: Nationwide Frequencies: Emotional wavelengths, data gathering through helocopter probes following media events - rebroadcast in order to restimulate population emotional levels for recreation of event scenarios. Ref: LE#108, March 1998 Potential: Mass behavior modification Power: Unknown. Possibly rebroadcast through GWEN network or cellular tower frequencies, coordinated from NBS in Colorado. DHS BRAIN READING SYSTEM http://www.lockergnome.com/news/2012/04/18/new-technology-enables-passive-mind-reading/ DHS ORDER FOR BRAIN READING DEVICES http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2007/09/20/us-government-adopts-russian-m/ ACLU ALREADY INVOLVED IN BRAIN READING http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/ACLU_objects_as_two_companies_offer_0628.html NEWS STORY ON TYPES OF ELECTRONIC WEAPONS http://thewe.cc/contents/more/archive/sound_as_weapon.html REMOTE BRAIN READING PATENT http://www.google.com/patents/US3951134 ANOTHER BRAIN READING PATENT http://remoteneuroimaging.blogspot.com/2010/09/us-patent-3951134-apparatus-and-method.html foia documents on the army's technology for talking into people's heads http://www.freedomfchs.com/usarmyrptonmicrowavefx.pdf more about military electronic weapons http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7077-maximum-pain-is-aim-of-new-us-weapon.html more http://www.impactlab.net/2006/02/15/remote-control-heart-attack-weapons/ foia military document on electronic weapons http://www.sunshine-project.org/UFLpeoplezapper.pdf a letter from john kerry advising on electronic weapons above Maximum pain is aim of new US weapon 19:00 02 March 2005 by David Hambling For similar stories, visit the Weapons Technology Topic Guide The US military is funding development of a weapon that delivers a bout of excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometres away. Intended for use against rioters, it is meant to leave victims unharmed. But pain researchers are furious that work aimed at controlling pain has been used to develop a weapon. And they fear that the technology will be used for torture. "I am deeply concerned about the ethical aspects of this research," says Andrew Rice, a consultant in pain medicine at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, UK. "Even if the use of temporary severe pain can be justified as a restraining measure, which I do not believe it can, the long-term physical and psychological effects are unknown." The research came to light in documents unearthed by the Sunshine Project, an organisation based in Texas and in Hamburg, Germany, that exposes biological weapons research. The papers were released under the US's Freedom of Information Act. One document, a research contract between the Office of Naval Research and the University of Florida in Gainesville, US, is entitled "Sensory consequences of electromagnetic pulses emitted by laser induced plasmas". It concerns so-called Pulsed Energy Projectiles (PEPs), which fire a laser pulse that generates a burst of expanding plasma when it hits something solid, like a person (New Scientist print edition, 12 October 2002). The weapon, destined for use in 2007, could literally knock rioters off their feet. Pain trigger According to a 2003 review of non-lethal weapons by the US Naval Studies Board, which advises the navy and marine corps, PEPs produced "pain and temporary paralysis" in tests on animals. This appears to be the result of an electromagnetic pulse produced by the expanding plasma which triggers impulses in nerve cells. The new study, which runs until July and will be carried out with researchers at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, aims to optimise this effect. The idea is to work out how to generate a pulse which triggers pain neurons without damaging tissue. The contract, heavily censored before release, asks researchers to look for "optimal pulse parameters to evoke peak nociceptor activation" - in other words, cause the maximum pain possible. Studies on cells grown in the lab will identify how much pain can be inflicted on someone before causing injury or death. Long-term risk New Scientist contacted two researchers working on the project. Martin Richardson, a laser expert at the University of Central Florida, US, refused to comment. Brian Cooper, an expert in dental pain at the University of Florida, distanced himself from the work, saying "I don't have anything interesting to convey. I was just providing some background for the group." His name appears on a public list of the university's research projects next to the $500,000-plus grant. John Wood of University College London, UK, an expert in how the brain perceives pain, says the researchers involved in the project should face censure. "It could be used for torture," he says, "the [researchers] must be aware of this." Amanda Williams, a clinical psychologist at University College London, fears that victims risk long-term harm. "Persistent pain can result from a range of supposedly non-destructive stimuli which nevertheless change the functioning of the nervous system," she says. She is concerned that studies of cultured cells will fall short of demonstrating a safe level for a plasma burst. "They cannot tell us about the pain and psychological consequences of such a painful experience." http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7077-maximum-pain-is-aim-of-new-us-weapon.html Now, I'd like to give a subject for readers to read & to think about this type of world wide issue: A story of a husband & a wife or a boy friend & a girl friend: This husband seeks else where job in a different country leaving own wife & children at home. One day both he & she were chatting Audio Video & they felt so wanting to have some sex over the internet not knowing about those hacking & intruding or remote assistance on their computers what might happen. They don’t have any slightest idea about such programs. People from home land & else where were playing around with such packages. They were taking everything on the spot from her & his computers. They copied everything & such programs are virus creators. People started to look at this wife & start to bla bla bla, laughs & talk about in the streets. This wife was wondering what is going on, not knowing why all of such change in her life! She used to hear things, insults & later her children started to change in their attitudes towards a mother! She asked her husband to come back home not knowing what is going on & not knowing what to say to her husband. Her husband also feeling the same from people! He said wait, I'll be at home by tomorrow because there is such change in my life in here as well! One of his friends told him that you & your wife been trapped by some internet users & they saw you both naked. O.M.G. (How many cases like that in the world?) The question is: Where from Husband & wife is from & what their religions are. What about their children & relatives? Who is going to solve their problems with people & with their internal law country or national security or protection from neighbors? All are guilty. All to have a self respect & to know they are victims. Some knowing about the wife & some knowing about the husband. Guess what: How much ARAB sex over the internet? & maybe with brains scanning & NASA Package? Real & fake! God knows better. Most of people seek such sites even children & teen age doing it. Many been trapped as well. Now a day's with brain connections all are the same due to electro magnetic radiation field. All have to have a self respect once satellites can also reaches to the skull & takes memories & dreams from without knowing. Many victims are there as well. Neither privacy nor secrecy of many skulls & can see from their eyes "Liquid Lenses". Satellites also hacking on families & sometimes misuse their behaviors with & Zoom with different waves & different rays that carry viruses to human brains. At all times God remains the greatest. Some times they use such to torture & to make movie & some business the way they like. Searching in memories to make budgets as well. This is against God law of creation by attacking human nature. All brains can whispers to locations & getting insane by hearing incoming voices to their skulls other than from another skulls or from zoom in the space. Once there is a brains in a mixers means all are shit & some feels horny by listening to such whispers with brain sharing people might also feels each another's while animals are also there. Danger life been created by such Satellites to create victims in life. We are Humans & families. We don’t need civil war between us. Our hope & dreams for tomorrow under attack at all times. What conscious punishment at all times? Families to kill families! Street fights! Dream fights! Would there be logic! People are afraid to lose self confidents even while their hippo campus also been under attack by some rays & waves from satellite zooming in the space. People go crazy at home even while they are alone at home. Is this for any type of peace or security? Would there be any religion in this jungle life of yours satellites? Skulls also satellites? Where from such sparks to the eyes come from tat causes permanent blindness? NASA Package: Rain Brain Scan, Dynamic Eye's & Tele- transport. With such brain connections are also the same. Making all to suffer, afraid, viruses, cold war assuming, conscious punishments, animal instance, & much more. Causes danger to our daily livings even to our work secretes & knowledge. To create guilt about all people. All to be Godless with their shit Bla Bla Bla & complains about each others. All living in this virus field of brains connections & yet Shit Zooming from above to enter to our brains! All is under attack. Nice movie? Nice business? While people are dieing from the above attack! Satanic network goes to hell. Attacking our God by evil work! At 1st God not Satellites with their secret weapons to create war of extermination. Who is behind all of this? Who's doing this to me? Satellite or some skull? That’s why all are shit in interfering with my thoughts & ideas. That's why all are shit headed. They can not live their own shit. This what in Jordan happening & since a long time back. All of it is wastage. Nerve systems in human bodies are under attack, Brains are under attack, bodies are under attack, Animals are under attack. & yet people to start to accuse people! All in a mental society. People talk's keeps on repeating the same everyday makes shit out of them selves! Their brains in their assholes. Their shit in them is the same as their brains in their skulls in a place called Al Ashrafiea; Foreigners are also living in this location, a non Arabs & from different origins. Are they pretenders or not? How should I know? Do they have any God believes in them? That is the question. Those whispers of insults & shit talk are mainly from Arab sides, this I know. All media in Arab world is shit & many skulls the same wanting to believe anything, creating shit out of their origins. All of them sinners & mistake holders tell the rest of their lives & they are fully responsible of their own shit. God best judge at all times. Holly Ramadan of Islam still going on, & early in the morning at 3 am has been hit by zoom sound while sleeping, accusing, assuming & fucking around with me. Is this Holly Too? Is this allowed by any type of law? Or it is a Satan work? I also feel much of this naghieborars are also belonging to a satanic network of theirs. What families & members of theirs are from once them creating their own shit everyday? They got used to be with no meaning in life & wastage of life's for not respecting them selves & interfering at all time with my brain. What Muslims? What Christians? Nice Jordan with 2 logos, All are Jordan & Jordan 1st. God the greatest & 1st. EH Electronic harassments! Or Electronic Government? Open your Yahoo email; see the red squire before typing your password & double click on to read what is written, in order to know who is behind the shadows. Stop victimizing victims. National security is different than National satanic networks. Go to hell shit satellites & stop approaching to my location. Strokes or strikes create what? All Channels in Nile Sat carrying viruses & thanks to shit secret weapon for not giving a chance even to watch movies. Some movies are also been played with it originalities. Once I saw the King of Jordan saying: What about National Security? A long time back! What this means? All type of all Harassments is against National Security. All are guilty, mobile business & their message also insults & gives shit insults as if they are scanning on me all times, & on spot to send me a massage. Once they reach my brain, they interfere with my passwords as well as with brain sharing. All in a mixer. How many Satellites are there within the Net work? Satellites also hacking on Satellites to become a world wide Umbrella. Locations can be numbered, skulls as well to open communication with, as if forcing us to communicate for brains to share talk, feelings, what ever. They are doing this to in forcing us for teaching & learning. We are like slaves to each others to assume National Security? Victims are there, families are there, & all wants their rights from shit administrations. What religions? What God? What law? What human souls? What brains to be used & for what? All having memories & what about Human Rights? This is war of extermination, no wonder many people died from such harassments. Is this a rescue mission or assassins? What protection? What peace? What God? Once people under attack while sleeping. Disturbance at all times! It is a world wide issue now & since a long time back been like this, Satan controlling the world. In Jordan they also hunt people on feet walking by cars. Those cars where from they been brought to kill? Education in danger, security in danger, all families are in danger. Who created this type of Jungle life? Where are the humans? All are shit in such life! All organizations & all business are also in Danger. What about SARS "Fears Virus" too? Why there is Mosques, Churches, Temples, Holly places? Religions? God? History is recording everything. Haven & hell, Good & bad, peace & war. Are we dead while alive! Brain suckers! Vampire world! Teach to learn, learn to teach! & brain cells to be smelled by own nose even while home alone! A positive vibration to skull & sensitive area's too! All of this is what? Religions also history! Killing our history? What, this planet belongs to Satan? Fuck you all. What good countries? What bad countries? What waiting for a real 3rd world wide? Are we in it? In the year 2010 20 million people died! What with war? Or Virus! Or by satellites? Should there be any holly place? Now once this still going on, means extermination of everything. What about the future & memories of many skulls? Would revenge stops? What a future to carry war between nations? This is totally danger situation. It has to stop & not to start ever again. Eliminate those shit satellites & their secret weapons, history recording everything. Stop faking us all. Why to get married in such situation world wide populations once your eyes is been used by satellites & even your brains. What! History stops here! What about tomorrow? No future! No education! Only war peace & politics? Who wants to be happy? Go & buy you some lottery invoice & learn to put its number in your skull, maybe those satellites or who ever reads your brain knows about its number, maybe your satellite & satellite TV channel or news papers makes you to win or to have a percentage from its price & the remaining to them. Nice business. I my self don’t seek for any fortune. Their business is in their assholes. TV. Played so much with me, as well as newspapers. All been faking all. Is this danger or not? Welcome to Jordan, we have ARAB SAT, NILE SATE, HOTBIRD SAT, & Some Satellite where hustler 2 channels are also there. Once there is no humanity or mercy in hurts & minds! Then what there will be? Nothing but shit for to live with. I used to say so since the year of 2000 in Jordan. God remains the greatest. Marriages also failed before for such things been happening in family life's. What destiny, once they keep on playing with? Where is the universal justice? Or higher court? That if there is. United Nations doing great job it seems. World wide totally involved. Thank you God. Should people to have religions or not? Welcome to Jordan. Mr. George Bosh & Mr. Obama both cared for world wide peace & world religions since 2001 & even before. The question is: Where is the problem about everything mentioned here. Who is creating problems in all of these years? Terrorists, Godless, Satan's & viruses creators. It is so clear & still going on! For what? All go to hell along with their shit administrations. Its trap to all. All scanning on me! All are what? All living in their shit. Local authorities, are they educated or lectured to read English? Are they qualified? Yes all scanners? Since when all of you been scanning on me? All embassies are also there. All are guilty in this shit business in this shit life that all been playing with, even children. This type of virus, one for all & all for one means shit & they forgot about all for all it seems. No such a thing one for all ever again shit demons. Each one of you is for all. People can not understand this still. Welcome to the party, & how is the bubbles in you assholes from your own mentalities & from Micro oven rays used from above secrete weapon? Creating life of death. Everything is in danger. Planet Earth is in danger. World wide countries. TV. Goes to hell as well as newspapers. Is there any politics once all of this going on? And if there is, I hate politics. I used to buy news papers to search for a job & to read my horoscope, In Capricorn they played to say, dress well & sit-down to watch TV. I saw much in TV. Nonsense about ministers, king, some people I know, some illogic to me for TV to screw around with me Plus people the surrounding ones to keep shout open TV. All are guilty for approaching my brain & soul to play with as if they all are God's. Later on, they say Jordan got talent in the internet. All brains in their assholes. All are guilty for life. All Satanic Network Business. I never missed use internet to insult any individual by publishing any thing like this in the above mentioned story. Used always to use internet with self respect at all times. Used to have good friends from all over. Sudden change made me to leave it for a long time. Now it's my passing time only & to communicate with some relatives. Read about my story & mission in life: My peace mission is accomplished & I am a human. There are programs to create sounds & Chars (Characters from a photo of a person) to play with as wanted to show it's real & not fake. Some Satellites channels in a satellite in the space broad casting world wide also did use such programs other than EH. In one satellite, how many countries broad casting to by their Videos, movies, news & what ever. Media can be played with in many ways. Sky Nets Is The Virus. A killing machine from above sky or space hunting locations, brains & families to corrupt everything. Hacking programs are also there over the internet yet to be downloaded by many computer users & news creator programs "Chars with voice commands" Teen aged people are also plying with such programs in all over the world. Some programs are also free. Is my brain also for free or my soul with this shit life of full of Harassments of full of under attack by whom? I also was insulted by using my WC or to have a shower & still going on even by surrounding brains. In who's law? That's why all are shit. All straight to hell for their interference & for their insisting to keep on with me. Stop forcing me for anything ever again & stop interfering in my privacy. All of these years all are SATAN networks. It's so obvious they not letting me to think & always redirecting my thoughts & ideas. This what shit about all ARABS. That’s why all are guilty for ever. All are selfish, conj use, trouble creators, wastage of facts & logic. Their Nature is like that, wanting to be God's. What do you call a country like this? Lot of mistakes, full of mistakes. Is this curse to all of Jordan? Or not! I got nothing to do with any of this shit, big shit of theirs not mine. They live their shit their virus, shame to remain for ever in history. Nice Movie Arabs? Enjoy it. Live with it & die with it all of you, history to remain. How many brains are suffering like mine? How should I know? Many brains infected by Satan Virus & all of them are wastage. Shit administration goes to hell. They made it this way. Wastage, no human rights, no God, no religions & no history! They live it once they want it like this! They created it in this way. I'm against it & been forced to live it all of these years. May the Lord God to curse who ever did this to me & for ever. & since when some one to ask for so much pain & every day? For what? As if something going to happen! What will happen? Nothing! All of it is wastage to all. Actually none has the write to connect any brain to mine. & those brains which connect to mine are un wanted to reach to my brain. So! Fuck you all & shove your brains in each others assholes.

Should I give a copy of this to F.B.I or C.I.A or to you all? A wonderful question for all to remain: Why people pray? 1- Because they love God & peace. 2- Fear from God. 3- Fear from political & religion troops trappers. 4- Fear from above scanning satellites traps. 5- Fear from Satan & satanic networks traps. 6- Because it is a tradition since a long time back. 7- Fear from terror activities. 8- To share wisdom & believes about God. 9- To pure & clean their souls. 10- To live within national security & protection. Please think to give your answers & comments below, & share it. By: Nabil Zegord konz kurt Polaski 15 July 2013. An Advice: It is a DANGER LIFE What I have gone trough in all of these years since the year of 2000 & even before: There was all the below mentioned & still going on: - NASA Package: "Rain Brain Scan, Tele-Transport & Dynamic Eyes" caused by Satellites & by people brains. Visions from many brains & many satellites. - People talk by repeating words heard by their ears or brains from many people inner brains thinking, but mainly focusing on my brain. Whispers are there most of times. "Brain thoughts sharing" which causes SARS Virus "Fear Virus" & mentality ill then to entire body illness. To cause all to be Gods, but all to be Satanic & trappers. People are dieing. - Strokes & Strikes from above caused by Satellites. Mobile phone tracers, locator & tracking used by Satellites. This also creates Fear Virus as if all the time no where to go nor to hide form above rays & waves. Even wile home alone. - Lot of cheating by whispering in location range assuming anything for listeners to believe about me which causes soul punishment. "Electro- magnetic field" for surroundings to create lot of talks & whispers causing RAT RACE By Bob Marley Song" & Corruptions to all people behaviors or a Civil War. - Satellites channel broadcasting been played with computer programs such as Crazy Talk "can be downloaded from internet" & sound matching mixing to fool the indoor TV watchers while Satellites above using Strokes & Strikes & Whispers on the same location of ours. - Strokes & Strikes while sleeping plus Micro Oven Rays causes Sickness to entire body & SARS VIRUS. Getting old within no time & to be always intension. - Strokes to brain & heart! Means killing. Waves & Rays from above used by them. - Sky Nets is the virus sharing even many countries to cause war of extermination. "We Don't Need No More Troubles By Bob Marley Song". Data Tele-Transport from inner brain visions, dreams & thinking. All the above mentioned is a secrete weapon missed used by Satellites Satanic Net Works to create us all a jungle life. & to live with no trust at all. To create wastage life & worrying us all of the unknown. Playing with us as they want us as toys "Expendable Assets", ill treating us to create App Planet or country of shit. Taking everything from our brains by force & to share the Bright side & Dark side of our brains as if they are our God & to create the surroundings people Gods as well. Leaving no prove of their killings! This means Big Mafia Of Satanic Networks. Leaving us with no hope for tomorrow, ignoring the Inventor Creator of the entire Universe. Life constitution is under attack, even human history. What is a human life? How many hours can a human live? We all are guests to this life. We all are families. What is the excuse for me to go through all of these above mentioned shit? My nerve system was always under attack. To be or not to be that is the question? One for all & all for one! Who's with & who's against! In this case, all are guilty. Human nature is to destroy them selves. Opening pasts & wounds from brain memories for what? & a punishment from people as if all are Gods! Who any among any of you all without sins & mistakes? I'm not a judge! Who is judging who? The real God is the judge. Brains of Apps are still fucking around & most converted to Satanism. Country of what? Voodoo wheel in the sky keeps on turning too! I stay home alone, far a way from corruptions, not wanting to be a part of such ashes. I stick with God. Not wanting to be trapped any more & never trapped any. A human self respect is a national security. God remains the greatest. By: Nabil Zegord Konz Kurt Polaski Thursday, May 15, 2014 Hey world wide Give your comments, answer after reading the below mentioned: A country with it's all media broadcasting, Satellites, people brains surroundings whisperings cheating on each others creating virus in the air, virus in all skulls, subjects never ends, hookers uprising, pimps & hores, lot of night clubs, bad words even from children, sickness uprising, madness in the air with echo to remain longer even in our memories, ignoring religions & God's law of creation for all wants to be God's n each others! Assuming what once they already are satanic networks! Country of what? What is its religion even though is mentioned in the encyclopedia? All zigzagging ways! Lot of victims, sickness, madness & death uprising other than what Satellites are doing in targeting human brains, hearts & even bones. Would there be anything holly in such countries? Once they also were involved & still involved with some other countries. Peace or War should be taken under true events. Brains connectivity in electro magnetic field radiation creates what? A suffering to a torched soul. Same as energy burst in a location effecting human brains due to electricity in their bodies "NERVE SYSTEM". Seek Dom of the rock in Israel when U.F.O did it to 3 Holly religions "Energy Burst" broadcasted by USA News 10 channel. Who is under attack? Some people still accusing Obama the United States of America for his origin of being a Muslim! The question is so what if he is? Maybe to insure peace among nations & their religions. Even Aliens believes in God, but not all of them, same as people in this planet of ours. So many insults with brain sharing, this means should I fuck you all! This what it creates. Singers are singing the same! Should we hate them all! Or should we kill them all? Songs by your ears & feelings listening to them. Killing them killing our love & our humanity. Once there is no humanity in hearts & minds means nothing remains but shit. If they don’t love singers then they don’t love anything, even they don’t love own selves. These will be called inhuman. What a corruption & the end is coming soon! All religions, history & future are in danger. What administration once all still freaking around. I did witness all of this in my country. All are witnesses on each others to create un appearing court even in our skulls, brains & memories. All still covering their guilt & faking all. Wastage of all to remain. Hunting people while they are n their feet by cars! That also I did witness. Killing people while they are at their houses by stroke & strikes! I did witness this as well. Such a country with so many traps to many families from their own means what? The originality of its people, population are from different origins creates what? Palestinians, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kurdistan, Charkas "Russia", Armenians "Armenia", Shishan "Russia", Syrians, Egyptians & Lebanese. Such country having much of such origins other than bid ions "From dessert of Arab countries" is called Jordan. All been living since a long time back & most families carrying their origins by their surnames in spite of their religions. Many thieves, drugers, lies & cheaters I did wetness & all still wasting time with their brains. Hacking my brain, then they start to rush people to solve their problems with me! That also hurts me a lot. As if there is no law, no judges & no God! All are God's! What a soul punishments to all! Memories remain & History remains. Law of SATAN ruing everything in our lives, making us all guilty. All are involved & many were plying & dream punishment creators. People yet to die. Punishment from Satan work as well! It is a SATAN VIRUS. All of it is absolute death, but the question is after death! Hell or heaven? People who has rights also suffering! Ray's & waves from above satellites also creates SARS VIRUS "Fear Virus" when people cant breath even (Read about) as if they are living in a micro oven rays caused by secret weapon from above space. Why this still going on once a human life can't reach to a million hours in a life time & 1/3 of it is sleeping time & in this 1/3 of it not to sleep in peace! Every second in each in every minute in each in every hour in each in every day "24hours"! This much I been suffering every day. Life is too short to live in anger & in danger. Now days, our brains creating Anger & Danger. Sometimes whispers causes block to our breaths other than brain sharing. Who is going to be the winner? The survivals with God only. How many of them? It is God & Satan war like. Good & Bad. Heaven & Hell. A human self respect is a national security in spite of what mentioned. I am a human. Embassies are there in each country! It is world wide problem. Everything is in danger. Stop acting proud people & stop approaching to a life of souls. This creates more war every where. I'm not Jesus J. Find another Jesus. I don’t want to trap or to be trapped. Past is past. Now & hen is more important with God & peace. I hardly can breath. Thank you God for everything. Should I fight Satan for all of you? Even Jesus did not defeat. Can any of you Yes American Dollars! In God we trust? Yes Kuwaiti's Diners! We depend on God? Court of Satan in your brains! Go to hell all of you. Say's God. No one to judge a human brain or dreams or thoughts & ideas. Who wants to live for ever? So stop wasting. All affecting all. It is all for all. That goes for all. How many countries were under attack by SARS Virus? Seek internet. Stop killing us. All families are in danger & where ever I lay my hat, that’s my home. I respect my self in any country & here or there is the same. Life is so danger. What? All using own sixth sensor! This is wastage people. Like: Hi sweaty, I been dreaming about you lately, do you like to have some fun with me tonight? Damn for how long? None stop even! Our brains killing us like: it's human nature to kill them selves. Brains in shadows! Sparks in eyes! Dim light passes our eyes! Voices of whispers during our sleep creating what with some strokes or strikes! This is a terror activity. People dies. It is a Satan work. Stop forcing to anything. Hunting indoor brains, hearts & entire bodies! Stop killing us. Or should I be an example to you all! & all are witnessing. All are guilty & all been punishing me. For what? Entertainment! Even TV broadcasting! Waw, do you like to have some fun with me? That goes for all. Leaving no prove to anything! Much of wisdom that I took from songs & from movies should we live or should we die! I live alone due to my life story below mentioned link. All are Kings of kings Gods of Gods! Who is doing this to me? Stop asking the lonely. This is a soul punishment from whom? Making us to loose hope & faith. A killing machine from the space with zoom "Rays & waves" creates sickness to entire body. & getting old fast. A small lens in the space can burn locations & can burn a human body with micro oven rays to create disaster for entire life. Satellites are so much danger. This game by capitalisms in their assholes. Taking our secrets by force from our brains & sharing with others. What a virus! The entire community of their brains having what religion once they misusing their words & their brains? All are infected by SATAN Virus. Who can deny? & I'm saying people are suffering to them, even though they still acting the same everyday as Gods not knowing they acting Satan's. I did witness this. Who is under attack? Umbrella of what? All are guilty in SATAN Virus. God is angry. No more traps people & stop treating us as slaves to your Satan work or to your dark side of your brains. Leave me alone Satan's, leave me with my God. My soul my brain belongs to me as how God did create any of you. You all are harassments. Jordan be aware from the unknown, Please understand. I am a human. A soul from Own mother & father by God, not by any of you. I live in home land, don't force me to fight. http://polaskilove.angelfire.com http://polaskilove2.angelfire.com How many nationalities in each & every country? Business with God & peace is for everything good in life. God remains the Greatest. Tuesday, May 20, 2014

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(The secret of existence remains with God the creator. The only key to heaven.) Peace always was there & we are fighting for it to remain, even from our inner believes. Creating war & peace in our inner brains, torturing our souls, creating us all death. Interfering with our inner bright & dark side of brain, creating nothing to remain but pain to remain. In-out in brain at all times is the pain that remains. Giving us conscious pain from past to remain makes us all to have no meaning to remain. Connecting many brains to keep us all in shame. Shame on you all shit brains. To be or not to be that is the question, to create corruptions for us all with so much pain. Budget at the end to whom to remain? Internally externally after this means war & death. Satan's, beasts & demon's been there against holly sprit after all. War & peace what to gain? Win & lose to remain. Creating destination unknown to us all! But we say God to help us all. Still there is a believe that as how peace always was there. God says I'm still waiting for those who care. Give life a meaning to remain for you all to care. Would there be life without a meaning? & if so, nothing to remain. God at first was there for us all to remain. A living soul who create at first & who takes at the end. In this life none of you to remain. Start with life to end, start with heaven or hell for ever to remain. At the end what remains heaven or hell? God best judge at all times to remain. The truth & nothing else other than the truth just been said for you all to remain. It remains as how it is for you all to recall from your inner believes. Is there more logic than this for all brains to recall? At the end God is logic to remain. Human brains remains limited & a living God law is un-limited, a holly soul to remain for us all to call. Everything was there yet to be discovered. Life to go on as how God wants it to go on. Satan's behind Satellites go to hell. God best judgment just been said for you all. The key to heaven after all. Angels were there before all man kind, remains to cover total records at all times. Reaches to God to ask we have an angel for you our God. God says go & remain with, till approaches to me as any of you. Thank you God, we say we remain for you & for us all. The heavenly God is all about. Religions not mentioned here & all religions approved what is in the above is true. Caring for God & angels after all for everything good & nothing bad as how God is. Who is against angels that God yet to recall? While any of you can be an angel. Loving an angel creates many angels. Satan you know were you belonging after this show is over. Who wins at the end? War or peace! Bad or good! Heaven or hell? What remains is the winner. And since when the good ones among you all to create problems! But to suffer & to call for us to call for God. Those who understand shall remain. Good hearts with good minds never dies. After all good souls to remain. To approach to reach holly spirits in heaven to remain. The truth that never said in religions is the fact of life existence else where in other galaxy in Other planet or planets that God created before us & after us. Be aware from the unknown. God is the greatest of everything good to remain. At the end we say thank you God for everything. This is the truth above all truths as how real God is. The entire universe creator is God that creates a big Universe full of galaxies & planets that still living. Some vanishes to create other ones. Life to go on. Just imagine that this universe is still nothing in compare to hell & heaven or to other universes. God remains the greatest & still calling us to live with to grow for creation to remain. How many Judgment days' are there? Don't make God angry, human learns even while dieing. Those who wins, wins with God (Supposed). Those who lose, lose with whom in this time of life? Lot of things in life has no meaning at all to remain but the good things supposed to remain. At the end, God is not he or she or it. God is the souls & life creator, heavenly living God. No one lives for ever but God remains to take to gain & heaven to remain the greatest creation from God. Holly places we say are the houses of God. But heaven is the best house of God where angels from all over planets to remain. But the question is how many heavens are there? This is something more than our thinking limits. God is very known but be aware from the unknown & don’t be much over flow, still there is good & bad in the universe or universes. Guess what! Life creator could be more than one God. Life to go on as how the inventor creator wants it to go on. Holly spirits to remain at all times within our souls. No one to argue with this fact because there is something called soul mates other than a living soul in a living body. Each male leis a female within. & each female leis a man within & both wishes to join. No wonder memories of love & dreams are there & no wonder the growth of living. Everything grows in universe as well as in heaven & this is the limit of existence for a human brain to understand & no more else to say or speak about. The question at this time is: who did miss used the usage of satellite by using Nasa Package that has such programs: Rain Brain Scan, Dynamic Eyes & tele-transport . Against man kind to kill us all? It has to end because this is a breakage of God's law of creation & all religions. Such viruses even in our bodies to remain for ever from inner brains that control our bodies. This is a killing of everything in life. Life is getting shorter & there has to be a solution before it's too late to survive. God is angry on all. Angels are there for God to rescue holly spirits. This planet is in danger. From heal foundation to all man kind. What's gone is gone & nothing to gain from the past but memories to remain as a history in our brains. No one can change the past of a living soul. But can be changed with so much pain in the time of present living. This is the truth of a living time but also can be shaped after death for some reasons. Those who shape such history shall be called assassins, murderer's, killers, not humans, nothing good but everything bad & God is against. The truth God wants it pure from any dirt. Angels are there before all mankind to recall & to help those who needed help with God best support. This is the beauty of life & a key to heaven. What is the reason for war or corruptions? Once knowing this logic even past showed this fact since many centuries before! The Egyptians has it from that time of Pyramids after the slavery time. If we look at old Egyptian draws on walls a fox head, a cow head & those over human bodies. What is the secret about? & A mummy existence up to now. Weird thing from the past yet to be discovered! Changing the history of past or present will affect the future & virus like to remain even in the future! For how long this corruptions to remain. God is angry. Olden traditions & believes are also true. Respecting the past history full of events & the present events for tomorrow to remain with truths & facts. History remains as life goes on & on. Any man or lady, no one should interfere in inner brain thinking because this is the breakage of everything, past, present & future. This is the way how it should be & nothing else other than the truth. Religions also history. Each country has histories to remain for all mankind to keep. Indian traditions, art & many Hindus religions are so true to understand, all praising the mighty heavenly God. India is covering & protecting all religions as well from any haters. All religions are there. India having control over nature keeping it safe by love & respect to mother earth or mother nature. History remained since a long time in past, present & yet to coming future. This time proves that everything about India is true. Souls, spirits, dreams, movies & imaginings as well ( a living life). Everything was there since a long time back. This what we are, who loves us love & who don’t don't! we remain as how God wished us to remain since a long time back ( a believe to prove history is so true at all times). NASA once seeking for new discoveries in space for other type or similar life is not to be blamed. But sky nets viruses to remain but for how long! Later on humans might think to discuss all with other life's in space. Space ships from here & there to join with peace or war. Protecting our home planet is also true. In case anything happens to our planet humans else where to remain. After all we say its God wish for us to survive to curry past present & future. Tsunami, earth quacks, lava, triangle, viruses & other crises wither natural or artificial might affect this planet & life to end. Mysteries still within this planet from past, present & coming future. Unknown is there still living that yet to be discovered for us all! Galaxies vanishes in the space! Shouldn't we care for a mankind to survive! Which way you all want it? That is the question for all to keep. At least there is something to live for. With God is so much safe. God to help us all. Nothing else to say. No more to argue. The End might be a start to go on with. Now days, satellites plays with inner human souls by connecting their brains with many brains, media & in the air from their inner thinking brains or whispers. Which cause much of bla bla. Hearts problems, sickness & brain damage that causes a full body under stress, madness, wildness, conscious punishment & much of judging days at all times other than blood pressure. Wither satellites approaches to the brain or not! Satellites already build inner virus to remain in the human body for pain to remain. But when they approaches most of times, they cause more pain & viruses other than cancers to a full human body. They keeps killing & corrupt the brain which also cause sparks to eyes that leads to a blindness other than bubbles in the ass because the brain cant have a release to care for its own body. Satellites can also cause sickness to many pregnant ladies & also reaches to her inner un born baby. Eyes ears, mouth & full body sensors attached to the brain that been used by satellites to share their satisfactions with other satellites & to other brains & bodies in the same location or in other locations. Dreams can also be shared. They can also beat the brain by vibrating the skull during a sleeping time. Cuts heart under its chest bones. What a slavery time for a mankind. Those who miss use their satellites go to hell. Once satellites insists of approaching to a human brain means there is a cause for them to do so. They can share sex feeling to other human bodies, they can sell such feelings to others, they can do as they pleased to play as they want with mankind. They question is: Are we humans or machines? What a fake world. No privacy or secrets for any to keep! Other than that human brain with full of sensors under attack from above radiation. A human asks where to stay? While at home is under attack even while sleeping. Such viruses also gave an effect to media, CD's music, movies & news. Not knowing the truth. Satan is so strong to do this & God is so much angry. Angels are still there to give a relief for such tortured souls. The question is Are they real or artificial? Maybe they are humans connected by their souls (brain & entire sensors). Artificial God & artificial Satan might be doing this to us all. The question is: who is attacking normality & natural of life. God is angry. Satanism net work is the sky nets is the virus creators. That can make a wonderful group sex while such groups is dying. What a virus to expand to some reason that took over on our planet. With this we order those who miss use their satellites against mankind to drop this shit of theirs at once & to stop using such programs for the coming future. Life time is much better than this much waste of life's. Many songs are there since many years before that sings the same. Normal life with peace & faith in god is much better than this much waste of time & souls. Many humans are sick already from such electro magnetic radiation & waiting to die. Leave them to die naturally & not artificially because of mighty heavenly God. War in the space to eliminate such virus is ok. But what it got to do with civilian's & everything living. Save our planet from dying. or there'll be no God & no human rights even in the future. The question is who attacked America. Other than what been mentioned above. Many having such satisfaction of playing the beauty & the beast while dying because of love & care other than faith in God. While all from near relations or far from. The whole written subject is best satisfaction for those who can understand what a human is. Read the whole thing please even the deaf girl used to understand while she's far a way & in far country contacted by internet. She used to hear & feel other than written words or maybe dream between us. Because of new modern technology of satellites that has NASA Package. Wale to wale can hear & feel from ocean to ocean. Natural or artificial does not give a right for Satan in between. Who is doing this artificial Satan works to all of us? Sky nets is the virus. They are playing with viruses that causes death. God Bless. By: Nabil Zegord konz kurt polaski. Whales were there since Dinosaurs time still exists & still communicate from ocean to ocean. Elephants were there too & still. Olden religions have that soul or holly spirit since their creations. same as what came after. So we have to respect all religions & their histories. Native Americans (Red Indians) has it too. Believing in souls & spirits. Having Soul doctors to heal them. Tradition in their believes as all religions! What is the problem? God Bless our souls people, this is something to keep with you with love & peace. Who any of you without sins or mistakes? Magic were there as well & still exists. Ask your self's or afraid to be your selves because of the upper invaders & brain suckers to keep us all in shame. The question is for how long? Freedom people, where is peace without? Keep God with you at all times before it's too late. This is the fact of all religions to remain. But Electro Magnetic Field Radiation creates what to a human brains? We don’t need GPS locators or satellites interference in our daily livings. Sky nets is the virus attacking us all we humans. The Greatest Power Is The Greatest And A Hope To Remain To Go On With. Miracles exists at all times for those who believes. Life full of souls & spirits. How about Natural Spiritual soul mates & not artificial mates to live in this life of ours, as how was since a long time back! Olden times there were human flesh eaters, but now human brain suckers & playing with human brains souls & life destination even. Fresh message: To all mankind, either we all live in peace or no peace at all to remain. That goes for all. God is against war since beginning. Wise people only understand this. History say's much to us all concerning olden traditions & religions from all over the world. Some still existsing & some expired but memories to remain for us to call. Africa had & still having such believes such as the slavery time since White & black "Kunta Kuntai". Tragedy to all now. Magic also was there since a long time back, still & maybe yet to remain! At first there were that perfect greatest power of all creations. Start from that first when & while praising Mighty God. Angel (Greek angelos,”messenger”), celestial being believed to be a messenger, or intermediary, between God, or the gods, and humankind. All religions are concerned with the relationship human beings have or may have with the supernatural realm. In ancient Greek religion, in Judaism and Christianity, and in Islam this relationship is thought to involve angels—divine messengers sent to humans to instruct, inform, or command them. An angel can function also as a protective guardian, as a heavenly warrior, and even as a cosmic power. Moreover, the line between a good angel and a bad angel, or demon, is sometimes unclear. Hence, angels can be broadly described as personified powers mediating between the divine and the human. After the period of Israel's Babylonian exile (597-538 bc), Jewish thought about angels was considerably altered and enriched. Drawing on Mesopotamian iconography, artists and writers began to provide wings even for anthropomorphic angels, and an interest developed in the angels' garments, names, and relative ranks. In addition to the Mesopotamian influence, the Persian dualistic tradition (see Zoroastrianism) added another dimension to the Jewish conception of angels by positing hostile and destructive angels who are rebellious against God. The Jewish Qumrān sect, or Essenes, for example, saw the world as a battleground, the scene of a struggle between the Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of Wickedness, the latter an angelic power opposed to God called Belial. Magic (sorcery), art of attaining objectives, acquiring knowledge, or performing works of wonder through supernatural or nonrational means. Techniques used in magic typically include chants and spells, gestures or actions that often have a symbolic relation to the desired result (for example, acting out a successful hunt of the past to make a future hunt successful), and the use of substances believed to have a special relationship with the powers needed to accomplish the intended purpose. Demon, supernatural being, spirit, or force capable of influencing human lives, usually by evil means. Demons have played a role in the traditions of most religions and also have appeared in mythology and literature. Exorcism, the practice of expelling demons that possess people or places, has been carried out by many religions, usually by a person with special authority. The study of demons is called demonology. Exorcism, practice of expelling demons or evil spirits from people or places that are possessed, or are in danger of possession, by them. Exorcism usually is performed by a person with special religious authority, such as a priest or shaman. The practice was common in ancient societies and was based on the practice of magic. Ancient Babylonian civilization, in what is now Iraq, had special priests who would destroy a clay or wax image of a demon in a ritual meant to destroy the actual demon. The ancient Egyptians and Greeks had similar rites. Many religions in various parts of the world continue the practice of exorcism. Satanism, an inversion of religion that parodies conventional faith by venerating evil instead of good. Despite rumors of widespread satanic crimes, organized satanism is rare. For the most part, it appears to pose no physical threat either to its members or to outsiders. The beliefs and practices of ritual satanists are almost entirely unknown because of their diversity and secrecy. Although some organized satanic activities resemble those of witches and neopagans, the latter object to the comparison (see Witchcraft). Ritual satanists uniformly reject the popular association of satanism with child abuse and animal mutilation. The modern fear of organized satanism can be traced to the wave of panic over witchcraft that swept through Europe from about 1450 to about 1700. In the 1980s a new satanism scare arose in the United States. This scare was based on rumors of a sophisticated network of ritual satanists engaged in a coordinated campaign of child abduction and abuse, including ritual sacrifice. Although satanic symbols were occasionally found at crime scenes, no evidence for a large-scale, organized network of satanists was uncovered. Allegations of satanic crimes against humans were often based instead on controversial so-called recovered memories, which are recollections brought to consciousness through psychological therapy (see Psychotherapy). Alleged ritual cattle mutilations proved to be the work not of satanists but of animal predators. Psychotherapy, treatment of individuals with emotional problems, behavioral problems, or mental illness primarily through verbal communication. In most types of psychotherapy, a person discusses his or her problems one-on-one with a therapist. The therapist tries to understand the person’s problems and to help the individual change distressing thoughts, feelings, or behaviors. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Is it a cloud full of radiation that took over this planet? or just a Business to some! or Movie (that actors & actresses pay's to Internal Government) to some, or (FBI) United International Satellites to seek what with the influence of TV even! Making it prohibited & painful to watch. Since 11 years & up to now living with so waste of real time of my life! September the 11th was not a movie. Trust me. Read everything to understand. It is a big Mess, Sin & Mistake to us all. Where is History & Justice? Here we talk DANGER think about everything, Federal Investigating my ass. I hate politics it is (My True Story) where is my sins or mistakes? Study this case very carefully, 11 years before, I seek Google Earth program over the internet & I saw a missile way to the capital Amman /Jordan. You are my friend please read all about the Real International story of healing the world foundation, Don't be angry at me because I am a victim. Thank you. ((((( DANGER SATAN virus in the air & in our inner brains. GOD to help us all. )))))

Guide to live with good life: 1-See the pictures to learn. 2-Read text. 3-Relax & don’t think much of me or any one else please. 4-God to help us all. Stop blaming. 5-Stick with logic & don’t make fun on any person that you know. 6-Stay clean always & safe keeping in mind we are humans not machines or monkey's. 7-Stay with no fear at all time & reduce bla bla bla or whispering in your inner. 8-Enjoy life with God & keep always with you. 9-Once you feel some dim light or sparks to your eye's your under attack. Try to stay calm because this virus approached to you from above. 10-Praise the lord & pray for peace always & for all. 11-Always say go to hell you Satan or virus & don’t come back to me. 12-Stay cool most of times & don’t be angry, treat people with good heart & open mind. 13-With above mentioned you win now (in this life) & then (after death heaven). Be aware from the unknown. 14-God never dies & always winner. 15-Keep in mind I am a human two & have memories to keep. 16-All religions with all mankind serves God & not against. At least love God the way I love & love you for you to love your self, God & others. Don’t hate much. Good luck. This is the best of me I can give to you. Don’t ask for more please. After all we belong to God, God best judge. Live your life for others to live their own. Stay alive & live. The end might be a start to something better. How to know that your under scan or some one hacking on you from above or from people that you know. We all knows that, satellites now a day's has so much A)modern technology & it deals with so much along with different types of B)other technologies. A) satellite in space controlled by satellite station on ground, both has so much data transfers between & can connect with other satellites in space which has locations on ground in different countries. Same as internet usage (Audio/ video / text data transfers & different files in many formats. They can transfer News, movie channels, computer programs & secrets between them selves. They can use this package of NASA which has such programs of hacking. Most of such hacking, spying & intruding has so much viruses that can create viruses in Computers, movies, clips, radio channels & in Human brains. They also can spy or hack on each others in space & on ground stations due to such virus caused by those who ever use such programs of NASA. Same as a computer that is connected with other computer in different country by internet line (ADSL telephone line.) which leads to a virus to take a place in your computer. There are many viruses some are so much danger to damage even your computer hardware other than soft ware. It can carry viruses to memories, files, programs & effect motherboard as well as your hard drive. Some viruses remain even if you changed some parts that gave the user some problems. Some time data transfers that carry viruses can affect other computers. We use & updates our different programs of defending from viruses such as Norton MacAfee & many others. When a satellite curries a virus Using NASA Programs means Virus & is so much Danger. Those who use This Danger programs should stop at once. NASA package has such programs that they uses on Human entire body: 1- Rain Brain Scan. 2- Tele-transport. 3- Dynamic eyes. 4-Virus in TV. Radio, mobile, telephone lines & what ever can carry such virus remains even in our human brains. B) Many other Technology such as computers, TV., radio, mobiles & storage facilities once from above satellite that approach to such location to hack the indoor humans using NASA Package all of those above mentioned devices shall be infected even a human brain & human entire body. Entire human body means Infected by dangerous radiations of different types, radio, signals, magnetic, electro & different gamma's that effect entire location with different ranges. This causes sickness, diseases, more viruses carried with more types of viruses & in air to curry such to other locations. It is like electronic bomb been dropped on location carried it's radiation by air to other locations. This can take Nation to death & once such programs are connected to other satellites then such virus reaches to other locations in different countries. The question is, what is the range? How many brains are connected? Electro magnetic field shows media also curing voices in the street to be heard from our TV. Radio & mobiles. Even human brain shit chat with memories & remembrance that cases so much pain even to our conscious & suffers a lot day after day once this what ever it is called lets say Electro cloud that many people in still suffers because of (Bermuda Triangle). Then hunters to hunt even victims? So who creates such inner punishment to human soul? Human brain connected with media! Brains sharing brains of thoughts, ideas, past, present & coming future! Victims victimizing victims? Memories with such viruses cant witness can't prove anything even to law once all in this virus. When a human under attack can attack back. Because of law of God, & law of internal & external all having problems connecting to a group of infected people that suffers day & night for others to wetness to keep on blab la bla. I say cool down all of you. Logic is God & Logic is internal law with logic not with satellites. Courts some times reach to say we don’t take videos & audios as evidence but once it's leading to something that might help but no need! Why? The main problem that created this Range of madness for all to start anther virus. This is shame for those the ones who created such range of radiations. By law, once there is madness that took over in one human brain supposed to be taken to hospital for treatment. And once been hunted many times & still under so much pain brain & body. This human needs to have a better life & normal life. Not to be trapped by any & once this human learns from past, present & always calls God to learn more wisdom supposed to have peace after so much war that lived in own brain. & once speaking the truth to all not to make corruptions means logic & not against any law even God best support to fall on. Wisdom & logic. God & internal Law are there. I don’t need virus in my brain. Stop playing with my brain to create so many subjects. (See pictures) I don’t know anything once I feel sparks approaches my eyes means what? I don’t know once I feel dim light passes my eyes means what? I don’t know when TV. Speaks to me means what? I don’t know when I hear voices of my inner & hear them is far away sky in the air means what? I don’t know when some voices reaches my inner skull or chest or indoor room means what? I don’t know when I feel pain in my body means what? I don’t know when I feel some one speaks to me when ever I remember something Or dream or call my past memories or to think of something or to imagine or to see or to smell or to learn or to teach or to think of what is going on or to keep on moving in door or to go out to have a relief or to be afraid to use bathroom or to do what I don’t know. Past when I call should I suffer once many spies my brain from above & surrounds! Where this coming from once living alone at home & hearing voices from those I know or is it real or not maybe recordings or brain connections or maybe satellite plying with my destiny, life, health, dreams, brain redirections, making me afraid even to think or to dream or to relax or not to think or wanting us all dead! Forgetting about God law of creation. Who is living in me? How many me, me, me ,me, me & so on. As how many American movies in Nile sat explained to us all in MBC. Sky nets (means satellites in space & their communications) is the virus See terminator 1+2 & 3. Other than that see the Predator movie of Arnold Swartz nagger & find out this predator that is so much advanced with new modern technology that exceeds humans technology represent what? A satellite almost in space that approaches to ground to approach human brains even. But where there a virus? Now who is the predator or predators, or machine or machines, or monkey or planet of apes, or computer or computers, or terminator or terminators, or robo cop or robo cops, or alien or alien's, or human or humans, or good or many good people, or bad or many bad people, or a virus or viruses? The question is asking your selves? Such as all for one & one for all said by Mr. George Bosh the United States Of America president = (NASA Package picking human brains to share what?) as how we saw in TV. About Sept 11th in who attacked America & that was in the news & there is a movie to show about the business centers in New York. This also called & registered in America History! China called all Presidents from all countries but not the Arabs & made them all to dress same uniform as one & then we saw that people of china covering their mouths while walking in the streets assuming virus in the air. But the question is this one means what? That is suffering in each non stop seconds, minutes, hours, in each 24hours everyday? Because of releasing from above satellite that controls brains data transfers where ever they want this data to go to. If it happened to me it can happen to any one of us. What planet is it now once there is lot of whisperings from many people inner approaches to many other inners ears or brains? Sky nets has a problem lot of problems & some satellites still playing with viruses & connecting brains together maybe they want to be better than God & they don’t know that they are creating shit out of us all to hate each others & they the ones who has on/off switch for connecting & disconnecting our brains as one satellite lost in the space & hunting our brains, who is that who is this who she is who he is what is he doing what they are doing? Indoor outdoor meeting speaking telling ignoring sharing secrets???????? Those are what? Those people who suffers maybe they have rights & some has no rights. Some starts to cheat even because of nonsense going on. Some starts & some stops. Like a running with non stop & it depends on satellites once (connecting & disconnecting = virus in human brains to curry till the last moment in their life's) in who's law they are doing so to many humans connecting their brains together? So they can take all past & all secrets out of human brain that leads to much people & people families as well. What year is it now? Since when this was going on? Why still going on? Why to suffer so much? Ask those who control the above satellites. Where is national security once people looses their minds & smell their own brains burns? God to help us all from those viruses or madness in the air we don’t want to know why & stop forcing our brains to keep on recalling memories. Is this logic to any of any of any of any of all? What is the reason for this to go on many years & still going on for what? This is a terror activity. In Beirut Lebanon what have we see in news channel? Gathering Arab leaders to discuss the meaning of terror. We are living in terror & un logic. Let us all to live in logic & normal life because all man kind is suffering for no reason at all. What do you call this virus? I am afraid when I see terminator 3 to understand that this movie might come true in our real life. See 1 then 2 then 3. How it started & what might happen. Normality is logic life to live with & this is peace to all & enough this shit NASA package to kill us all with viruses (bird virus, pig's virus, human virus, nature virus, food virus, water virus, oxygen virus & cheep virus. Is there anything Hygienic left for life to go on? Would war brings hygienic back to life or might create more damages to remain. Ask you're selves' humans & stop involving me between any of you even by force I say you are shit to do this to me all these years & still giving me more loss & fuck your peace you cowards. And by the way, I don’t like to hear threatening sounds even from the public or sound of knocks or sound of doors that also causes fear just because I'm thinking & connected by you with you & others. You wasted my life with this shit NASA Package of yours & shove it in who ever you are ass holes for damaging my entire life & taking everything even my love for those I still thinking about away. Ask the international law of justice. Terrorists in stations go to hell; you have no rights to do so to me. This is the law I know. Those who are good or bad that I know have rights on those who is doing us conscious punishment & playing with our brains. Stations stop acting as if better than God. Because of clean life & not to be full of viruses. Stop telling, stop cheating, stop whispering, stop acting, stop blaming, and stop your selves from cheating your selves, your God & all man kind. Eliminate this virus. Do it for peace! Experts some times create viruses in using & dealing with computers to learn how to eliminate before selling their products. Some times they sell without doing so. For other field companies to start to check their product after sale to public even for some business of selling such as Norton Anti Virus package for users to have protections. Some virus makers also can create to give from some where to show those who making such business of selling Norton Anti Virus package to try to fix such virus & life goes on with protections after damages caused to many computers or entire network or maybe entire satellite that goes here, there & then to everywhere. But to reach to human brains wither it's real or not or faking all or not or by force or not or happened or not. We don’t know, we don’t trust Satan or virus with switches even (that goes & comes) Stop blaming a human brain that thinks. We stick with logic to speak to us all with mobiles not shit chat from inners that creates blab la bla. One person can lead to so many people, for satellite to hunt from above. Because it is universal & people having relatives everywhere in this shit planet called earth. Now Planet earth is under attack by a viruses, hackers & intruders = (Satan to play with our inner)=(NASA Package users)=(virus creators)=(madness in brains) & (voices from inner humans while thinking goes in the Air for much people to hear). "Those users of such package stop it at once". Everyday I used to say same words when ever I feel that I'm connected wither sure or not. This means what to all of you? Voices that approaches to human brain directly from satellite goes with focusing direct to inner skull & chest or inside any indoor room. They can punish you & cause you more sickness=madness=afraid even to live=suicide for those people who can't realize what is going on & kill them selves. Most important thing is to protect your heart & brain. They can kill with radiation that vibrates your skull & cut your heart other than breaking your bones from their satellite. Those who suffer complain to families & relatives. Some of them are afraid even to speak to any & yet to be called cowards or something else & to be hunted by others for their money, furniture, car, properties or some own business to loose. Those people when they leave they speak about everything that they were going through. Some times satellites follows them & reports to other satellites to keep on tracing & finding what exactly they are doing. Not all satellites are same once they have people with different traditions, policy, religions & what ever. When they find no reason for him to suffer to loose even for their people. They welcome those victims to stay because they have logic & more understanding of life & there are levels. (This is not Interpol if this what you are thinking. This is war or peace. Just now I witnessed a spark approached to my eyes followed with a voice said we eat shit! Well who you to tell me so once I'm not agreeing with you & you the one who caused me so much loose & cost me almost death many times! Because surrounded by many connected brains (some are good & some are bad other than those who works in the stations that still beams on you finding out what are you up to.) making you to feel so much pain even if you remember or call any memories & connect you to those concerned people. Voices from their inners to start a subject for many to witness. Is this law? This is shit & nothing else. No peace with shit of what ever. "Those users of such package stop it at once". Everyday I used to say same words when ever I feel that I'm connected wither sure or not. This means what to all of you? They created Virus in me to remain with me & to take it with me to death. Still they are wanting more. Planet Earth & human brains needs some protection or shield that lasts for ever for life to go on with peace & not to be involved in space cloud that is full of (electro magnetic radiation & much more) We are humans we are afraid & fall's sick in most of time. No one lives for ever & stop wasting our life time. We want to think as how we want, dream as natural bad or good, share with our families our own secrets & we don’t need any between us or between us & God. How can a human protect own inner thinking, dreaming, imagining, feeling, seeing & to see natural movie in TV without sound mixings or some one plays with the movie while it is running from it's source station that broadcasting for people. Songs that I liked I wrote original words, when I hear it's words same time I read the words at least to keep it original for my listing ears my mind to understand that at least something original & normal listening to with real feelings to feel about the song. Those experts who can help from all over the world, to approach to such regions to help in solving such problem in stations or diplomatic talk in TV. Would that help any more once no one trusts TV? Any more so all like remains behind the shadows. Many internet users were so much wondering when I hear someone saying "can you read my brain?" to those he know else where in different countries maybe friends, family or relatives? I say to you all, I feel someone killing me, what about you all? Would any of you like to be me? Who I am? A human to all or to many brains or as requested? We don’t need shit satellite to tell us what to do or share our inner thinking or to trap us or to prove some against any of us or to create us mental problem or to try to reach to others to us by connecting brains or to publish fear among any parties or to create sort of punishment to our bodies or to take us to death or to assume that it is business, or movie or investigation or any sort of helping guide or any thing else. Satellites leave & don’t come back to any of any of any brain of us for good. No one wants you satellite to play with inner brain thinking or something else. & stop approaching to our location to scan & hack inner brains of families & their visions to collect for what? Leave us with our own problems. Stop victimizing me more & more please. Where is family secrets? What about God? 11 years before I used to say this: Hey world, do you know what this means? -- Do you? This means when the entire entire world is reading your mind & you cannot have your privacy any longer. When you see there is no meaning in life to live but hope that keeps you to go on. What was your past? What was your history? What were your mistakes or sins? When you see that you're self-living with the mighty GOD cause he the only one wants you to go on & feel what life is all about. This planet is a holly planet & all should live in peace & we all are a like. Men women are the same; both have blood, flesh, feelings, and hearts to live with in this life. But once who starts to break this law of humanity, things will be worse & create problems to all. The best thing to do in this situation is to pray & keep on hoping that one day you will with his wish to break free. Security, privacy, peace, love, peace minds is all for us to live for. This is my message to you my friends & stop blaming each other's, forget the past & people's history & learn to love each other's with understanding each others life's & feelings. We all the same & be good families in order to live in peace. It's not easy at all to be as in my situation, who am I? What am I? Why this is going on with me? Why me? & lots of other questions. My story had lot of enigma & mysteries that I my self-cant understand, I know GOD above me he the only one who knows everything about my life. He's been there in the past, present & the coming future. For this, I pray to him & keep hoping that one day he will give me a chance to break free from my existing situation & be my self once more. With this, I learn that he is above us all & with his wish things will be solved for all kind of human problems. I am what I am, I'm as any of you. This is my past & history, for this I faced all & God is my witness from early beginning. God bless those who work for peace & let others to live in peace. God bless you all. Who is God? Well here we all again, Wise people from all type of all Thinking & groups meeting from all ages from past approached to so much witnessing & religions been created to all mankind on this planet. Now I mean at this time how many religions are there & attachments or parts of? So much. For what? Many religions where at the past & magic where there since many years before in many countries & provisions before any satellites in skies. Once a human witness & believes of what eyes, ears, memories & years to live with it, is called history & brains to carry on with for many years ahead. Incidence happens, inner thinking happened, some un logic & logic happening, brains starts to keep on whispering & so on. Babylon from the past & much more still happening. All of this means what? Or why? Or maybe for what? Let's say virus in the air & in brain that yet to be washed out for all mankind to survive. Much of wearied things many did witness & many still demanding for rights & explanations from all over the world. If we say no one to be blamed & praise God to help us all & do much less mistakes in our lives, then a history & remembrance to remain. Not necessary war & peace. Just because of God. Those who believe in God will understand that it is something up-normal & yet to call back to their religions to see what is all about? Question & answers are there for many mankind's to understand & once reaches to the source & say's God to help us all means what? Means good & not bad... God been there at first before man kind. God create everything to all to survive. Life's where so much less than what after is. Many years people populations where decreased & increased from time to time. Due to war & peace, due to centuries that took over to win something during wars & developments of many countries. Life goes on & on with so much new born & natural death to many that used to be belonging to us. And us that yet to be belonging to our children's & so on. All are what? Living beings living under God protection & nature take over between all because all & everything of what God gave to mankind is limited to own concern & our concern due to still upgrading minds & due to more knowledge that is still growing all of this still limited. God is unlimited, something so much to describe & our full felling knowledge about still going on & shall last for ever. Our believe in God means we wish to learn more & more. God is so much to explain. Why all religions were created? For the same reason! God is life to all of us. Once we all approached to this wisdom means we all to live in peace. Once understanding the real meaning of God. God The one who created the entire universe! Not only us or sun & moon or our Galaxy! But much Galaxies in this universe! What's wrong? With to any of you? Still creating me problems & I'm explaining what is creation of God? That is you all! Why you all or some doing this to us all? & to give me hard tuff time? For what? God Is not he or she or it or what even our words to speak about. God Is God! What is going on? God remains for ever & how can die? For God I survive by trusting, believing, depending & living with in my inner believes. & when God wants what gave to me a soul & wants it back he takes. If there is no heaven or hell! Why we are here & living? God says I am the life that not only you but all in the past, present & future that all of you living for & in. Any against this? God also say's that I create angels out of you for loving me. How many of you are angels? Die all & come to me & live with me. If Satan were much upon you & killed you. Those who did this, shall have no mercy from me & those who were killed they died under my name & shall live for ever. Now & then. God say's all nations under my command & those who against me they take what ever they want if they can & I the Judge after all. Is it Blessing or Curse? What do you think? Now I say, I love you all & that means what? Some one who loves God loves you all because of whom? Because of us all as humans & nothing else. Who is Satan & who is God among you all? I am a Human same as any of you! Here I am same as how God wants me to be! When I say I am what I am, means leave me alone & buzz off far away from me! Stick with logic or find no logic ever again. Religions are there! Who against? Should any to fall? What is wrong? A human just said that! Well here we start again! God Is 1st that never fails. How many religions are there & all for same God! Well Here I am! & me same as any of you trying to find my way! In life! Any of you against me? Now a day's assuming satellites is the virus or not! Is same once it approaches to inner feelings to give us so much pain & connected with something that can play with many things still. Such as? The question is for how long? The main thing is one brain connected with many brains is called group connection & if there is more groups living such in same time means what? & if such from country to country means what? Then what might happen? Big war here & there. If there are no wisdom & good bright inner thinking definite corruptions to take over & leads to real war. The best is to have patience on each others & not to prove anything on each others to cool down what went wrong & to learn not to be involved ever again or there'll be no peace at all. Because revenges might take a place later on. It seems like worst tragedy that took over in man kind time. Not easy to control I'm approaching this out from so much pain. Logic to stay with & virus to leave for good & I praise God for that to have us all released from this thing. When it reaches to a brain that is so much danger. For many groups of (one to all & all to one)=(NASA Package "hacking programs full of viruses")! Where is logic in it? It has to stop sooner or later. Peace is logic; law is logic & what about God? So much more than logic for us in all times. Even if there is such viruses. God remains in all generation’s time. Birds virus, Pigs Virus & this Virus where from? From out of the space. This planet we hope to go on as before without such viruses which killing us all from time to time. God to help us all. Have faith & don’t loose control! Logic & stick with logic life. Those who were playing behind the shadow in their satellite stations in different locations & causing us all this much of virus & pain. Taking our secretes & sharing with them selves & with others & playing with brains outputting inputting, deserves to be Locked As wild animals or predators that been hunting us all for their what? In a Zoo for all man kind to have a nice visit & to make good business out of them. They the ones who create us all war even in our brains. Our selves fighting our selves & our inners. If they believed in God they wouldn’t done what they still doing since almost 11years. If they were seeking business, movie, law, terror, war or peace. Using human souls to play with! Many died in this period of time. Why no one stopping this? The main question remains to all of us. What about G.O.D? Encarta ® 2009: God, the center and focus of religious faith, a holy being or ultimate reality to who worship and prayer are addressed. Especially in monotheistic religions (see Monotheism), God is considered the creator or source of everything that exists and is spoken of in terms of perfect attributes—for instance, infinitude, immutability, eternity, goodness, knowledge (omniscience), and power (omnipotence). Most religions traditionally ascribe to God certain human characteristics that can be understood either literally or metaphorically, such as will, love, anger, and forgiveness. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Wanting my past, wanting to know everything about me! Ok I have no problem with that. I can analyze Societies that I lived in & within, to talk about administrators, system of control & false, comparing communities with each another’s, traditions & social mentalities & how people are living with different standards mentalities: Once & I know its so true that I connected with many satellites that plays with people brains assuming what ever about me to put me even with public with different standards of daily thinking as if all owns me & I don’t belong to my self. The question is, is this fare for one person to be shared by force with all? Who did this is Satan to me & to many. Satan’s are in the stations having fun along with other stations in different countries. Once this Satanism network is active this virus remains to kill us all. Families, children, teens, amateurs, adults & young, old people of males & females. How many Satellites in the space beside Jordan? Look at the map to understand. I remember the time since childhood, less than 2 years of age living in Bethlehem leaving to Jordan for a while, then to Iraq for a few months, then to stay in Kuwait until my high secondary school (traveled to west Germany, Holland, Syria, Lebanon & Jordan) due to relatives from mother side, worked for 2 years in Kuwait then left for further studies in India (traveled to Bangkok for a short tour along with friends) lived for 3 years in India until graduation. Coming back to Kuwait, then to Jordan for a while visit then to Bethlehem for engagement & taking a tour in Israel, then back to Kuwait for 2 years work then back to Jordan to settle down in homeland as own country. Left to UAE for 3 years to work then coming back to stay in Jordan. Traveled to Turkey for a week, then left twice to India for un finished business that failed followed by Satanism satellite network Those countries that I been in can be called societies & I can write so much about each one. I can give so many insults to each, I can say what ever I want, and I can say which the best is with fewer problems & as follows: 1) India (all religions are there & in peace) 2) Germany & Holland (advanced & less problems) 3) Arab upper mentioned countries “third world” ( So much Bla Bla Bla, problem creators & everything still under construction that remains for ever this way). Once I heard that the 3rd world war shall start from the Arab gulf by UN blue hates (this means international). Arabs got involved with Satan Work for many years & still going on. Tried to explain to all just to let go, but it seems all having fun. September 11th is not a movie. Or maybe wanting it a movie! Maybe me, my family & who ever I knew also a movie to you all! What a great mistake in mankind history. Future will expose all about to all of you. War out of nonsense that leading all to hell.

In the Arab world, I faced this problem with Arab satellite Satan network since the day I entered Jordan & before in Kuwait, followed In Emirates UAE then still running in Jordan. Tried to reach USA before Sept the 11th, but couldn’t due to Satan Work above in skies, which keeps on chasing & tracing other than bothering me all times with TV. & NASA Package. I’m not against any tradition, religion or any country! Stop forcing me to be against. I hate politics, don’t force me into it & don’t stick to my ass. All those years of waste in my life for what? Any excuse to any of you? Any reason? You all are guilty now & for ever. Those who shared with such Satanism Network yet to be losers forever because of Greatest God. There are secrets that I like to keep to my self if I’m allowed. Some visions that to remain in my brain caused by a believe in God. I know they took these visions too, but I won’t write about to you. Nice business. Nice Jordan. Nice satellites & Satanism net work between each another's & how many countries connected with? Having Baqaa "Jordanians" & Balqaa "Kuwaitis" stations or Satan's! You Satan's have to confess. Playing behind the shadows with cold blood. Trap who ever you want but far away from me if you don't mind. Making people rich & others to loose more than what gained! Taking action when ever you want! Or all rich or all poor! Stop using your shit satellites Jordan. In whose law you doing this? What about God? .....Enjoy..... All these years, what those satellites & their Satan network connections with other satellites did to me? They made me to loose everything & torched my soul. People gains to grand their children something for their future & for them to survive & I lost this chance by force in this country of Satan's. The above example shows what Jordan & its people mentality is. Is this a Muslim country?! What Muslim satellites did to me & family? War in their blood & origin. Thieves, killers, blackmailers, terrorists, black magic dealers, satins & Muslims they are. Hating everything good in life or it's just me that feel this! They took everything from me & left me to suffer & not to help my family but made problems, corruptions, waste & loving to proceed in doing so still. Is there God in Jordan? Ask the lonely. Even Jesus didn't suffer this much. Where is law of justice in Jordan once they still doing so? This is the only prove I got to speak about. Bereave it, it is the truth. Satan world they made in Jordan & still. Brain talk (shit chat & whispers) assuming virus. What a way of cheating & everybody knows that. War it is, but is it cold one? What's up? Voodoo wheel in sky. Who made this to me? Keeping me home alone to suffer so much all these years & satellites of Jordan to keep beaming on me & connecting my brain with many brains from all over? Naturally Arabs! In fact Muslims trying to keep on trapping & enforce me to suffer. In Kuran they against all religions & other than Arabs since the day of establishment of Islam. Now it proof who are the terrorists the ones who created the cold war & attacked Christians in door, in brains & in their country. Frankly speaking Muslims are also against Jewish. With this Palestinians took total Arab Muslims & non Arab Muslims granted approval to keep on growing against Israel & asking for their rights. (Occupation & Islam) since a long time back. With this once the truth been said all about, Palestinians looses their rights for ever. Concerning Golan & south Lebanon & what is going on there is nothing but tension at all times as if war going on. But actually those places have to remain as borders between them because Israel has the right to defend it self & its people & its religion other than other religions in their country. This Satanism satellites net works of Arabs are representing their terrorist countries & their shit fake politics in newspapers, TV. & radio channels & still playing with as they want. Losers they are for ever. How many Arab countries against one Israel? All Muslims are as written in Kuran. Israel took a whole word wide approval for existence & terrorists still against international law of peace & against Israel. (Arabs play's more & shall loose more for ever & they them selves against Islam, all religions & God, no one else. What Arab countries administration is in compare to all countries? Or maybe they are asking for 3rd world wide war. Concerning alcohol drinks, there are factories in Jordan; they don't give license to Muslims! Most here drinks, Christians (most) & Muslims (teen age most). There is different between, it seems that it's hard to have drink with Muslims. They create unnecessary problems because they different. They might create problems to Christians & many might be involved later on. So when ever I drink I drink alone. Better for & for all. Friends might fight just because of getting drunk. There is a black market for foreign drinks as well. According to Islam drinks with alcohol is prohibited! The question is why they only give Christians such license in order to have their shops to sell such drinks once all are drinking? Many people in here showing off so much, some create lot of blab la bla, to create a subject out of it. This subject seems not ending at all since a long time back. Who's fighting who? Who's with & who's against! God knows. Me even while I'm having a drink alone at home, those shit satellites Satan's blames or connect other brains to blame! Corrupting people's mentalities nonsense. Create more problems to make people to suffer & for some to have more drinks till they go completely drunk. Even at home humans are suffering. Is it me or is it many who are suffering? God or god's (Brain Connections) or (Brain Viruses)?!! This is my brain, my heart, my soul & my body no one has the right to approach to my inner thinking shit countries or shit brains or shit religions or shit nationalities. What about God?!!!!!!!! Stop trapping people!!!!!!! Stop Chasing People In there houses & in their Brains!!!!!!! Get lost from my life totally. Find someone else to play with other than me. Playing with people conscious? In who's law doing so still. Even in UAE, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt & many other Arab countries! There are such places where people can go & have such drinks at hotels, at bars, at night clubs & there is black market for drinks. Connecting brains even with your own children, males females, different ages, different qualities, different mentalities & different inner thinking!!! For what? What excuse doing so? Release my brain from any of you; you shit coward's virus creators. I'm not a school to teach you all. I'm not a movie for all of you to watch. I'm not bad as you all for what you all been doing to me & to my entire life. I'm not a slave for any of you, Satan's. Don’t let me to blame you, or you to blame me or any to blame any. Let my soul rest in peace you shit cowards. Sky-nets are the virus. Hey you all, take your shit away from me. If you have any problem with any of your own people that is your problems not mine. Plus fuck you all, this is your country not mine. You made all of these problems to me & I got nothing to do with any of it. You brought shame to your selves not me. Leave my brain alone it belongs to me & not to you. Wanting only fools to live among you? I'm not a fool. Take your shit away from me & from all. Stop bothering me any more. Each one judge owns self & that's it. A virus in the air! Shove it far away from me. If there is a war go and fight far way from me. If there is a problem for any of you here in Jordan, you'll wanting it for allowing all these years your selves scanning on me, connecting me, hurting me, fucking my inner thinking & much more. How many of you? If all wanted to solve this problem, you all could've. If it is because of money, each one of you could've paid less than a 1 JD. To have at least a release from my brain that you'll assume that I'm making any problem to any of you. Could've helped me to help your selves by making a budget to help suffering people that you been killing all these years day & night. Blame your selves & stop blaming me. Should I bring all to justice? Then all to be blamed. All to be in jail. If I'm good, leave me alone so I can still to remain good. Stop shaping me the way you want it. Where is peace about it? Who's the beneficiary? Any of you? Or me? Or any one? Let go satellites let go & shit brains I'm surrounded by & stop bla bla bla all of you. Killing me, killing your selves killing everybody! Thinking of taking a nab hearing someone in Arabic language saying yes take a nab. I just heard that. They love that to keep on going like that. How God to forgive? History & brains recording everything. God is witnessing people, nice pavilion virus to take all to hell. Shaping me the way you want, I remain a human not shit as you. Let go on me & stop attacking my brain ever again. Why still going on like this with me? Did I ask anything from any of you? Are any of you a mother or a father or a sister or a brother to me or any of you belonging to me? Or me belonging to any of you? You the ones sneaking to my brain, I don't seek to any of yours. Stop being Satan's. What a virus in the air ha Arabs! Leave my brain alone. Stop tracing me, trapping me & to follow me were ever I go. Stop this shit of yours as if all are lawyers & judges or maybe God. All of you a waste of time to all even. What is it? Ape planet! No concentration on your own life's? Nothing concerning Adam & Eve? Still hearing voices from my previous relations! Is it real, or might be recording! Same as my mother voice after her death! Inputting-outputting! (tele-transporting) by satellites either real or recordings one program that still used out of NASA Package from those people in satellite station. People hears voices & speaks, some hears from their skulls, chest or in the air & speaks the same, they have no control over their brains assuming what ever. Some of their voices approach into TV. Or radio speakers. Are we living in electro magnetic radiation field? Then all of us going to die with cancers or by each other by inner brains. Other than that by satellites using their secret weapon of radiation beating entire human body pointing on heads, hearts & bones. Where is God or man kind? All slaves?!!! & how many satellites above? Should we look up to pray to God or to satellites? Why there are churches & mosques? Or other places to praise God? Who is still doing these viruses to us all? Brain connection! Who judge who? The breakage of God's law of creation. Are we living in a mental hospital? Or in What? Once this still going on! Those satellites are not officially recommended by what they are doing, building a human brain viruses to many brains among groups of people to create brain damages, conscious punishments, people bla blab la, self punishments, terror, fear, no justice, waste of time, heart problems, blood pressure, social interference between each others families, it is a virus that goes & comes & causes war, sickness to a full human body & soul. Other than that, the beat from above with radiation to cause harmful injuries that remains in a body & memories to keep with Pain to create more problems with the surroundings. The best way is to stay calm, not to be involved with much people & not even to think badly, because this is a terrorist activity from above satellites. By all the entire world wide courts is not acceptable & proves nothing & all courts & international law of all countries should be against this type of what? & fight it, because a believe of God for all nations & religions. It has to be stopped by one way or another because this is inhuman & Satan work that makes life goes shorter & a corruption even in a human body that suffers & forced to suffer for no reason at all, for all man kind to understand that this is for what reason! What cased it to happen, what is the excuse of it, & why wasting people life that suffers & not getting any medical treatment for that behind the shadows in the satellite stations those who play with viruses to create what! Could you eat my pain, other than eating my brain & share it with others? Brain suckers! Traders! Fuckers! There is Law & there is God. To suffer to stop People mouths & their inner mentality punishments to each others as if they all God's, law, judges, lawyers. Thinking in there own thoughts taking ideas, knowledge, past, present & yet what yet to come. According to Law all of you are thieves, murderers, demands & against peace, against God, against justice, against everything good in life. Is the satellite in the space happy to see this happening! A non stop electro-magnetic radiation to a full human bodies that cases absolute death at the end for many groups of people building inner memories in them to remain till end of their life's & not getting anything in return but all to witness on all. A big waste of time, people to understand, it is a human virus caused by Sky nets as if all to love each others, or all to hate each others (peace or war), in both cases it is a punishment to the one who's trying any one to reach to own mind, but cant because of satellite the continuous beaming on the victim that suffered many years not to be bad but good at all times with so much pain from satellite & people, can't find a place or a destiny to go for or with (( to live or to die in a jungle life full of surprises but in who's law? Where to hide where to go where & how to take a shelter or to find a peaceful place to stay safe in.)) Is there a place to hide from this satellite that play's with your brain even while sleeping? Humans belong to God, not to satellites that create the problems to all. The best is to try to ignore whispers, surrounding sounds & to stick with logic, but have to suffer to explain to all people to understand even & while the satellite trying stopping you from, which cause more pain. Each country to solve own problem internally but once shared with other countries satellites, it's so hard because many brains shared that has memories, so it is own country satellite problem controlled by whom? Every body sticks to logic & not to any whispers because of the virus (electro-magnetic radiation field) that made it? This virus has to stop one day to all, and once it stops, people will ask what went wrong? What was it? We suffered & we want our rights, give us medical insure, give us our selves, give us our normal life's, give us peace, give us our destiny, The thing is who created this virus, for what? What was the reason? Why still going on & still killing us? & yet to be blamed from all mankind. God is the greatest. How can a human to go on without faith? God keeping us alive not Satan or Satan virus that caused by whom? Is it a nice movie? Is it logic? Is it that all of you victims? Is it that all of you thieves, Is it that all of you humans or machines, is it Pavilion City that it's own people Bla,Bla,Bla much then God said they have Virus & they might Affect other countries & better for me to take them all off because they all are waste of time to each others & to others once they can not communicate probably to each others & they might effect other communities & the main problems is that all are witnesses. So I say no need for a third world war, or to eliminate lot of population & kill them all with their families. But to stop this Satan virus from above in the space because this virus is killing machine controlled by Satan's & not populations that still they all are victims. Where are Human rights? Normal lives, normal pregnancies to all females. What a new generation year after year? All are infected & yet they to suffer. So once there is this problem that has no reason to stay, people to ignore & to go on with what left for them to go on with. Assuming a virus that one day to go far away from all life's after more than ten years lasted. So no one to judge on any one because of this trap & craziness, madness in our brains. God is there, & law is there. This virus is a big trap to all. Satellites have no rights to be God or Satan in any type of law of a human life. Even having pictures, audio-video recordings. All courts to reject any type of prove from satellites but not the killing cases or corruptions. It depends on the judge but once they are using the satellite immorally, terrorist, beating, taking all secrets & publishing among brains & sharing with many satellites from all over & uses media to create more corruptions, they to go for Jail for life for being playing for many years with viruses & people health, people destiny, people brains, people hearts, people family secrets, people past, present & future that yet to be lived. They know a human future before the victim lives it because of Rain Brain Scan from satellites after all this Nasal programs in one package is a virus that creates corruptions. For all judges to be aware & be careful because all are connected. To take a Judgment in this way might create corruptions later on & looses control of big corruptions that might take a place within the country & then might cause a war & might other countries army be involved to stop this massacre while going on or from happening. This of what going on is called one for all & all for one. But should not work because Satan's are using & playing with living beings human brains as they want & they the ones who creating victims, good or bad, pain to all, if all are good or all are bad is the same because they did un forgivable sins & mistakes during many years & they can cheat & cheat with evidence once they are playing with everything plus cheating on victims & share victim pain with them selves with so much entertainments & joy as if they are God & much better. Leaving the victim with so much pain to remain to curry forward with. All laws should be against this Satan that creates nothing good to go on with & people goes on with one circle trying to stay alive out of so much fear & those who don't understand among people they say those are cowards, crazy, lunatics, don’t know how to live, cant be normal & starts to judge on as if they are better. The victim tries to stay calm, even while thinking & hearing voices around in neighbor hood what been thinking of what been saying of how living of what going on, of what learning from, of what comments & so much blab la bla. I am a human, not Jesus nor God or Satan. Should I be afraid at all times? Why? Just Because of a virus in the air & some brains might go crazy or might be bad with their bodies? Hi live or die! Is this life? Is this normal life. God the one who judge not any of you people. At the end where is the truth? Once all creating nonsense blab la bla. For what? Did any of them take anything from it? Nothing but they are viruses to all. So people started to even speak from their inner as if it fun, but punishment to many. If all are God's, & electromagnetic radiation creating more madness & to many brains, feelings, life's, destinies & corrupted minds all creates absolute blood pressure, to many people not only to victims. So all are suffering with their inner brains & thoughts. For what? Peace! War! Justice! Praising God! No concentration! What a waste of time everybody! Even though while I'm writing this I know it is my privacy, but it seems so hard for me to even concentrate to my inner thinking because of so much pain corruptions that many people can read or listening to my brain. Being thinking of what happened in the past even since a long time back doesn't mean that I have to suffer just because I am human that has memories & others to interfere even in such a thing because of the electronic radiation a virus called. People start to forget that human has to have privacy, secret & their brains belongs to them & not to others. Not to a virus or to any brain or shit. A human brain supposed to be belonging to own body & not to another body. Using satellites to make so much pain to all is terror. Of Once group of people are connected by their own brain to each others might create corruptions to all, two of them communicates might create so much pain to many others including their families. With this, families has to protect own families if anything happens. So playing with satellite by its station people & miss leading with its tools that to activate this of what going on between brains is a terror & nothing good about. I my self hates politics, and don't want any of it. Because I hate politics & don’t want any of it. Like to live far away from this corruption which might lead to blood of some one or death to some or many or none if there understands between. Good relations remain good & forgiveness some required. But memories remain. Those brains who still connected suffer unless both parties to ignore thinking of each others. So we don't need any interference from any brain which might bring any one to remembrance. Since ten years and more I had been suffering from this problem. Any brain that is connected to any brains suffers because of memories or thinking of present or past or shared memories. This type of virus is a killing to all. It is a deadly virus that made people so afraid from each others. But to ignore is the best even though there is some suffering. With respect to relations is needed for all to minimize the pressure on each others & to live with less problems. All of it has to end one day & God to help. Once we are all having children we all to care for. Let's say past is past, now and then is more important. Past's only memories and lessons & no one have to ask anybody anything, not all is God, & relations to be respected by all people. & no one has the right to speak nonsense about anybody & none is judge or God. Voodoo wheel in the sky keeps on turning. How nice Satanism between satellites in space & on ground; that to connect between countries! For what? To spy on human brain! So it is a trap to all. Any of them can judge? So fuck you all shit satellites. You & you're fucking shit satins in stations what a big waste of time. What you'll want? A third world war? Fuck your selves you pigs shit you all are terrorists & nothing good. Sky nets is the virus your satellites! Making so nice budgets & building big fortune. The rich getting richer & the poor getting poorer. Some gains & the remaining to lose! (It is a corruptions & trap to many nations for own people to suffer) cold war every where! & upraise of weapons & terrorists with their evil souls! Where was the law or peace all these years? With this virus that been created by international NASA programs that uses Human brains trade by attack even! Whets on the way now to all? Un known. Is it grace or curse? God to help us all to stay alive or those behind the shadows in stations to stop the killings & waste of our time & lives by stopping the usage of such deadly programs of corruptions & war making by those satins. The question is: are all satellites using such programs of NASA in the same way on own people? Is there satellites asking for war & some asking for peace while others waiting & watching while hacking & spying between them all? What in the space going on? What on ground going on? It is endless if they don't stop & quit the usage of deadly NASA package & satellites spying from hurting man kind & future destiny. Let peace to take over in life & back to normal life without any radiation by wide & narrow beaming which makes all corruptions & black hole existence for us to live in with its different radiations even within our brains sharing for free (even by force) of thoughts that creates lot of bla bla in our lives that creates lot of wonderings & ???!!! Action - Reactions (causality) a non stop cause & causes. A none stop Subjects, concepts & issues! Questions everyday! Answers everyday! Ok! I say yes & I say no to the same question! Who is judging? Yes I did no I didn't! If it is or it is not! The answer for all is: stop trapping me. This is not your business it's my brain, my body, my soul & my life. Stop your Satan work! Stop the war of yours you shit satellites & brains. Stop challenging your selves to win or to lose or to waste time by killing us all & seeking the unknown. Stop victimizing my soul, our souls & give us the truth & logic not zigzags to live with. Don't irradiate or play with our believes & our trust in God you satins. Leave me with my God & take me out from this hole of yours & stop farting in my brain & other brains when ever you like or making brains to fart. Mixing all type of all brains in one hole or pot for all to share each others or with only me! For what? To fight! To kill! To fuck each others! To love each others! To have entertainment sucking each other brains! To trap each others! To investigate! Or maybe to seek what can be taken for free & only from me! Or what's all about? One for all & all for one! Release me at once because this is the only peace I know by telling you the truth & wish harm to no one since 2000 & even before you shit satins. Telling you all what I want is to live in a normal life & to be a family man. Was that much to ask for? Used to tell you all: I don't need corruptions. You'll were what to me in all these years? Ask your selves. Who is my witness other than God? Shame on you all. Stop mixing good & bad together to create a war out of them for Satan to gain out of corruptions. Enough means enough. Why I'm still connected & you took everything from my brain by force without a permission & shared it & still sharing with many brains: (thoughts, idea's, dreams, imagination, true & false of past from my memories & present that I'm living with thinking of it so far) all this for free? Who you to do this to me? What is the reason? Kill me if you want Satan! I'm not God or Jesus or angel nor animal or machine! I am a human & hate to be a slave to any of you or an asset & want to live my life as how God & me wants not any of you. Would any of you like to be a slave to any of any? Would you like to live my life! My body! My brain! My eyes! My everything of me? All is allowed to live & do what ever pleased but me nothing is allowed & when ever I do something yet to be blamed because they (station people) are still living in my brain having fun maybe & hunting brains under skulls & hearts under its chest bones with their secret weapon that can kill brain or heart at any time wanted. (Terrorists in the stations). End the hacking & sharing with brains before it's too late or we all dies & the most shall go to hell but not those who has good minds with good loving hearts, those never dies, angels they are to last! This what you brought to your selves Arabs by attacking America. What I got to do with any of it? I am a victim you shit brains stop victimizing me more & more. Enough killing me with so much pain you shit mafia of Islam. No where to go, no where to hide. Solve the problem now & stop your shit from shitting from space. I had enough shit from you shit Satan's in shit stations. The truth is peace! God is truth. I believe in the truth not in shit. Enjoy life while can or while dying before the real dying real death Arabs. Or waiting for 3rd world war to take over? Time is passing & going on waste. I hate wastage. You all wasted my life can any of you denies? Can you bring back my wasted years to me at least other than my suffering that you forced me to suffer all these years? For what I'd to suffer so much in Muslim or Satan country of yours? Is this international movie to all of you Arabs or Satan's? While entire world witnessing on you all? What a Nice king's Visit along with his brothers asking me what about peace that was in 2002! Now What about God you Muslims? Hi Arabs! Any of you wants anything still you fucking shit Satan's in Jordan? Tracing brain to trap others! Shame on you all it is a trap to all of you too satins. Stories are all over the world! I wrote you my story above! What else do you want? _____________The End___________ Written in 21/10/2010. True story as previous ones. Bye for now. God bless.

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Take What You Want From Me, But Give Me The Option To Say Yes Or No Please. Reaching to my brain without my permission & play with as you want! In whose law you shit satellite station people (terrorists)! Don't Rush Me In Shit Of Yours! Should I Shit With You All? Don't Force Me Please. I Don't Want To Fight Any Of You. Real God Is My God. Fight My God Before Me. Who Wants To Be Me? To Live In Me! Or In My Brain! Who I Am For You To Do So? Any Better? Shit Brains God Is Waiting. I Am Male Or Female What Any Of You Are? Any Better? Don't Play With Me. Playing With Your Own God Own Self's But Not With Me. Stop Your Satan Within Your Selves. Shame On You All. & Shame On Those Who Did Sacrifice Me To You All. And Shut Up All. My God Is So Much Angry On All Of You Because I Cant Find Peace Among You All. Who Wins? GOD Or Satan? I'm Not Taking Cover Behind Any Nation Or Religion! But Under My God I'm Protected From All Of You. What You Want Still? One satellite can report to many! & so on! I'm Waiting. I'm Limited But My God Is Un Limited. Those Behind The Shadows Are Still Learning From Me Assuming That I yet To Teach Their Communities. My Life Gone On Waste For All I Guess. Stop Begging People & Live With God Not With Me. That Goes For All. Shut The Fuck Up. Why I'm Suffering? I want Explanation To Show It To You All. My Life Gone On Waste For What & To Whom? Those Who Plays With Our Brains Are Needed To Expose With Confession Of What They Were Doing To Us All & Why Still They Doing So & Still Using TV. Indoor Of Ours? Are They Better Than God? Is This Technology Thought Them To Be So! What About God? No Zigzag Way 's Please. Who You All To Do This To God? Good Among You & Shit Among You. What Remains Among You All? Good Or Bad? War Or Peace? Who Is God? I am a human but not perfect even while I'm naked, told you all, you'll picked a wrong person to play with since a long time back. Animals feels what's wrong with you all? leave me alone with my God please. Even if I go in the darkest deepest valley of death I wont be afraid once God with me & I'm with. I don't see any reason for me to suffer this much! Since when this virus were there? Are we living or dying? Is there meaning to survive to live with so much pain? Who did this to me with so much insisting of killings? Who brought this Satan Virus to us all since long time back to last for now? This what I felt & still feeling. Did I ask for any of it! I have the biggest why to ask! Who Is Perfect? Who crucified Jesus! killers, cheaters they were. Don't do this mistake again please if it was. NASA & your programs buss off. Or there shall be no God to all. Who wants my past? While God can open not only your pasts put also Nations pasts & histories! As well your religions pasts once we all are connected with brains. !!!! Are we living with two heads now? Logic & un logic? Or learning? Well stick with logic please. Who those behind the shadows to do so to all of us? Stop blaming me. Blame your self's for blaming me. All waiting all to understand. Your kids gives much of hell to me & all of you knows that! a Human Nature to learn & seeks for more. Even Families still learning. What future you all seeking for? Even for your children's! What about God? Bring me my wasted years of my life you Satan's! My soul belongs to me, to my God & to no one else. Any of you God or Satan? Answer this question please! That goes for all of you to ask to ask your self's. Stop killing me. Are you all are sick?! Stop thanking me or blaming me. all of you the same to me. I wish some one helps me. some one who knows God like me. It's over since the day it started! but no one wants to end it. (why?) Because they like to learn for free (is there anything for free), to destroy man kind inner believe towards believing in mighty God & mixing with total different levels of brains. If I'm bad what about you? I can say fuck you all! No matter those eyes of mine or those ears of mine to see & hear, I remain the same as I am. A Human! or maybe wanting me something else? Leave something good in my life at least GOD. Why don't you stop it all! I don't like to be involved with any of you from here or else where. I treat people as how I want them to treat me. Logic honest human & honest logic humans (no zigzag ways please). Stop sucking my brain you Vampires you Dracula’s. Suck all brains then! Who is miss using technology ha? Answer this question your selves. What about God? Challenging God you shit brains behind the shadows in your shit satellite stations assuming Virus in the air. Ask your selves where this virus such as cow madness came from! People started since long back to kill people by their tongs & by their inner thinking. Blaming & making much suffering to many good & bad people that each has a family. My mother last words of her was (((Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God, Thank you God))) She fallen sick with liver cancer in Jordan & suffered a lot for months. Then taken to Kuwait for medical treatment & died. Then shifted to Jordan to be parried. Her last words I heard by phone from Kuwait. Hi Satellite Station People in Jordan in 2 locations Baqaa old satellite station & Balqaa newer one by Kuwait money & kuwaties share holders since 2002 at the time of "sept 11th".Artificial God & Artificial Satan. Ohh is it nice. Still having a nice fun? Should we all to shit blood & to have bubbles in asshols to satisfy all? Making a human afraid to look for a job even! or stopping from finding any! Should I start to wanck to please you! I Used to tell you all before 10 years & more: Once there is no humanity & mercy in hearts & minds then what its going to be? Nothing but shit, any better than that? Since when Satan in station speaks peace? You tell me! Today 27th, Oct 2010 I opened the main door & found this cat that been crying at night. I thought its cry was out of hunger & I knew it wasn’t my cat’s voice. I been laying down going to sleep, I said to my self, at morning if it still there I’ll feed some & went to deep sleep. Today when I got up, saw it! It was so hurt, it’s mouth was almost half away out! But teeth were all there. Young cat it was almost 2 months old (black & white) So skinny & so in pain. Cant even to stand, some one brought to my door. My cat didn’t show since last 2 day’s! I wondered & said it’s ok, have to take care of this one now. I went & purchased some cold meat to feed, it wanted to eat but with pain. Eat so less. I brought some water & it’s head falls into full plate & can’t take a breath. Raising it’s head just to breath. I said it needs more care, went to pharmacy & brought it some medicine to put on the huge cut that large portion of it’s flesh were out & to insert medical needle to provide it with fresh milk. Then to cover its wounds with white powder from pharmacy. I did the best I could, but it went more sicker within no time its soul to be given to belonging. It took 4 to 5 time that long deep breath watching it’s stomach blowing several time then stopped while its eyes open. It died while I’m watching. Didn’t know what to do! A living being I lost while trying my best. Can any of you to bring back its soul? Waited for 2 hours to put it in a plastic bag to put in carbage tank. Said God have mercy on its soul. What about you guy’s, what do you think! ------- All has to confess. ------- Satanism’s & their satellites networks: 1) Did they make you to loose so much money? 2) Did they make you to feel that you’re bad? 3) Did they make you to feel that you’re not welcomed to stay at home & in your country? 4) Did they make you to feel that you’re chased by all man kind as if you are criminal nation? 5) Did they beat your heart & your brain by satellites & by neighborhood brains? 6) Did they make a subject out of you & family for all to discuss everything about as if something never ends & makes you to suffer day & night? 7) Did they blame you just because you are a human? 8) Did they try to kill you several times by car? 9) Did they try to rape your privacy & independency all times? 10) Did they start to say that’s why we all dead? 11) Did they still Bla Bla Bla about reading your brain as if they finding answers to solve your problems or still analyzing your past, present & future? 12) Did they solve any of you’re problems? 13) Did they rape you’re past & present by force? Assuming movie, war, peace, business, security, virus & human rights? 14) Did they approached to you by Satellites & played with your TV. Indoor at home? 15) Did they connected you’re inner brain thinking with other countries brains? 16) Did they scanned you’re in brain many times taking you back to past since the day of birth? 17) Did they try always to interfere with you’re privacy of thinking? 18) Did they corrupt you’re inner mind assuming you’re bad or good everyday? 19) Did they try to keep you in their inner thinking to approach to you’re brain to keep you in shame at all times? 20) Did they try to make you to loose control over your self? 21) Did they laugh at you in TV? 22) Did they tell you to play with your self? 23) Did they do or don’t of what ever? 24) Did you hear whisperings in you’re inner skull & chest? 25) Did you hear you’re inner thinking sound in the air? 26) Did you hear voices speaking about you in the streets? 27) Did you hear threatening from many sounds assuming that you with or against the King? 28) Did you hear a voice from TV. To suicide your self? 29) Did you hear that the King want to see own people trough you? 30) Did you hear bad words about the king, government & public? 31) Did you hear that you are involved with upper country heads? 32) Did you try to explain at all times that your soul belongs to you? 33) Did you hear that entire world gone on sane? 34) Did you hear speaking sounds about your son, daughter, father & mother? 35) Did you survive under so much daily pain? 36) Did you feel you living alone but all brains living with you? 37) Did you feel that all behaving Gods & Satan’s upon you? 38) Were they scanning on you to laugh at you while using WC? 39) Were your inner mind corrupted during your prayer? 40) Did you witness that people taking everything from your brain, some laugh, some shout, some understand, some wonders & ask to gain answers from you on daily bases by forcing you to confess? 41) Have you fallen sick several times a day for the last 11years & more? 42) Did you cry day & night with so much pain that kills you inside knowing some one watching & witnessing your pain & having fun a human suffering. What would they gain? What I got to do with any mankind issues once been the victim of you all! Play far away from my brain you brain suckers. Causing viruses in the air that causing us all cancers & madness! Using NASA package that its programs full of viruses above humans! 1) Rain Brain Scan (all to one & one to all!) (Toura "little" Poura "much")To how many groups or families? 2) Tele-Transport (Input-Output data to machine storages & human brains!) 3) Dynamic Eyes (dim light from above & sparks that causes blindness using for the above 1 & 2!) 4) Media usages for above 1+2+3! (TV, Radio, Mobiles, Sounds in the air, indoor & human inners!). This is Satan work & waste of time. Is God without meaning now? God remains the only winner. You all have past & histories! Who any among of you without sins & mistakes? Now all of you are sinners & mistake holders till the rest of your lives. Having fun with victims! Thanks to NASA package & your inner minds. God still witnessing each one of you. Brain talk & connection! Virus’s from satellite (sound matching mixing) remains in recordable Cd’s! Other than dead belonging ones words to reach to our brains! Who still plays with such viruses? Any of you better than God? ------ All has to confess.--- Dear highest level ever business makers in the entire world wide on this global planet Earth of ours. Good day to you all; My regards to your esteemed concerns along with your valuable teams of yours. Concerning the entire world wide peace & justice, concerning satellite stations & their satellites in space. As we all knows that there is agreements between manufactures (NASA) & buyers (Countries) NASA build a huge rockets & different types of satellites. Each satellite has a black box full of information’s that shows the full usage of used satellites & how been used such as airplane. Each satellite in the space needs maintenance once there is something wrong. Some viruses, some technical support, some over usage parts yet to be replaced & what ever might happen in connection with station on ground. For a country to pay much budget to have such project which costs much in accordance to different agreements between. After all it is a business. Knowing that much of what went wrong for the last 10years & more were un logic to us all. Lot of involvements from many countries took over even in space. News, sound matching mixings in TV, radio & even cell phones! Movies tell of what going on. At the end Peace & war. Approaching to human brains to play with! That sucks. Sucking human memories & scanning using NASA Package full of virus’s means death to many humans. Looking at smaller issues to ignore the real big ones, means illegal & against the truth, God & all types of Human law's. Such package is so danger not only to certain humans but to all mankind. It is called killings the way of how been used & with this much of insisting without a break, mainly connected with many other satellites in space & stations on ground. This caused hell to many families. After all it is a Satan work that play’s with the real law of God’s creation. This electro magnetic radiation field is killing virus can kills all beings & make life shorter. A human has sensors & nerves. To loose control means corruptions even in streets & between families. Once such happens this might lead to internal & external corruptions due to family relations in all over the world. Who wants this to happen? Other than that human rights & what about real God the one who created the entire Universe. Or is it some business to supply such package for other types for numbers of business! Such NASA Package full of viruses been used, that also effected other satellites, countries & populations! Has to be eliminated by you NASA International. Same as in the movie of Arnold Shartznagger in terminator III. Who wants a 3rd world war to start? We humans, we fall sick, angry, up normal, going coco & so on. You also having families & caring for & for their future! This also can be called International Peace. I know this might cost much for certain countries. Why not once it’s serving God. Past is past, now & then much important. This also to stop terror activities. Budgets speak to you NASA & maybe money can take us all back to normal life. After all, this is a good business to you NASA. You know how big the universe that contains much Galaxies & planets (who creates?) Now a day’s nations caring sins & mistakes in their inners for not solving such problem. All are guilty for having physical torching to them selves & to others. Reaching to no where & at the end all say’s God to help. This type of virus should have no existence in any nation once Universal Justice is there. As if all living & still living in a big lie not knowing what’s still coming! Good or bad! But Law & God is logic for us all. In whose law this still going on? Money, money that’s so funny in a rich man’s world. How much do you want? Help, a Satan virus took over us all. SOS poor lonely planet. Should we keep on crying? For how long? What a big waste. Or this is my feelings only? As you know that since 11th Sept 2002 up to now un logic took over many countries with this type of virus. Movies, musical clips & songs, been established to play certain roles to expose such virus & what can do to mankind. United States of America along with Arab world played as America under attack with Al Qeeda organization assuming business & peace. This type of business trapped many families & individuals. Created victims nonsense & made them to loose much. Made people to trap people but the question is: is this logic? History been created & registered in countries history for still coming future to call for. Was it war or peace? One for all & all for one! (Human issues one by one) but once for all (one satellite to stop for all to stop such NASA package). So it is International Issue (world wide) since that time. All now including populations are involved! Waiting for something to happen without knowing what might it be. What about the 1) future, 2) history, 3) peace & 4) justice? The main question is what about GOD that covers the 4 mentioned above & much more. Our planet is still under attack. Shame on all. Why should I go trough this to speak about to you all even by force & under pressure? That's why all God's (different brains with different levels, different age, different traditions & religions, males & females!) is this law or business or something else! Is this God's wish? One more thing, stop sharing my brain many God's & how many you all? What it got to do with me or with any of you? It could happen to any of us at any time! Be aware from the coming unknown. As if a subject that can not be closed! Hi Electronic Governments, still wishes to play? All satellites hacks on each others in the space that gravity has no existence & easier to pick any signals everything is connected! Seek knowledge far away from me! What I got to do with any of you? You all hurt me so much! I did not ask for this owner! Besides I'm not Jesus of yours. Oh God have mercy on us all & heal the world. It seems all been trapped! All has to quiet, stop playing with viruses. Are Tsunamis & Earthquakes natural disasters or artificial? Once a satellite can vibrate a human skull. What a magic! Mini Skull quake, Heart quake & Body quake? Other than brains redirecting & torching. What a technology! Where is peace? God is so angry. ------- At the end All has to confess.------ Knowledge & information seekers, those behind the shadows once they takes by any type of technology & share such information's by force or not Has to pay in return. such right has to be reserved to those who is suffering & not wanting to give any of their secrets. This is called terrorists against human brain & soul (a victim been created) & once there are witnesses this also to assure the victim rights. This is the logic to all man kind mainly this remained for over than 12 years playing with a human nerve system. Or there shall be no human rights or no God to many that might create a war as during such period lot of corruptions took over a place. The money or what ever commodities can be exchanged but a human brain & suffering soul with what to be exchanged. Satellites played with human destiny assuming business & trade with human brains & inner feelings & playing still with souls to create lecturing or corruptions using dark side & bright side of a human brain & inner believes. No private secrets, work or business & no future thinking once taking the thinking what to do for tomorrow! Gods or Satan's, FBI, Judges. Advocates, Hollywood, Bollywood! Artificial or Natural! Logic not logic! Broad casting to many satellite channels in one satellite such as Arab & Nile Sat & branch satellites that plays with all Sat's as well. Soul marriage been created with inner thinking & brain suckers. Did you all forget about God for over than 12 years? & keeping parrying victims while they still alive! Read the meaning of money below! Please Read: Now a days, It seems we are living in a "human brain sucking" life which is completely different than what was in the past either real facts or only in movies! Such as "Wolf Man, Dracula & Vampires". Is this a movie or a real fact Logic that all are living since past years? WOLFMAN You don't understand. Every night when the moon is full I turn into a wolf. COSTELLO You and twenty million other guys! THE ORIGINAL PRINCE DRACULA Bran Castle Bran Castle sits high in the mountains of Transylvania, a region in central Romania. Prince Vlad Dracula, who inspired the Count Dracula of horror fame, used the castle as his headquarters during raids on Transylvania in the 15th century. Encarta Encyclopedia Susan McCartney/Photo Researchers, Inc. The novel by Stoker was inspired by the fearsome reputation of Vlad Dracula, prince of Walachia (now part of Romania). Vlad was born about 1431 in Transylvania, the son of Vlad Dracul, who was then in exile. Dracul means “dragon” or “devil” in Romanian, and dracula was known by his enemies as “son of the devil.” They were fierce rulers. Vlad Dracul was murdered in 1447, and his son ruled by terror. By the time Vlad Dracula was overthrown in 1462, he had killed tens of thousands of his people, primarily by impaling them on stakes, a gruesome way to die. Vlad became known as Vlad the Impaler. Vampires are creatures of legend and folklore. Like all vampires, Count Dracula is able to come to life each night by sucking the blood of living people. When Dracula leaves his castle in Transylvania to go to England, he creates a reign of terror in the Stoker novel. After first attacking the beautiful Lucy Westenra, who later becomes a vampire, Dracula seeks out her friend Mina Harker. As Dracula pursues his victims he is, in turn, pursued by Jonathan Harker, a lawyer married to Mina. Harker is convinced by Dutch scientist Abraham Van Helsing that the only way to stop Dracula is to find the coffin that conceals him during the day and drive a stake through his heart. Harker discovers the coffin and Dracula is destroyed. Brain Suckers, stop killing us all. Are we all humans or not? Away from our brains. Vampire, in folklore, a corpse that rises from the grave during the night, often in the form of a bat, and, for nourishment, sucks the blood of sleeping humans. Various talismans and herbs supposedly avert vampires, but, according to tradition, they can be destroyed only by cremation or by stakes driven through their hearts. Belief in vampires originated in ancient times and was especially widespread among the Slavs. The novel Dracula (1897) by the British writer Bram Stoker tells the story of the Transylvanian vampire Count Dracula, who became one of the most popular subjects of horror films. Cremation, practice of burning human corpses. In cremation the body is reduced to ashes in specially constructed furnaces; the ashes are then preserved in an urn, and are either buried in the urn, or are scattered (often in accordance with the wishes of the deceased, for instance, at sea, or over sacred ground). Evidence of cremation dates from antiquity. Pottery vessels from the Neolithic Period, filled with the ashes of several individuals, have been found throughout Europe. Between 1400 BC and AD 200, cremation was the preferred burial custom, especially among Roman aristocrats; the Caesar family was one of many to choose this mode. Between the 3rd and 19th centuries, Christianity became widely accepted. Its doctrines forbade cremation because of the belief that the body could not be resurrected if it were destroyed. Early Jews also prohibited cremation, believing it was the desecration of a work of God. Orthodox Jews, the Eastern Orthodox Christian Churches, and Muslims are still forbidden to cremate their dead. Other groups of people, especially in India, continued to practise cremation and still do today. At present, cremation is practised by some Jews and Christians, and by Buddhists, Sikhs, and Hindus. Economic and sanitary considerations are the principal reasons for the increased number of cremations in recent years. Expanding populations have created land shortages, causing a space for burial to become scarce and expensive. In addition, burial can sometimes contaminate water supplies for entire communities. This is especially serious when death has been caused by a highly contagious disease. A society advocating cremation was founded in England in 1874. Although initially opposition was great to the modern revival of cremating the dead, strict legal requirements to determine the cause of death allayed opponents' fears that evidence of a murder might be destroyed by cremation. Echolocation, use of sound by some animals to perceive surroundings. By emitting sounds and listening for their echoes, animals are able to find prey, avoid obstacles, and navigate without using vision. Echolocation is used at night or in environments that are perpetually dark, such as inside caves, underground, or in the deep sea. Four groups of animals use echolocation: cetaceans (whales and dolphins), bats (see Bat: Echolocation), birds, and shrews. II. HOW ECHOLOCATION WORKS Echolocation and Prey Detection Bats use auditory stimuli to navigate and to locate and catch insect prey. High frequency pulses of sound emitted by the bat bounce off objects in its path and return as echoes. Various sensory cells in the bat’s brain interpret these echoes to determine the location and some physical properties of the objects, creating a spatial “map” that governs the bat’s behavior. Sounds are vibrations that travel through air, water, or solid objects. The number of vibrations per second is known as the frequency, and it is measured in units of cycles per second, or hertz. Sounds with higher frequencies are heard as higher tones. Tones higher than the limits of human hearing, usually above 20,000 hertz, are called ultrasounds. When a sound strikes an object, the sound bounces back, or reflects. The returning sound is called an echo. By careful interpretation of returning echoes, animals can gauge an object’s distance, size, and whether the object is moving away from or toward them. The length of time between when a sound is emitted and when it returns as an echo indicates how far away an object is—echoes take longer to return from objects that are farther away. The loudness of an echo is determined by the size of the object, its distance, and its texture. Echoes from an approaching object are compressed, returning at a higher frequency than when they were sent (see Doppler Effect). For an object moving away, the effect is the opposite. Echolocators create a very precise image from the echoes they hear. Studies have shown that killer whales can distinguish between cod and salmon, and bats can avoid very fine wires while flying at full speed. Toothed whales and dolphins emit sounds for echolocation that span a wide frequency, from the lower tones used in human speech (around 250 hertz) to ultrasounds (around 220,000 hertz) that are way beyond the limit of human hearing. Other echolocating animals emit sounds within a narrower range. Short bursts of high-pitched sounds are most effective for echolocation. The sounds are pulsed, leaving silent pauses during which the animal listens for echoes. As hunters close in on their prey, the sounds emitted increase from 1 to 5 pulses per second to as many as 200 per second in bats and 500 per second in killer whales. In order not to deafen itself while the pulse is produced, the hunter uses muscles to immobilize the small bones that transmit sound from the eardrum to the inner ear. III. ANIMALS THAT USE ECHOLOCATION Sperm Whale The clicking sounds emitted by a sperm whale bounce off of underwater objects and reflect echoes back to the whale. Sperm whales use echolocation to find prey, and mother sperm whales interpret the echoes from their clicks to monitor the location of their young. Encarta Encyclopedia Flip Nicklin/Minden Pictures/Library of Natural Sounds, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. All rights reserved. Most bats use their larynx to produce ultrasounds between 20,000 and 120,000 hertz. An exception is the rousette bat, the only type of Old World fruit bat that uses echolocation. These cave-dwelling bats click their tongues to make sounds that are audible to humans. The clicks bounce off cave walls to help the bats navigate in the dark confines of the cave. Some bats, like the American leaf-nosed bats, use elaborate nasal structures to amplify and focus sounds. Most bats have funnel-shaped ears with complex ridges, which presumably improve the accuracy with which echoes are received. The speed of hunting bats is extraordinary: Typically, less than half a second passes from detecting to capturing prey. Oilbird An oilbird peers out of its nearly inaccessible nest in a rocky cave in Trinidad’s Arima Valley. Oilbirds produce a steady clicking sound that acts as a sonarlike echolocation system, helping them to navigate within the dark caves in which they live. Moths use a number of strategies to defend themselves from bats. Some moths have wings covered in soft scales that muffle the echo. Tiger moths emit clicks of their own to identify themselves to bats, and the bats quickly learn to associate the clicks with the foul-tasting moths. Many moths have sound receptors to detect the emitted sounds of an approaching bat; alerted, the moths take evasive action. Greater Horseshoe Bat Bats make a series of short, high-frequency sounds while flying, using the echoes to locate the direction and distance of prey. The horseshoe bat received its name from its unique nose leaf, which covers its upper lip and nostrils in a horseshoelike shape. Some scientists believe such bats may use their nose leaf to direct sound at their targets. Encarta Encyclopedia Library of Natural Sounds, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Robert C. Stein. All rights reserved./Stephen Dalton/Animals Animals The echolocation sounds of toothed whales, produced in their nasal passages, are focused into a narrow beam as they pass through the melon, a waxy, lens-shaped body in the forehead. The echoes are received by the lower jaw and pass through oil-filled sinuses to the inner ear, which is insulated from the skull by a foamlike pad that cuts out irrelevant noise. Upon closing in on their prey, both sperm whales and killer whales can produce pulses strong enough to stun their prey. Cave swiftlets and oilbirds, which roost and nest in caves, are the only birds that use echolocation. As they fly from daylight to darkness, their normal chirruping calls change to a buzzing sound that enables them to navigate inside dark caves. Shrews produce sounds at ultrasonic frequencies. These sounds may be used for echolocation, but with shrews this ability is crude compared with that of bats and whales. IV. HUMAN USE OF ECHOLOCATION Ultrasound Scanning Ultrasound imaging—a technology that incorporates the principles of echolocation—helps physicians to diagnose a variety of medical conditions. Here, an ultrasound-emitting device called a transducer is placed against the abdomen of a pregnant woman. The resulting pattern of echoes will be detected by the transducer and converted into a moving image seen on a monitor, which in turn will provide clues to the age and health of the developing fetus. The 18th century Italian physiologist Lazzaro Spallanzani first noticed that bats with covered eyes could avoid obstacles in flight, while those with plugged ears could not. However, he could offer no explanation. It was not until 1938 that American scientist Donald Griffin, using microphones sensitive to ultrasounds, discovered that bats use ultrasound for echolocation. Humans use echolocation in sonar, a technology that monitors the echoes of underwater sound pulses. Originally proposed for detecting icebergs, sonar was developed to track submarines during World War I (1914-1918). Since then, it has been used for depth sounding and fish tracking, as well as for mapping the ocean floors.

With the development of computers, ultrasound imaging became possible. In this medical technology, ultrasounds are directed into a body, and the waves that reflect off internal organs are converted into detailed images by a computer. Another medical procedure, called ultrasonic lithotripsy, mimics the whale’s attack pulse of intense bursts of focused sound, enabling surgeons to break up kidney stones without surgery. Among the more important Babylonian deities, in addition to Marduk, were Ea, the god of wisdom, spells, and incantations; Sin, the moon god, who had his main temples at Ur and Harran, two cities associated in the Bible with the Hebrew patriarch Abraham; Shamash, the sun god and the god of justice, who is depicted on the stele, or tablet, inscribed with the code of Hammurabi (see Hammurabi, Code of); Ishtar, the ambitious, dynamic, and cruel goddess of love and war; Adad, the god of wind, storm, and flood; and Marduk's son Nabu, the scribe and herald of the gods, whose cult eventually rivaled that of his father in popularity. In addition to the sky gods were the netherworld deities, as well as a large variety of demons, devils, and monsters, who were a constant threat to humanity and its well-being, and a few good, angelic spirits. Babylonian documents indicate that the ethical and moral beliefs of the people stressed goodness and truth, law and order, justice and freedom, wisdom and learning, and courage and loyalty. Mercy and compassion were espoused, and special protection was accorded widows, orphans, refugees, the poor, and the oppressed. Immoral and unethical acts were considered transgressions against the gods and the divine order and were believed to be punished by the gods accordingly. No one was considered to be without sin, and therefore all suffering was held to be deserved. The proper course for Babylonians unhappy with their condition in life was not to argue and complain but to plead and wail, to lament and confess their inevitable sins and failings before their personal god, who acted as their mediator in the assembly of the great gods. According to the Babylonian mythological poem known in world literature as Enuma elish (“When above,” its initial two words), Marduk was granted the leadership of the pantheon as well as the “kingship over the universe entire” as a reward for avenging the gods by defeating Tiamat, the savage and defiant goddess of chaos, and her monstrous host. Following his victory, Marduk fashioned heaven and earth, arranged and regulated the planets and stars, and created the human race. Marduk, in Babylonian religion, the supreme god. Originally, he was a god of thunderstorms. According to Enuma elish, an ancient epic poem of creation, Marduk defeated Tiamat and Kingu, the dragons of chaos, and thereby gained supreme power. Acknowledged as the creator of the universe and of humankind, the god of light and life, and the ruler of destinies, he rose to such eminence that he claimed 50 titles. Eventually, he was called simply Bel, meaning “Lord.” Bel, supreme god of the Babylonians (see Isaiah 46). Bel is the Chaldaic form of Baal and is believed by some to be identical with that god. Like the equivalent Hebrew Baal, the name Bel was used also in the sense of “lord” or “owner.” Bel presided over the air. His consort was Belit. Bel was identified with the Greek god Zeus by the Greek historian Herodotus and was believed by the British Orientalist George Rawlinson to have been different from the Syrian Baal. As Bel-Merodach the god was connected with the planet Jupiter, associated in astral mythology with the productive power of nature. Zeus, in Greek mythology, the god of the sky and ruler of the Olympian gods. Zeus corresponds to the Roman god Jupiter. Zeus was considered, according to Homer, the father of the gods and of mortals. He did not create either gods or mortals; he was their father in the sense of being the protector and ruler both of the Olympian family and of the human race. He was lord of the sky, the rain god, and the cloud gatherer, who wielded the terrible thunderbolt. His breastplate was the aegis, his bird the eagle, his tree the oak. Zeus presided over the gods on Mount Olympus in Thessaly (Thessalia). His principal shrines were at Dodona, in Epirus, the land of the oak trees and the most ancient shrine, famous for its oracle, and at Olympia, where the Olympic Games were celebrated in his honor every fourth year. The Nemean games, held at Nemea, northwest of ?rgos, were also dedicated to Zeus. Logic (Greek logos, “word,” “speech,” “reason”), science dealing with the principles of valid reasoning and argument. The study of logic is the effort to determine the conditions under which one is justified in passing from given statements, called premises, to a conclusion that is claimed to follow from them. Logical validity is a relationship between the premises and the conclusion such that if the premises are true then the conclusion is true. The validity of an argument should be distinguished from the truth of the conclusion. If one or more of the premises is false, the conclusion of a valid argument may be false. For example, “All mammals are four-footed animals; all people are mammals; therefore, all people are four-footed animals” is a valid argument with a false conclusion. On the other hand, an invalid argument may by chance have a true conclusion. “Some animals are two-footed; all people are animals; therefore, all people are two-footed” happens to have a true conclusion, but the argument is not valid. Logical validity depends on the form of the argument, not on its content. If the argument were valid, some other term could be substituted for all occurrences of any one of those used and validity would not be affected. By substituting “four-footed” for “two-footed,” it can be seen that the premises could both be true and the conclusion false. Thus the argument is invalid, even though it has a true conclusion. Scholastic thought was less interested in discovering new facts and principles than in demonstrating the truth of existing beliefs. Its method was therefore dialectical (based upon logical argument), and its intense concern with the logic of argument led to important developments in logic as well as theology. The Scholastic philosopher Saint Anselm of Canterbury adopted Augustine’s view of the complementary relation between faith and reason and combined Platonism with Christian theology. Supporting the Platonic theory of Ideas, Anselm argued in favor of the separate existence of universals, or common properties of things—the properties Avicenna had called essences. He thus established the position of logical realism—an assertion that universals and other ideas exist independently of our awareness of them—on one of the most vigorously disputed issues of medieval philosophy. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Money of the World Most nations have their own system of money and print their own currency. Made of paper, these pieces of currency have very little intrinsic value. As fiat money, however, the paper notes represent a specific monetary value decreed by the government and accepted by the people. The notes pictured here are examples of fiat money from all over the world. , any medium of exchange that is widely accepted in payment for goods and services and in settlement of debts. Money also serves as a standard of value for measuring the relative worth of different goods and services. The number of units of money required to buy a commodity is the price of the commodity. The monetary unit chosen as a measure of value need not, however, be used widely, or even at all, as a medium of exchange. During the colonial period in America, for example, Spanish currency was an important medium of exchange, while the British pound served as the standard of value. The functions of money as a medium of exchange and a measure of value greatly facilitate the exchange of goods and services and the specialization of production. Without the use of money, trade would be reduced to barter, or the direct exchange of one commodity for another; this was the means used in primitive societies, and barter is still practiced in some parts of the world. In a barter economy, a person having something to trade must find another who wants it and has something acceptable to offer in exchange. In a money economy, the owner of a commodity may sell it for money, which is acceptable in payment for goods, thus avoiding the time and effort that would be required to find someone who could make an acceptable trade. Money may thus be regarded as a keystone of modern economic life. The basic money of a country, into which other forms of money may be converted and which determines the value of other kinds of money, is called the money of redemption or standard money. The monetary standard of a nation refers to the type of standard money used in the monetary system. Modern standards have been either commodity standards, in which either gold or silver has been chiefly used as standard money, or fiat standards, consisting of inconvertible currency paper units. The principal types of gold standard are the gold-coin standard, the standard in the United States until 1933; the gold-bullion standard consisting of a specified quantity of gold; and the gold-exchange standard, under which the currency is convertible into the currency of some other country on the gold standard. The gold-bullion standard was used in the United Kingdom from 1925 to 1931, while a number of Latin American countries have used the dollar-exchange standard. Silver standards have been used in modern times chiefly in Asia. Also, a bimetallic standard (see Bimetallism) has been used in some countries, under which either gold or silver coins were the standard currency. Such systems were rarely successful, largely because of Gresham’s law, which describes the tendency for cheaper money to drive more valuable money out of circulation. Most monetary systems of the world at the present time, including those in Canada and the United States, are fiat systems; they do not allow free convertibility of the currency into a metallic standard, and money is given value by government fiat or edict rather than by its nominal gold or silver content. Modern systems are also described as managed currencies, because the value of the currency units depends to a considerable extent on government management and policies. Internally, the monetary systems of Canada and the United States contain many elements of managed currency; although gold coinage is no longer permitted, gold may be owned, traded, or used for industrial purposes. Federal Reserve System The next important change in the currency system was introduced by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which authorized the establishment of 12 regional Federal Reserve banks, with power to issue two types of currency (see Federal Reserve System). The first, and most important, was the Federal Reserve note, which is issued under conditions consistent with economic stability and the needs of trade and industry. As member banks require more currency, they can obtain it from the Federal Reserve banks by drawing on their deposits or borrowing or rediscounting commercial paper if their deposit balances with the Federal Reserve banks are insufficient. The second type of Federal Reserve currency, the Federal Reserve Bank note, was originally intended to replace the national bank notes, but never became a permanent part of the currency because the Federal Reserve notes proved adequate. The national bank notes were retired in 1935, but greenbacks are still part of U.S. paper currency. The economic depression and the epidemic of bank failures in the early 1930s led to sweeping reforms in the nation’s monetary structure. Executive proclamations issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in March and April 1933 prohibited gold exports except under government license, and called in all gold and gold certificates from general circulation, thus ending the gold standard. Under the Gold Reserve Act of January 30, 1934, the country returned to a modified gold standard with a devalued dollar. The act gave the president authority to lower the weight of the gold dollar to between 50 and 60 percent of its former gold content. The following day the president issued a proclamation reducing the gold content of the dollar to 59 percent of that established by the Gold Standard Act of 1900, or from 23.22 to 13.71 grains of fine gold. The years 1933 and 1934 were also marked by important legislation regarding silver. Under the Thomas Amendment to the Emergency Farm Relief Act of May 12, 1933 (commonly known as the Inflation Act), the president was given the power to restore unlimited coinage of silver under a bimetallic system. The Silver Purchase Act, which was signed by the president on June 19, 1934, authorized the nationalization of silver and declared it to be the policy of the United States to have the silver holdings of the U.S. Treasury ultimately make up a maximum of one quarter of the value of the nation’s combined monetary gold and silver stocks. On August 9, 1934, the president issued an executive order requiring that all silver in the United States, with the exception of certain categories such as silver coins, fabricated silver, and silver owned by foreign governments, be delivered to the mints to be coined or held as bullion for later coinage. Under the Silver Purchase Act and subsequent legislation the Treasury purchased large quantities of silver abroad and from domestic producers, which tended to raise the price of the metal and curtail the monetary use of silver abroad, especially in China and India. During much of the 20th century, countries around the world used the gold standard, which tied the value of currencies to the value of gold. The 1944 Bretton Woods Conference established a modified gold standard under which the exchange rates of most currencies were fixed against the gold-based United States dollar. Although the system inspired economic confidence, by the late 1960s the United States became unable to maintain the system and gradually abandoned the Bretton Woods agreement during the 1970s. This 1968 Collier’s Year Book article by economist Eliot Janeway explores the history of the gold standard and the Bretton Woods agreement. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Earth Day was first observed on April 22, 1970. The idea for a nationwide demonstration in support of Earth’s environment came from Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. Nelson is considered the founder of Earth Day. On the first Earth Day in 1970 as many as 20 million Americans in schools and communities across the country participated in rallies and demonstrations on behalf of Earth. In New York City, Mayor John Lindsay closed Fifth Avenue to automobile traffic, and thousands of people attended a fair on ecology in Central Park. III. ACTIVITIES ON EARTH DAY Classroom in Washington, D.C. A teacher in a Washington, D.C., classroom leads students in a project to measure how much garbage each class produces in a week. Educational activities like this take place around the world on Earth Day. They draw attention to human threats to Earth's environment. Encarta Encyclopedia Annie Griffiths Belt/Corbis By 1990 Earth Day had become an international event, with more than 200 million people in 141 countries participating. Environmental groups use Earth Day as an occasion to draw attention to current local and global environmental problems and to discuss commonsense solutions. At fairs, festivals, and talks, people learn about air pollution, water pollution, and soil pollution; the destruction of habitats (see Ecosystem); the devastation of hundreds of thousands of plant and animal species (see Endangered Species); the depletion of nonrenewable resources (see Conservation); and global warming. They explore exhibits on such topics as conserving energy, recycling, renewing natural habitats, leading healthier lives, making their backyards friendly to wildlife, and protecting endangered species. Volunteers gather to pick up litter; clean up streams, reservoirs, and other water supplies; restore parks; plant trees; and participate in other environmental activities. An organization called Earth Day Network coordinates Earth Day activities around the world. The organization estimated that 1,000 groups and 500 million people were participating in Earth Day observances by the early 2000s. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. What is a human? What is the origin? From Adam & Eve! Or from Apes an sisters? From sperm a human came. Children represents their parents! DNA shows the origin of structure from which different structures came from! Read below. Emotion, term frequently and familiarly used as synonymous with feeling. In psychology it signifies a reaction involving certain physiological changes, such as an accelerated or retarded pulse rate, the diminished or increased activities of certain glands, or a change in body temperature, which stimulate the individual, or some component part of his or her body, to further activity. The three primary reactions of this type are anger, love, and fear, which occur either as an immediate response to external stimuli or are the result of an indirect subjective process, such as memory, association, or introspection. The American psychologist John Watson proved in a series of experiments that infants are capable of these three emotions; he also demonstrated that emotional reactions may be conditioned. The external stimuli diminish in importance, as a direct cause of the individual's emotional reaction, in proportion to the individual's maturity, and the stimuli that elicit these emotions develop more complexity. Thus, the same environmental condition that inspires anger in a child may cause fear in an adult. As the emotional degree of the reaction rises, however, the resemblance between the various kinds of reaction increases as well; thus, extreme anger, fear, or resentment have more in common than the same reactions in less exaggerated phases. Momentary physiological change or distortion accompanies all emotional reactions, as in the instance of the accelerated heart action during a fit of anger. Fear, for example, may result in a violent physical manifestation such as the quaking of the limbs or a momentary loss of voice. It may also, by way of contrast, result in an attempt to disguise itself by means of an assumed coolness or even bravado. Limbic System The limbic system is a group of brain structures that play a role in emotion, memory, and motivation. For example, electrical stimulation of the amygdala in laboratory animals can provoke fear, anger, and aggression. The hypothalamus regulates hunger, thirst, sleep, body temperature, sexual drive, and other functions. Emotion, Memory and the Brain: The neural routes underlying the formation of memories about primitive emotional experiences, such as fear, have been traced By Joseph E. LeDoux Despite millennia of preoccupation with every facet of human emotion, we are still far from explaining in a rigorous physiological sense this part of our mental experience. Neuroscientists have, in modern times, been especially concerned with the neural basis of such cognitive processes as perception and memory. They have for the most part ignored the brain's role in emotion. Yet in recent years, interest in this mysterious mental terrain has surged. Catalyzed by breakthroughs in understanding the neural basis of cognition and by an increasingly sophisticated knowledge of the anatomical organization and physiology of the brain, investigators have begun to tackle the problem of emotion. One quite rewarding area of research has been the inquiry into the relation between memory and emotion. Much of this examination has involved studies of one particular emotion—fear—and the manner in which specific events or stimuli come, through individual learning experiences, to evoke this state. Scientists, myself included, have been able to determine the way in which the brain shapes how we form memories about this basic, but significant, emotional event. We call this process 'emotional memory.' By uncovering the neural pathways through which a situation causes a creature to learn about fear, we hope to elucidate the general mechanisms of this form of memory. Because many human mental disorders—including anxiety, phobia, post-traumatic stress syndrome and panic attack—involve malfunctions in the brain's ability to control fear, studies of the neural basis of this emotion may help us further understand and treat these disturbances. Most of our knowledge about how the brain links memory and emotion has been gleaned through the study of so-called classical fear conditioning. In this process the subject, usually a rat, hears a noise or sees a flashing light that is paired with a brief, mild electric shock to its feet. After a few such experiences, the rat responds automatically to the sound or light, even in the absence of the shock. Its reactions are typical to any threatening situation: the animal freezes, its blood pressure and heart rate increase, and it startles easily. In the language of such experiments, the noise or flash is a conditioned stimulus, the foot shock is an unconditioned stimulus, and the rat's reaction is a conditioned response, which consists of readily measured behavioral and physiological changes. Conditioning of this kind happens quickly in rats—indeed, it takes place as rapidly as it does in humans. A single pairing of the shock to the sound or sight can bring on the conditioned effect. Once established, the fearful reaction is relatively permanent. If the noise or light is administered many times without an accompanying electric shock, the rat's response diminishes. This change is called extinction. But considerable evidence suggests that this behavioral alteration is the result of the brain's controlling the fear response rather than the elimination of the emotional memory. For example, an apparently extinguished fear response can recover spontaneously or can be reinstated by an irrelevant stressful experience. Similarly, stress can cause the reappearance of phobias in people who have been successfully treated. This resurrection demonstrates that the emotional memory underlying the phobia was rendered dormant rather than erased by treatment. Fear and Emotional Memory: Fear conditioning has proved an ideal starting point for studies of emotional memory for several reasons. First, it occurs in nearly every animal group in which it has been examined: fruit flies, snails, birds, lizards, fish, rabbits, rats, monkeys and people. Although no one claims that the mechanisms are precisely the same in all these creatures, it seems clear from studies to date that the pathways are very similar in mammals and possibly in all vertebrates. We therefore are confident in believing that many of the findings in animals apply to humans. In addition, the kinds of stimuli most commonly used in this type of conditioning are not signals that rats—or humans, for that matter—encounter in their daily lives. The novelty and irrelevance of these lights and sounds help to ensure that the animals have not already developed strong emotional reactions to them. So researchers are clearly observing learning and memory at work. At the same time, such cues do not require complicated cognitive processing from the brain. Consequently, the stimuli permit us to study emotional mechanisms relatively directly. Finally, our extensive knowledge of the neural pathways involved in processing acoustic and visual information serves as an excellent starting point for examining the neurological foundations of fear elicited by such stimuli. My work has focused on the cerebral roots of learning fear, specifically fear that has been induced in the rat by associating sounds with foot shock. As do most other investigators in the field, I assume that fear conditioning occurs because the shock modifies the way in which neurons in certain important regions of the brain interpret the sound stimulus. These critical neurons are thought to be located in the neural pathway through which the sound elicits the conditioned response. During the past 10 years, researchers in my laboratory, as well as in others, have identified major components of this system. Our study began at Cornell University Medical College, where I worked several years ago, when my colleagues and I asked a simple question: Is the auditory cortex required for auditory fear conditioning? In the auditory pathway, as in other sensory systems, the cortex is the highest level of processing; it is the culmination of a sequence of neural steps that starts with the peripheral sensory receptors, located, in this case, in the ear. If lesions in (or surgical removal of) parts of the auditory cortex interfered with fear conditioning, we could conclude that the region is indeed necessary for this activity. We could also deduce that the next step in the conditioning pathway would be an output from the auditory cortex. But our lesion experiments in rats confirmed what a series of other studies had already suggested: the auditory cortex is not needed in order to learn many things about simple acoustic stimuli. We then went on to make lesions in the auditory thalamus and the auditory midbrain, sites lying immediately below the auditory cortex. Both these areas process auditory signals: the midbrain provides the major input to the thalamus; the thalamus supplies the major input to the cortex. Lesions in both regions completely eliminated the rat's susceptibility to conditioning. This discovery suggested that a sound stimulus is transmitted through the auditory system to the level of the auditory thalamus but that it does not have to reach the cortex for fear conditioning to occur. This possibility was somewhat puzzling. We knew that the primary nerve fibers that carry signals from the auditory thalamus extend to the auditory cortex. So David A. Ruggiero, Donald J. Reis and I looked again and found that, in fact, cells in some regions of the auditory thalamus also give rise to fibers that reach several subcortical locations. Could these neural projections be the connections through which the stimulus elicits the response we identify with fear? We tested this hypothesis by making lesions in each one of the subcortical regions with which these fibers connect. The damage had an effect in only one area: the amygdala.

Filling in the Picture: That observation suddenly created a place for our findings in an already accepted picture of emotional processing. For a long time, the amygdala has been considered an important brain region in various forms of emotional behavior. In 1979 Bruce S. Kapp and his colleagues at the University of Vermont reported that lesions in the amygdala's central nucleus interfered with a rabbit's conditioned heart rate response once the animal had been given a shock paired with a sound. The central nucleus connects with areas in the brain stem involved in the control of heart rate, respiration and vasodilation. Kapp's work suggested that the central nucleus was a crucial part of the system through which autonomic conditioned responses are expressed. In a similar vein, we found that lesions of this nucleus prevented a rat's blood pressure from rising and limited its ability to freeze in the presence of a fearcausing stimulus. We also demonstrated, in turn, that lesions of areas to which the central nucleus connects eliminated one or the other of the two responses. Michael Davis and his associates at Yale University determined that lesions of the central nucleus, as well as lesions of another brain stem area to which the central nucleus projects, diminished yet another conditioned response: the increased startle reaction that occurs when an animal is afraid. The findings from various laboratories studying different species and measuring fear in different ways all implicated the central nucleus as a pivotal component of fear-conditioning circuitry. It provides connections to the various brain stem areas involved in the control of a spectrum of responses. Despite our deeper understanding of this site in the amygdala, many details of the pathway remained hidden. Does sound, for example, reach the central nucleus directly from the auditory thalamus? We found that it does not. The central nucleus receives projections from thalamic areas next to, but not in, the auditory part of the thalamus. Indeed, an entirely different area of the amygdala, the lateral nucleus, receives inputs from the auditory thalamus. Lesions of the lateral nucleus prevented fear conditioning. Because this site gets information directly from the sensory system, we have come to think of it as the sensory interface of the amygdala in fear conditioning. In contrast, the central nucleus appears to be the interface with the systems that control responses. Mapping the Mechanism: These findings seemed to place us on the threshold of being able to map the entire stimulus response pathway. But we still did not know how information received by the lateral nucleus arrived at the central nucleus. Earlier studies had suggested that the lateral nucleus projects directly to the central nucleus, but the connections were fairly sparse. Working with monkeys, David Amaral and Asla Pitkanen of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego demonstrated that the lateral nucleus extends directly to an adjacent site, called the basal or basolateral nucleus, which, in turn, projects to the central nucleus. Collaborating with Lisa Stefanacci and other members of the Salk team, Claudia R. Farb and C. Genevieve Go in my laboratory at New York University found the same connections in the rat. We then showed that these connections form synaptic contacts—in other words, they communicate directly, neuron to neuron. Such contacts indicate that information reaching the lateral nucleus can influence the central nucleus via the basolateral nucleus. The lateral nucleus can also influence the central nucleus by way of the accessory basal or basomedial nucleus. Clearly, ample opportunities exist for the lateral nucleus to communicate with the central nucleus once a stimulus has been received. The emotional significance of such a stimulus is determined not only by the sound itself but by the environment in which it occurs. Rats must therefore learn not only that a sound or visual cue is dangerous, but under what conditions it is so. Russell G. Phillips and I examined the response of rats to the chamber, or context, in which they had been conditioned. We found that lesions of the amygdala interfered with the animals' response to both the tone and the chamber. But lesions of the hippocampus—a region of the brain involved in declarative memory—interfered only with response to the chamber, not the tone. (Declarative memory involves explicit, consciously accessible information, as well as spatial memory.) At about the same time, Michael S. Fanselow and Jeansok J. Kim of the University of California at Los Angeles discovered that hippocampal lesions made after fear conditioning had taken place also prevented the expression of responses to the surroundings. These findings were consistent with the generally accepted view that the hippocampus plays an important role in processing complex information, such as details about the spatial environment where activity is taking place. Phillips and I also demonstrated that the subiculum, a region of the hippocampus that projects to other areas of the brain, communicated with the lateral nucleus of the amygdala. This connection suggests that contextual information may acquire emotional significance in the same way that other events do—via transmission to the lateral nucleus. Although our experiments had identified a subcortical sensory pathway that gave rise to fear conditioning, we did not dismiss the importance of the cortex. The interaction of subcortical and cortical mechanisms in emotion remains a hotly debated topic. Some researchers believe cognition is a vital precursor to emotional experience; others think that cognition—which is presumably a cortical function—is necessary to initiate emotion or that emotional processing is a type of cognitive processing. Still others question whether cognition is necessary for emotional processing. It became apparent to us that the auditory cortex is involved in, though not crucial to, establishing the fear response, at least when simple auditory stimuli are applied. Norman M. Weinberger and his colleagues at the University of California at Irvine have performed elegant studies showing that neurons in the auditory cortex undergo specific physiological changes in their reaction to sounds as a result of conditioning. This finding indicates that the cortex is establishing its own record of the event. Experiments by Lizabeth M. Romanski in my laboratory have determined that in the absence of the auditory cortex, rats can learn to respond fearfully to a single tone. If, however, projections from the thalamus to the amygdala are removed, projections from the thalamus to the cortex and then to the amygdala are sufficient. Romanski went on to establish that the lateral nucleus can receive input from both the thalamus and the cortex. Her work in the rat complements earlier research in primates. Once we had a clear understanding of the mechanism through which fear conditioning is learned, we attempted to find out how emotional memories are established and stored on a molecular level. Farb and I showed that the excitatory amino acid transmitter glutamate is present in the thalamic cells that reach the lateral nucleus. Together with Chiye J. Aoki, we showed that it is also present at synapses in the lateral nucleus. Because glutamate transmission is implicated in memory formation, we seemed to be on the right track. Long-Term Potentiation: Glutamate has been observed in a process called long-term potentiation, or LTP, that has emerged as a model for the creation of memories. This process, which is most frequently studied in the hippocampus, involves a change in the efficiency of synaptic transmission along a neural pathway—in other words, signals travel more readily along this pathway once LTP has taken place. The mechanism seems to involve glutamate transmission and a class of postsynaptic excitatory amino acid receptors known as NMDA receptors. Various studies have found LTP in the fear-conditioning pathway. Marie-Christine Clugnet and I noted that LTP could be induced in the thalamo-amygdala pathway. Thomas H. Brown and Paul Chapman and their colleagues at Yale discovered LTP in a cortical projection to the amygdala. Other researchers, including Davis and Fanselow, have been able to block fear conditioning by blocking NMDA receptors in the amygdala. And Michael T. Rogan in my laboratory found that the processing of sounds by the thalamo-amygdala pathway is amplified after LTP has been induced. The fact that LTP can be demonstrated in a conditioning pathway offers new hope for understanding how LTP might relate to emotional memory. In addition, recent studies by Fabio Bordi, also in my laboratory, have suggested hypotheses about what could be going on in the neurons of the lateral nucleus during learning. Bordi monitored the electrical state of individual neurons in this area when a rat was listening to the sound and receiving the shock. He and Romanski found that essentially every cell responding to the auditory stimuli also responded to the shock. The basic ingredient of conditioning is thus present in the lateral nucleus. Bordi was able to divide the acoustically stimulated cells into two classes: habituating and consistently responsive. Habituating cells eventually stopped responding to the repeated sound, suggesting that they might serve to detect any sound that was unusual or different. They could permit the amygdala to ignore a stimulus once it became familiar. Sound and shock pairing at these cells might reduce habituation, thereby allowing the cells to respond to, rather than ignore, significant stimuli. The consistently responsive cells had high-intensity thresholds: only loud sounds could activate them. That finding is interesting because of the role loudness plays in judging distance. Nearby sources of sound are presumably more dangerous than those that are far away. Sound coupled with shock might act on these cells to lower their threshold, increasing the cells' sensitivity to the same stimulus. Consistently responsive cells were also broadly tuned. The joining of a sound and a shock could make the cells responsive to a narrower range of frequencies, or it could shift the tuning toward the frequency of the stimulus. In fact, Weinberger has recently shown that cells in the auditory system do alter their tuning to approximate the conditioned stimulus. Bordi and I have detected this effect in lateral nucleus cells as well. The apparent permanence of these memories raises an important clinical question: Can emotional learning be eliminated, and, if not, how can it be toned down? As noted earlier, it is actually quite difficult to get rid of emotional memories, and at best we can hope only to keep them under wraps. Studies by Maria A. Morgan in my laboratory have begun to illuminate how the brain regulates emotional expressions. Morgan has shown that when part of the prefrontal cortex is damaged, emotional memory is very hard to extinguish. This discovery indicates that the prefrontal areas—possibly by way of the amygdala—normally control expression of emotional memory and prevent emotional responses once they are no longer useful. A similar conclusion was proposed by Edmund T. Rolls and his colleagues at the University of Oxford during studies of primates. The researchers studied the electrical activity of neurons in the frontal cortex of the animals. Functional variation in the pathway between this region of the cortex and the amygdala may make it more difficult for some people to change their emotional behavior. Davis and his colleagues have found that blocking NMDA receptors in the amygdala interferes with extinction. Those results hint that extinction is an active learning process. At the same time, such learning could be situated in connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. More experiments should disclose the answer. Placing a basic emotional memory process in the amygdalic pathway yields obvious benefits. The amygdala is a critical site of learning because of its central location between input and output stations. Each route that leads to the amygdala—sensory thalamus, sensory cortex and hippocampus—delivers unique information to the organ. Pathways originating in the sensory thalamus provide only a crude perception of the external world, but because they involve only one neural link, they are quite fast. In contrast, pathways from the cortex offer detailed and accurate representations, allowing us to recognize an object by sight or sound. But these pathways, which run from the thalamus to the sensory cortex to the amygdala, involve several neural links. And each link in the chain adds time. Conserving time may be the reason there are two routes—one cortical and one subcortical—for emotional learning. Animals, and humans, need a quick-and-dirty reaction mechanism. The thalamus activates the amygdala at about the same time as it activates the cortex. The arrangement may enable emotional responses to begin in the amygdala before we completely recognize what it is we are reacting to or what we are feeling. The thalamic pathway may be particularly useful in situations requiring a rapid response. Failing to respond to danger is more costly than responding inappropriately to a benign stimulus. For instance, the sound of rustling leaves is enough to alert us when we are walking in the woods without our having first to identify what is causing the sound. Similarly, the sight of a slender curved shape lying flat on the path ahead of us is sufficient to elicit defensive fear responses. We do not need to go through a detailed analysis of whether or not what we are seeing is a snake. Nor do we need to think about the fact that snakes are reptiles and that their skins can be used to make belts and boots. All these details are irrelevant and, in fact, detrimental to an efficient, speedy and potentially lifesaving reaction. The brain simply needs to be able to store primitive cues and detect them. Later, coordination of this basic information with the cortex permits verification (yes, this is a snake) or brings the response (screaming, sprinting) to a stop. Storing Emotional Memory: Although the amygdala stores primitive information, we should not consider it the only learning center. The establishment of memories is a function of the entire network, not just of one component. The amygdala is certainly crucial, but we must not lose sight of the fact that its functions exist only by virtue of the system to which it belongs. Memory is generally thought to be the process by which we bring back to mind some earlier conscious experience. The original learning and the remembering, in this case, are both conscious events. Workers have determined that declarative memory is mediated by the hippocampus and the cortex. But removal of the hippocampus has little effect on fear conditioning—except conditioning to context. In contrast, emotional learning that comes about through fear conditioning is not declarative learning. Rather it is mediated by a different system, which in all likelihood operates independently of our conscious awareness. Emotional information may be stored within declarative memory, but it is kept there as a cold declarative fact. For example, if a person is injured in an automobile accident in which the horn gets stuck in the on position, he or she may later have a reaction when hearing the blare of car horns. The person may remember the details of the accident, such as where and when it occurred, who else was involved and how awful it was. These are declarative memories that are dependent on the hippocampus. The individual may also become tense, anxious and depressed, as the emotional memory is reactivated through the amygdalic system. The declarative system has stored the emotional content of the experience, but it has done so as a fact. Emotional and declarative memories are stored and retrieved in parallel, and their activities are joined seamlessly in our conscious experience. That does not mean that we have direct conscious access to our emotional memory; it means instead that we have access to the consequences—such as the way we behave, the way our bodies feel. These consequences combine with current declarative memory to form a new declarative memory. Emotion is not just unconscious memory: it exerts a powerful influence on declarative memory and other thought processes. As James L. McGaugh and his colleagues at the University of California at Irvine have convincingly shown, the amygdala plays an essential part in modulating the storage and strength of memories. The distinction between declarative memory and emotional memory is an important one. W. J. Jacobs of the University of British Columbia and Lynn Nadel of the University of Arizona have argued that we are unable to remember traumatic events that take place early in life because the hippocampus has not yet matured to the point of forming consciously accessible memories. The emotional memory system, which may develop earlier, clearly forms and stores its unconscious memories of these events. And for this reason, the trauma may affect mental and behavioral functions in later life, albeit through processes that remain inaccessible to consciousness. Because pairing a tone and a shock can bring about conditioned responses in animals throughout the phyla, it is clear that fear conditioning cannot be dependent on consciousness. Fruit flies and snails, for example, are not creatures known for their conscious mental processes. My way of interpreting this phenomenon is to consider fear a subjective state of awareness brought about when brain systems react to danger. Only if the organism possesses a sufficiently advanced neural mechanism does conscious fear accompany bodily response. This is not to say that only humans experience fear but, rather, that consciousness is a prerequisite to subjective emotional states. Thus, emotions or feelings are conscious products of unconscious processes. It is crucial to remember that the subjective experiences we call feelings are not the primary business of the system that generates them. Emotional experiences are the result of triggering systems of behavioral adaptation that have been preserved by evolution. Subjective experience of any variety is challenging turf for scientists. We have, however, gone a long way toward understanding the neural system that underlies fear responses, and this same system may in fact give rise to subjective feelings of fear. If so, studies of the neural control of emotional responses may hold the key to understanding subjective emotion as well. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

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Where is the human fate and who is controlling? Human Emotions and Feelings: Admiration, Ambition, Anger, Anxiety, Bitterness, Contempt, Contentment, Despair, Disappointment, Discontent, Disillusionment, Embarrassment, Emotion, Enthusiasm, Envy, Fear, Foreboding, Guilt, Happiness, Hate, Homesickness, Hope, Horror, Inferiority, Intuition, Jealousy, Joy, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Mourning, Nostalgia, Passion, Pity, Pleasure, Regret, Resentment, Satisfaction, Shame, Shyness, Sorrow, Unhappiness, World Weariness. What is love? Love, emotion explored in philosophy, religion, and literature, often as either romantic love, the fraternal love of others, or the love of God. For information on: • fundamental source of love, see Family: The Modern Family • capacity to love as a measure of mental health, see Mental Health • love ranked among other human needs, see Motivation • philosophical considerations of love, see love (with hate) as a basic force in shaping reality in Empedocles; reference to detailed examination of love and hate in Max Scheler; description of love of God in Baruch Spinoza: Philosophy • pre-Christian credos of love, see Essenes; Mithraism; Stoicism: Principles • Christian love of God, self, and others, see Epistles of John; Christianity: Central Teachings;Ethics: Christian Ethics;Existentialism: Existentialism and Literature;Lutheranism: Salvation by Faith • Platonic love, see Marsilio Ficino • rituals and customs of romantic love and marriage, see Betrothal; Celibacy; Dowry; Marriage; Courtly Love • excessive self-love, see explanation of “the Fall” of Adam and Eve in Religion: Salvation; mythological incarnation of obsessive self-love in Narcissus • rejection of romantic love, see Hippolytus; Pygmalion; Arthur Schopenhauer • excessive self-love, see Narcissus, see Cupid; Eros; Freya; Hathor; Ishtar; Sumerian Religion; Venus • creative forms used as expressions of love, see Elegy; Poetry; Popular Music; Romance; Song; Sonnet. Salvation by Faith Salvation, according to Lutheran teaching, does not depend on worthiness or merit but is a gift of God’s sovereign grace. All human beings are considered sinners and, because of original sin, are in bondage to the powers of evil and thus unable to contribute to their liberation (see Justification). Lutherans believe that faith, understood as trust in God’s steadfast love, is the only appropriate way for human beings to respond to God’s saving initiative. Thus, “salvation by faith alone” became the distinctive and controversial slogan of Lutheranism. Opponents claimed that this position failed to do justice to the Christian responsibility to do good works, but Lutherans have replied that faith must be active in love and that good works follow from faith as a good tree produces good fruit. Faith, an attitude of the entire self, including both will and intellect, directed toward a person, an idea, or—as in the case of religious faith—a divine being. Modern theologians agree in emphasizing this total existential character of faith, thus distinguishing it from the popular conception of faith that identifies it with belief as opposed to knowledge. Faith indeed includes belief but goes far beyond it, and in the history of theology the distinction has more often been drawn between faith and works than between faith and knowledge. This distinction was powerfully expressed by the apostle Paul, who argued that the sinful human being cannot achieve salvation through good works, but only through faith in the free grace of God. In this view, forcefully revived by Martin Luther at the time of the Reformation, good works are consequences of faith. The faithful relation to God enables the believer to transcend limitations and bring forth good works. Soul, in many religions and philosophies, the immaterial element that, together with the material body, constitutes the human individual. In general, the soul is conceived as an inner, vital, and spiritual principle, the source of all bodily functions and particularly of mental activities. Belief in some kind of soul that can exist apart from the body is found in all known cultures. In many contemporary nonliterate societies, human beings are said to have several souls—sometimes as many as seven—localized in different parts of the body and having diverse functions. Disease is frequently explained as “soul-loss,” which can occur, for example, when witches steal the soul or evil spirits capture it. In the East, belief in a human soul is central to several philosophical and religious systems. Thus, for instance, in early Hinduism the soul or self (atman) was considered the principle that controls all activities and defines one's self-identity and consciousness. The philosophical Hindu writings, the Upanishads, identify the atman with the divine (Brahman), adding an eternal dimension to the soul. Bound up with matter, the human soul is caught in the cycle of reincarnation until it achieves purification and knowledge and merges once again with ultimate reality (see Transmigration). Buddhism is unique in the history of religions because it teaches that the individual soul is an illusion produced by various psychological and physiological influences. Thus, it has no conception of a soul or self that can survive death. Early Judaism considered the human personality as a whole, without making a sharp distinction between body and soul. By the Middle Ages, however, the soul was defined in Judaism as the principle of life and was considered capable of surviving bodily decay. The Christian doctrine of the soul has been strongly influenced by the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle (see Christianity). Most Christians believe that each individual has an immortal soul and that the human personality as a whole, composed of soul and resurrected body, may, through faith, be granted God's presence in the afterlife (see Resurrection). The Neoplatonic theory of the soul as prisoner in a material body (see Neoplatonism) prevailed in Christian thought until the advent of the 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas, who accepted Aristotle's analysis of the soul and body as two conceptually distinguishable elements of a single substance. The teachings of Islam on the soul resemble those of Judaism and Christianity. According to the Qur'an (Koran), God breathed the soul into the first human beings, and at death the souls of the faithful are brought near to God. SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE The belief in the existence of souls may have important social consequences by reinforcing moral obligations and by serving as a guiding principle in life. The cultural significance of the belief in souls reflects the universality of the problems to which it is a response: the complex question of the human personality, the moral and spiritual experiences of life, and the perennial question of life after death. See also Immortality. Immortality, unending existence of the soul after physical death. The doctrine of immortality is common to many religions; in different cultures, however, it takes various forms, ranging from ultimate extinction of the soul to its final survival and the resurrection of the body. In Hinduism, the ultimate personal goal is considered absorption into the “universal spirit.” Buddhist doctrine promises nirvana, the state of complete bliss achieved through total extinction of the personality. In the religion of ancient Egypt, entrance to immortal life was dependent on the results of divine examination of the merits of an individual's life. Early Greek religion promised a shadowy continuation of life on earth in an underground region known as Hades. In Christianity and Islam, as well as in Judaism, the immortality promised is primarily of the spirit. The former two religions both differ from Judaism in holding that after the resurrection of the body and a general judgment of the entire human race, the body is to be reunited with the spirit to experience either reward or punishment. In Jewish eschatology, the resurrection of the soul will take place at the advent of the Messiah, although the reunion of body and spirit will endure only for the messianic age, when the spirit will return to heaven. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Female Reproductive System The bones of the human female pelvis form a bowl-shaped cavity that supports the weight of a developing fetus and encloses the organs of the female reproductive tract. Two ovaries, the female gonads, produce mature eggs. Leading away from the ovaries are the fallopian tubes, or oviducts, the site of fertilization. The uterus, a muscular organ with an expandable neck called the cervix, houses the developing fetus, which leaves the woman's body through the vagina, or birth canal. Male Reproductive System The organs of the male reproductive system enable a man to have sexual intercourse and to fertilize female sex cells (eggs) with sperm. The gonads, called testicles, produce sperm. Sperm pass through a long duct called the vas deferens to the seminal vesicles, a pair of sacs that lies behind the bladder. These sacs produce seminal fluid, which mixes with sperm to produce semen. Semen leaves the seminal vesicles and travels through the prostate gland, which produces additional secretions that are added to semen. During male orgasm the penis ejaculates semen. Reproduction: Reproduction is accomplished by the union of male sperm and the female ovum. In coitus, the male organ ejaculates more than 250 million sperm into the vagina, from which some make their way to the uterus. Ovulation, the release of an egg into the uterus, occurs approximately every 28 days; during the same period the uterus is prepared for the implantation of a fertilized ovum by the action of estrogens. If a male cell fails to unite with a female cell, other hormones cause the uterine wall to slough off during menstruation. From puberty to menopause, the process of ovulation, and preparation, and menstruation is repeated monthly except for periods of pregnancy. The duration of pregnancy is about 280 days. After childbirth, prolactin, a hormone secreted by the pituitary, activates the production of milk. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. HUMAN Human, common name given to any individual of the species Homo sapiens and, by extension, to the entire species. The term is also applied to certain species that were the evolutionary forerunners of Homo sapiens (see Human Evolution). Scientists consider all living people members of a single species. CLASSIFICATION Homo sapiens is identified, for purposes of classification, as an animal (kingdom Animalia) with a backbone (phylum Chordata) and segmented spinal cord (subphylum Vertebrata) that suckles its young (class Mammalia); that gestates its young with the aid of a placenta (subclass Eutheria); that is equipped with five-digited extremities, a collarbone, and a single pair of mammary glands on the chest (order Primates); and that has eyes at the front of the head, stereoscopic vision, and a proportionately large brain (suborder Anthropoidea). The species belongs to the family Hominidae, the general characteristics of which are discussed below. STRUCTURE AND PHYSIOLOGY Human Spine : Although individual vertebrae move little from one to the next, the human spinal column as a whole is a chain flexible enough to allow us to touch our toes. Its unique S-shape centers the weight of our long bodies over our feet, keeping us from toppling. Animals that walk on all four legs have straighter spines that provide even support for their horizontal bodies. Encarta Encyclopedia Dorling Kindersley Full Size The details of skeletal structure distinguishing Homo sapiens from the nearest primate relatives—the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orangutan—stem largely from a very early adaptation to a completely erect posture and a two-footed striding walk (bipedalism). The uniquely S-shaped spinal column places the center of gravity of the human body directly over the area of support provided by the feet, thus giving stability and balance in the upright position. Other mechanical modifications for bipedalism include a broad pelvis, a locking knee joint, an elongated heel bone, and a lengthened and aligned big toe. Although varying degrees of bipedalism are seen in other anthropoids, all have straight or bowed spines, bent knees, and grasping (prehensile) feet, and all use the hands to bear part of the body weight when moving about. Complete bipedalism in the human freed the hand to become a supremely sensitive instrument for precise manipulation and grasping. The most important structural detail in this refinement is the elongated human thumb, which can rotate freely and is fully opposable to the other fingers. The physiological requirements for speech were secondarily established by erect posture, which positions the vocal cords for controlled breathing, and by the skilled use of the hands. The latter development occurs in association with the enlargement and specialization of a brain area (Broca's convolution) that is a prerequisite for refined control of the lips and tongue. The large (averaging 1400 cc/85.4 cu in) brain of Homo sapiens is approximately double that of early human toolmakers. This great increase in size in only 2 million years was achieved by a process called neoteny, which is the prolongation of retention of immature characteristics. The juvenile stage of brain and skull development is prolonged so that they grow for a longer period of time in relation to the time required to reach sexual maturity. Unlike the early human adult skull, with its sloping forehead and prominent jaw, the modern human skull—with biologically insignificant variations—retains into maturity a proportionately large size, in relation to the rest of the body, a high-rounded dome, straight-planed face, and reduced jaw size, all closely resembling the characteristics of the skull in the juvenile chimpanzee. Its enlarged dimensions required adaptations for passage through the birth canal; consequently, the human female pelvis widens at maturity (with some sacrifice in swiftness of locomotion), and the human infant is born prematurely. Chimpanzees are born with 65 percent of their adult brain capacity; Australopithecine, an erect, tool-using near-human of 3 million years ago, was born with about 50 percent; modern human newborns have only 25 percent of adult brain capacity, resulting in an extended period of helplessness. The many neurological pathways to the rapidly growing brain must be organized and coordinated during a prolonged period of dependency on and stimulation by adults; lacking this close external bond in the early years of life, development of the modern brain remains incomplete. BEHAVIOR Human Brain The human brain has three major structural components: the large dome-shaped cerebrum (top), the smaller somewhat spherical cerebellum (lower right), and the brainstem (center). Prominent in the brainstem are the medulla oblongata (the egg-shaped enlargement at center) and the thalamus (between the medulla and the cerebrum). The cerebrum is responsible for intelligence and reasoning. The cerebellum helps to maintain balance and posture. The medulla is involved in maintaining involuntary functions such as respiration, and the thalamus acts as a relay center for electrical impulses traveling to and from the cerebral cortex. Encarta Encyclopedia London Scientific Films/Oxford Scientific Films Full Size The physiological adaptations that made humans more flexible than other primates allowed for the development of a wide range of abilities and an unparalleled versatility in behavior. The brain's great size, complexity, and slow maturation, with neural connections being added through at least the first 12 years of life, meant that learned behavior could largely modify stereotyped, instinctive responses. New environmental demands could be met by rapid adjustments rather than by slow genetic selection; thus, survival in a wide range of habitats and under extreme conditions eventually became possible without further species differentiation. Each new infant, however, with relatively few innate traits yet with a vast number of potential behaviors, must be taught to achieve its biological potential as a human. CULTURAL ATTRIBUTES Flint Tools Humans have been toolmakers for at least 2.5 million years. The earliest technology was a tool kit of haphazardly shaped chopping, cutting, and scraping implements fashioned from pebbles. From the later stone ages, archaeologists have identified some 60 or 70 standard kinds of intricate tools with very specific purposes. While the ax-head, arrowhead, scrapers, borers, and flakes in this picture were all made of stone, materials such as bone and ivory were also used. Tools like these can be made by direct percussion (using a hammerstone or other implement to knock flakes from the raw material) or indirect percussion (using the hammerstone to strike a chisel-like tool that is precisely positioned on the raw material). Encarta Encyclopedia G.A. Maclean/Oxford Scientific Films Full Size The human species has a unique capability for culture in the sense of conscious thinking and planning, transmission of skills and systems of social relationships, and creative modification of the environment. The integrated patterns of behavior required for planning and fashioning tools were accomplished at least 2.5 million years ago, and some form of advanced code for vocal communication may also have existed at this time. By 350,000 years ago planned hunting, firemaking, and the wearing of clothing were well established, as was possibly ritualized disposal of the dead. Evidence of religion, recorded events, and art date from 30,000 to 40,000 years ago and imply advanced language and ethics for the complex ordering of social groups required for such activities. From about that time the genus Homo began to stabilize into the one generalized species of Homo sapiens. OTHER DEFINITIONS The preceding description rests on anatomical observation (see Anatomy) and current scientific theory on the origin of the Homo species. Humankind itself and the essence of being human are also defined in many other ways—religious, social, moral, and legal. Human Nature, essential qualities shared by all humans. Philosophy has often been concerned with identifying what constitutes and drives human nature and with determining whether human nature is essentially good or evil. For information on: • the impermanence of what is generally thought of as human nature, see Michel Foucault • human nature as constituting formed habits and the desire for happiness, see Aristotle: Ethics • human nature as driven toward pain, suffering, and death, see Arthur Schopenhauer; Pessimism • human nature as essentially evil, see Original Sin; Chinese Philosophy: Legalism • essential goodness of human nature, see Confucianism: Confucian Schools of Thought;Pelagianism • human nature as a struggle between good and evil, see Western Philosophy: Augustinian Philosophy • human nature as controlled by natural selection, see Sociobiology; Naturalism (literature) • human nature as the result of environment and experience, see Ludwig Feuerbach • creating one's own nature through free choices, see Existentialism; Søren Kierkegaard: The Choice of Life • human nature as resulting from the struggle to fulfill a hierarchy of human needs, see Abraham Maslow • human nature as the product of innate drives conflicting with the requirements of social living, see Psychoanalysis: Id, Ego, and Superego Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Recessive Gene Transmission Some genes that cause genetic diseases interact in a dominant-recessive pattern. In these cases, two copies of the recessive gene are required for the disease to occur. A person who has just one copy of the recessive gene is termed a carrier, since he or she carries the gene but is not affected by it. In this illustration, the dominant gene is represented in green, and the recessive in blue. For the couple on the left, the father has one copy of the dominant gene and one copy of the recessive gene. The mother has two copies of the dominant gene. Each parent can contribute just one gene to the child. The four children shown on the lower left represent the probabilities (not the actual children) for the combinations that can result from their parents. The children on the far left received the recessive gene from their father and the dominant gene from their mother, and are therefore carriers. For any child born to these parents, there is a 50 percent chance that the child will be a carrier. Since none of the children can inherit two copies of the recessive gene, none of the children will develop the disease. When both parents are carriers, however, as shown by the couple on the right, there is a 25 percent chance that any child born has the disease, a 50 percent chance that a child is a carrier, and a 25 percent chance that a child does not have the disease and is not a carrier. Sexual reproduction ensures that the genes in a population are rearranged in each generation, a process termed recombination. Although the combinations of genes in individuals change with each new generation, the gene frequency, or ratio of different alleles in the entire population, remains relatively constant if no evolutionary forces act on the population. One such force is the introduction of new genes into the genetic material of the population, or gene pool. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Scientists have long considered the nature of consciousness without producing a fully satisfactory definition. In the early 20th century American philosopher and psychologist William James suggested that consciousness is a mental process involving both attention to external stimuli and short-term memory. Later scientific explorations of consciousness mostly expanded upon James’s work. In this article from a 1997 special issue of Scientific American, Nobel laureate Francis Crick, who helped determine the structure of DNA, and fellow biophysicist Christof Koch explain how experiments on vision might deepen our understanding of consciousness. The Problem of Consciousness By Francis Crick and Christof Koch

The overwhelming question in neurobiology today is the relation between the mind and the brain. Everyone agrees that what we know as mind is closely related to certain aspects of the behavior of the brain, not to the heart, as Aristotle thought. Its most mysterious aspect is consciousness or awareness, which can take many forms, from the experience of pain to self-consciousness. In the past the mind (or soul) was often regarded, as it was by Descartes, as something immaterial, separate from the brain but interacting with it in some way. A few neuroscientists, such as Sir John Eccles, still assert that the soul is distinct from the body. But most neuroscientists now believe that all aspects of mind, including its most puzzling attribute—consciousness or awareness—are likely to be explainable in a more materialistic way as the behavior of large sets of interacting neurons. As William James, the father of American psychology, said a century ago, consciousness is not a thing but a process. Exactly what the process is, however, has yet to be discovered. For many years after James penned The Principles of Psychology, consciousness was a taboo concept in American psychology because of the dominance of the behaviorist movement. With the advent of cognitive science in the mid-1950s, it became possible once more for psychologists to consider mental processes as opposed to merely observing behavior. In spite of these changes, until recently most cognitive scientists ignored consciousness, as did almost all neuroscientists. The problem was felt to be either purely 'philosophical' or too elusive to study experimentally. It would not have been easy for a neuroscientist to get a grant just to study consciousness. In our opinion, such timidity is ridiculous, so a few years ago we began to think about how best to attack the problem scientifically. How to explain mental events as being caused by the firing of large sets of neurons? Although there are those who believe such an approach is hopeless, we feel it is not productive to worry too much over aspects of the problem that cannot be solved scientifically or, more precisely, cannot be solved solely by using existing scientific ideas. Radically new concepts may indeed be needed—recall the modifications of scientific thinking forced on us by quantum mechanics. The only sensible approach is to press the experimental attack until we are confronted with dilemmas that call for new ways of thinking. There are many possible approaches to the problem of consciousness. Some psychologists feel that any satisfactory theory should try to explain as many aspects of consciousness as possible, including emotion, imagination, dreams, mystical experiences and so on. Although such an all-embracing theory will be necessary in the long run, we thought it wiser to begin with the particular aspect of consciousness that is likely to yield most easily. What this aspect may be is a matter of personal judgment. We selected the mammalian visual system because humans are very visual animals and because so much experimental and theoretical work has already been done on it. It is not easy to grasp exactly what we need to explain, and it will take many careful experiments before visual consciousness can be described scientifically. We did not attempt to define consciousness itself because of the dangers of premature definition. (If this seems like a copout, try defining the word 'gene'—you will not find it easy.) Yet the experimental evidence that already exists provides enough of a glimpse of the nature of visual consciousness to guide research. In this article, we will attempt to show how this evidence opens the way to attack this profound and intriguing problem. Visual theorists agree that the problem of visual consciousness is ill posed. The mathematical term 'ill posed' means that additional constraints are needed to solve the problem. Although the main function of the visual system is to perceive objects and events in the world around us, the information available to our eyes is not sufficient by itself to provide the brain with its unique interpretation of the visual world. The brain must use past experience (either its own or that of our distant ancestors, which is embedded in our genes) to help interpret the information coming into our eyes. An example would be the derivation of the three-dimensional representation of the world from the two-dimensional signals falling onto the retinas of our two eyes or even onto one of them. Visual theorists also would agree that seeing is a constructive process, one in which the brain has to carry out complex activities (sometimes called computations) in order to decide which interpretation to adopt of the ambiguous visual input. 'Computation' implies that the brain acts to form a symbolic representation of the visual world, with a mapping (in the mathematical sense) of certain aspects of that world onto elements in the brain. Ray Jackendoff of Brandeis University postulates, as do most cognitive scientists, that the computations carried out by the brain are largely unconscious and that what we become aware of is the result of these computations. But while the customary view is that this awareness occurs at the highest levels of the computational system, Jackendoff has proposed an intermediate-level theory of consciousness. What we see, Jackendoff suggests, relates to a representation of surfaces that are directly visible to us, together with their outline, orientation, color, texture and movement. (This idea has similarities to what the late David C. Marr of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology called a '2 1/2-dimensional sketch.' It is more than a two-dimensional sketch because it conveys the orientation of the visible surfaces. It is less than three-dimensional because depth information is not explicitly represented.) In the next stage this sketch is processed by the brain to produce a three-dimensional representation. Jackendoff argues that we are not visually aware of this three-dimensional representation. An example may make this process clearer. If you look at a person whose back is turned to you, you can see the back of the head but not the face. Nevertheless, your brain infers that the person has a face. We can deduce as much because if that person turned around and had no face, you would be very surprised. The viewer-centered representation that corresponds to the visible back of the head is what you are vividly aware of. What your brain infers about the front would come from some kind of three-dimensional representation. This does not mean that information flows only from the surface representation to the three-dimensional one; it almost certainly flows in both directions. When you imagine the front of the face, what you are aware of is a surface representation generated by information from the three-dimensional model. It is important to distinguish between an explicit and an implicit representation. An explicit representation is something that is symbolized without further processing. An implicit representation contains the same information but requires further processing to make it explicit. The pattern of colored dots on a television screen, for example, contains an implicit representation of objects (say, a person's face), but only the dots and their locations are explicit. When you see a face on the screen, there must be neurons in your brain whose firing, in some sense, symbolizes that face. We call this pattern of firing neurons an active representation. A latent representation of a face must also be stored in the brain, probably as a special pattern of synaptic connections between neurons. For example, you probably have a representation of the Statue of Liberty in your brain, a representation that usually is inactive. If you do think about the Statue, the representation becomes active, with the relevant neurons firing away. An object, incidentally, may be represented in more than one way—as a visual image, as a set of words and their related sounds, or even as a touch or a smell. These different representations are likely to interact with one another. The representation is likely to be distributed over many neurons, both locally and more globally. Such a representation may not be as simple and straightforward as uncritical introspection might indicate. There is suggestive evidence, partly from studying how neurons fire in various parts of a monkey's brain and partly from examining the effects of certain types of brain damage in humans, that different aspects of a face—and of the implications of a face—may be represented in different parts of the brain. First, there is the representation of a face as a face: two eyes, a nose, a mouth and so on. The neurons involved are usually not too fussy about the exact size or position of this face in the visual field, nor are they very sensitive to small changes in its orientation. In monkeys, there are neurons that respond best when the face is turning in a particular direction, while others seem to be more concerned with the direction in which the eyes are gazing. Then there are representations of the parts of a face, as separate from those for the face as a whole. Further, the implications of seeing a face, such as that person's sex, the facial expression, the familiarity or unfamiliarity of the face, and in particular whose face it is, may each be correlated with neurons firing in other places. What we are aware of at any moment, in one sense or another, is not a simple matter. We have suggested that there may be a very transient form of fleeting awareness that represents only rather simple features and does not require an attentional mechanism. From this brief awareness the brain constructs a viewer-centered representation—what we see vividly and clearly—that does require attention. This in turn probably leads to three-dimensional object representations and thence to more cognitive ones. Representations corresponding to vivid consciousness are likely to have special properties. William James thought that consciousness involved both attention and short-term memory. Most psychologists today would agree with this view. Jackendoff writes that consciousness is 'enriched' by attention, implying that whereas attention may not be essential for certain limited types of consciousness, it is necessary for full consciousness. Yet it is not clear exactly which forms of memory are involved. Is long-term memory needed? Some forms of acquired knowledge are so embedded in the machinery of neural processing that they are almost certainly used in becoming aware of something. On the other hand, there is evidence from studies of brain-damaged patients that the ability to lay down new long-term episodic memories is not essential for consciousness to be experienced. It is difficult to imagine that anyone could be conscious if he or she had no memory whatsoever of what had just happened, even an extremely short one. Visual psychologists talk of iconic memory, which lasts for a fraction of a second, and working memory (such as that used to remember a new telephone number) that lasts for only a few seconds unless it is rehearsed. It is not clear whether both of these are essential for consciousness. In any case, the division of short-term memory into these two categories may be too crude. If these complex processes of visual awareness are localized in parts of the brain, which processes are likely to be where? Many regions of the brain may be involved, but it is almost certain that the cerebral neocortex plays a dominant role. Visual information from the retina reaches the neocortex mainly by way of a part of the thalamus (the lateral geniculate nucleus); another significant visual pathway from the retina is to the superior colliculus, at the top of the brain stem. The cortex in humans consists of two intricately folded sheets of nerve tissue, one on each side of the head. These sheets are connected by a large tract of about half a billion axons called the corpus callosum. It is well known that if the corpus callosum is cut, as is done for certain cases of intractable epilepsy, one side of the brain is not aware of what the other side is seeing. In particular, the left side of the brain (in a right-handed person) appears not to be aware of visual information received exclusively by the right side. This shows that none of the information required for visual awareness can reach the other side of the brain by traveling down to the brain stem and, from there, back up. In a normal person, such information can get to the other side only by using the axons in the corpus callosum. A different part of the brain—the hippocampal system—is involved in one-shot, or episodic, memories that, over weeks and months, it passes on to the neocortex. This system is so placed that it receives inputs from, and projects to, many parts of the brain. Thus, one might suspect that the hippocampal system is the essential seat of consciousness. This is not the case: evidence from studies of patients with damaged brains shows that this system is not essential for visual awareness, although naturally a patient lacking one is severely handicapped in everyday life because he cannot remember anything that took place more than a minute or so in the past. In broad terms, the neocortex of alert animals probably acts in two ways. By building on crude and somewhat redundant wiring, produced by our genes and by embryonic processes, the neocortex draws on visual and other experience to slowly 'rewire' itself to create categories (or 'features') it can respond to. A new category is not fully created in the neocortex after exposure to only one example of it, although some small modifications of the neural connections may be made. The second function of the neocortex (at least of the visual part of it) is to respond extremely rapidly to incoming signals. To do so, it uses the categories it has learned and tries to find the combinations of active neurons that, on the basis of its past experience, are most likely to represent the relevant objects and events in the visual world at that moment. The formation of such coalitions of active neurons may also be influenced by biases coming from other parts of the brain: for example, signals telling it what best to attend to or high-level expectations about the nature of the stimulus. Consciousness, as James noted, is always changing. These rapidly formed coalitions occur at different levels and interact to form even broader coalitions. They are transient, lasting usually for only a fraction of a second. Because coalitions in the visual system are the basis of what we see, evolution has seen to it that they form as fast as possible; otherwise, no animal could survive. The brain is handicapped in forming neuronal coalitions rapidly because, by computer standards, neurons act very slowly. The brain compensates for this relative slowness partly by using very many neurons, simultaneously and in parallel, and partly by arranging the system in a roughly hierarchical manner. If visual awareness at any moment corresponds to sets of neurons firing, then the obvious question is: Where are these neurons located in the brain, and in what way are they firing? Visual awareness is highly unlikely to occupy all the neurons in the neocortex that are firing above their background rate at a particular moment. We would expect that, theoretically, at least some of these neurons would be involved in doing computations—trying to arrive at the best coalitions—whereas others would express the results of these computations, in other words, what we see. Fortunately, some experimental evidence can be found to back up this theoretical conclusion. A phenomenon called binocular rivalry may help identify the neurons whose firing symbolizes awareness. This phenomenon can be seen in dramatic form in an exhibit prepared by Sally Duensing and Bob Miller at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Conflicting Inputs Binocular rivalry occurs when each eye has a different visual input relating to the same part of the visual field. The early visual system on the left side of the brain receives an input from both eyes but sees only the part of the visual field to the right of the fixation point. The converse is true for the right side. If these two conflicting inputs are rivalrous, one sees not the two inputs superimposed but first one input, then the other, and so on in alternation. In the exhibit, called 'The Cheshire Cat,' viewers put their heads in a fixed place and are told to keep the gaze fixed. By means of a suitably placed mirror, one of the eyes can look at another person's face, directly in front, while the other eye sees a blank white screen to the side. If the viewer waves a hand in front of this plain screen at the same location in his or her visual field occupied by the face, the face is wiped out. The movement of the hand, being visually very salient, has captured the brain's attention. Without attention the face cannot be seen. If the viewer moves the eyes, the face reappears. In some cases, only part of the face disappears. Sometimes, for example, one eye, or both eyes, will remain. If the viewer looks at the smile on the person's face, the face may disappear, leaving only the smile. For this reason, the effect has been called the Cheshire Cat effect, after the cat in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Although it is very difficult to record activity in individual neurons in a human brain, such studies can be done in monkeys. A simple example of binocular rivalry has been studied in a monkey by Nikos K. Logothetis and Jeffrey D. Schall, both then at M.I.T. They trained a macaque to keep its eyes still and to signal whether it is seeing upward or downward movement of a horizontal grating. To produce rivalry, upward movement is projected into one of the monkey's eyes and downward movement into the other, so that the two images overlap in the visual field. The monkey signals that it sees up and down movements alternatively, just as humans would. Even though the motion stimulus coming into the monkey's eyes is always the same, the monkey's percept changes every second or so. Cortical area MT (which some researchers prefer to label V5) is an area mainly concerned with movement. What do the neurons in MT do when the monkey's percept is sometimes up and sometimes down? (The researchers studied only the monkey's first response.) The simplified answer—the actual data are rather more messy—is that whereas the firing of some of the neurons correlates with the changes in the percept, for others the average firing rate is relatively unchanged and independent of which direction of movement the monkey is seeing at that moment. Thus, it is unlikely that the firing of all the neurons in the visual neocortex at one particular moment corresponds to the monkey's visual awareness. Exactly which neurons do correspond to awareness remains to be discovered. We have postulated that when we clearly see something, there must be neurons actively firing that stand for what we see. This might be called the activity principle. Here, too, there is some experimental evidence. One example is the firing of neurons in a specific cortical visual area in response to illusory contours. Another and perhaps more striking case is the filling in of the blind spot. The blind spot in each eye is caused by the lack of photoreceptors in the area of the retina where the optic nerve leaves the retina and projects to the brain. Its location is about 15 degrees from the fovea (the visual center of the eye). Yet if you close one eye, you do not see a hole in your visual field. Philosopher Daniel C. Dennett of Tufts University is unusual among philosophers in that he is interested both in psychology and in the brain. This interest is much to be welcomed. In a recent book, Consciousness Explained, he has argued that it is wrong to talk about filling in. He concludes, correctly, that 'an absence of information is not the same as information about an absence.' From this general principle he argues that the brain does not fill in the blind spot but rather ignores it. Dennett's argument by itself, however, does not establish that filling in does not occur; it only suggests that it might not. Dennett also states that 'your brain has no machinery for [filling in] at this location.' This statement is incorrect. The primary visual cortex lacks a direct input from one eye, but normal 'machinery' is there to deal with the input from the other eye. Ricardo Gattass and his colleagues at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro have shown that in the macaque some of the neurons in the blind-spot area of the primary visual cortex do respond to input from both eyes, probably assisted by inputs from other parts of the cortex. Moreover, in the case of simple filling in, some of the neurons in that region respond as if they were actively filling in. Thus, Dennett's claim about blind spots is incorrect. In addition, psychological experiments by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran [see 'Blind Spots,' Scientific American, May 1992] have shown that what is filled in can be quite complex depending on the overall context of the visual scene. How, he argues, can your brain be ignoring something that is in fact commanding attention? Filling in, therefore, is not to be dismissed as nonexistent or unusual. It probably represents a basic interpolation process that can occur at many levels in the neocortex. It is, incidentally, a good example of what is meant by a constructive process. How can we discover the neurons whose firing symbolizes a particular percept? William T. Newsome and his colleagues at Stanford University have done a series of brilliant experiments on neurons in cortical area MT of the macaque's brain. By studying a neuron in area MT, we may discover that it responds best to very specific visual features having to do with motion. A neuron, for instance, might fire strongly in response to the movement of a bar in a particular place in the visual field, but only when the bar is oriented at a certain angle, moving in one of the two directions perpendicular to its length within a certain range of speed. It is technically difficult to excite just a single neuron, but it is known that neurons that respond to roughly the same position, orientation and direction of movement of a bar tend to be located near one another in the cortical sheet. The experimenters taught the monkey a simple task in movement discrimination using a mixture of dots, some moving randomly, the rest all in one direction. They showed that electrical stimulation of a small region in the right place in cortical area MT would bias the monkey's motion discrimination, almost always in the expected direction. Thus, the stimulation of these neurons can influence the monkey's behavior and probably its visual percept. Such experiments do not, however, show decisively that the firing of such neurons is the exact neural correlate of the percept. The correlate could be only a subset of the neurons being activated. Or perhaps the real correlate is the firing of neurons in another part of the visual hierarchy that are strongly influenced by the neurons activated in area MT. These same reservations apply also to cases of binocular rivalry. Clearly, the problem of finding the neurons whose firing symbolizes a particular percept is not going to be easy. It will take many careful experiments to track them down even for one kind of percept. It seems obvious that the purpose of vivid visual awareness is to feed into the cortical areas concerned with the implications of what we see; from there the information shuttles on the one hand to the hippocampal system, to be encoded (temporarily) into long-term episodic memory, and on the other to the planning levels of the motor system. But is it possible to go from a visual input to a behavioral output without any relevant visual awareness? That such a process can happen is demonstrated by the remarkable class of patients with 'blindsight.' These patients, all of whom have suffered damage to their visual cortex, can point with fair accuracy at visual targets or track them with their eyes while vigorously denying seeing anything. In fact, these patients are as surprised as their doctors by their abilities. The amount of information that 'gets through,' however, is limited: blindsight patients have some ability to respond to wavelength, orientation and motion, yet they cannot distinguish a triangle from a square. It is naturally of great interest to know which neural pathways are being used in these patients. Investigators originally suspected that the pathway ran through the superior colliculus. Recent experiments suggest that a direct albeit weak connection may be involved between the lateral geniculate nucleus and other visual areas in the cortex. It is unclear whether an intact primary visual cortex region is essential for immediate visual awareness. Conceivably the visual signal in blindsight is so weak that the neural activity cannot produce awareness, although it remains strong enough to get through to the motor system. Normal-seeing people regularly respond to visual signals without being fully aware of them. In automatic actions, such as swimming or driving a car, complex but stereotypical actions occur with little, if any, associated visual awareness. In other cases, the information conveyed is either very limited or very attenuated. Thus, while we can function without visual awareness, our behavior without it is rather restricted.

Clearly, it takes a certain amount of time to experience a conscious percept. It is difficult to determine just how much time is needed for an episode of visual awareness, but one aspect of the problem that can be demonstrated experimentally is that signals received close together in time are treated by the brain as simultaneous. A disk of red light is flashed for, say, 20 milliseconds, followed immediately by a 20-millisecond flash of green light in the same place. The subject reports that he did not see a red light followed by a green light. Instead he saw a yellow light, just as he would have if the red and the green light had been flashed simultaneously. Yet the subject could not have experienced yellow until after the information from the green flash had been processed and integrated with the preceding red one. Experiments of this type led psychologist Robert Efron, now at the University of California at Davis, to conclude that the processing period for perception is about 60 to 70 milliseconds. Similar periods are found in experiments with tones in the auditory system. It is always possible, however, that the processing times may be different in higher parts of the visual hierarchy and in other parts of the brain. Processing is also more rapid in trained, compared with naive, observers. Because it appears to be involved in some forms of visual awareness, it would help if we could discover the neural basis of attention. Eye movement is a form of attention, since the area of the visual field in which we see with high resolution is remarkably small, roughly the area of the thumbnail at arm's length. Thus, we move our eyes to gaze directly at an object in order to see it more clearly. Our eyes usually move three or four times a second. Psychologists have shown, however, that there appears to be a faster form of attention that moves around, in some sense, when our eyes are stationary. The exact psychological nature of this faster attentional mechanism is at present controversial. Several neuroscientists, however, including Robert Desimone and his colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health, have shown that the rate of firing of certain neurons in the macaque's visual system depends on what the monkey is attending to in the visual field. Thus, attention is not solely a psychological concept; it also has neural correlates that can be observed. A number of researchers have found that the pulvinar, a region of the thalamus, appears to be involved in visual attention. We would like to believe that the thalamus deserves to be called 'the organ of attention,' but this status has yet to be established. Attention and Awareness The major problem is to find what activity in the brain corresponds directly to visual awareness. It has been speculated that each cortical area produces awareness of only those visual features that are 'columnar,' or arranged in the stack or column of neurons perpendicular to the cortical surface. Thus, the primary visual cortex could code for orientation and area MT for motion. So far experimentalists have not found one particular region in the brain where all the information needed for visual awareness appears to come together. Dennett has dubbed such a hypothetical place 'The Cartesian Theater.' He argues on theoretical grounds that it does not exist. Awareness seems to be distributed not just on a local scale, but more widely over the neocortex. Vivid visual awareness is unlikely to be distributed over every cortical area because some areas show no response to visual signals. Awareness might, for example, be associated with only those areas that connect back directly to the primary visual cortex or alternatively with those areas that project into one another's layer 4. (The latter areas are always at the same level in the visual hierarchy.) The key issue, then, is how the brain forms its global representations from visual signals. If attention is indeed crucial for visual awareness, the brain could form representations by attending to just one object at a time, rapidly moving from one object to the next. For example, the neurons representing all the different aspects of the attended object could all fire together very rapidly for a short period, possibly in rapid bursts. This fast, simultaneous firing might not only excite those neurons that symbolized the implications of that object but also temporarily strengthen the relevant synapses so that this particular pattern of firing could be quickly recalled—a form of short-term memory. If only one representation needs to be held in short-term memory, as in remembering a single task, the neurons involved may continue to fire for a period. A problem arises if it is necessary to be aware of more than one object at exactly the same time. If all the attributes of two or more objects were represented by neurons firing rapidly, their attributes might be confused. The color of one might become attached to the shape of another. This happens sometimes in very brief presentations. Some time ago Christoph von der Malsburg, now at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, suggested that this difficulty would be circumvented if the neurons associated with any one object all fired in synchrony (that is, if their times of firing were correlated) but out of synchrony with those representing other objects. Recently two groups in Germany reported that there does appear to be correlated firing between neurons in the visual cortex of the cat, often in a rhythmic manner, with a frequency in the 35- to 75-hertz range, sometimes called 40-hertz, or g, oscillation. Von der Malsburg's proposal prompted us to suggest that this rhythmic and synchronized firing might be the neural correlate of awareness and that it might serve to bind together activity concerning the same object in different cortical areas. The matter is still undecided, but at present the fragmentary experimental evidence does rather little to support such an idea. Another possibility is that the 40-hertz oscillations may help distinguish figure from ground or assist the mechanism of attention. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. About the authors: Francis Crick and Christof Koch share an interest in the experimental study of consciousness. Crick is the co-discoverer, with James Watson, of the double helical structure of DNA. While at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, he worked on the genetic code and on developmental biology. Since 1976, he has been at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego. His main interest lies in understanding the visual system of mammals. Koch was awarded his Ph.D. in biophysics by the University of Tübingen. After spending four years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he joined the California Institute of Technology, where he is now professor of computation and neural systems. He is studying how single brain cells process information and the neural basis of motion perception, visual attention and awareness. He also designs analog VLSI vision chips for intelligent systems. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Arnold Schwarzenegger, born in 1947, Austrian-born bodybuilder, who became an American motion-picture star and later governor of California. Schwarzenegger ran as a Republican in 2003 in the California recall election that ousted the incumbent Democratic governor, Gray Davis. He was reelected in a landslide in the 2006 elections. Schwarzenegger was born in Graz, the second-largest city in Austria. As a bodybuilder he won the Mr. Universe title three times and the Mr. Olympia title seven times. Schwarzenegger showed considerable charm in a supporting role as a bodybuilder in Stay Hungry (1976) and again in his appearance in the documentary Pumping Iron (1977). The sword-and-sorcery movies Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984), each of which grossed more than $100 million worldwide, established Schwarzenegger as a major box-office attraction. Schwarzenegger then starred in the science fiction film The Terminator (1984), a cult favorite that helped develop a genre of futuristic action films. Terminator 2: Judgment Day, motion picture about a cyborg who travels back in time to protect a future revolutionary leader from assassination. Released in 1991, the film won Academy Awards for special effects, sound, and makeup. This is the sequel to The Terminator (1984), which also starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cyborg time traveler. The Terminator travels back in time to protect the young boy, John Connor (played by Edward Furlong), from T-1000 (Robert Patrick), an assassin from the future. Graz, city in southeastern Austria, capital of Steiermark (Styria) Province, on the Mur River, bordered on three sides by the Alps. Graz is the second-largest city in Austria, after Vienna. Steel, railroad equipment, automobiles, chemicals, leather goods, and precision instruments are among the products manufactured in the city, which is the center of a considerable trade in wine, fruit, and cereal grains. The old town, on the western bank of the river, is connected with the new town, on the eastern bank, by seven bridges. The old town is built around the Schlossberg Park, which was a strongly fortified hill until 1809, when its fortifications were destroyed by the French. The buildings of Graz include an 11th-century castle, the 13th-century church of the Teutonic Knights, the 15th-century Gothic Cathedral of Saint Aegidius, and a 16th-century parish church with an altarpiece by the Venetian artist Il Tintoretto. Among educational institutions in the city are Graz University (1586), Graz Technical University (1811), and the University of Music and Dramatic Art (1963). Graz is known to have existed in the 9th century ad and is thought to occupy the site of a Roman town. In the 15th century it was a residence of the Holy Roman emperors. In the 16th century it became one of the important centers of resistance to the Ottoman expansion in central Europe. The town was occupied by the French in 1797, 1805, and 1809, during the Napoleonic Wars. Following World War II (1939-1945) until 1955, Graz was included in the British Zone of Occupation of Austria. The city's name comes from gradec, a Slavic word meaning “small fort,” which refers to the fortress that once stood on top of the Schlossberg. Population (2006 estimate) 244,604 Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Hi a whole world wide populations. How many are you all? Hi whole world wide International Bank. Those shit behind the shadows in their Caves (Satellite stations) how many are they? Whom they are serving? Let them to give us all their explanations! For what they were doing this to us all during this much years? Your virus shove in your ass holes. Majority minority who wins? How about killing us all?! Hi Monica Lewinsky & Bill Clinton, Hi higher courts, Anything official by any law of yours shit satellites acting as Interpol on all of us! what a business! Who can sue who now? All are witnesses. Stick with logic all of you & stop talking to me through TV. as Polis Yeltsen of Russia said once at court that they told him & he didn't has any prove! That I saw in TV news. So stop trapping me please. I'm nothing but civilian. Even Jesus did not suffer this much! Hi Sept,11th & Al Qaeda! What about God? We were since along time before satellites to have existence. Are we in an artificial magical circle? Put me in history like Clinton & Lewinsky! دخلونى التاريخ مثل كلينتن و لوينسكى Clinton’s Televised Speech About Lewinsky THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. This afternoon in this room, from this chair, I testified before the Office of Independent Counsel and the grand jury. I answered their questions truthfully, including questions about my private life—questions no American citizen would ever want to answer. Still I must take complete responsibility for all my actions, both public and private. And that is why I am speaking to you tonight. As you know, in a deposition in January I was asked questions about my relationship with Monica Lewinsky. While my answers were legally accurate, I did not volunteer information. Indeed, I did have a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky that was not appropriate. In fact, it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible. But I told the grand jury today, and I say to you now, that at no time did I ask anyone to lie, to hide or destroy evidence, or to take any other unlawful action. I know that my public comments and my silence about this matter gave a false impression. I misled people, including even my wife. I deeply regret that. I can only tell you I was motivated by many factors: first, by a desire to protect myself from the embarrassment of my own conduct. I was also very concerned about protecting my family. The fact that these questions were being asked in a politically inspired lawsuit which has since been dismissed was a consideration, too. In addition, I had real and serious concerns about an independent counsel investigation that began with private business dealings 20 years ago—dealings, I might add, about which an independent federal agency found no evidence of any wrongdoing by me or my wife over two years ago. The independent counsel investigation moved on to my staff and friends, then into my private life, and now the investigation itself is under investigation. This has gone on too long, cost too much, and hurt too many innocent people. Now this matter is between me, the two people I love most—my wife and our daughter—and our God. I must put it right, and I am prepared to do whatever it takes to do so. Nothing is more important to me personally. But it is private. And I intend to reclaim my family life for my family. It's nobody's business but ours. Even Presidents have private lives. It is time to stop the pursuit of personal destruction and the prying into private lives, and get on with our national life. Our country has been distracted by this matter for too long. And I take my responsibility for my part in all of this; that is all I can do. Now it is time—in fact, it is past time—to move on. We have important work to do—real opportunities to seize, real problems to solve, real security matters to face. And so, tonight, I ask you to turn away from the spectacle of the past seven months, to repair the fabric of our national discourse and to return our attention to all the challenges and all the promise of the next American century. Thank you for watching, and good night. The news media has answered this question with a collective 'yes' by making personal information about political candidates available. Such information tends to increase the size of the news media's audience, since personal lives and behavior seem to be more interesting to more people than are detailed discussions of issues and policy. Many scholars would say that private information should be available only if it is relevant to a person’s performance in office. Was information about President Bill Clinton’s relationship with White House aide Monica Lewinsky relevant to this performance? Democrats and Republicans disagreed in their answers, but people on both sides were interested in what the president did, which is why the press kept reporting such material. 1998: Clinton, Bill: Starr Testifies As Impeachment Hearings Open Independent counsel Kenneth Starr testified before the United States House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary for 12 hours on November 19, 1998, as impeachment hearings against U.S. president Bill Clinton got underway. The hearings provided little new information about Clinton's relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, however. Starr's appearance before the Judiciary Committee highlighted the partisan nature of the inquiry. Democratic panel members repeatedly criticized Starr in an attempt, observers said, to shift attention away from the president's behavior. Democratic representative John Conyers, Jr., of Michigan characterized Starr as a “federally paid sex policeman” whose investigation had “crossed the line into obsession.” Republicans, meanwhile, attempted to keep the committee focused on the core questions of whether Clinton lied under oath and convinced others to do the same. “Do we still have a government of laws and not of men?” asked committee chairman Henry Hyde, an Illinois Republican. “Does the law apply to some people with force and ferocity while the powerful are immune?” Other Republicans praised Starr's handling of the investigation and commended him for standing firm despite his many critics. Starr began his testimony with a prepared statement that recapped the contents and conclusions of his September 1998 report: that Clinton is guilty of 11 allegedly impeachable offenses, including perjury, witness tampering, and abuse of power. He spent the remainder of the day fielding questions from Democratic and Republican committee members, and from David Kendall, Clinton's private attorney. The Democrats assailed Starr on several fronts, accusing him of illegally leaking grand jury information to the press, ignoring evidence that favored the president, and using strong-arm tactics against Lewinsky and other witnesses. Starr maintained his temper throughout the day, revealing little emotion as he deflected the Democratic attacks on his handling of the case. Opinion polls indicated that many Americans approved of Starr's presentation. A poll conducted on the evening of November 19 by the Cable News Network (CNN), USA Today, and Gallup showed that 67 percent of those who saw or heard about Starr's testimony thought he did an “excellent” or “good” job of presenting his case. But Starr's testimony did little damage to Clinton's job approval rating, which remained above 60 percent. Starr's Democratic opponents also assailed him for belatedly revealing that Clinton had been cleared of wrongdoing in the Whitewater real-estate scandal, White House travel office firings, and the White House's use of confidential FBI files on prominent Republicans—three of Starr's original avenues of inquiry. Democrats criticized Starr for withholding the information until after the midterm congressional elections. Starr's testimony was the highlight of the committee hearings in November. Four other witnesses were scheduled to testify behind closed doors, reportedly on the subject of Clinton's alleged sexual advances toward Kathleen Willey, a onetime White House volunteer, in 1993. The committee also heard from expert witnesses on the history of impeachment and the legal ramifications of perjury. Most observers expected the Judiciary Committee to vote on articles of impeachment some time in early December. On November 26 the New York Times reported that the committee planned to accuse Clinton of three impeachable offenses: perjury, obstruction of justice and witness tampering, and abuse of power. Once approved by the Judiciary Committee, the accusations—known as articles of impeachment—would go before the full 435-member House. If approved by a majority of the House, Clinton would be considered impeached and the process would move into the Senate for trial. But many analysts predicted the process would never get that far. More than a dozen Republicans said they would vote against impeachment, enough to derail the process. Democrats, meanwhile, planned to offer censure as an alternative to impeachment, observers said. Both Hyde and incoming House Speaker Robert Livingston said they wanted the inquiry completed before Congress reconvenes in early January 1999. Other related developments included: Clinton's response on November 27 to 81 questions sent by Hyde on November 5. Hyde asked Clinton to admit or deny each of the 81 questions, the purpose of which, Hyde said, was to establish what facts the president disputed so as to narrow the inquiry and allow it to proceed more quickly. Clinton's responses mirrored earlier statements in which he denied lying or telling others to lie and provided little new information. The announcement on November 13 that Clinton had reached a settlement with Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state worker who accused Clinton of sexually harassing her in 1991. Clinton agreed to pay Jones $850,000 to settle the case. Starr has accused Clinton of committing perjury in a deposition he gave during a civil lawsuit filed by Jones. The resignation of Samuel Dash, Starr's ethics advisor, on November 20. Dash accused Starr of overstepping the bounds of his office by becoming an advocate of impeachment. Independent counsel Kenneth Starr said that the ruling would not affect his investigation into allegations that Clinton lied about—and advised former White House intern Monica Lewinsky to lie about—their alleged extramarital affair. Many analysts, however, said the ruling could sharpen public opinion against Starr, whose investigation has increasingly been seen as partisan, and put pressure on him to wrap up the probe. Others noted that while Wright's ruling did not legally forbid Starr's investigation from proceeding, it was unlikely that the U.S. Congress would seek impeachment on charges related to a case dismissed by a federal judge. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Read the below & praise God! This planet Earth is so small to our God that has the power to tell Noah to take what ever to his ship to rescue the living ones because the over flow of water ( Tsunami! or a melting Antarctica ) Noah, in the Old Testament and the Koran, son of Lamech, tenth in descent from Adam, and, as survivor with his family of the flood, the father of all humanity (see Genesis 6-9). According to the biblical account, Noah was spared for his piety when God, angered at the corruption of the world, destroyed it with a flood lasting 40 days and 40 nights. Noah had been warned to build the ark, a great ship, and to take on board with him his wife, his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, his sons' wives, and two mated specimens of every species of animal on Earth. Noah (Nuh) is also regarded by Islam as a prophet. In an episode after the flood, Noah is portrayed as having discovered wine making and becoming helplessly drunk (see Genesis 9:20-27). Noah is said to have lived 950 years (see Genesis 9:29). Similar heroes of flood stories are found in Babylonian, Greek, and other cultures. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Antarctica, fifth largest of Earth’s seven continents. Antarctica surrounds the South Pole and is a place of extremes. It is the southernmost, coldest, iciest, driest, windiest, most remote, and most recently discovered continent. Nearly the entire landmass lies within the Antarctic Circle. Air temperatures of the high inland regions fall below -80°C (-110°F) in winter and rise only to -30°C (-20°F) in summer. Massive ice sheets built up from snow over millions of years cover almost all of the continent and float in huge ice shelves on coastal waters. In winter frozen sea water (sea ice) more than doubles the size of the Antarctic ice cap. Antarctica's vast areas of ice on land and on sea play a major role in Earth’s climate and could be strongly affected by global warming. The melting of Antarctic ice could dramatically raise global sea level. Antarctica means “opposite to the Arctic,” Earth’s northernmost region. Antarctica is completely encircled by the Southern Ocean. The entire area south of the Antarctic Convergence zone where cold Antarctic waters sink below warmer waters on the northern boundary of the Southern Ocean is referred to as the Antarctic region. The small human presence on Antarctica is made up of visiting scientists, support staff, and tourists. The last continent to be discovered, Antarctica remained hidden behind barriers of fog, storm, and sea ice until it was first sighted in the early 19th century (see Polar Exploration). Because of the extreme cold and the lack of native peoples, forests, land animals, and obvious natural resources, the continent remained largely neglected for decades after discovery. Scientific expeditions and seal hunters had explored only fragments of its coasts by the end of the 19th century, while the interior remained unknown. Explorers first reached the South Pole in 1911, and the first permanent settlements—scientific stations—were established in the early 1940s. From that time the pace of exploration and scientific research has accelerated rapidly. In the mid- to late 20th century, the region’s majestic scenery and wildlife began to attract increasing numbers of tourists. Seven nations—Argentina, Australia, the United Kingdom, Chile, France, New Zealand, and Norway—claim territory in Antarctica. Other nations, including the United States and Russia, do not acknowledge these claims and make no claims of their own, but reserve rights to claim territory in the future. Since 1961 the continent has been administered under the Antarctic Treaty, an international agreement to preserve the continent for peaceful scientific study. With the pole conquered, explorers began to take on new challenges. In 1912 Australian scientist Douglas Mawson led the Australian Antarctic Expedition to explore the coast of East Antarctica directly south of Australia. An overland party explored the area now known as George V Land, although two of Mawson’s companions died and Mawson returned to his base barely alive. Shackleton returned in 1915, intending to cross the continent from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea by way of the pole. But his ship never reached the continent; it became trapped by the ice and sank ten months later. Shackleton reached South Georgia in a lifeboat, and returned to rescue his stranded men three months later. Between 1929 and 1931 the British, Australian, and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (BANZARE) used floatplanes to explore and photograph many kilometers of East Antarctica’s coast. Between 1929 and 1934 Norwegian whaler Lars Christensen equipped his expeditions with seaplanes, which flew over and photographed the remote island of Bouvetoya and stretches of the Antarctic coast from Enderby Land to Coats Land. In 1936 American explorer Lincoln Ellsworth crossed Antarctica by air, flying from Dundee Island at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula to the Bay of Whales. In 1938 a German expedition flew over and photographed an extensive area of East Antarctica now known as Queen Maud Land (Dronning Maud Land). In 1908 Britain revived long-standing territorial claims, based on discovery, to South Georgia, the South Shetland, South Orkney, and South Sandwich islands, as well as Graham Land, to justify the control and taxation of whaling in those areas. In 1923 Britain claimed the Ross Ice Shelf and adjacent coasts (now Ross Dependency) for similar reasons. In 1924 France claimed Adélie Land, a narrow sector of East Antarctica where Dumont d'Urville had landed in 1840. In 1933 Britain claimed the sectors of East Antarctica that BANZARE had explored as an Australian territory; this area was formally declared the Australian Antarctic Territory in 1936. Spurred by the possibility of a German claim, Norway in 1939 claimed the sector of East Antarctica later called Queen Maud Land, along with Peter I Island and Bouvetoya. When Britain set up wartime stations in the peninsular region in 1943, Argentina and Chile lodged rival claims to the sector. Because U.S. policy for Antarctica states that all nations should have free access for peaceful pursuits, the U.S. government did not support claims made by American explorers and does not recognize any foreign territorial claims. During the exploratory period of Antarctic history, scientific research was less important than discovery. In 1939 the U.S. Antarctic Service Expedition under Richard Byrd introduced the concept of permanent stations with science as a major objective. Two stations, at Bay of Whales and Stonington Island off the Antarctic Peninsula, opened in 1941, but closed after a year when the United States entered World War II. In 1943 Britain set up several permanent stations. Although the British stations were set up primarily to assert sovereignty against Argentine and Chilean claims in the maritime Antarctic, they were staffed by scientists. Establishment of these early bases began the era of scientific research that was closely coupled with political rivalry. During this period Argentina, Australia, Chile, and France established permanent national expeditions, both to maintain territorial claims and to conduct scientific research. In 1946 the United States conducted Operation Highjump, the largest Antarctic expedition to date, involving massive exploration by means of ships, aircraft, and temporary land stations. This operation also gave U.S. military forces experience in polar conditions, seen as a necessity should a confrontation with Soviet troops occur in the Arctic region of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Against the backdrop of the Cold War, a period of political tension between the Soviet Union and its associated nations and Western countries allied with the United States, the USSR declared its right to make an Antarctic territorial claim in 1950. The International Geophysical Year (IGY), a period of worldwide coordinated geophysical research from July 1957 to December 1958, proved a useful step toward resolving political disputes in Antarctica. Twelve nations (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the United States, and the USSR) agreed to cooperate on scientific research in Antarctica. Starting a year beforehand, survey parties established research stations on an unprecedented scale. During the IGY more than 5,000 scientists and support staff served at 49 Antarctic stations. Projects included studies of a wide range of geophysical topics such as upper atmosphere physics, meteorology, oceanography, glaciology, seismology, and geology. The IGY led to the establishment in 1958 of the Special (later Scientific) Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), a group designed to coordinate additional research; SCAR continues in that same function today. The international cooperation and overall success of the IGY led the governments of the 12 nations to develop the Antarctic Treaty, an agreement to extend cooperation in Antarctica after the IGY ended. Concluded in 1959, the treaty asserts that Antarctica be used only for peaceful purposes; prohibits military measures, fortifications, and weapons testing; and requires freedom of scientific investigation and scientific cooperation to continue. It provides for exchanges of scientific personnel, plans for scientific programs, and scientific observations and results. It also provides for exchanges of observers, mutual inspection of stations and of ships and aircraft that are loading or discharging cargoes or personnel, and meetings of representatives to promote its objectives. The treaty prohibits nuclear explosions and disposal of nuclear waste in the treaty area (south of latitude 60° south). The treaty addressed long-standing territorial conflicts of interest over Antarctica. It made no ruling on the validity of existing claims by seven nations (Argentina, Australia, Britain, Chile, France, New Zealand, and Norway), and particularly on the overlapping claims of Argentina, Britain, and Chile. However, it forbids any new claims while the treaty is in effect and states that no member nations are required to recognize the claims of other nations. Although the United States and the USSR reserved the right to lodge future claims of their own, the indefinite freeze on territorial claims served to ease Cold War suspicions of each other’s activities in Antarctica. Research projects to study changes in the Antarctic include the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007/2008, conducted from March 2007 to March 2009. The IPY involves thousands of scientists from more than 60 nations in more than 200 projects focused on the Arctic and the Antarctic. Topics of study include biology, geology, climatology, meteorology, oceanography, and geophysics. Also ongoing is the Census of Antarctic Marine Life (CAML). The CAML is part of the international Census of Marine Life (CoML), a ten-year international initiative begun in 2000 to study life in the oceans. Satellites in space regularly monitor and map Antarctica and the ocean waters and ice around the continent. McMurdo Base, Antarctica McMurdo is the largest scientific station in Antarctica, with laboratories and living quarters for scientists and visitors. During the summer months, McMurdo accommodates up to a thousand residents. In addition to such special projects, scientists from dozens of nations at more than 40 stations participate in year-round research on Antarctica. Most stations are located on rocky shores or coastal ice slopes. A few stations sit farther inland on the ice cap, cut off from the outside world except by radio. Small stations have up to a dozen scientists and support staff, while larger stations may have two to three times as many. The largest is McMurdo, which may accommodate several thousand visitors in summer, including those on their way to inland stations or field camps. Life at the smaller stations is simple, with comfortable living quarters and a family atmosphere. Larger stations resemble hotels or barracks, with cafeteria meals and fewer home comforts. The largest stations are effectively small towns, with stores, cinemas, chapels, banks, offices, laboratories, garages, powerhouses, airstrips, and hostels for residents and visitors. Men far outnumber women in Antarctica. Although some people spend one or two years there at a time, most visit just for the summer months when good weather facilitates fieldwork. Many scientists who work indoors in laboratories or offices, perhaps servicing self-recording instruments or collecting data by radio from remote instruments, may hardly be aware of the cold world outside. Field scientists who travel in small parties by tractor or skidoo (motorized toboggan), surveying or collecting specimens and camping for weeks on end, live and work much closer to the challenges of Antarctica’s unique landscape and climate. Scientists have studied extensively Antarctica’s ice sheet and the land beneath it. Geologists and solid-earth geophysicists conduct research in plate tectonics, the study of the plates of the Earth’s crust. Antarctica is a valued source of fossils, which provide a record of the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwanaland. Although most of Antarctica is covered in ice, ancient rock is exposed in the parts of the Transantarctic Mountains and on islands on the Antarctic Peninsula. Paleontologists have found fossils of dinosaurs, marine reptiles, birds, mammals, and other prehistoric animals as well as plant life that lived in Antarctica when the climate was much more temperate, although sunlight was absent or reduced for part of the winter. Astronomers have installed telescopes in Antarctica to take advantage of the long dark nights and clear atmosphere. In addition to infrared and visible-light observatories, neutrino detectors have been buried in ice to map the source of these elusive subatomic particles. The converging magnetic force lines at the poles also increase the flux of cosmic rays, which can be studied with instruments on high-altitude balloons. Scientists also collect meteorites that have landed in the ice sheet, including specimens from the Moon and from Mars. Biologists study the microbial, plant, and animal life of the Antarctic region. These scientists model the continent’s relatively simple ecosystems, study responses of plants and animals to hostile environments, and measure the impacts of people on the polar environment. Marine biologists study the local marine food chains. Warmer ocean temperatures and increased ultraviolet radiation could have major effects on marine life in the Antarctic region. Launching Ozone Balloon, Antarctica Earth scientists launch a balloon from the roof of a building at McMurdo research base in Antarctica. The balloon will be used to study Earth’s ozone layer. The atmosphere above the continent provides another important area of study. Antarctica provides important information for climatologists modeling atmospheric circulation, or the constant flow of warm air toward the poles and cold air toward the equator (see Meteorology: Energy Flow and Global Circulation). Antarctica’s relatively unpolluted, thin, and dry atmosphere allows scientists to study phenomena such as auroras and transmission of radio waves. Most notably, these scientists study the levels of ozone, the atmospheric gas that protects life on the Earth from the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation. In 1985 they identified the so-called ozone hole, a region of depleted ozone that develops over Antarctica each spring and virtually disappears several months later. Continuous monitoring revealed that the size of the hole continued to increase. Largely due to the work of Antarctic scientists, many nations have reduced or eliminated the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which have been linked to ozone depletion. In 1987, 36 nations, including the United States, signed the Montréal Protocol, a treaty to protect the ozone layer. In the 1990s further steps were taken to ban the production of CFCs. Many scientists believe that the presence of CFCs in the atmosphere peaked in 2001 and then began to decline. Nevertheless, U.S. government scientists reported in 2006 that the ozone hole over Antarctica had reached its greatest extent ever. They do not expect the ozone layer to recover until 2065. Finally, medical researchers study the scientists and support staff living in Antarctica. Physicians have made discoveries about the behavior of viruses in a cold, isolated environment. Immunologists study the ability of expeditioners to resist infection. Psychological and sleep studies are frequently conducted during the winter, when the extreme climate and lack of visitors isolate workers from the outside world. GROWING PUBLIC INTEREST IN ANTARCTICA: Until the middle of the 20th century only explorers and technical staff were the main visitors to Antarctica. With the establishment of the first research stations the continent became the preserve of scientists. More recently Antarctica has slipped into public awareness, both as a wilderness in need of conservation and as a venue for tourism. The two trends began together: Tourists from the 1960s onward drew attention to accumulating garbage and abandoned buildings littering Antarctica—relics of installations used and discarded by scientists. Motion pictures and other forms of popular culture have made penguins in particular a symbol of endangered wildlife in the Antarctic region. In the 1970s and 1980s growing environmental organizations such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) effectively organized public opinion against practices at the bases that impacted the natural environment, such as construction near animal breeding grounds, improper disposal of containers and chemical wastes, and open burning of garbage. Largely as a result of public pressure, many stations cleaned up former dumping sites. They also began disposing of waste by shipping it back to the countries operating the bases. Environmental groups continue to oppose mining in Antarctica and to press for high standards of environmental protection. Some seek to have Antarctica managed as a world park, a status akin to a national park in the United States. This would protect Antarctica from mining, military activities, and permanent human settlement. Glaciologists measure the movement and the layers of the ice sheet. They use satellites to plot the slow movement of the ice surface. Ice cores drilled through the layers of the ice sheet have enabled scientists to trace changes in the climate over a period of tens of thousands of years. Scientists have put radio transmitters on icebergs to plot their movement. Some countries have considered the possibility of towing icebergs to arid regions as a source of fresh water. Tourism has grown slowly since its beginning in 1958. Tens of thousands of tourists visit Antarctica annually between November and March. Most travel by ship and only go ashore for brief periods, so they require very few facilities on land. Several thousand more tourists take sightseeing flights over the continent from countries in the southern hemisphere. Although some environmental groups feel that an increase in tourism would undoubtedly increase its impact, on its current scale tourism makes few demands on the environment and does not interfere significantly with scientific activities. In introducing nonscientists to the scenery, wildlife, and mystery of Antarctica, tourism may well be helping broaden public interest in Antarctica, thereby ensuring a safer future for this most remarkable area of the world. Click Wall 3 Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

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See Egypt & Iraq in League of Nations (International Peace) & In Seven Wounders. Balfour Declaration, letter prepared in March 1916 and issued in November 1917, during World War I, by the British statesman Arthur James Balfour, then foreign secretary in the cabinet of Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Specifically, the letter expressed the British government's approval of Zionism with “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” The letter committed the British government to making the “best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” It has been commonly accepted that the Balfour Declaration was a unilateral undertaking by the British government. The immediate purpose was to win for the Allied cause in World War I the support of Jews and others in the warring nations and in neutral countries such as the United States. In long-range terms, the motive behind British policy rested on the importance of Palestine as a strategic point on the land and sea routes to India and, above all, as the terminus at the Mediterranean Sea of pipelines from the rich oil-bearing regions of the Middle East. The establishment of a Zionist state under British protection would have given Britain possession of that coveted prize, while at the same time apparently implementing the Allied slogan of “self-determination of small nations.” On July 24, 1922, the declaration was embodied in the League of Nations mandate for Palestine, which set forth terms under which Britain was entrusted with the temporary administration of the country in behalf of its Jewish and Arab inhabitants. As an indirect result of the Balfour Declaration, Israel was established as an independent state in 1948 in the mandated area. League of Nations, international alliance for the preservation of peace. The league existed from 1920 to 1946. The first meeting was held in Geneva, on November 15, 1920, with 42 nations represented. The last meeting was held on April 8, 1946; at that time the league was superseded by the United Nations (UN). During the league's 26 years, a total of 63 nations belonged at one time or another; 28 were members for the entire period. II. THE COVENANT AND THE UNITED STATES In 1918, as one of his Fourteen Points summarizing Allied aims in World War I, United States president Woodrow Wilson presented a plan for a general association of nations. The plan formed the basis of the Covenant of the League of Nations, the 26 articles that served as operating rules for the league. The covenant was formulated as part of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, in 1919. Although President Wilson was a member of the committee that drafted the covenant, it was never ratified by the U.S. Senate because of Article X, which contained the requirement that all members preserve the territorial independence of all other members, even to joint action against aggression. During the next two decades, American diplomats encouraged the league's activities and attended its meetings unofficially, but the United States never became a member. The efficacy of the league was, therefore, considerably lessened. III. LEAGUE STRUCTURE The machinery of the league consisted of an assembly, a council, and a secretariat. Before World War II (1939-1945), the assembly convened regularly at Geneva in September; it was composed of three representatives for every member state, each state having one vote. The council met at least three times each year to consider political disputes and reduction of armaments; it was composed of several permanent members—France, Britain, Italy, Japan, and later Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)—and several nonpermanent members elected by the assembly. The decisions of the council had to be unanimous. The secretariat was the administrative branch of the league and consisted of a secretary general and a staff of 500 people. Several other bodies were allied with the league, such as the Permanent Court of International Justice, called the World Court , and the International Labor Organization. IV. WORLD INVOLVEMENT The league was based on a new concept: collective security against the “criminal” threat of war. Unfortunately, the league rarely implemented its available resources, limited though they were, to achieve this goal. One important activity of the league was the disposition of certain territories that had been colonies of Germany and the Ottoman Empire before World War I. Supervision of these territories was awarded to league members in the form of mandates. Mandated territories were given different degrees of independence, in accordance with their stage of development, their geographic situation, and their economic status. The league may be credited with certain social achievements. These include curbing international traffic in narcotics and prostitution, aiding refugees of World War I, and surveying and improving health and labor conditions around the world. In the area of preserving peace, the league had some minor successes, including settlement of disputes between Finland and Sweden over the ?land Islands in 1921 and between Greece and Bulgaria over their mutual border in 1925. The Great Powers, however, preferred to handle their own affairs; France occupied the Ruhr, and Italy occupied Corfu (Kérkira), both in 1923, in spite of the league. Although Germany joined the league in 1926, the National Socialist (Nazi) government withdrew in 1933. Japan also withdrew in 1933, after Japanese attacks on China were condemned by the league. The league failed to end the war between Bolivia and Paraguay over the Chaco Boreal between 1932 and 1935 and to stop the Italian conquest of Ethiopia begun in 1935. Finally, the league was powerless to prevent the events in Europe that led to World War II. The USSR, a member since 1934, was expelled following the Soviet attack on Finland in 1939. In 1940 the secretariat in Geneva was reduced to a skeleton staff, and several small service units were moved to Canada and the United States. In 1946 the league voted to effect its own dissolution, whereupon much of its property and organization were transferred to the UN. V. LEGACY Never truly effective as a peacekeeping organization, the lasting importance of the League of Nations lies in the fact that it provided the groundwork for the UN. This international alliance, formed after World War II, not only profited by the mistakes of the League of Nations but borrowed much of the organizational machinery of the league. VI. MEMBERSHIP The accompanying table lists the countries that were members of the international organization. Where no date is given, the country was an original member of the league. The year in parentheses is the year of admission to the league unless otherwise indicated. The Arab League The Arab League declared war on the new state, and Egypt, Transjordan (now Jordan), Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq announced that their armies would enter the area to restore order. The newly established Israel Defense Forces (IDF), formed from prestate defense organizations, successfully repelled Arab forces. Fighting continued into early 1949, when Israel and each of the bordering states signed truce agreements that established the borders of the new state. Iraq, which shared no borders with Israel, did not sign any agreements. 1980: International Regional Organizations Arab League. This year, as often in the past, the Arab League was primarily concerned with the Arab-Israeli conflict and conflicts among its member states. It extended the mandate of the Syrian troops in Lebanon, and it also created on February 29 a commission to try to resolve the increasing and potentially explosive tensions between Tunisia and Libya. Arab League, informal name of the League of Arab States, a voluntary association of independent countries whose peoples are mainly Arabic speaking. Its stated purposes are to strengthen ties among the member states, coordinate their policies, and promote their common interests. II. MEMBERSHIP The league was founded in Cairo in 1945 by Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Transjordan (Jordan, as of 1949), and Yemen. Countries that later joined are: Algeria (1962), Bahrain (1971), Comoros (1993), Djibouti (1977), Kuwait (1961), Libya (1953), Mauritania (1973), Morocco (1958), Oman (1971), Qatar (1971), Somalia (1974), Southern Yemen (1967), Sudan (1956), Tunisia (1958), and the United Arab Emirates (1971). The Palestine Liberation Organization was admitted in 1976. Egypt's membership was suspended in 1979 after it signed a peace treaty with Israel; the league's headquarters was moved from Cairo, Egypt, to Tunis, Tunisia. In 1987 Arab leaders decided to renew diplomatic ties with Egypt. Egypt was readmitted to the league in 1989 and the league's headquarters was moved back to Cairo. III. STRUCTURE The supreme organ of the Arab League is its council, made up of all the member states; each state has one vote. Unanimous council decisions are binding on all members. Majority decisions are binding only on those members who accepted them. The council convenes twice annually, in March and September. It convenes in special session upon the request of two member states whenever the need arises. The league appoints, by two-thirds majority, a secretary general, who is in charge of the administration and financial offices, called the secretariat general. The secretariat general is divided into several departments concerned with political, economic, social, and legal affairs. Ahmed Esmat Abdul Maguid was unanimously voted secretary general by the council in 1991. Other specialized agencies connected with the league include the Arab League Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization; and the Arab League Labor Organization. IV. HISTORY The Egyptian government first proposed the Arab League in 1943. Egypt and some of the other Arab states wanted closer cooperation without the loss of self-rule that would result from total union. The original charter of the league created a regional organization of sovereign states that was neither a union nor a federation. Among the goals the league set for itself were winning independence for all Arabs still under alien rule, and to prevent the Jewish minority in Palestine (then governed by the British) from creating a Jewish state. The members eventually formed a joint defense council, an economic council, and a permanent military command. V. ACTIVITIES The Arab League is involved in political, economic, cultural, and social programs designed to promote the interests of member states. The league has served as a forum for member states to coordinate their policy positions and deliberate on matters of common concern, settling some Arab disputes and limiting conflicts such as the Lebanese civil wars of 1958. The Arab League has served as a platform for the drafting and conclusion of almost all landmark documents promoting economic integration among member states, such as the creation of the Joint Arab Economic Action Charter, which set out the principles for economic activities of the league. It has played an important role in shaping school curricula, and preserving manuscripts and Arab cultural heritage. The league has launched literacy campaigns, and reproduced intellectual works, and translated modern technical terminology for the use of member states. It encourages measures against crime and drug abuse and deals with labor issues (particularly among the emigrant Arab workforce). The league has also fostered cultural exchanges between member states, encouraged youth and sports programs, helped to advance the role of women in Arab societies, and promoted child welfare activities. 1982: Israel As in previous years, foreign policy and national security issues dominated the Israeli scene in 1982. As the year began, Israel sought to improve its relationship with the United States, which had become strained following the Israeli decision to carry out a de facto annexation of the occupied Golan Heights in December 1981. Then, from January to April, Israel went through what Prime Minister Menachem Begin called a 'national trauma,' as Israeli forces totally withdrew from the remaining area of the Sinai Peninsula under Israeli occupation, in accordance with the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Another major development in 1982 was a change in Israel's occupation policy on the West Bank: Israel dissolved its military government and established 'village leagues,' composed of West Bank Arabs willing to cooperate with the Israelis. In June, Israel, beset by the amassing of increasing numbers of sophisticated weapons in southern Lebanon by the Palestine Liberation Organization, invaded Lebanon. Although the initial goal of the operation was to move the PLO out of artillery range of Israel's northern settlements, Israel's goals soon expanded to include the ouster of PLO and Syrian forces from all of Lebanon. The operation brought Israel important military gains but also created major political problems, abroad and at home, for the Begin government, especially because of Israel's indirect association with a massacre of Palestinians near West Beirut. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. International Organization: World Meteorological Organization (WMO), specialized agency of the United Nations, established in 1947 to coordinate, standardize, and improve world meteorological information. Successor to the International Meteorological Organization, which had coordinated weather-reporting services among its members after 1878, the WMO has 187 members, consisting of countries and territories that maintain meteorological services. The organization facilitates international cooperation in the establishment of station networks and centers to provide meteorological and hydrometeorological service and observations. It promotes the establishment of systems for the rapid exchange of weather data and the standardization of meteorological observations, and encourages research and training to further the application of meteorology to aviation, shipping, agriculture, and other activities. The organizational structure of the WMO includes the policymaking body called the World Meteorological Congress, which meets at least once every four years; the executive committee, which carries out the resolutions of the congress, initiates studies, and makes recommendations on matters requiring international action; meteorological associations for six regions (Africa, Asia, South America, North and Central America, Europe, and the Southwest Pacific); and technical commissions composed of experts in such fields as climatology and maritime meteorology. The secretariat, which is headed by a secretary general, has its headquarters in Geneva. World Trade Organization (WTO), international body that promotes and enforces the provisions of trade laws and regulations. The World Trade Organization has the authority to administer and police new and existing free trade agreements, to oversee world trade practices, and to settle trade disputes among member states. The WTO was established in 1994 when the members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a treaty and international trade organization, signed a new trade pact. The WTO was created to replace GATT. All of the 128 nations that were contracting parties to the new GATT pact at the end of 1994 became members of the WTO upon ratifying the GATT pact. A number of other nations have joined the WTO since then. The WTO began operation on January 1, 1995. GATT and the WTO coexisted until December 1995, when the members of GATT met for the last time. Although the WTO replaced GATT, the trade agreements established by GATT in 1994 are part of the WTO agreement. However, the WTO has a significantly broader scope than GATT. GATT regulated trade in merchandise goods. The WTO expanded the GATT agreement to include trade in services, such as international telephone service, and protections for intellectual property—that is, creative works that can be protected legally, such as sound recordings and computer programs. The WTO is also a formally structured organization whose rules are legally binding on its member states. The organization provides a framework for international trade law. Members can refer trade disputes to the WTO where a dispute panel composed of WTO officials serves as arbitrator. Members can appeal this panel’s rulings to a WTO appellate body whose decisions are final. Disputes must be resolved within the time limits set by WTO rules. The WTO is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and is controlled by a General Council made up of member states’ ambassadors who also serve on various subsidiary and specialist committees. The ministerial conference, which meets every two years and appoints the WTO’s director-general, oversees the General Council. Since its creation, the WTO has attracted criticism from those concerned about free trade and economic globalization. Opponents of the WTO argue that the organization is too powerful because it can declare the laws and regulations of sovereign nations in violation of trade rules, in effect pressuring nations to change these laws. Critics also charge that WTO trade rules do not sufficiently protect workers’ rights, the environment, or human health. Some groups charge that the WTO lacks democratic accountability because its hearings on trade disputes are closed to the public and press. WTO officials have dismissed arguments that the organization is undemocratic, noting that its member nations, most of which are democracies, wrote the WTO rules and selected its leadership. WTO supporters argue that it plays a critical role in helping expand world trade and raise living standards around the world. Criticism of the WTO reached an apex in late 1999, when more than 30,000 protesters disrupted a WTO summit in Seattle, Washington. The protesters called for reforms that would make the organization more responsive to consumers, workers, and environmentalists. The summit failed in its goal to set an agenda for a new round of global trade talks, largely because of disagreements between industrialized and developing nations. These disagreements focused on agricultural subsidies provided by the developed countries, particularly the European Union (EU) and the United States, to support their farmers. Developing countries objected to the extent of the subsidies, which amount to about $300 billion annually, arguing that such generous support artificially lowered world crop prices and made it difficult, if not impossible, for farmers in developing countries to compete. The failure of the richer nations to reach agreement on lowering agricultural subsidies continued to derail trade talks in the early 2000s. See also Globalization. International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), specialized technical agency of the United Nations, created as a permanent body on April 4, 1947, for the purpose of promoting the safe and orderly development of civil aviation throughout the world. The agency sets international standards and regulations necessary for the safety, efficiency, and regularity of air transport. The ICAO also serves as a medium for cooperation in all fields of civil aviation among its member nations, and it provides technical assistance to countries who need help maintaining civil aviation facilities or meeting the global standards set by the ICAO. The ICAO also produces technical publications and special studies. The agency has been instrumental in improving meteorological services, air traffic control, air-to-ground communications, search and rescue operations, and other measures for safe international flight. It also has done much to simplify customs and immigration procedures and public health regulations related to international air travel. The fight against airplane hijacking and other terrorist attacks and the effects of aircraft noise on the environment also have been of special concern to the ICAO. The ICAO is composed of 180 member nations that meet once every three years at an assembly. Its executive body in the interim is a council consisting of representatives from 33 member nations who are elected by the assembly on the basis of their relative importance in international air transport and of geographical distribution. The ICAO has its own secretariat, headed by a secretary general appointed by the council, and several permanent technical committees. The agency headquarters is in Montréal. International Criminal Police Organization or Interpol, intergovernmental body established to promote mutual cooperation between police authorities around the world and to develop means of effectively preventing crime. Founded in Vienna in 1923 and reconstituted in 1946, Interpol is strictly nonpolitical and is forbidden to undertake any activities of a religious, racial, or military nature. The majority of countries (177 in 1997) belong to Interpol, and only government-approved police bodies may hold membership. The general assembly meets annually to decide policy and to elect the executive committee, consisting of a president, three vice presidents, and nine delegates, all of different nationalities. The general secretariat, based in Lyon, France, is the permanent administrative headquarters. It coordinates the international activities of member countries, holds a library of international criminal records, and organizes regular meetings at which delegates can exchange information on police work. Interpol is financed by contributions from member countries; its budget in 1997 was $28 million. International Maritime Satellite Organization (INMARSAT) organization that operates a system of satellites facilitating mobile communications on land, at sea, and in the air. INMARSAT launched its first satellites in 1979 to provide global communications for shipping. In the 1980s INMARSAT also began to offer aeronautic and land communications services. INMARSAT’s satellites each lie in a geostationary orbit 22,223 miles above one of the four major ocean regions of the earth. Data transfer services that the satellites provide include direct-dial telephone, telex, fax, and e-mail data links, along with automatic position and status reporting for aircraft and land transport, and distress and safety messaging and positioning. INMARSAT has 79 member nations. Decision-making authority centers in the council, which includes representatives of member nations with the largest investment share, and the directorate, a permanent staff organization with headquarters in London. In 1996 the Government Accountability Office (GA0) of the United States recommended reorganization of both INMARSAT and the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (INTELSAT). The GAO stated that these treaty organizations stifled private competition that would benefit consumers of the services offered by the international telecommunications and satellite industries. Proposals for the reorganization range from dismantling INMARSAT and INTELSAT to creating affiliates with ownership in these parent organizations. Deployment and operation of communications satellites on a commercial basis began with the founding of the Communications Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) in 1963. When the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (INTELSAT) was formed in 1964, COMSAT became the U.S. member. Based in Washington, D.C., INTELSAT is owned by more than 120 nations. Intelsat 1, known as Early Bird, launched in 1965, provided either 240 voice circuits or one two-way television channel between the United States and Europe. During the 1960s and 1970s, message capacity and transmission power of the Intelsat 2, 3, and 4 generations were progressively increased. The first of the Intelsat 4s, launched in 1971, provided 4,000 voice circuits. With the Intelsat 5 series (1980), innovations in signal focusing resulted in additional increases in capacity. A satellite's power could now be concentrated on small regions of the earth, making possible smaller-aperture, lower-cost ground stations. An Intelsat 5 satellite can typically carry 12,000 voice circits. The Intelsat 6 satellites, which entered service in 1989, can carry 24,000 circuits and feature dynamic on-board switching of telephone capacity among six beams, using a technique called SS-TDMA (satellite-switched time division multiple access). In the early 2000s, INTELSAT had 21 satellites in orbit, providing the world's most extensive telecommunications system. Other systems also provide international service in competition with INTELSAT. The growth of international systems has been paralleled by domestic and regional systems, such as the U.S. Telstar, Galaxy, and Spacenet programs and Europe's Eutelsat and Telecom. A method for interconnecting many ground stations spread over great distances was demonstrated in 1993 with the launch of NASA's ACTS (Advanced Communications Technology Satellite). The satellite uses what is known as the hopping spot beam technique to combine the advantages of frequency reuse, spot beams, and TDMA. By concentrating the energy of the satellite's transmitted signal, ACTS can use ground stations that have smaller antennas and reduced power requirements. The concept of multiple spot beam communications was successfully demonstrated in 1991 with the launch of Italsat, developed by the Italian Research Council. With six spot beams operating at 30 GHz (uplink) and 20 GHz (downlink), the satellite interconnects TDMA transmissions between ground stations in all the major economic centers of Italy. It does this by demodulating uplink signals, routing them between up- and downlink beams, and combining and remodulating them for downlink transmission. Laser beams can also be used to transmit signals between a satellite and the earth, but the rate of transmission is limited because of absorption and scattering by the atmosphere. Lasers operating in the blue-green wavelength, which penetrates water, have been used for communication between satellites and submarines. The latest development in satellites is the use of networks of small satellites in low earth orbit (2,000 km (1,200 mi) or less) to provide global telephone communication. The Iridium system uses 66 satellites in low earth orbit, while other groups have or are developing similar systems. Special telephones that communicate with these satellites allow users to access the regular telephone network and place calls from anywhere on the globe. Anticipated customers of these systems include international business travelers and people living or working in remote areas. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. United Nations I INTRODUCTION United Nations (UN), international organization of countries created to promote world peace and cooperation. The UN was founded after World War II ended in 1945. Its mission is to maintain world peace, develop good relations between countries, promote cooperation in solving the world’s problems, and encourage respect for human rights. The UN is an organization of countries that agree to cooperate with one another. It brings together countries that are rich and poor, large and small, and have different social and political systems. Member nations pledge to settle their disputes peacefully, to refrain from using force or the threat of force against other countries, and to refuse help to any country that opposes UN actions. UN membership is open to any country willing to further the UN mission and abide by its rules. Each country, no matter how large or small, has an equal voice and vote. Each country is also expected to pay dues to support the UN. As of 2007 the UN had 192 members, including nearly every country in the world. The UN’s influence in world affairs has fluctuated over the years, but the organization gained new prominence beginning in the 1990s. It was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001. Still, the UN faces constant challenges. It must continually secure the cooperation of its member nations because the organization has little independent power or authority. But getting that support is not always easy. Many nations are reluctant to defer their own authority and follow the dictates of the UN. II CREATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS The UN is the result of a long history of efforts to promote international cooperation. In the late 18th century, German philosopher Immanuel Kant proposed a federation or “league” of the world’s nations. Kant believed that such a federation would allow countries to unite and punish any nation that committed an act of aggression. This type of union by nations to protect each other against an aggressor is sometimes referred to as collective security. Kant also felt that the federation would protect the rights of small nations that often become pawns in power struggles between larger countries. Kant’s idea came to life after World War I (1914-1918). Horrified by the devastation of the war, countries were inspired to come together and work toward peace. They formed a new organization, the League of Nations, to achieve that goal. The League would last from 1920 to 1946 and have a total of 63 member nations through its history, including some of the world’s greatest powers: France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, Germany, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). But the League had two major flaws. First, several of the world’s most powerful countries were not members, most notably, the United States. Second, the League required consensus among its members to oppose aggression. Dissent by any one member could prevent consensus and render the League impotent. When Japan, Italy, and Germany undertook military aggression in the 1930s, they would not agree to censure themselves, thus preventing the consensus necessary for League action. This aggression ultimately led to World War II (1939-1945). In the end, the League failed in its most basic mission, to prevent another world war. Despite this failure, the idea of a league did not die. The first commitment to create a new organization came in 1941, when U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill announced the Atlantic Charter, in which they pledged to work toward a more effective system to keep world peace and promote cooperation. In 1942 representatives of the Allies—the World War II coalition of 26 nations fighting against Germany and Japan—signed a Declaration by United Nations accepting the principles of the Atlantic Charter. The declaration included the first formal use of the term United Nations, a name coined by President Roosevelt. A year later, four of the Allies—the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China—agreed to establish a general international organization. The four countries met in 1944 at the Dumbarton Oaks estate in Washington, D.C., and drafted a charter for the new organization. They called the new league the United Nations. But they still could not agree to certain details, such as membership and voting rights. The four countries met again in early 1945 at a summit in Yalta, Ukraine (see Yalta Conference). There, they settled their differences and called for a conference of nations to complete their work. On April 25, 1945, the United Nations Conference on International Organization convened in San Francisco, with delegates from 50 countries attending. The delegates worked for two months to complete a charter for the UN that included its purpose, principles, and organizational structure. The charter contained a formal agreement committing all the world’s nations to a common set of basic rules governing their relations. The UN officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, with 51 member countries-the 50 represented at the conference and Poland, which had not been able to send a delegate.

Like the League of Nations, the UN was founded to promote peace and prevent another world war. The UN recognized it would not be successful unless it had the ongoing support of the world’s most powerful countries. The organization took several steps to ensure that support. To encourage continued U.S. involvement, the UN placed its headquarters in New York City. To reassure the world’s most powerful countries that it would not threaten their sovereignty, the UN gave them veto authority over its most important actions. Five countries received this veto power: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Soviet Union, and China. (Russia inherited the Soviet Union’s veto after the breakup of that country in 1991.) Another major strength of the UN, unlike the earlier League of Nations, is that virtually every territory in the world is a member, or a province, or a colony of a member. Some nonmember political entities, such as the Vatican City and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), also have permanent observer mission status at the UN. III STRUCTURE OF THE UNITED NATIONS The UN’s charter established six distinct bodies that serve different functions: (1) the General Assembly, (2) the Security Council, (3) the Secretariat, (4) the Economic and Social Council, (5) the International Court of Justice, and (6) the Trusteeship Council. A General Assembly The General Assembly is made up of all 192 member countries, each with one vote. It undertakes all major discussions and decisions about UN actions. It is like a global town hall, providing a powerful medium for countries to put forward their ideas and debate issues. The Assembly can discuss and make recommendations on any issue covered by the UN’s charter. However, the recommendations are not binding and the Assembly has no authority to enforce them. Members decide routine matters with a simple majority vote. Important decisions require a two-thirds majority. The General Assembly meets annually in regular sessions that generally run from mid-September to mid-December. Recently the General Assembly has been meeting year round. It also convenes for special sessions every few years on specific topics, such as economic cooperation or disarmament. In addition, the Assembly can meet in emergency session to deal with an immediate threat to international peace. At the beginning of each regular session, Assembly members elect a president to preside over the assembly. The Assembly sessions, like most UN deliberations, are simultaneously translated into many languages so that delegates from around the world can understand any speaker. The General Assembly has the power to admit new members to the UN. It approves the budget for UN programs and operations. The Assembly can establish agencies and programs to carry out its recommendations. It elects members to serve on certain agencies and programs, and it coordinates those programs through various committees. B Security Council The Security Council is the most powerful body in the UN. It is responsible for maintaining international peace, and for restoring peace when conflicts arise. Its decisions are binding on all UN members and have the force of international law. The Security Council has the power to define what is a threat to security, to determine how the UN should respond, and to enforce its decisions by ordering UN members to take certain actions. For example, the Council may impose economic sanctions, such as halting trade with a country it considers an aggressor. The Council convenes any time there is a threat to peace. A representative from each member country who sits on the Council must be available at all times so that the Council can meet at a moment’s notice. The Security Council also frequently meets at the request of a UN member—often a nation with a grievance about another nation’s actions. The Security Council has 15 members, 5 of which hold permanent seats. The General Assembly elects the other 10 members for rotating two-year terms. The 5 permanent members—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia (formerly the Soviet Union), and China—have the most power. These nations were the winning powers at the end of World War II, and they still represent the bulk of the world’s military might. Decisions of the Council require nine votes. But any one of the permanent members can veto an important decision. This authority is known as the veto right of the great powers. As a result, the Council is effective only when its permanent members can reach a consensus. This created problems during the Cold War, the post-1945 struggle between the United States and Soviet Union that ended when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. During that time, the council was frequently deadlocked because the United States and Soviet Union could not agree. Beginning in the 1990s, increased cooperation between the United States and Russia enabled the council to become more effective. The Council has a variety of ways it can try to resolve conflicts between countries. Usually the Council’s first step is to encourage the countries to settle their disagreements without violence. The Council can mediate a dispute or recommend guidelines for a settlement. It can send peacekeeping troops into a distressed area. If war breaks out, the Council can call for a ceasefire. It can enforce its decisions by imposing economic sanctions on a country, or by authorizing joint military action. In recent years, there has been growing controversy over which countries should have permanent seats on the Council. Some nations believe that other countries beside the original five should be included. For example, Japan and Germany are powerful countries that pay large membership dues and make substantial contributions to the UN, yet they do not have permanent seats. There is no easy solution to this problem. Adding more permanent members creates its own set of complications, including how to decide which countries get a seat and which do not. For example, if Germany joined, three of the permanent members would be European, giving that region an unfair advantage. Several proposals for addressing this problem have been considered, including adding Germany and Japan as permanent members, waiving the veto power of the permanent members, and limiting Council membership to one year. Thus far, none of the proposals have been adopted, partly because the present structure works well for the five permanent members and they can veto any changes to it. C Secretariat The Secretariat is the UN’s executive branch. It oversees the administration of the UN’s programs and policies and carries out day-to-day operations. This branch is headed by the secretary general, who acts as the UN’s spokesperson. C1 Secretariat Staff The UN’s staff includes administrators, experts on technical issues such as environmental protection, and economic advisors working on various programs and projects in the member countries. These workers have a variety of responsibilities, such as overseeing the operations of peacekeeping missions, preparing studies on world issues, organizing international conferences, surveying economic and social trends, and providing translations of speeches. They perform the day-to-day work necessary for basic UN operations. The largest concentration of staff outside New York City is in Geneva, Switzerland, where several UN programs and agencies have headquarters. One purpose of the Secretariat is to develop an international civil service of diplomats and bureaucrats whose loyalties are not tied to any one country. The staff answers only to the UN and takes an oath not to obey any outside authority. The UN charter calls on its members to respect the independence and international character of the staff. However, the UN has had mixed success following through on this ideal. The secretary general is generally seen as an independent diplomat. But member nations still compete to place their citizens in control of staffs that administer important UN programs. In the early 1990s the UN bureaucracy came under increasing criticism for inefficiency and even corruption. Much of this criticism came from the United States, which believed it was bearing an unfair share of the costs of supporting the UN. By the mid-1990s, these criticisms had led to a series of reforms, including budget and staff reductions. C2 Secretary General The secretary general is a powerful public figure who oversees the daily operations of the UN and plays a major role in setting the organization’s agenda in international security affairs. The secretary general can bring to the Security Council any matter that might threaten world peace. The secretary general has the authority to serve as a neutral mediator in international conflicts and to bring hostile parties together to negotiate. The secretary general’s personal attention to a problem can often help bring about a resolution. For example, in the 1990s Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali personally mediated conflicts in Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere. In the 1980s, Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar mediated conflicts in Central America. The secretary general also works to build consensus among the five permanent members of the Security Council, knowing that without it the Council cannot act. The secretary general is formally chosen by the General Assembly. But the secretary general must first be nominated by the Security Council and win the consent of all five of its permanent members. The secretary general serves a five-year term, which may be renewed. The Security Council can nominate a candidate from any country, but it is an unwritten tradition that the position rotates geographically, with a secretary general chosen from a new region after every two terms. In 1997 the General Assembly created the post of deputy secretary general to assist in the management of the Secretariat. The secretary general appoints the deputy secretary general. The secretary general, like the rest of the UN staff, is supposed to be independent. In reality, the secretary general must rely on member countries, especially the five permanent Security Council members, to get anything done. As a result, the secretary general often struggles with the Security Council over what direction the UN should take. Since the Security Council chooses the secretary general, there is a limit on how independent the position can be. Kofi Annan of Ghana was elected by the General Assembly to be secretary general from 1997 through 2001. In 2001 the General Assembly unanimously elected him to a second term, running from 2002 through 2006. He was the first secretary general from sub-Saharan Africa and the first to rise through the UN staff to the top job. Before becoming secretary general, Annan served as undersecretary general for peacekeeping operations. He was credited with doing the best job possible with difficult peacekeeping missions in Somalia and Bosnia in the early 1990s. Annan was educated in the United States and knew the UN bureaucracy well. As secretary general, Annan reformed the UN secretariat’s finances and management and significantly improved relations between the UN and the United States. He also worked to improve human rights worldwide and to slow the spread of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), particularly in developing countries. Annan’s immediate predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt, was secretary general from 1992 through 1996. He tried to expand the UN’s role as peacekeeper and peacemaker. He was outspoken with the Security Council, a trait that got him into trouble with its members, particularly the United States. For example, he scolded the Council for giving him big projects without enough money to carry them out. In 1996 the United States vetoed his candidacy for a second term. Since both Annan and Boutros-Ghali represented African nations, Annan’s selection preserved the tradition of keeping the secretary general’s post in the same geographic region for two terms. Annan was succeeded in 2007 by Ban Ki Moon, former foreign minister of South Korea. Secretaries general have come from various regions of the world, but it is an unwritten rule that they never should come from one of the most powerful countries. This tradition is a response to concerns that a secretary general selected from such a country would not be perceived by other nations as objective or neutral. There is also a fear that such a selection would give the world’s most influential nations that much more power. Past secretaries general include Trygve Lie of Norway, who served from 1946 to 1953; Dag Hammarskj?ld of Sweden, 1953 to 1961; U Thant of Burma (now Myanmar), 1961 through 1971; Kurt Waldheim of Austria, 1972 to 1982; and Javier Pérez de Cuéllar of Peru, 1982 through 1991. No woman has yet served in this position. D Economic and Social Council The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) works under the authority of the General Assembly to coordinate the economic and social work of the UN. ECOSOC has 54 member countries elected by the General Assembly for three-year terms. ECOSOC coordinates studies and recommends actions on international topics such as medicine, education, economics, and social needs. It promotes higher living standards, full employment, respect for human rights, and economic and social progress. It oversees the work of a large number of UN programs and agencies. ECOSOC operates mainly through various standing committees, functional commissions, and regional commissions. There are five regional commissions that look at how the UN’s programs in a particular region are working together. There are ten functional commissions that deal with topics such as population growth, narcotics trafficking, human rights, and the status of women. Other committees work on topics relevant to several UN programs, such as crime prevention, public finance, natural resources, science and technology, and geographical names. ECOSOC coordinates the work of many specialized agencies that provide a variety of social, economic, and related services. The agencies operate independently but work with other programs in the UN. Those agencies include the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund; the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Labor Organization (ILO), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). ECOSOC also works closely with the private sector and with more than 2,000 nongovernmental organizations. E International Court of Justice The International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court , is the judicial arm of the UN. It is located in The Hague, Netherlands. The court hears cases brought by nations against each other. It has 15 judges, elected by the Security Council and the General Assembly. A country is not required to participate in the court’s proceedings, but if it agrees to participate, it must abide by the court’s decisions. F Trusteeship Council The Trusteeship Council was established to oversee the transition of a handful of colonies to independence. The last of those colonies, the Palau Islands, gained independence in 1994, making the Trusteeship Council obsolete. IV MEMBERSHIP IN THE UN The UN started in 1945 with 51 founding members—including the 50 countries that had attended the San Francisco conference, and Poland, which was not at the conference but signed the charter later. New members are admitted to the UN on the recommendation of the Security Council, if approved by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly. Membership is open to any country that supports the UN’s mission and is willing to follow the rules and responsibilities specified in the charter. In its early years, Western countries dominated the UN and the General Assembly regularly sided with the United States. The Soviet Union provided a balance to Western influence by using its veto power in the Security Council. The balance of power began to change in the 1950s and 1960s, as colonies in Asia and Africa gained independence and became members of the UN. The UN’s membership more than doubled during that time and the new members had different concerns than did the once-dominant Western industrial nations. Many of the new members believed the United States was too powerful and the UN too often gave in to American interests. As newly independent developing nations began to predominate, they affected voting patterns in the UN. The United States found itself in the minority on many issues. By the end of the 1970s, the United States had become the primary user of the veto. Another change in UN membership involved representation for China. In 1945 China joined the United Nations as a founding member and was represented by the Nationalist government in Nanjing. In 1949 the Nationalists lost the Chinese civil war against the Communists and retreated to the island of Taiwan. Backed by the United States and other Western nations, the Nationalist government on Taiwan claimed to be the legitimate government of all China and continued to hold the China seat in the UN until 1971. That year the General Assembly took the seat away from Taiwan and gave it to the Communist government in Beijing, on the mainland. This action left Taiwan without representation in the UN. Taiwan would like to be a member and has tried to win a separate seat. But China regards Taiwan as a province and has opposed independence for the island, despite the fact that Taiwan functions like an independent nation in many international matters. China has vehemently objected to UN membership for Taiwan because leaders there believe if the UN recognizes Taiwan with a seat it would help that government’s bid for independence. V UN FUNDING The UN is funded by dues paid by each of its members. Each country’s dues are based upon its wealth and ability to pay. The UN also requires countries to make financial contributions to its peacekeeping efforts. In addition, many countries make voluntary contributions to support various UN programs. The United States is the largest contributor to the UN. The UN cannot force member nations to pay their dues. Many nations have failed to pay their full dues and have cut their voluntary contributions, causing the organization to fall into considerable debt. The financial crisis began in the 1980s when countries started falling behind in their payments. Yet as financial support declined, the UN’s expenses grew. In 1996 the UN came perilously close to bankruptcy. After Kofi Annan became UN secretary general in 1997, he pushed through reforms to consolidate some major UN offices, in part to encourage the United States to pay its back dues. In 1999 the U.S. Congress agreed to pay nearly $1 billion of back dues, but only on the condition that the UN decrease the U.S. share of the administrative budget from 25 to 22 percent and its share of the peacekeeping budget from 31 to 25 percent. In 2000 the General Assembly responded to these terms by overhauling its system of financing. It set a ceiling of 22 percent as the maximum amount any country would pay toward the administrative budget. It also replaced its ad hoc system of funding peacekeeping operations with a sliding scale of dues based on a country’s per capita income. As a result, the U.S. contribution to peacekeeping operations declined to about 27 percent by 2004, and more than two dozen countries accepted increases in their peacekeeping contributions. The UN also receives money from private citizens. Individuals may donate to various UN programs, such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Program (WFP). In 1997 American business executive Ted Turner pledged $1 billion to UN programs, the largest single gift to the UN in its history. VI FUNCTIONS OF THE UN The UN today has the same basic purpose and structure as it did when it was founded in 1945. Its primary purpose—and greatest benefit to its members—is to maintain world peace. That, in turn, helps countries to develop and prosper, thereby improving the lives of their citizens. In addition to that primary mission, the UN serves its member countries in a variety of other ways. The UN provides a forum for countries to promote their views and settle conflicts without violence. It allows countries to cooperate to solve world problems, such as poverty, disease, and threats to the environment. It serves as a symbol of international order and global identity. It works to address economic and social problems in developing countries, with the idea that such problems create sources of conflict that can lead to war. The UN helps coordinate the work of hundreds of agencies and programs, both within its own organization and outside it. It also collects and publishes global statistics. A Maintenance of International Peace and Security The UN has three primary ways to maintain international peace and security. All directly involve the Security Council. Under chapter 6 of the UN charter, the UN can assist in the peaceful resolution of international disputes. This authority has evolved into the use of UN authorized peacekeeping forces. Under chapter 7 of the UN charter, the UN can authorize military action to enforce its resolutions. Finally, the UN can serve as a forum for international deliberations on long-term solutions to pressing security issues, such as arms control and terrorism. A1 Peacekeeping Peacekeeping is the nonaggressive use of military force to help nations in conflict reach a settlement. The UN charter does not mention peacekeeping forces, although chapter 6 of the charter does establish guidelines for peaceful resolution of international conflicts. The UN’s first peacekeeping effort took place in the Middle East in 1948. The UN sent unarmed observers to help maintain the truce negotiated after five Arab countries attacked Israel earlier in the year. The UN first used armed peacekeepers during the Suez Crisis of 1956, when England, France, and Israel fought Egypt for control of the Suez Canal. The peacekeepers oversaw the withdrawal of French, British, and Israeli troops and acted as a buffer between the warring parties. Today, the UN’s peacekeeping forces play a neutral role, working to calm regional conflicts in several ways. They can go into an area of conflict as observers, making sure agreements reached between opposing sides are being followed. They can provide a buffer between warring parties by physically interposing themselves in the middle. They can negotiate with military officers on both sides, providing a channel of communication. They can also monitor ceasefires, supervise elections, and provide humanitarian aid. Peacekeepers are lightly armed. They travel in armored vehicles with automatic rifles, but lack artillery, tanks, or other heavy weapons. Their work can be hazardous, especially if one of the warring sides doubts their neutrality. They are often caught in the middle when ceasefires collapse and they sometimes have been deliberately attacked. By 2007 more than 2,300 peacekeepers had died in the line of duty. The Security Council grants authority for peacekeeping missions, usually for several months, although the Council can reauthorize missions for many years. The UN does not have its own army, so the Security Council borrows forces for each mission from the military and police personnel of member countries. The Security Council also chooses a single commander, and the forces operate under UN command. The forces operate only if the parties in conflict agree to their presence. Thus, the success of a peacekeeping mission depends upon the cooperation of the opposing parties. Peacekeeping forces are funded by special fees paid by UN members. The General Assembly must approve the funds. Today, lack of funds is the single greatest constraint in the use of peacekeeping forces. As peacekeeping operations have expanded, they have required more and more money. UN peacekeepers won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988 in recognition of their successes. In the early 21st century the UN had nearly 90,000 troops from 112 countries in almost 20 separate peacekeeping missions in regions of the world including South Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa. In July 2007 the UN Security Council authorized a peacekeeping force of 26,000 for the Darfur region of Sudan. It became the UN’s largest peacekeeping force. See also United Nations Peacekeeping Forces. A2 Peace Enforcement In addition to peacekeeping missions, the UN can also authorize peace enforcement operations. Unlike peacekeeping missions, which help willing parties maintain an existing peace agreement, peace enforcement operations seek to repel international aggression, using military force if necessary. Under chapter 7 of the UN charter, the Security Council may authorize member countries to take military action in response to international breaches of the peace. The UN’s founders initially envisioned chapter 7 as the teeth in the UN charter. An early example of the UN’s role in peace enforcement came in 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea, starting the Korean War. The UN Security Council condemned the invasion and authorized a multinational force, led by the United States, to repel the attack. This resolution was only possible because the USSR boycotted the Security Council meeting to protest the UN’s refusal to recognize the communist government of China. When the USSR returned to the Security Council, it used its veto to protect its ally, North Korea. After the Korean War, the Cold War prevented further UN peace enforcement operations. The UN again authorized a peace enforcement mission in 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. After Iraq refused to comply with UN demands to withdraw, the UN launched a military operation to expel Iraq from Kuwait. This operation was again led by the United States, and it included a vast coalition of forces from many UN member countries (see Persian Gulf War). UN-sponsored peace enforcement operations remain rare, however, because of the difficulty of getting all five of the veto-wielding great powers to agree to military action. A3 Arms Control The UN charter authorizes the Security Council to plan for worldwide disarmament and arms control. To help achieve those goals, the UN has sponsored arms control negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, for decades. The General Assembly also held a special session on disarmament in June 1982. None of these UN activities have had much direct effect on actual arsenals. Instead, during the Cold War, the most important arms control agreements were reached by countries negotiating directly with each other, particularly by the United States and Soviet Union. At that time, arms control was dominated by the nuclear arms race between the superpowers. The United States and the Soviet Union reached several important agreements, and then other countries signed on. Examples include the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty, and the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. In some instances the General Assembly ratified these agreements. But in none of these cases did the UN play a major role. After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, UN agencies assumed a lead role in enforcing a Security Council resolution to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. IAEA inspectors uncovered and dismantled Iraq’s secret nuclear weapons program, and other UN weapons inspectors monitored the destruction of stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. However, in 1998 Iraq announced it would no longer cooperate with the UN. In 2002, in response to renewed U.S. efforts to enforce Iraqi disarmament, the Security Council approved a resolution warning of “serious consequences” if Iraq did not disarm. Weapons inspections resumed, but U.S. authorities charged that Iraq was not cooperating fully and was hiding banned weapons. In March 2003, after diplomatic talks broke down, the United States led a military assault on Iraq. However, U.S. forces failed to find any evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and subsequent investigations revealed that much of the prewar intelligence about Iraq's weapons programs was flawed. See U.S.-Iraq War. B. Economic and Social Development The second major function of the UN is to promote economic and social development worldwide. The UN engages in a myriad of activities and sponsors a large number of agencies to meet this goal. The UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) oversees these activities. 1. Economic Development The UN operates under the principle that promoting economic and social development will help bring about lasting world peace. The organization’s charter calls on the UN to promote full employment for all, higher standards of living, and economic and social progress. As a result, the UN devotes a major proportion of its staff and budget to economic development programs worldwide. The General Assembly has recognized the need to restructure international economic relations to help developing countries and has recommended a series of steps aimed at reducing the gap between wealthy and poor countries. The UN operates many programs and special agencies to promote economic development and provide assistance and technical expertise to developing countries. One of those programs is the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Many developing nations rely on income from trade to support their economic development efforts at home and are especially vulnerable to price fluctuations on international markets and other trade problems. UNCTAD was founded in the 1960s to help negotiate international trade agreements that stabilize prices and promote trade with developing countries. During the 1970s the General Assembly included those goals in its call for a New International Economic Order to promote growth in developing countries. But developing countries have little power in the international economy, and as a result UNCTAD has been largely ineffective in advancing their interests in international trade. Other efforts include the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which coordinates all UN efforts in developing nations. It is funded through voluntary contributions and has thousands of projects operating around the world. UNDP is the world’s largest international agency providing development assistance on technical issues. Two related agencies are the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. UN programs offer several advantages in promoting economic development. Governments of developing nations see the UN as a friend of the developing world, not as an outsider threatening their authority or as a reminder of colonial rule. Many UN experts and volunteers are themselves from other developing countries. UN workers who come from the developing world may be more sensitive to local conditions and to the pitfalls of development assistance than their counterparts from more wealthy countries. The UN can also organize its assistance on an international scale, avoiding duplication of efforts. Some issues, such as prevention and treatment of major diseases and environmental protection, particularly benefit from the UN’s international approach. A major disadvantage of the UN development programs is that their funding largely depends on voluntary contributions from wealthy nations. Each program has to solicit contributions to carry on its activities, and contributions can be abruptly cut off if the program displeases a donor government. In addition, programs sometimes lack the efficiency and resources that governments and businesses in wealthy countries take for granted. This has given the programs a reputation for being inefficient and bureaucratic. The UN also helps finance development through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, better known as the World Bank. The World Bank was created in 1944 to help developing nations get funding for projects. The bank grants loans to member countries to finance specific projects and this in turn encourages foreign investing. A related agency, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was created at the same time to promote international cooperation on monetary issues. It encourages a stable, orderly pattern of monetary exchange rates between nations.

2. Health Infant Vaccinations in Africa At a Rwandan health center, infants receive vaccinations against infectious diseases. The World Health Organization, an agency of the United Nations, works to provide basic vaccinations to underserved populations in Africa and elsewhere. The UN has recognized that adequate health and control of disease are essential to economic and social development. The World Health Organization (WHO) is the leading UN agency to address global health concerns. Its goal is to improve the health of all people, and it does this through a number of global health programs. WHO epidemiologists help track outbreaks of new diseases and epidemics. For example, WHO was instrumental in diagnosing and containing the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003. WHO also helps deliver basic immunizations to underserved populations. One of the greatest accomplishments of the WHO was the eradication of smallpox, a viral disease that once devastated humans around the globe. The UN has also taken action to combat the worldwide epidemic of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). In 1995 it established the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) to coordinate the international response to the disease. In 2000, the United States led a special session of the Security Council to address the global threat from AIDS, and the General Assembly held a special session on AIDS the following year. Sessions such as these focused global attention on the disease and helped to win commitments of resources to the UNAIDS program. 3. Environment The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) encourages and coordinates sound environmental practices throughout the world. It grapples with ways to approach environmental problems on an international level, provides expertise to member countries, monitors environmental conditions worldwide, develops environmental standards, and recommends alternative energy sources. UNEP’s work is guided by principles adopted at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the Earth Summit. The summit, which took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was the largest such conference ever held, attracting with more than 100 national leaders. It was the third international environmental conference hosted by the UN. The first UN environment conference took place in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972. It adopted general environmental principles, such as the idea that one country’s actions should not cause environmental damage to another. It also raised awareness about the international aspects of environmental damage. A second conference was held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1982. Nairobi is the headquarters of the UN Environment Program. The 1992 Earth Summit was larger and more ambitious than its predecessors. Its major theme was sustainable economic development, meaning development that does not use up or destroy so many of the world’s natural resources that it cannot be sustained over time. The meeting produced an overall plan, called Agenda 21, in which large developing countries promised to develop their industries with an eye toward protecting the environment. Industrialized countries pledged to help them do that. The Earth Summit also produced major treaties on biodiversity and global warming, although the latter treaty lacked enforcement provisions. In 2002, UNEP sponsored the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa. This conference sought to help developing countries undergo industrialization without harming the environment. But progress on environmental issues is slow because proposed solutions continue to pit the interests of poorer developing countries against those of richer industrialized nations. Most developing countries cannot afford to build an environmentally sound industrial base, while industrialized countries are unwilling to absorb the entire cost of environmental reform. 4. Other Economic and Social Programs The UN operates a host of other economic and social programs. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) addresses the needs of children worldwide. The International Labor Organization (ILO) advocates for workers’ rights. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) helps countries improve education and literacy, promotes ethics in science, and works to preserve cultural diversity. The United Nations Population Fund promotes family planning, safe pregnancies and childbirths, and reproductive health in developing countries, and it helps countries formulate population policies. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime helps countries fight illicit drugs, crime, and terrorism. The UN has an organization, commission, or specialized agency to address nearly every social issue on the global agenda. C. Human Rights One of the UN’s major goals under its charter is to promote and encourage respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for all people, regardless of race, sex, language, or religion. But once again, the UN’s effectiveness in promoting its agenda is limited by its lack of authority over member nations. After the atrocities committed by the Germans in the Holocaust, the slaughter of Jews that occurred during World War II, the UN adopted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The declaration was adopted on December 10, 1948, which is now celebrated annually as Human Rights Day. It proclaims that “all human beings are born free and equal” and establishes basic rights for all people and norms for the behavior of governments in many areas. For example, it says that all people have the right to liberty, religious and political freedom, education, and economic well-being. It bans torture and states that all people have the right to participate in their governments. The declaration does not have the force of law, however, and seems to have had little visible effect on the UN’s member countries. Governments with poor human rights records, such as China, criticize the UN’s attempts to promote human rights, saying that such actions interfere with their internal affairs. Until 2006 the UN operated a Commission on Human Rights. In 2006 this commission was replaced with a Human Rights Council. The work of the previous commission had been largely discredited because countries known to violate human rights had become members. As members they often blocked the commission from censuring them for their human rights abuses. The reformed Human Rights Council was created to address this problem. The UN General Assembly now elects individual countries to the council by majority vote. Previously, membership on the council was allocated by region. The council also reviews the human rights records of member countries, and systematic violators of human rights can be suspended from the council by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly. The council also meets more frequently than the commission did. The council meets three times a year for a total of ten weeks, compared with the commission’s single session of six weeks each year. The council has the ability to meet quickly to address a human rights emergency. The purpose of the council is to monitor human rights abuses in countries and address complaints about human rights violations. The UN also operates the office of High Commissioner for Human Rights. The General Assembly created this position in 1993. The commissioner oversees all the UN’s human rights programs, works to prevent human rights violations, and investigates human rights abuses. The commissioner also has the power to publicize abuses taking place in any country, but does not have the authority to stop them. However, most publicity about human rights abuses does not come from the UN but from rival countries or from nongovernmental organizations, such as Amnesty International. The UN has also drawn up four international conventions (treaties) on human rights, which are legally binding but hard to enforce. The conventions address the problems of genocide, racial discrimination, civil and political rights, and economic and social rights. The treaties have been ratified by only about half of the world’s nations. The United States has only ratified the convention on genocide and has declined to ratify the others. Other countries have also refused to sign the conventions, citing concerns about the specific terms of the conventions and the loss of authority that such treaties imply. During the Cold War, Western countries continually criticized nations under Soviet rule for their lack of respect for human rights, such as freedom of expression and fair elections. But the UN played a small role in these arguments because of the Soviet Union’s veto power, and because many other national governments did not guarantee human rights in their own domestic politics. The most important Cold War pact regarding human rights, the 1975 Helsinki Accords, a diplomatic agreement between 35 countries that encouraged human rights, was negotiated outside the UN framework. One of the UN’s most visible recent activities regarding human rights has been the creation of special war crimes tribunals to prosecute those responsible for atrocities committed during the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. These tribunals, established by the Security Council in 1993, 1994, and 2002, respectively, operate independently of the UN (see War Crimes Trials). The UN also played an important role in the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute war criminals, although the ICC is not a UN organ. D. Humanitarian Assistance Food Aid Distribution in Afghanistan Residents of a remote mountain village in northern Afghanistan cluster around trucks distributing sacks of wheat as part of the United Nations World Food Program. Relief workers distributed record amounts of food aid in the impoverished, war-torn country after the collapse of the Taliban regime in December 2001, just as the cold winter months were making food even more scarce. Since the end of the Cold War the UN has become increasingly involved in providing humanitarian assistance to people in need. All too frequently, the humanitarian crises to which the UN responds are caused by international conflict. The UN can also respond to humanitarian crises caused by natural disasters such as floods or hurricanes. Conflicts and wars may create refugee crises, as when people flee their homes for fear of persecution or harm. Agencies such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the World Food Program (WFP) can mobilize international assistance in a short time frame to respond to a crisis. Noodle Factory, North Korea Workers cut and dry fresh noodles in a factory in North Korea. The noodle factory is subsidized by the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) as part of international humanitarian relief efforts to address North Korea’s chronic food shortages. Increasingly, UN agencies work with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that provide relief and assistance, as well as with the aid agencies of governments, to coordinate a global response to humanitarian crises. For example, in 1999 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) began to bomb the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (see Serbia and Montenegro) to protest its treatment of ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo. The conflict created a massive flow of refugees out of Kosovo and into the neighboring province of Montenegro and the countries of Albania and Macedonia. These governments were not able to absorb the large number of refugees. International aid agencies, led and coordinated by the UN, responded to the crisis and were able to house, feed, and care for the thousands of refugees who had fled the fighting. E. Development of International Law The UN plays an important role in the development of international law. Formally, the UN can produce international law in two ways. Security Council resolutions are binding on all UN members and have the force of international law. Decisions by the World Court are also binding as international law. Through these two bodies, the UN has been responsible for the development of a significant body of international law. However, much of this law deals with specific issues of peace and security—the Security Council’s main focus—and becomes obsolete after the crisis in question has been resolved. For example, Security Council resolutions prohibit Iraq from invading its neighbors and possessing weapons of mass destruction. Following the U.S.-Iraq War, however, much of this law became obsolete because it pertained to a regime no longer in power. Informally, the UN also has a large role in the development of international law. The standing committees of the General Assembly and the standing UN commissions and functional agencies routinely hold global conferences on topics such as arms control, the environment, and human rights. These large diplomatic sessions often produce the ideas and early momentum for international treaties that are not formally part of the UN system but owe their existence to UN discussion of an issue. Treaties such as the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the 1997 Ky?to Protocol on greenhouse gases, and the 1998 Rome Statute approving the International Criminal Court were the topic of UN deliberations before they became treaties in their own right. Two UN commissions are specifically charged with developing and codifying international law. The UN’s International Law Commission, created in 1947, studies important questions of international law and prepares drafts of treaties codifying these topics. Over the years, topics have included the law of the sea, diplomatic relations and immunity, treaties between nations, shared natural resources, nationality and statelessness, relations between nations and international organizations, and many other issues. The UN’s Commission on International Trade Law, created in 1966, drafts texts on laws concerning international commerce and economic development. These commissions submit their texts and recommendations to the General Assembly, which may then call an international diplomatic conference to incorporate the texts into a treaty. F. Decolonization At the end of World War II (1939-1945), the great powers held vast colonial empires in the developing world. One goal of the UN charter was decolonization—ending the practice of colonialism. The Trusteeship Council was established as the UN organ to aid in the decolonization process. As colonies gained their independence in the mid-20th century, one of their first steps was to join the UN. This act announced their arrival on the international stage as a full-fledged member of the international community. The Trusteeship Council served as a transitional authority to help a country make the transition from colony to independent nation. In 1994 the last colony gained its independence and the Trusteeship Council suspended its operations. VII. INFLUENCE AND EFFECTIVENESS The UN’s influence on international politics is significant and cannot be ignored. The main goal of the UN’s founders was to avoid a third world war, and in that respect, the organization has succeeded. The UN has peacefully resolved numerous international disputes since its founding and has established a set of rules for the use of force in the contemporary world. Although these rules are not always followed, the UN has nevertheless established itself as a significant player on the world stage. The UN has been involved in every major war and international crisis since World War II in one fashion or another. It authorized the international coalitions that fought the Korean War (1950-1953) and the Persian Gulf War of 1991. A UN resolution created the state of Israel in 1948, and the UN has been both a forum for debate and an active mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the United States used the UN as a forum to challenge the Soviet Union in front of the whole world. Since the end of the Cold War, the UN has asserted the right of the Security Council to be the soul body with the power to declare international uses of military force legitimate. However, this claimed authority does not always work. In some cases, the UN may fail to muster support for a force to intervene in a violent conflict. For example, lacking support for intervention from UN member nations, the UN failed to stop the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. In other cases, great powers such as the United States take action on their own when they cannot get the UN to grant the authority they wish. In 2003 the United States sought but did not receive explicit Security Council approval of military action against Iraq. The United States nevertheless led an invasion of Iraq, inviting the UN to play a role in postwar humanitarian assistance and running elections for a new government (see U.S.-Iraq War). Certain tensions constrain the UN’s influence and effectiveness. The first is the tension between the UN’s role as an autonomous actor and its role as a collection of nations. The UN can call on member nations for action, but it has a hard time enforcing its own resolutions because it is also committed to the principle of sovereignty, which asserts each country’s right to set its own policies. The UN requires member nations to contribute to its peacekeeping operations and relief missions, but when no nation wants to contribute, it is an impotent body. On the one hand, the UN has a mandate to work on its own to promote the values of its charter. On the other hand, the UN Charter is a treaty among nations. Thus, the UN cannot do anything without the expressed approval of its members, particularly the great powers. The UN’s authority comes from the countries that join the organization, sign the charter, and provide the UN with the resources it needs to accomplish its mission. The UN also faces the tension of the gap between the developed and developing world. The developing world represents the majority of the UN’s members, both in terms of number of countries and global population. The developed world, meanwhile, controls the majority of financial and military resources available to the UN. Developing countries want the chance to build their societies, but to do this they need help from the richer, already developed countries, many of which are reluctant to spend their resources on others. The struggle to set priorities and allocate scarce resources is a constant tension within the UN. There is a constant tension between the International Law of the UN Charter and the diplomacy that the member nations conduct on a daily basis. The UN Charter only has value to the extent that members follow its provisions. Nations can ignore elements of the charter and can also work outside the charter. Peacekeeping, for example, is never mentioned in the Charter but has become a key UN diplomatic function. Trying to maintain the integrity of international law while still playing effective diplomacy that satisfies the needs of the member countries consumes much of the day-to-day business of the UN. Finally, a longstanding tension exists between the UN and the United States, the world’s most powerful nation. The UN constrains the United States by creating the one coalition that can rival U.S. power—that of all other nations. In addition, the United States has a streak of isolationism in its foreign policy that runs counter to the idea of the UN. But the UN also benefits the United States in many ways. It amplifies U.S. power because the United States usually leads the UN coalition. It helps keep world peace, which the United States is not rich or strong enough to do by itself. And it helps keeps the world stable, providing a good climate for global economic growth.

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VIII. THE FUTURE OF THE UNITED NATIONS Since its creation in 1945, the UN has done much to promote international cooperation in economic and social goals, and to a lesser extent, world peace. The end of the Cold War and new possibilities for cooperation among the world’s major powers has given the UN an opportunity to realize the original vision of its founders. The UN now has a chance to become an international organization that can effectively maintain world peace within the limits of a system where individual nations maintain their own authority and independence. Constantly challenged, the UN remains the only forum where all the nations of the world can gather to discuss pressing issues of peace and security. The UN’s greatest asset remains its ability to speak as the world’s voice, offering legitimacy and guidance on the paths nations follow to solve their problems. Despite the challenges it faces, the UN will likely play an increasingly central role in international politics in the coming decades. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Constitution of the United States, system of fundamental laws of the United States of America. The Constitution was drawn up by 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787 and ratified by the states in 1788. The Constitution defines distinct powers for the Congress of the United States, the president, and the federal courts. This division of authority is known as a system of checks and balances, and it ensures that none of the branches of government can dominate the others. The Constitution also establishes and limits the authority of the federal government over the states and spells out freedoms and liberties for U.S. citizens. Bill of Rights Because the Constitution of the United States granted the federal government so much power, as compared with the earlier Articles of Confederation, several states demanded a list of amendments to guarantee individual rights against intrusion by the federal government. The first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, embody libertarian ideas in the United States. The amendments protect such rights as freedom of speech (First Amendment), right against unlawful search and seizure (Fourth Amendment), and the right to a public criminal trial by jury (Sixth Amendment). Human Rights Concerns. Violence in land conflicts became a common occurrence in 1991. A February report by the New York-based human rights group Americas Watch asserted that police had burned squatters' homes, beaten peasants, and stolen their property. The government's response to the report claimed that in order to encourage foreign and domestic investment in agriculture (the nation's most important economic sector), property rights would have to be respected. Critics argued that the endemic violence in the countryside was evidence that the change in government had not changed the traditional forcible tactics of rural control. A private study released in December 1990 reported that 78 percent of Paraguay's cultivable land was owned by less than 0.4 percent of the population. In August 1991, Amnesty International accused the government of detaining peasants so as to preempt possible land occupations. The human rights organization also registered concern over President Andrés Rodr?guez's November 1990 veto of a congressional bill that proposed establishing a bicameral commission to investigate human rights violations committed during Stroessner's 34-year rule. Foreign Affairs. In June the U.S. Congress restored Paraguay's eligibility for trade benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP); it had been suspended in 1987 because of human rights violations. In August the French ambassador caused a diplomatic flap when he commented that Paraguay enjoyed 'a good reputation among people of ill repute.' He also claimed that the country's endemic corruption was a major limiting factor to foreign investment in Paraguay. The Great Compromise sparked a heated and no less contentious dispute over slavery. Even though the words slave and slavery do not appear in the Constitution, the convention included ten provisions dealing with slavery. The most serious dispute arose over how to assign House seats to Southern states. If seats in the House of Representatives were apportioned according to state populations that included slaves, Southern states would gain an advantage because of their large slave populations. Northern states pushed to exclude slaves from the population calculations altogether. Southern states resisted, threatening to scuttle the entire Constitution. Finally abolitionists from northern states compromised. They agreed to the infamous clause in Article I that counted slaves as only three-fifths of a person and that barred Congress from ending the slave trade before 1808. The settlement over slavery led the convention to accept the Great Compromise. Instrumental in convincing Republicans that it was futile to seek a compromise with the president were his vetoes in early 1866 of two measures that won overwhelming Republican support and were eventually enacted over his vetoes. The first of these was the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which continued the agency's operations for another year. The second was the Civil Rights Bill, which extended citizenship to blacks by defining all persons born in the United States as citizens. In denouncing these measures as illegal interference within the states by the federal government, Johnson clung to basic Democratic beliefs rooted in a pre-Civil War vision of states' rights, weak central government, and white supremacy. EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY AROUND THE WORLD As in the United States, most countries rely upon large executive bureaucracies to carry out laws and enforce rules. However, the United States government is proportionately smaller than the governments of comparable nations-for example, Britain, Canada, France, or Germany. There are several reasons for this. First, the United States has a tradition of limited government. From colonial times to the present, Americans have distrusted government, preferring to let private individuals, firms, and groups operate with a minimum of governmental interference. Second, U.S. citizens resist taxes even more fiercely than people in other nations. The 1773 Boston Tea Party, for example, was a protest against taxes levied by the British on a variety of products, including tea. More recently, President George H. W. Bush appealed to voters during the 1988 presidential campaign by promising "No new taxes!" As a result of this resistance to high taxes, Americans pay lower taxes than citizens of most other industrialized countries. Third, local and state governments perform many services valued by citizens, including policing services, fire safety, and even welfare programs. These entities have seen steady growth, in contrast to the federal government, which has had a shrinking workforce and little increase in spending. The executive branch in the United States is also unusual in its separation from the legislature and the judiciary. In many other countries these powers are closely integrated. In India, for example, executive agencies are supervised by cabinet ministers who are also members of the parliament (national legislature). See also Separation of Powers. Noun (plural ve·toes) 1. right to reject legislation: the power of one branch of government to reject the legislation of another 2. exercise of right to reject measures: the exercise of the right to reject something, especially a political measure 3. prohibition: an order prohibiting something. transitive verb (past and past participle ve·toed, present participle ve·to·ing, 3rd person present singular ve·toes) 1. reject something: to reject something such as a measure or government bill by veto 2. prohibit something: to refuse to consent to or approve something My teacher vetoed the idea. [Early 17th century. < Latin, "I forbid"] Veto in parliamentary government, the executive power, as that of the president of the United States, to abrogate or kill a measure that has already been passed by a legislative body. The word veto is a Latin term that means "I forbid." According to Article 1, Section 7, of the U.S. Constitution, the president has only limited veto authority since negation of a legislative act can be overridden by a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress. A presidential veto, unlike that in many states, is comprehensive, applying to all parts of a bill, and the president must communicate to Congress the reasons for a veto. In 1996 Congress passed the Line-Item Veto Act, which gave the president the power to veto individual items in funding or tax bills. In 1998, however, the Supreme Court ruled that the act was unconstitutional. In the case of a so-called pocket veto, sometimes used for political reasons, a bill fails to become law when the president does not sign it and the Congress happens to adjourn within a ten-day period after its submission to the chief executive. On the other hand, if Congress remains in session and does not receive the unsigned bill from the president within that time, the measure becomes law. The great majority of presidential vetoes throughout American history have not been overridden. For example, of the some 600 vetoes handed down by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s and '40s, only 9 were overridden by Congress. The governors of most states in the U.S. have veto powers, which in some cases can be overruled by a simple majority rather than two-thirds of their legislatures. The monarch of Great Britain has long had putative absolute veto power, but this prerogative has not been exercised since 1708. In the Security Council of the United Nations (see Security Council, United Nations), each of the five permanent members-France, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, and the U.S.-has veto power over all substantive matters. In one of the most controversial decisions of the year, the Supreme Court, in Rust v. Sullivan, upheld regulations of the Department of Health and Human Services prohibiting employees of family planning clinics that receive federal aid from engaging in abortion counseling, abortion referrals, or activities advocating abortion. (Congress passed legislation that would have removed those prohibitions but was unable to override a presidential veto.) The Court held that the regulations did not violate free speech rights or the right of women to choose abortion or infringe on the doctor-patient relationship. Though former regulations had required information on all options, including abortion, the Court held that the new regulations were reasonable under the statute involved and that the government may value childbirth over abortion and had no obligation to foster activities it opposed even if such activities are constitutionally protected. This holding, if applied broadly to other areas where federal funding is important (such as the arts), was viewed by critics as providing government agencies with vast discretion over the content of expression. Legislative and Judicial Responsibilities Johnson Signs Civil Rights Bill Lyndon Johnson's years of experience in Congress gave him an edge in pushing through his legislative proposals. Here Johnson signs the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which banned racial discrimination in public accommodations and by employers, unions, and voting registrars. The passage of the act over the objections of Southern senators was one of Johnson's greatest achievements. Legislative veto. Of all the opinions issued by the Court, none had greater impact than the one in the so-called 'one-house veto' case. In Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha, the Court ruled unconstitutional, by a 7-2 vote, a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that, in effect, authorized one house of Congress to veto a decision of the executive branch. Five justices joined Chief Justice Warren E. Burger's majority opinion, which said that, given the bicameral structure of the legislative branch, the only permissible way for Congress to override an executive decision was by introduction of legislation to be passed by a majority of both houses and eventually signed by the president. Rights of individuals. A close second in significance to the Chadha case was Arizona Governing Committee for Tax Deferred Annuity and Deferred Compensation Plans v. Norris, in which the Court ruled that the long-established policy whereby employers pay retired women smaller monthly benefits than retired men was a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Five members of the Court agreed that the practice, even though based upon statistics which accurately show that women as a class live longer than men as a class, constituted sex discrimination because the Civil Rights Act requires employers to treat their employees as individuals, not as members of a group. One of the five, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, switched to the dissenters' view of the appropriate remedy, however, thus making the majority's holding applicable to future retirees only, not retroactive. Justice O'Connor was concerned that if employers were required to disburse greater annuity benefits than collected contributions could support, entire pension funds would be jeopardized. Related to the Norris case was Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Wyoming, in which a 5-4 majority held, in an opinion written by Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., that the federal age discrimination act (which generally prohibits involuntary retirement before age 70) could be applied to state and local governments as employers, without violating the Tenth Amendment's reservation of states' rights. Justice Brennan drew a distinction between National League of Cities v. Usery, a 1976 case in which the Court invoked the Tenth Amendment to protect states against federal regulatory power, and Wyoming on the grounds that the Wyoming case, concerning the involuntary retirement at age 55 of a state game warden, would not cause nearly the same infringement of state operational autonomy as the attempt in National League of Cities to apply federal wage and hour provisions to state and local government workers. The dissent, led by Chief Justice Burger, argued that Wyoming was within the National League of Cities proscription against federal interference in state functions. The president proposes much of the legislation that Congress approves. The president's power to veto (reject) legislation also serves as a strong influence on the legislative process. Because it takes a two-thirds vote of both the House and the Senate to override a presidential veto, Congress often modifies pending legislation to suit the president's preferences. Aside from the role in proposing and vetoing laws, the president exercises important legislative authority by issuing executive orders that have the force of law. The president also supervises the implementation of laws by directing administrative agencies, such as the Department of Justice and the Department of Agriculture. The president appoints federal judges, subject to the approval of the Senate. In addition, the president assumes important judicial and law enforcement powers through executive agencies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) gathers evidence against perpetrators of federal crimes and the Justice Department seeks indictments and convictions in the courts against wrongdoers. Agencies such as the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) act as quasi-judicial bodies by holding hearings, issuing regulations, and adjudicating disputes. On July 19, 2006, Bush cast the first veto of his presidency, rejecting congressional legislation that would have lifted some of the limits on the federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research. Bush cited moral grounds for his opposition to the bill. However, polls showed that a majority of Americans supported the use of embryonic stem cells for medical research. Some Republicans in Congress broke with Bush on the issue, including former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Senator John McCain, who both voted for the vetoed legislation. Perhaps the most substantial limit on Congress is the president's power to veto legislation, which Congress can override only by a two-thirds vote of both chambers. The president also has informal power over Congress. The power and prestige of the White House gives the president an edge over Congress in attracting public attention, so the president can often press Congress to accept legislative proposals. The president has no constitutional authority to compel Congress to consider a specific legislative agenda, but members of the House and Senate often propose legislation on the president's behalf. George W. Bush 43rd president of the United States Birth July 6, 1946 Death - Home State Born in Connecticut and raised in Texas Party Republican Terms In Office 2001-2005 Vice President Dick Cheney Significant Acts Ordered the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Proposed and helped enact increased federal spending on education and established a system for annual testing. Proposed and helped pass one of the largest tax cuts in U.S. history and lowered tax rates for all income brackets. Radically changed U.S. foreign policy to establish a doctrine of preventive war. Career 1977 Ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives. 1978 Founded Arbusto Energy Inc. 1989 Purchased a part interest in the Texas Rangers baseball team. 1995-1999 Served as governor of Texas. 1999-2001 Served as governor of Texas. 2001- Served as president of the United States. Did You Know George W. Bush was the first son to follow his father as president since John Quincy Adams followed John Adams in the early 1800s. Bush was the first presidential candidate to win the electoral college vote but lose the popular vote since Benjamin Harrison in 1888. Barack Obama, born in 1961, Democratic member of the United States Senate from Illinois and candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for the 2008 presidential election. UNITED STATES SENATOR In 1999, after only three years in politics, Obama made an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. House of Representatives, running against the incumbent Democrat from Illinois, Bobby Rush. Obama tried for Congress again in 2004, this time setting his sights on the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Peter Fitzgerald. Obama's campaign attracted legions of fervent volunteers. Obama won 53 percent of the vote in the primary election, emerging from a seven-person field as the Democratic nominee. He surprised political pundits by winning in the blue-collar and predominantly white counties around Chicago, which many believed would not support a black candidate. Obama's ease in connecting with people across racial and class lines was attributed in part to his upbringing in a white working-class family. In a New York Times article published after the primary, Obama noted that for all people's differences, he believes there is "a set of core values that bind us together as Americans." This philosophy stood in stark contrast to the divisive politics of his opponents. The Democratic Party noted Obama's success, inviting him to be the keynote speaker at the party's national convention held in Boston in July 2004. His speech at the convention catapulted Obama into the national spotlight, giving television viewers nationwide a first glimpse of the charismatic "rising star" from Illinois. In his keynote address Obama offered his personal story as an example of the American dream, stating: "My parents shared not only an improbable love; they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or 'blessed,' believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren't rich, because in a generous America you don't have to be rich to achieve your potential." In the general election held in November 2004, Obama won in a landslide with 70 percent of the vote, aided in part by months of scandal and upheaval in the Illinois Republican Party. He became the only African American member of the U.S. Senate and only the fifth in U.S. history. One of his black predecessors in the Senate, Carol Moseley Braun, had held the same Illinois seat. In January 2007 Obama formed a presidential exploratory committee prior to making his decision whether to run in the 2008 presidential race. The following month Obama officially announced his candidacy and entered a growing field of candidates vying for the Democratic Party's nomination. Obama's autobiography, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995), became a bestseller during his 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate. Obama's second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006), expounds on some of the themes in his 2004 keynote address Zionism movement establishing and developing Jewish state: a worldwide movement, originating in the 19th century, that sought to establish and develop a Jewish nation in Palestine. Since 1948 its function has been to support the state of Israel. Study the Origin, History & Religion of Jewish: The Need for National Belonging In the late 20th century nationalism has served as a driving force in world affairs, fueling political conflicts around the globe, from the Middle East to the former Yugoslavia. In this article, writer Michael Ignatieff provides insight into this phenomenon by examining the causes and characteristics of nationalism, its historical development, and its emotional basis as the human desire to belong. Nationalism and Belonging What is the fundamental motive for nationalism, the reason that so many peoples have fought and died for the right to a state of their own? Perhaps the primary motive is to be safe from persecution. Many minority groups feel that they will only be secure if they control the levers of state power. A second motive underpinning nationalist efforts is the need of human beings to belong to something larger than themselves, to be part of a community—of language, customs, tradition, and history—that gives a purpose to their striving as individuals. Belonging to a nation gives human beings a sense of being safe, of being understood, and of being free to create their futures as they see fit. These are deep and understandable longings. The challenge for peoples undertaking nationalist movements is that to achieve these goals, they must face the choice of whether to drive another national group from its land, or learn, if possible, to share that land in peace. Author: Michael Ignatieff is a Canadian writer who has written extensively on nationalism, most notably in Blood and Belonging: Journeys Into the New Nationalism and The Warrior’s Honour: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience. Camp David Accords, framework for peace in the Middle East signed by United States president Jimmy Carter, Egyptian president Anwar al-Sadat, and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin on September 17, 1978, in Washington, D.C. Although the accords led to a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, they did not result in peace between Israel and other Arab states. For their efforts to resolve their long-standing conflict, Sadat and Begin received the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. After a peace treaty is signed, and after the interim withdrawal is complete, normal relations will be established between Egypt and Israel, including: full recognition, including diplomatic, economic and cultural relations; termination of economic boycotts and barriers to the free movement of goods and people; and mutual protection of citizens by the due process of law.... Signed: For the Government of the Arab Republic of Egypt: A. Sadat For the Government of Israel: M. Begin Witnessed by: Jimmy Carter, President of the United States of America. Arab-Israeli Conflict, conflict between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East over the land of historic Israel and Palestine. The conflict has led to several wars, beginning in 1948, among Arab nations, Palestinian refugees, and the state of Israel. Since 1979 several peace accords have been signed, addressing parts of the conflict. Middle East Peace Accord, 1993 In September 1993, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, left, and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasir Arafat, right, agreed to the signing of a historic peace accord. The accord paved the way for limited Palestinian self-rule in Israeli-occupied territories. After witnessing the signing, the longtime foes shook hands in the presence of United States President Bill Clinton. In a speech he delivered at the signing ceremony, Rabin called for an end to the violence. Israel and Jordan Make Peace In July 1994 Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, right, and King Hussein of Jordan, left, came together in the United States, in the presence of U.S. president Bill Clinton, to sign a peace agreement ending 46 years of war and tension between their countries. This initial agreement paved the way for a full peace treaty, signed in October 1994 on the Israeli-Jordanian border. The treaty settled long-standing disputes over land and water rights, and pledged cooperation in areas including trade and tourism. In November 1995 Nelson Mandela, then president of South Africa, selected Archbishop Tutu to serve as head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The purpose of the commission was to investigate and collect testimony on human rights violations and other crimes during the period from 1960 through 1994 and to consider amnesty for those who confessed their participation in atrocities. In June 1996 Tutu retired from his positions as archbishop of Cape Town and head of the Anglican church in South Africa so that he could devote himself to his role on the commission. For more than two years he presided over the testimony from hundreds of perpetrators and victims of apartheid-era violence. The commission issued its final report in October 1998. Tutu wrote of the insights he gained from his work on the commission in No Future Without Forgiveness (1999). Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. I am a human. Do I need a satellite or some programs to play with my brain? Human Nerve System is under attack. What about UFO's that been approved to have an existence? Are they going to take us all off? Secret weapon in the space if it has an existence, why they don’t use upon those UFO's flying saucers & their creatures to communicate with instead of misusing upon us to take our secrets & everything from us without knowing or to create us all to live in Bermuda triangle or circle brains in a mixer or mixers for us to lose hope in living in all type of all aspects or issues? Man kind natural livings are totally in danger. What went wrong & still going on since a long time back as if it's not going to stop till the end of our life's to live with more & more up coming viruses? Life still going on & we go on with. Life is too short to live within danger & anger. Once we can not help each another's & every body starts to questions & starts to doubts? "Wastage & hunger of brains sneaking for more information's from own & other brains by whispers & Bla Bla Bla from shit skulls to create what? Lonetic brains & children to create more shit about it to total curse as how it happened in past history for God to be angry to take them all off for giving no meaning for life to have an existence as in Babylonian time to create mental disturbance to all" Should we call for those UFO's to help us all? Or Creatures are also a part of it! Answer the question please: In accordance to God & own creation, the entire universe having billions of galaxies & planets. U.F.O “flying saucers” visited our planet Earth several time & still doing so! We have history of clips over the internet & some almost so real! God knows better. Us we humans, there are bad & there is good in accordance to our nature & believes. Hell & haven, God & Satan. A human brain has good & bad sides of thinking. Who has the right to judge a human inner brain dreaming or thinking? & who keeps on judging over human soul form mankind or from & among us is what? The answer is waste, but for how long? God’s law of creation being played with! No wonder corruptions in all over the world. Aliens can also be as us! Good & bad. They might also believe in God. Those U.F.O’s has lightning speed to travel, not only in the space between galaxies but also within our planet skies “above our countries”! They hit us with Energy Burst in 2001 “see the clip in my page” & affected our brains to be connected! “Umbrella of electro magnetic covering our planet as shield above all living brains even animals & birds”. We are having so limited standards of thinking in compare to them! Did we reach to lightning speed? They moves so fast as if a laser pointer creating flying object in the sky to move so fast that cant be blocked by any type of missile! --- Are they real or not? --- Are they good or bad? --- Did they do this to us to create peace or war? For us to care for war or for peace to our selves “Humans” ? --- Should we fight them or to try to understand them? --- Is it war of extermination? God to help us all. All of these years since 2001, media, politics, and Arab population brain connectivity's in mixers plus action reaction turned to be a Satan Work. All skulls & their whispers taking advantages from each others to create traps as well, all wants to accuse all with the interference of outer satellite voices from its station also playing to fool around much of human brains! Virus with brains plus satellite station people to create electronics in a circle, circle of madness serving what? What a Satan policy it is called to create civil war in each country & to effect neighbor countries to affect the world wide countries as well to create war of exterminations to many people. In America under attack in 2001, Saudi Arabia been accused as terror due to Al Qaeda Means Base in English, tropes & base. Gulf war before affected us all. Kuwait under attack by Iraq is the reason for many nationalities to suffer or to pay back the loses of Kuwait, Many Kuwaitis & their families ran to Saudi Arabia. Osama Bin Laden a Kuwaiti that ran & gained Saudi Passport to be accused as a leader of this Al Qaeda that been established in 1966 in the Gulf. Satellites & F.B.I secrete weapon been playing from outer space with many locations & human brains since that time & even before. (( I just felt a spark in my eyes!)). They are scanning on me right now. What amazes me is, all of it is a big issue of traps. New established satellite Station in Jordan "AL Balqa"" by Kuwaiti's share holders since the year 2001 to follow up with Sept, 11th & still active above us along with old Jordanian Satellite station in "Al Baqaa". Both creating a lot of corruption to many families by their interference on civilians & following up with latest updating world news. Umbrella of satellites to update wit other countries causing many problems. Islamic Satanic Network & Christian Satanic Network with outer ranged countries & remaining religions Satanic network to play war of extermination of populations. Sky Nets is the virus s well. United Nation also been involved in Gulf war to act as peace to stop the war. Iraq was under attack by 28 countries. Now how United Nation going to solve life of full of harassments a fully corrupted planet of ours of not knowing! Wonder life & dream lands with lands of no where or lands of wastage due to humans viruses brains full of wondering, suggestions, dreams, thinking of past, present & future, imaginings & fooling around. Many to have conscious pain to remain. Who is doing this to us all? We all are families in all over the world. A force forcing us to absolute unknown. Be aware from the unknown at all times. Emptiness & a feeling of something missing in life & in our own each brain. Something wearied not knowing what wanting due to much Satan work above us making us to remain with fear for many years not knowing what might happen. Emotion feelings even under attack & people to lose hope.

U.F.O's are also playing as visitors to our planet & causing us much wonderings. What type of life on our planet & who's going to solve all of this for us to break free from madness, Fear & Satan works? Ignorance & believing in God is the way to live in peace even while we are under attack. What can we do once all living in a mixer of brain sharing? Many people died from the above mentioned with war or without, with fight or without. What left is to have patience on each others better than to kill each another's? Nerve system war it is, wisdom is required with some knowledge of what exactly going on. This is what is going on. Where is the normal life? Would there be a normal life after war? Some people still saying this is the end of life to us all. Such people saying so to many of us create what? We have to have hope to go on once life still going on. Shame on shit administration that playing around with our souls to make shit out of our life's. Satan Virus attacking us all. It's between good & bad. Sky Nets & U.F.O's plus EH electronic harassments in media, our brains & in the air caused by them are the cause of our suffering. Strokes & electric shock "F.B.I Weapon" also causing viruses to everything. All livings are under attack even animals. Damn you all, a strike of locations is war. Tsunami & earth quakes caused by satellites! We all are so afraid. What left for a human to suffer from even while at home alone! Suffering all of these years from the above mentioned. Narrow & wide range, internally, externally! Attacking us all! What? Ty Kingdom Come! SATAN, go to where you belong, leave us alone. Many people already died during these years in a jungle life. All of these years I been advising not to lose hope with God & Peace. All are witnessing & knowing this fact. Is it between Arabs & America or it is a world wide? Stop the 3rd world war from happing. Some say's it's going to start from the Arabian Gulf by the blue hates. One author writer or foreseeing man has been saying so since a long time back & many events happened as he has been saying this before the events to happen. Maybe analyzer he was! Maybe he was warning us all from such tings to happen. I believe United Nation is very much aware from such a thing. God to help us all. Back to normal life better for us all, better than to be taken to a definite deepest shit of hell. NASA, if it is U.F.O attack, then exploring the universe is stopped. Such a virus might kill all business & leave us with nothing but disasters or total extermination. Visitors from outer space from a far away galaxy. What do they want? Is this a movie? Something beyond our thinking & believes. They do exist. Stop all wars in the world & let's deal with this situation. There has to be a better way for living. Human brain is so much limited in compare to such U.F.O's & Such U.F.O's Creatures & their brains are also so limited in compare to God the inventor creator of them, us & entire universe. Billions of Galaxies are there in the universe. Are we alone in this huge universe? All are wastage but not us or our planet? How that can be? Facts & logic say's, they have to have an existence. Don't make me angry please; no one likes me while I'm angry. World wide populations & we all are belonging to this planet & each has family tree & roots. God to help us all. Hope you all to understand. What's wrong with people brains? I don't like to hate any of you please. We been visited by them in many times & there is history of their visits, they re so clever not in keeping prove to us to prove or been hidden from us by some organization of investigators, analyzers, scientists for some reason not us to be worried about. Hiding such evident from us, does not mean that they are against us. People might loose their brains & faith. Populations are so many & reporters with their news papers & media can create much of nonsense, worries & subjects that never ends. Hard to deal with population of any country. Movies are also teaching, step by step for all to have some understandings. Such U.F.O's can cause us all death, but they still did not kill us! We still a live. Such huge lighting energy burst over Jerusalem mad what to population in the year 2001? For human nature to kill them selves? Or for them to share our souls, reproductions & life style a study project of man kind & their updating information of everything. Maybe they the ones whose responsible of this change in the year of 2001 or even before. Maybe they also are learning about our faith in God that remains the greatest. If they believe in God, then it's an advantage for us. A human nature still asking, ok, what next? How we to deal with such situation? Above mentioned are the excuses of such situation. Human brain always asks to know more & more, never stops even learning how own soul leaving its body. Brains sharing, creating this non stop Babylon virus to many people as well. Life of viruses. It's like that: we believe in everything that has an existence. Who saw God? But we believe in. Who saw U.F.O's but we has to believe that they do have an existence. Some people saw U.F.O's, why we make them as if they are cheating us all? Shit brains cheating us all. The cheaters those who don't want to think wisely & to create lies for others to believe. God never been seen by any of us, but own creation proved God existence. U.F.O's many did see them. God always remains the greatest. Many brains denying the U.F.O's & not wanting to believe that they have an existence. Why? Are they God believers? If so, then they have to believe in such life that has an existence else where on a planet in a galaxy just like ours. We are not alone by Michele Jackson song. Earth song "We been shot" They don't care about us & so on. This is what is going on with our planet. Some people swearing that they saw U.F.O's, Ask your selves why they are swearing? What is the advantage of doing so? What they well gain? What makes them to swear? Rumors are also there, shiting us all. Stick with normal life. U.F.O's can not be God as how our brains sharing doing this to us. God best judge. I don't judge on any, stop focusing on me. I am not the subject for all of you to keep on going like shit with me. It's about us all. Thank you & God Bless. Get lost shit satellites & stop learning by spying on me. Who's bad? By Michele Jackson as well. Stop approaching my brain ever again. Is the virus doing this to the neighbors of mine? Stop fooling around with me. Respect your God. No fighting. Cool down all of you. Live don't die. Life is for us all! This planet for us all! This is the way how I see things in life! Experience is there! Knowledge is there & believing in God is there! Any one having a problem with a human nature? Stop opening wounds of a human soul. Stop wasting time please. Years already gone on waste & some died. What business? What information technologies? All are guilty in God's law of creation. By: Nabil Zegord Konz Polaski 25th June, 2013 At this time of our life, Arabs been involved with so much civil wars "look at Syria today!" & wanting to have their own changes within their countries corruptions started & as if nothing going to stop this type of indoor situation of fighting! Big change took over in many family lives. All wanting & many still wondering of existence "Jungle life". Such above clip changed lot of things to Israel Palestinian authorities all Arab countries USA & then to entire world wide countries. Israel represents 3 religions & Mr. George Bosh spoke about in the year of 2001 then Mr. Obama said Not only those 3 religions but also the remaining religions. World wide under attack. We all are under attack by such energy burst. Approaching to USA to discuss about such U.F.O's from outer layer & then to internal layer. Israeli Prime minister was so much afraid & Mr. George bosh cried. All saw this in TV. The question is: Their existence been approved & no one at this time can deny their existence. After this is what yet to happen? We should not lose hope by believing in God & in peace always. I also seen some clips tat been published over the internet abusing Mr. Obama & stating that he's a Muslim from Athubia! First they started to say, his grand father is a Muslim, then saying his father is a Muslim! For what this wastage to create war between religions or rumors or subjects to be talked about? This is truly been developed by shit brains to waste time in life for other shit brains to create more wastage of time. Is this the subject for wise brains to share with? Wise people say: Go to hell shit brains. And shit brains as if can not quiet from doing so! What do they want? This big question remains in their shit skulls because they created it to them selves. What's wrong with their brains as if it's the only subject that has no ending & they yet to act God's! & to create more viruses between them ignoring God existence. What should they be called? Anything better than shit? It's concerning you all. Now all the surrounding brains are infected by brains of sharing, each skull can also whispers other than visions due to this connectivity's of sharing between locations & countries. Now, those satellites & their satellites movie channels are what doing? Is what all of what they broadcast is not played with? Faking us by: Char with voice commands, sound matching mixing, voices from neighbors along with any type of channels as well, mixing vision, thoughts, insults & advices "Good & Bad" from human brains to create what by watching TV? Sparks in the eyes where from? Whispers where from? Electric shock to a human brain attacking hippocampus & re breaking broken bones where from? Voices in skulls, chests, to ears & surrounding area's where from? All of this makes what? Such a things that taking over on our daily life creating what? Viruses in the air, sickness in human lives, Babylon bla bla bla from many skulls & tongs to take an events, existence & history records of human nature. Human nature under attack. Questions, answers & wonderings from all brains with non stop cause what? Crippled & lunatic brains are also sharing, creates what? All are infected with this mixer which took over in our life. Who's with & who's against. Virus in the air for all brains to play with for endless subjects. Human brains sharing & wanting even emotional feelings from each another's means what? Groups of brains focusing over one or more brains & vise versa with their inner thinking to create pain to many of us means what? Victims are also suffering from such without gaining their rights & all of it is wastage to all. Memories been played with by above mentioned s if no God nor human rights. Jungle life I call it. Animal instant in us are also taking a part by brain sharing. Conscious pain, guilt feelings, dream sharing & thoughts of sneaking into such circle of corruptions are also spreading in many lives to create more danger to many families s if all God's on each another's brains. We all are under attack. Songs are there, movies are there for us to understand. It is a trap, trapping us all from upper sky. All of these years, all been playing & still playing to create fake life to us all. Arab TV actresses & many actors also were playing in our daily livings as if they are a part of our brains in our location "at home", speaking, and trapping, sharing, blaming & torturing our brains & souls acting also God's. What do you call this? Anything better than SATN work? Life of wastage of us all, as if we are meaningless. People are dying from such harassments, as if life of harassments not only electronic but also evil harassments due to dark side & bright side of human's inner brain thinking. All in a mixer & all will never be the same. Hard to unite them all due to their nature of fiction different standers of brain behaviors. It's a punishment from God to all of us. Who's with who's against, groups & groups, families & families, one for all & all for one, is the virus description that all are suffering from. What a virus life that took over in our life. We all are in danger. My advices been advising all since a long time back with a daily bases to stop the uprising of corruptions, war, fights & to give hope for all to survive. God & Peace is the only hope left for us all. We all are families in all over the world. U.F.O's are also a main part of this corruptions that took over in our planet, we been sot by Energy Burst power to effect our brains due to our creation of nerve system & electricity in our brains. Misusing satellites & using F.B.I secret weapon are also Satan work. All are guilty in God's law of creation of a human nature. God remains the greatest, God to help us all. God best judge. By: Nabil Zegord Konz Kurt Polaski June 28, 2013 -------------------------------------- A human in life has two options: 1-To live with God (fact, logic & heavenly good well with all good people) to live in peace & to ignore all brains in a mixer. 2-To die with Satanic satellite networks a mafia of a black international market full of (lies, artificial real viruses & terror all times with different "Electronic Harassments" )http://www.surveillanceissues.com/ a planet of apps forcing you to jungle fake life & can kill you at any time even while you are sleeping by a stroke targeting heart, brain & any location of a human body or a living location even. Look at the viruses they are creating us all in world wide & a lot of crazy brains around, as if all are God's. A secret weapon in the space. Which way you want it? I am a human, who created me! Satellites or God? Human brain has two sides (good created God & bad created Satan) I speak world wide peace better than 3rd world war to start all over again as it started along time back & still going on. God to help us all. What we need? Assassins or a rescue team? No one going to win anything good with Satan. No one has the right to play with a human brain; after all, it is a Satan Savage Network. Can they bring those who they killed to life & back to their families? Can they pay for the wasted time of ours? Can they pay for what they took from our brains? God remain the greatest, not the world wide killers umbrella of satellites to be the greatest. My destiny in life been giving me less chances even to support my self. It was bad & still it is, due to EH. Still they are active on me. Pretending all are God's & as if I'm the only human that lives with much of sorrow & pain. Never been given a chance to be me. & all the time to be corrected. Satellites still active on me even taking my dreams & inner thinking. Thief's, murderer, demons & Stan work above human nature even. Knowing what I'm thinking to do for tomorrow. What else to say. Living in fear most of time. People talk never ends & creates more mental problems to us all. So I speak peace most of times. Better than to be trapped all over again by them. I hope this ends. They created hell of a time & took what ever they wanted. Making me to live as they want in a fake life by force. What a national security Taking our secrets from our brains. Did they pay for what they take? Never ever they do that. Faking us all. We stick with facts & logic life much better dear. God Bless us all. My peace mission is accomplished. all in a CD. God knows that too I start to try to live my normal life back again. Facts & logic life if I have the chance to do so, trying my best. (waiting) Alisa Arabic songs is there too. All of her songs. I call her an angel voice. Recent songs explains everything as well the old ones. All against EH. Believe me. NANA Songs. Bob Marley Songs. Michael Jackson & most of singers. EH been since a long time. Don't worry, be happy. You know, Face Book can keep a good record of any human history. Can update with what ever goes on a daily bases experiences & events. Can share much of advices & stories to share with friends, relatives & family as well. Can share others with comments, likes & share to own Face Book, combining variety of issues, concepts & believes as well. Can issue a story of past, present & what ever thing to ...do later on "future". Can share own feelings with others by posts, pictures & video clips, can chat with friends from all over. It is a good site for many to interview others over it by questions & answers or messages as well. One thing left, audio/cam video not there. Just imagine, some one dies, leaves a history behind in here for others to recall. Memories remain for good friends & beloved ones. Such (EH) Electronic Harassment creates viruses plus fear in a human brain, not allowing to write or express own feeling or what really going on with. Though it hurts, still doing my best to write what ever I want. Naturally I have the full rights to keep on blaming them for not giving me the chance to be me like even though while I'm alone as if intending to fake what I write. This also faking all mankind history if we want to think about. No privacy, no secrecy & thief what comes to mind plus their comments hurts the nature of a human creation to loose concentration. As if they all are Gods. Satellites from above & all kind people talk from surroundings, other than who ever whispers in brain. Suffering to keep a history of comments under so much pressure. It was like that since a long time back to me. Still Satellites are active knowing what I'm doing. Even from memories, dreams & thinking they sneak to gain for free as if a subject to share, with me or with them selves & with others. This also I call a Babylon virus which might create a civil war of comments & anger. They forgot what SARS virus is (fear) they are creating this virus to them selves as well. Strokes from above http://www.strokeassociation.org/STROKEORG/ plus EH from same source mixing all in one (Media with all brains)! as if a war of extermination of a living beings humans & animals though for having brain stem. Such strokes might create a computer data loss or a virus while typing or writing on this site, I did face such while using mobile a cell phone. What about a human brain that also has electric within brain cells. Danger Life. This type of electro-magnetic radiation field killing us all like. All has to have patient on each others. The question is, is it about me or not? How should I know? Maybe they don't want me to expose any secret! But it's my human rights after all. All are a waste of time, creating sins & mistakes to them selves to carry on with till last moment in their lives. God is best judge. I'm feeling I cant do any type of business due to Sky Nets you know. All are God's. I wish I can help! I'm in Jordan under so much Ray's & Waves. That hurts a lot on a daily bases, day & night. People also scans on me with much of Bla Bla Bla you know more God's. I am a civilian that has so much broken bones in my body that hurts in winter other than what satellites can do. What else to say! God to help. I am a good person & wanting to stay like this for ever. I been trapped so many times, finally I decided to stay home alone even though under so much pressure from above & surroundings. I never was in the Army due to broken bones & lonely to parents. I hate politics & don't like any to force me to any of it even from TV or Satellites. All played a lot with me & people trapped me much, wasted my life time for their fun. Believe it or not, I got nothing to do with the above in the space. Voodoo wheel in the sky. I am a peace full person that cared a lot for peace & wanting to have my normal life back. You know I had much from all, shame & pain to remain in my brain memories about all. Like to stay clean always. Good human is peace in any country. But some say's stupid. I like National Security. Not wanting War & worked so hard for Peace by studding Encarta Encyclopedia during these years while under so much attack. Seek so much information's from every where almost to prove that we all are families & not supposed to trap each others & all to respect a Human. One thing for sure, I am a human. What about you? This what's all about. It's like that. I hate my self when I make mistakes or to be fooled by any! That also hurts Who don't have past or history? Are we living to kill each another's or to live with peace? Jesus didn't have any sin or mistake & what they did to him? That was also history. Memories to recall. This much it is, painful life & danger. God to help us all If we think about it! All are guilty since the day it started. How can I trust any once the above is Satan in the space trapping us all! Slave ring us all even while we are home alone! Judging our dreams, memories & our thinking for tomorrow as well. Expendable Assets. I hate terror activities, I don't belong to any of it & over my dead body. I love God & Peace. All religions & all nationalities. Don't want to hate any. Not all people are good. That what scares me a lot once all acting as God or Satan. I'm not God to judge & non should be. NASA Package: "Rain Brain Scan, Dynamic Eyes & Tele-Transport" is breaking God's law of creation, history, believes & faith. Full of viruses. Living in DANGER. My peace mission is accomplished. I used to say: case is closed since the day it started. Satellites above is still active. You know, that Umbrella. One more thing, they did play with media as well, TV, Radio = Songs, Movies & God knows much more. Human souls is in danger. Since the year of 2000 & even before, they were there. Hands Up, What's Up? (devil) They were fooling us all & some died already. Secret weapon above killing us all. Read about SARS VIRUS (FEAR VIRUS) please. Time passes; we grow old & die later on. Let's keep it natural & normal. Freedom freedom freedom. S.O.S Help Help Help. No one is there! They don't care about us & wasting life's. God to help Seek those songs & listen to all of them: Boney M - Rivers of Babylon -Mary's Boy Child _ Oh My Lord. Bob Marley _Rat Race_ War no more trouble. ENIGMA - WHY- Silent Warrior. Eurhythmics -Sweet Dreams- Angel. Chris de Burgh -A spaceman came traveling. Best Advice to all: It is a wild world. Every body wants more & more. The best is to have a self respect & never let go on your family, stick always together. Traps always there in life. There are lots of victims here & there. Not all to be trusted due to bright & dark side of all brains. Stay calm always & try your best not to be under pressure by any even by your inner brain. God always there for us all & never let go. Try your best not to be involved in any trouble or problem, always set back & give your opinion once asked for. The best answer is to answer with respect & a good behavior. Try to be wise all times even with your own. Don’t cheat, always be smart & honest. Always look in the eyes once communicating with any. Remember not all brains the same. Always stay safe far a way from mind disturbance & study well about everything. Do as what you believe in because it is your life & decision. Each soul lives in its own body & the body to protect its soul. Each soul to protect own body as well. A human has to protect on self from almost everything. It is a human nature & a law of God law of creation of our kind. Mother, father, brother & sister never let go on any of them always be with. Don’t ever regret or blame your self because of others mistakes. God to help us all. It is a good advice for all after all, in spite of tradition, religion, nationality & origin. An advice from my inner believe. Life is too short to live in anger & with danger. Each has a mission in life. Life to go on always. God from or is first & last to remain always. After all we are all humans belonging to families. During a sleep, a human feels that there is something wrong as if the brain is under so much pain! As if in a micro wave. Effects eyes, nerves & concentration other than that whispering voice saying don’t worry! What is it a national duty? Satellites go hell you shit murderers, killing people at home in a cold blood leaving no proof as if they are useless meaningless after taking what ever from their memories to serve whom while they are sleeping? When they get up from fear they start to wonder what is going on! Arab country a Muslim country doing this, is this what Islam all about? Jordan stop fucking around with souls, what about God? I know that satellite has lot of advanced technology Zoom with different rays. There is a story in my brain in 2005 if you want it, I been told that this lady gone to police station shouting & taking her cloths off saying: is this what you want, stop fucking with me. Believe it or not. Day’s before, I saw her yelling & saying what king doing this to us! Shit king to her friends. That was in front of my eyes & a listening ears of mine and others. A Jordanian actress in TV while acting in a theater stating that why to go to have an injection we had enough from government injections. Believe it or not, both ladies are from same family a Muslim one holding same sir name wanting to live a free life & not a slavery one. Is this Islamic movement or to make budgets? In Amman the capital, I had been told that there are 250 night clubs. Believe it or not! They also play with events & law the way they want. Who is good who is bad? I don’t know. In whose law all are still playing? Is this a free country or Zigzag? Satellites stop fucking with our sols. You shit Bedouins from Mohammed an sisters. Is this your roots? Combining with other Arab satellites! As UAE & Kuwait, I lived in those countries as well & they are a part & miss uses their satellites. In Arab TV they said it that Christians are attacking us we Muslims! (Satanic Network) This means what many non Arab people & some are Arabs over the internet stating that: Is Mohammed of Islam a prophet or a terrorist? Lot of corruptions going on in Jordan due to shit families administration & a lake of information or information technology! Or covering the truth creating business out of human sols to trap many persons that each person belong to a family & so on. Today I felt the pain as many times before since the year of 2000 & even before, fighting this shit SATAN from above. Jordan Kingdom of what? What is going on? Who is under attack? By: Nabil Zegord Konz Kurt Polaski Final statement - 23 December 2012 Judgment Day: After of what I had gone through since a long time back, I came out with these results & conclusions: Satellites were playing a Satan work since a long time back in the Arabian Gulf countries, Jordan, Israel, Palestinian Authorities, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, India, China, Japan, Europe countries & United States of America. Then other countries were also involved such as 11th, Sept 2001 (America under Attack by Alqeeda from Arab countries) what a diplomatic relations! What it got to do with civilians? World Trade Center! What a fake peace & war!) What a business based on cheatings civilians for many years. Singers, actors & actresses are also involved. Due to above countries different nationalities of civilians & their communications, all embassies in all countries. World wide global Satellites are involved with all types of issues & mixing with digital life by NASA Package: - Rain Brain Scan (Brain Scan + Dreams + Memories + Visions Input – Output)1 2- Dynamic Eye's (Dim light shadow passes, Sparks that causes blindness & Visions Input – Output) 3- Tele – Transport (Narrow & Wide Beaming with Electro Magnetic Radiation Field, Waves with speak voice, opinions, comments, bad words & torturing waves & voices in " Skull, Chest, Air, in any room & mixing with Media such as TV, radio, mobiles & phone speakers, brain sharing with other brains Input – Output ") Satellite Network started to assume Law & Justice, War & Peace. But what about God? Satellite station people those who are behind the shadows playing as wanted with NASA Package forcing Satan to many brains at home or at work places to many victims & shapes the evident as wanted to build their own budgets with evil work that can make Babylon AD, Brains in a mixer from one place to another & so on to create viruses in the air & SARS Virus (Fear Virus) over many nations. Human brain & heart in danger. Should we cover our selves with aluminum pads or aluminum sleeping bags or aluminum wall papers & ceilings? THE TRUTH ABOUT SECRET WEAPONS AND THE INVOLUNTARY TESTING OF THOSE WEAPONS ON CIVILIANS. THE PEOPLE TARGETED INCLUDE MANY WHO CHALLENGE ORGANISED CRIMINAL ACTIVITY WHICH IS CORRUPTLY PROTECTED BY GOVERNMENT / MEDIA INTERESTS. (Victims can experience hearing voices, mind reading, directed energy attacks and more) Please seek: http://www.surveillanceissues.com to understand. This site contains information relating to advanced satellite surveillance and "harassment" technologies which are made available to covert government agencies and organized crime syndicates. No trust to any Satellite, no trust to any un-logic or any non face to face comments, advices, opinions (can cheat) & to stick with facts & logic. It is a wild life & danger with satanic. How to trust? To have a self respect & to treat people with logic & facts, not by thinking, thoughts, idea's, imaginings, dreams or whisperings. Stop the 3rd war from happening, not all people are good (a business & budgets out of human sufferings!). Because of God, Religions, Histories, Original songs & Movies to remain for future, all Satellites to drop this Satan Work. No fortune to any Satan. I've been trapped so many times during many years since the year of 2000 & even before. United Nations with good well only with God. Only God can judge a human brain & stop trapping us all you Sky Nets. Sky Nets is the virus, zooming with rays & waves with cold blood. It is a great Mistake that took over many years in unmentioned human history. Satellites still active. Well, finally I want to say that once a human having a full community a country with all it’s capacity to live with & families all over. No need for brain connections between all & along with family members. We all are families after all. Police is there, fire brigades are there, courts are there, lawyers & advocates are there, judges are there, everything is there for all of us. All have to have a self respect in order all to live in peace. Entertainments also there, TVs. & movies are there, streets & cars are there, hospitals are there, shelters & accommodations are there, schools & universities are there! What is the reason for brain connections? It is a terror activities & nothing good in it. Satan works that play’s with satellites & media’s. NASA package is a virus of all type of shapes ( Rain brain scan, dynamic eye’s & Tele- transport over a human brain). Causing shortage of life time, waste of time, making so much corruption to all families & to all countries. Trying to cause a civil war to many families. What about everything that been established as the above mentioned? What about God law of creation? Since when life been like this? Satan goes to hell. Leave us to live our lives. Stop playing with our souls shit umbrella of satellites. This much Satan is big. As if the world is under control of Satan establishing a Danger Rat Race even with brains. Virus in the air & indoors creating us all fear as if it’s endless! Satellites were there since a long time back. Thank you readers read about SARS Virus (fear virus) creating so much pain even in the brain & all to have pain that to remain. Life is too short to live in anger & too short to live with danger. My peace mission in life. What a life journey. Life is going on & we going on with. Destination unknown. I'm like a mirror, what do you see in your mirror? A human. We have to live the facts & logic. Each to blame own self & to have a self control please.

One thing else I would like to add: As you see in my first site, I did post my CV, it shows dates where I study & where I worked, all the official certificates are there for all references. I have clearance from all countries where I lived in or studied. Now I'm here in Jordan since a long time back. I also have a hand written from my American wife Pamela stating that she doesn't want anything from me or from my side. Not to claim for anything. Asking me for a divorce. So far I did not divorce here. I'm free person supposed to be! I suppose not to have any problem with any one! One thing lift is what about my daughter Lilly? I say, once I did call Pamela & she said you keep your son with & I keep my daughter with me. I said ok. Should I have any problem with any country? I stick with my supposed country Jordan & to live alone forever. Not wanting any extra relations. Most of time I stay home alone. The question is: Why I'm still under attack from above satellites? Plus sound matching mixing in TV accusing me & giving me insults with whispers either from TV or from above satellite! Plus neighbors comments & opinions! All are God's! What about the real God? Who is judging who now? All of it is shit waste of time. All of these years gone with the wind with much of suffering & regrets. Any how it's my home land no matter what. Even though been trapped for so many times from local people as mentioned before. Satellites did create ell of problems to many families around the globe. Many died already from above rays & waves. Strokes, microwave oven rays targeting a human location causes what? Other than that NASA Package all together playing with human souls & destiny. Nations can fail & fall with what I have gone trough. What remains? Only pain & memories keeps it. By a victim: Nabil Zegord Konz Kurt Polaski For the last years after 1999, worked in two places & each were very temporary. 1- Export Import Co. as executive secretary works over the internet as a helping guide. Worked for 2 months almost. 2- I used to work as Executive & Deputy Manager for tour & travel co., did the program on excel to simplify the calculation assisted by the owner. Faxing hotels & transportation for reservations & corresponding for approvals from all concerns. This was my last job in Jordan. Starting Day in Company 23/06/2007 with JD200 Salary only, worked for 5 months almost. Spying on me while I’m at work! What experience to remain once they are taking everything? Many can lose their jobs & business. Should I search for a job while I’m under scan still as now March 16, 2014? Yes satellites & yes brains! Stop fuck’n around from any space & stop playing with human soul. And by the way, what protections while all is connected? Histories are there in Encarta Encyclopedia CD or over internet, seek that history. What human brains needed still from a human soul that belongs to its God at the end? We all are families. Leave me alone shit satellites & shit brains & sound matching along with people talk in streets & within skulls. All of these years, all been torturing a human soul! All were like calling for death & still going on. All were & still involved for all conscious to be awake for all type of all brains. What a history of all! Who is under attack? Are all are happy now? Let go on me & let me to live alone, it’s my life. An indoor soul wishes to lives alone with its own, is that much to ask? This also is an advice. Would there be any trust once activation still there? The best is to ignore all of it & to be aware from all. We stick with facts & logic. What a wastage of time & life’s. All has to respect them selves & their families those who spies on me while I can also do the same. That goes to all & such virus has to vanish (National Security in a home land & home lands due to Umbrella of what?). One for all & all for one “Mr. George Bush speech during America under attack Sept 11, 2001” this what I saw in TV at that time. Is it real or not? Histories are there in Encarta Encyclopedia to teach us all. All are learners while I’m thinking or dreaming! The question is: Are they supporting God & Peace? That is the question. Where ever I lay my hat that’s my home “Paul Anka song” whether I’m here or else where. I want to feel I’m at home protected by walls & ceilings to have my privacy & secrecy. I work at home with some art, not for business but gifts. I won’t pay tax, is that bad? Or should I make business? Can I? Plus I’m not working to any. Al of these years I preferred to stay home alone, not wanting to trap any or any to trap me. Friendship now a day's seems impossible once brains & satellites are there at all times. Home alone & yet to be disturbed! In what type of law this still going on? Is it a virus? Welcome to Jordan & Happy Mothers Day on 21st March 2014 & Happy Easter on 31st March 2014. God remains the greatest all times. Thank you & God Bless. Now concerning Iraq: Since a long time, Iraq been seeking Kuwait & there was hate between. Assuming Kuwait belongs to Iraq! But if we want to think about it's concerning the Arab Gulf. Because Kuwait s been shown belonging to Arab Gulf countries. If we study the war history of the Arab Gulf we find also Iran been involved. Muslim Arab countries fighting! All of it for what? Showing of & seeking fortune among them. Later on they accuse Israel & America! This also called a business same as what happening now a days in total Arab countries in the 21st century! Almost the same. Since when God loves war! They create corruptions to some civilians & to some not! Peace to some civilians & to some not! Business to some & to some not! They kill some & some not! & so on! Very simple to understand Arab war history. Weapon business, satellite business, trapping business, news business & it affects the entire life style & behaviors of poor & rich. Money & trade around the globe. The main thing is what about God & human souls? How strong Satan in the Arab world? Is the same meaning of the Arab war history. It is totally terror activities to many families. Any Arab country affects the entire Arab countries & so on till it approaches to world wide involvements. Internally externally! We all are families. I hate politics & war. Satan work it is. Now a day's electronic war among civilians, one county to another & so on! cased by whom? Other than electro magnetic field radiation "umbrella of viruses" or "brains in mixers" = "autohypnosis, hypnosis, hypotenuses, hypnotism" & the surroundings keeps on Bla Bla Bla wanting to be talented to each anothers! (Non stop talk) (Babylon Virus) acting as Gods as if I'm the only subject ignoring what they are doing! It hurts me much. All of them are guilty & all are witnesses (Gods, F.BI, C.I.A) Cased by whom? Later on they publish that Jordan got talented & later on they publish Arabs got talented in an official site over the internet! I read that. Can any deny? Welcome to Jordan. Yes Arabs! Seeking for peace or for war? What business you all seeking for? There will be no peace without God. Stop wasting. A human self respect is a national security. Are we humans or not? Now a day's & since before the year of 2000 they approaches a human indoor at home brains & hearts by (Strokes & Strikes), (Waves & Rays) to target with secret weapon (Zoom with rays) from above space & also to scan the brain & connect with other brains & satellites of different countries! Nice entertainments to many brains by watching a human soul suffering! What Islam! What law! What any religion! What any people talk Bla Bla Bla! What whispers for! What peace or war! What God once all of this shit is happening? All is under attack & everything my friends. All of it is Satan work wasting us all with electronic harassments plus TV indoor! Do I need to explain more to you all? What about something called a home land to live within peace with God? Or home land full of viruses? Look at Iraq Flag! It say's God is the greatest! Since when it's been changed? Why war then? Stop torturing human soul. Yes Arabs study your history! Stop studding my brain. Study yours. I stick with facts & logic, I hate wastage. Wanting my history! Ask your selves what is your history once all been involved with Satan Virus! I suffered a lot from this wastage & still I'm suffering. Stop wasting my time & yours. God bless those who understand how to make it to haven. Always keep in mind that God is 1st. Wednesday, July 02, 2014 Just imagine Just imagine, a country with total brain mixer, using their brains with the sixth since other than electronic radiation field that connects much of brains to a brain or much of brains. This country naturally will be country of viruses, sick brains which leads to sick bodies. Apes, satanic networks & troops from location to another. Satellites above scan & develop madness in the air as well by reaching to a location to record voices & shove the recorded voices to another location. Other misusing their F.B.I package or NASA package (Rain brain scan, dynamic eyes & tele-transport) over a human brain & to play with the brain by different Ray's & waves other than surrounding brains using their own brains as the package above. Using the same words all the time from outer space for their people "population to keep on repeating the same words that they hear, look at children for example, behaving as apes. Some adults also the same & teaching the same to their own children. Welcome to Jordan. We are dealing with such situation since the year of 2000 & even before. Brains connected with TV broadcasting to all houses also creates madness to many people. It's type of electronic war. Creating Apes & satanic brains. The administration of satellites can scan on any location brains & brains as if can do the same. Who is the judge & who is the prisoner? In this way all the same. Dark side of a brain & the good side of the brain. War & peace all the time, no where to go & no where to hide for all. What it is? A conscious punishment! In who's law? This is Satan work over mankind. Out of curiosity they misusing their shit Satellites & shit brains. It is the real life they are playing with assuming a movie, or a virus. What type of country should we call it? Kingdom of dummy heads! While all are witnesses! Life is too short to live in danger & in anger. A human life does not exceed a million hours! Nerve human system is under attack, even while dreaming or thinking or remembering, other than that voices reaches to the brain from upper satellites to keep on blaming or torturing or playing with waves & rays. Strokes & strikes from above as well! Any body against me? I wish all to suffer & all their pasts to be opened as how all been doing to me. All wants to be God's over my soul or Satan's! What a type of brains I should call them. Are they qualified to be called humans those I'm surrounded by? All scans on me! For what? All exercising on me! All is everything! What about me for being me for me! Do I need such a think to happen to all? Who should have a self respect? They are so many & I'm alone! This creates what? Everything about me& endless subjects! If I ask any of them, what do you want from me? What any of them to answer? Should I ask while all knowing what is going on! Some wish me good & some wish me bad! Other than that, some wants my sex with brain sharing! Neither privacy nor secrecy for me! Who wish to be put in this situation of mine? Did all forgot about God & peace? Should I keep on fighting them all for God existence & peace for all over the world? A single human cant take this much suffering alone as if all against! My peace mission is accomplished by contacting you all! Apps should have learned by now. What amazes me is those who keeps doing it to me & not letting others to learn! I'm doing this almost daily since the year of 2000 due to shit heads not wanting to understand. Should I suffer for them & for their children or suffer by them? I had enough from such a nation that create wastage of time, sorrow & pain. All are guilty. Jungle life! Isn't this danger to all families & to their future, if this yet to go on? Why wastage? I hate wastage. I hate political. I hate Satan. I hate war. I hate traps. I hate blame. I hate apes. I hate cheaters. I hate misunderstandings. I hate Satan & satanic & loves God & peace. I'm suffering for what? Who is bad now? All concentrating on my brain as if all are without sins or mistakes! All are clean! With out sins or pasts! I did not kill any body in my life & yet to be killed on a daily bases? & by whom? Or to live in a fear virus for ever! Gangsters all over! Let go & stop fucking around with a human soul. I am a human, what about any of you? Any of you going to compensate me for my wasted years? Creating SARS VIRUS (Fear Virus)? God remains the greatest. Sept the 11th (America under attack), or nine eleven (911) would it be the same? America & Jordan played such game to create a war against all religions. All countries been playing in this type of field. Voices from Jordan to the U.S.A & vice versa from different brains to a brain. U.A.E, Kuwait, P.L.O, Jordan, Egypt, Israel & all different Nationalities from all over the world & their embassies as well total involved in U.S.A & Al Qeeda of Arabs problem. The question is What about God's law of creation? What about United Nation opinion & act? Playing with media broadcasting to all world wide faking them for what? What is real & what is not? Soul punishment to many brains! For much of brains to have a nice entertainments at all times? In who's law? All are Sinners & mistake holders for life. I leave all to their own God & want to be lifted to my own God. All are guilty in the law of God & in the of all religions. Who created such a miss that lasted for several years to many families? The question is: The budget to whom? Who's winning & who's loosing. Well, this is the subject. Many brains are in each others ass wholes. This type of life creates so many misunderstandings & danger to all. A human self respect is a national security. My life in Jordan, when I remember, all were faking me, trapping me, punishing me, & creating me war even while I'm dreaming. All are Satan's acting God's. Zionists, killers & there God is so much angry on them all. Such type of people is Godless, religion less, pre Muslims & pre Christians that I am surrounded by. The question is: the local authority doesn't have such brains? So a full community is creating wastage to all & to everything good in life! What a virus that attacking all of us. Who is the teacher & who is the student? Most of the time I'm living in anger mode due to shit brains that I'm attacked by! Getting angry when I hear them speaking about me as if they are God's. Such brains deserve the punishment & not me. Plus I'm not Jesus or Mohammed or Moses. I am a human under attack by Apes, demons, assassins, rumors, terrorists & Ugliest shit nature behavior of mankind. They want to make a movie, a business? Over a human punished soul! Should any human agree with? The question is: What about History of all countries? Should we trust! Or all of it is fake? That is the subject & not me. Fuck you shit surrounding & shove your brains into each others Ass wholes. Not trusting in God leads to such war of extermination. So I been calling for God & Peace & yet to be under attack! All wanting? Who is going to give to such hunger brains of shit. Their sixth since in each others, some thinking they can use it to steal, to create subject, to judge, to create anything for others to have fun upon a human soul. Facts & logic still they are playing with, All God's. May the lord God to curse their souls. They the ones who need to be punished, not me. In this neighborhood there are thefts, lies, cheaters, self cheaters, haters, wasters, rumors, whispers, brain scanners, listeners to my inner thinking on a daily bases, troubles, corrupted brains, pretenders as actors or actresses, pretending by holding any religion while doing so!, bla, bla, bla creators! & much of them. Mobile messages, tracers, trackers, trappers & hunters as well! For how long? All wants to be proud while it is a curse! I had been punished by Apes & Satan's on a daily bases for many years. Children also a problem, my question is where is their parents, elder brothers & elder sisters to teach them how to behave? What a home land that not allowing my soul to live in peace even indoor at home or house or flat! All are involved. There is a King, Queen for this Kingdom & their families. I got nothing to do with any of any of local people. My family members been insulted by media broadcasting as well! What! Under attack by everything! God to protect me from evil work (living in it for many years) (nerve war!). Get lost shit brains, creating danger to me! Creating me shit facts & shit logic in real life! There are movies & songs from all over the world describing everything about such situation! What about Arab University? (Nile Sat & Arab Sat) TV in all houses. All countries are broadcasting over satellites. What about United Nations? My life gone on waste & thanks to whom? I only wanted to live as a family man living in a normal life! As I been saying since the year of 2001! Who needs lecturing now? Me or you? I been left alone to live under so much pain for what? Wasting a human soul by Apes & Satan's! For what? In which law? Satanic network creating Umbrella of what? All got talented by what? By sixth since! & they don’t know that it is the field which been created by the above satellites is doing to us all! Should we call them talented people due to the influence of satellites (helping them to go straight to hell!)? Are all happy now? What about history? All fake! All are puppets & one bait? Or one puppet & all baits? One for all & all for one! Mr. George Bush (U.S.A president) been explaining it to all since Sept 11th, 2001. This is the Umbrella. We don’t want a 3rd world war. A war of extermination! Exterminating what? Get lost shit satellites & shit brains. God remains the greatest at all times. Stop focusing on me & don’t interfere in my life. Learning from me & me yet to be punished by you? Who wants to live this type of life as mine? Memories remains & history remains. Should any of you to fake my life or my feelings? A human soul been punished & wasted by whom? That is the question? What a movie (rise of the apes "Caesar" or planet of the apes) that we watch over TV screen. TV also real & fake broadcasting. Electronic programs also playing & interfering in broadcasting! Stop it shit heads (elusion & hysteria creators) & let go. Stop insulting me at all times. What a life of danger & at all times? Sneakers & seekers! even while I'm home alone! In door alone! Surrounded by brains to non stop hacking on me! Zion's & Zionism all are. Slaves to whom? What about visions? Nice cold war? Is history recording all the above mentioned? Study encyclopedia A magic in the air! Or a virus in the air or our inner voices in the air or to brains (electro magnetic radiation field)? Non stop bla, bla, bla creation & at all times. This is the big issue we are living in it as Mr. George Bush said: (They looked at small issue & forgot the big one!). Welcome to Jordan or to our world wide countries! Planet Earth. God did create the entire universe & not only Planet Earth. Sky nets is the virus. Thank you. By: Nabil Zegord Konz Kurt Polaski December 8th, 2014 Thursday, March 20, 2014 Satellite scans the indoor human brain & they broadcast in Satellite TV Channels & Radio on the spot of what comes to the indoor human brain at home location & sound matching mixing along with char’s effect to use eyes & mouths of actors & actresses or singers on TV screen to fool around with human soul. And later on in News Papers as well! Using block on the brain where ever goes & misusing their secret weapon of NASA Package “Rain Brain Scan, dynamic eyes & tele-transport” zoom with rays & waves from above space sky acting as God’s & involving the surrounding people by tele-transport “input-output data from brain to brains using our skulls & minds to start wondering to start bla bla about each others to create corruptions & to act as God’s as well”. They can trap us all & they are in command. Who are they? They are Satellites Net Works. Umbrella of what? In whose law they to do this? Where is the truth? It is around the globe “world wide” as if war of extermination of all populations of all nations. I call them Satanic Net Works to scan our pasts, present & our destiny in life. People to scan on people brains as if living in electro magnetic field! God to help us all. They made us to live in fake life. Assuming electronic bomb or some virus of different types in all times took over our brains & bodies. What a slavery & fear (SARS VIRUS) time for us to live in it in the 21st century! Sneaking into our brains to take our secrets (one brain leads to many brains & so on) & (one for all & all for one) to trap us all from one country to another! To create what? Nice business! Those behind the shadows creating business out of peace & out of war. Do they care for any soul? They also having such secret weapon zoom with rays & waves to use for punishments while they takes everything from the brain by force in the magnetic field that they build on the location of the brain & to involve others with. To create all God’s upon brains! All are guilty in this way & all been trapped. I spoke peace & God law of creation since beginning. God & Peace is two subjects that I been seeking to all. What a Vampire World! Brains of hungers of what? What talents still they are seeking for? Damn you all look what you did (Ape Planet or Planet of Apes) they fooled us all by also playing with broadcasting in Satellite TV Channels & rumors from many whispers either from above satellites or by brains. Many people believe what they hear! Non stop war in our brains! Thanks to God that we still alive. There are good people & there are bad people. Be aware from the unknown once there are brains sharing. So I put my experience in life to you all in my web site http://polaskilove2.angelfire.com. Updates also there of what I’m going through. Still they are active over me. Thursday, March 20, 2014 I call them Satanic Net Works. And as I said “a human self respect is a national security” but not by force from shit above satellites or shit brains around. I don’t want to trap or to be trapped & I hate politics. No trust in TV screens any more once they are playing with the broadcasting & I only watch movies & musical clips. Misusing such technologies creates what? War of extermination. Such administration are demons & don’t care for any of us or about us (Michel Jackson song “They don’t care about us”). Plus I’m always home alone been advising all to stop hacking, spying or sharing my thoughts, dreams & ideas. All are thieves & Satan’s or Gods?

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All are: (despotic, tyrannous, inequitable, oppressive, unjust, wrongful, unfair, tyrannical, unrighteous, iniquitous, heavy -handed) because I'm suffering from all! Terrorist's within their brains even while learning! In which law? God best witness & all are guilty & in what law! What a wastage of time. In the last few years, look at the high secondary school marks & what happened to many students & teachers! This brain focusing made such problems. Haters misusing their brains to play with many student & teachers brains to take the passwords to play with the marks. Satellites can do that too! What if nations are attached like this together? Stop the 3rd world war from happening people & stop wasting everybody's time. All are guilty (Brains of what? Different Extortions, good & bad, self cheaters! While all are witnesses on each others!). Such Package of NASA or F.B.I created what? dissimulation, hypocrisy, insincerity, guile & duplicity of all. I speak God & Peace! Who's bad? I'm I bait? To all! World wide! Whose business it is? Who made this to me? And why Satellites still fucking around from the sky with me in my location & in my brain other than skulls with it's brains doing the same? Where is the problem if I write my story? Each has own story! All playing with my conscious! & who does that has any conscious? Causing excisions & wastage! All got talented over a human sole! All God's? All wants to be Apes & satanic over me! Look what they did to me & individuals been hacking to keep on trapping! What law with satanic networks of satellites & their broadcasting? Other than that, skull with their brains? Any has a reason? Or a clue? To treat a human sole like this? All are guilty. How should I know who is focusing on me or who is connected with me? This is slavery as well! Causes life of shit! I say God & peace people, not Satan & war! Stop being God over me. Yes brains? God remain the greatest. Welcome to Jordan of full of Different Arab nationalities other than less foreigners. With different traditions & religions. Embassies are all over the world countries! Updated on Friday, January 16, 2015 How does it feel when you are always living in fear at your house or flat? Being under attack by upper spying satellite with its new technologies of rays & waves that keeps on attacking you even during your sleep (Creating Ghosts) strokes & strikes! & the surrounding people knowing that & also having fun feelings to see you suffering & they also keeps on torturing your inner brain & soul while learning from you everything! (Apes & Satanic). No privacy no secrecy even for you to keep memories in own brain (not wanting to share any with!). NASA Package: Rain brain scan, dynamic eyes & tele-transport. Passwords (I copy & past my password, not keeping in my memory) can I trust any? TV. also been used to keep on trapping & insulting the indoor persons. What business while extortion going on over you? What religions to allow this to go on! Everything is in danger because (Virus in the air, inner brain whispers also goes to many brains, satellites, TV & in the air). What a magic in the air! (Nice song). This creates Ape planet or the rise of the Apes. Are we living in a movie? All of it is a terror activities creating wastage & disaster to a complete country & yet to all countries. Study SARS virus (Fear Virus) & what caused it to many nations? Virus, intruders, bugs, spies & Satan work. What a jungle life & full of harassments. They keep on going for you to live with no trust no logic & no life to go on with! All are witness's even satellites from above! Living in terror! My God is best witness. All are guilty! What a waste! What excuse any to have for doing so? Is it a movie or a business? What about GOD? All are God's! All the above mentioned lasted for many years & since the year of 2000 & even before. All are happy now? No quitting from doing so! Shame on you all, making people families & individuals to feel punished for no reason at all. Brain connections & sixth sense! For how long? Bla Bla Bla & whispers! A victim yet to be victimized on a daily basis! What law of such a thing? Satan Law. Making hopeless life to many. Is this is the way God great life for a man kind to live or all made it in this way? Who is doing this to me? Satan & Satanic networks. God remains the greatest & to help us all. On December 8, 1987, United States president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed a treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear weapons. The treaty was important, Reagan noted in his exchange with Gorbachev, because it contained stringent rules to verify compliance with its provisions, including on-site inspection. Elimination of these weapons, which clearly targeted European countries because of their limited range, also marked a key step in winding down the Cold War. Excerpts from the treaty follow the leaders’ comments. Herbert S. Parmet INTRODUCTION Treaty, in international law, written agreement concluded by two or more sovereign nations or by a nation and an international organization, such as the European Union. The power to enter into treaty relations is an essential attribute of sovereignty. The principle that treaties validly concluded are binding on the signatories, who must adhere to them in good faith, is a cardinal rule of international law. II. VALIDITY The usual conditions essential to the valid conclusion of a treaty are that the contracting parties must have the requisite capacity to enter into international engagements, the plenipotentiaries who negotiate the treaty must be properly authorized, and freedom of consent on the part of the signatory powers must exist. It is now recognized that a treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force in violation of the principles of international law embodied in the United Nations Charter (see United Nations). Peace treaties concluded after the cessation of hostilities were usually considered not to be void because of the preceding warfare. Nevertheless, in 1932 the U.S. established a policy not to recognize any treaty or agreement brought about by means contrary to the Kellogg-Briand Pact. This principle, known as the Stimson Doctrine, was adopted by the League of Nations. Similar principles were included in the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. III. CONTENT On the international level, the scope of the treaty-making power of a state is practically unlimited. It includes the acquisition of foreign territory, the cession of domestic territory, the delimitation and rectification of boundaries, the promise of mutual assistance, the guarantee of foreign investments, and the extradition of persons accused or convicted of crimes. Treaties may be of a law-making character and of a multilateral nature, such as the conventions on the law of the sea and on the privileges and immunities of diplomatic missions and their staff. Multilateral treaties are also the basis for the establishment of international organizations and the determination of their individual functions and powers. IV. TYPES OF TREATIES Many treaties can be classified as either political or commercial agreements. Political treaties may relate to mutual defense in case of armed attack; to guarantees of a particular status, such as neutrality; or to the preservation of existing boundaries. Treaties of alliance that promised mutual support in the event of war are no longer valid to the extent that they violate the UN Charter. Commercial treaties usually provide mutual economic advantage, such as reduced tariffs on the imported products of the parties to the agreement. In modern times such treaties often contain a clause stipulating that each signatory will extend to every other signatory treatment equally favorable to that accorded to any other nation (the most-favored-nation clause). The most important multilateral treaty of that type is the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The national treatment clause in commercial treaties assures equal treatment to the nationals of each signatory to the agreement. Another class of treaties provides for the submission of disputes to arbitration by special tribunals or to the adjudication of disputes by institutions such as the Permanent Court of Arbitration or the International Court of Justice. V. CONCLUSION AND RATIFICATION International law prescribes neither a fixed form for a treaty nor any fixed procedure for its conclusion. It may be concluded by an exchange of diplomatic notes incorporating an agreed-upon text signed by authorized officials or by the signing of one or more copies of the text by officials authorized to express the consent of their respective governments to be bound by the treaty. Many important treaties require ratification by each of the contracting parties. In such cases the negotiators, after reaching agreement on the final text, sign the document and then submit the proposed treaty for ratification to the constitutionally authorized authority, usually the head of state or head of the government. VI. TERMINATION Treaties may be terminated in various ways. The treaty itself may provide for its termination at a specified time or it may allow one party to give notice of termination, effective either at the time of receipt or following the expiration of a specified period. A treaty may be terminated by one signatory's repudiation of its obligations; such a unilateral termination, however, may provoke retaliatory measures. A treaty may also be terminated by reliance on the principle rebus sic stantibus (“things remaining that way”), that is, when the state of affairs assumed by the signatory parties (when they signed the treaty, and therefore the real basis of the treaty), no longer exists, and a substantial change in conditions has taken place. VII. THE VIENNA CONVENTION Rules of international law governing the conclusion, validity, effects, interpretation, modification, suspension, and termination of treaties were codified in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, adopted in 1969 at a conference convened by a resolution of the UN General Assembly. Representatives from 110 nations participated, including the United States, Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and most other United Nations members, as well as several nonmembers including Switzerland. The draft was prepared by the International Law Commission. The convention went into force in January 1980 after ratification by 35 nations. The U.S. signed but has not yet ratified the convention; however, the U.S. considers most of the Vienna Convention's rules as representing customary international law. Most modern constitutions vest the power to conclude treaties in the head of state, but require prior approval by the legislature. Under the U.S. Constitution the treaty-making power is vested in the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate. An important treaty usually is negotiated by the State Department and then submitted to the Senate for approval by a two-thirds vote of the members present. The Senate may make its approval dependent on the inclusion of amendments, reservations, or other declarations that require acceptance by the other parties involved. After final approval, the treaty goes to the president for ratification. The president may conclude agreements on his own authority if the conclusion of such agreements is authorized by a treaty already approved by the Senate, or by statute or joint resolution adopted by Congress within its constitutional powers, or by the constitutional powers of the president as chief executive and commander-in-chief. The scope of the president's power to conclude agreements without congressional consent has caused political controversy. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty Remarks by Reagan and Gorbachev REAGAN: It was over six years ago, Nov. 18, 1981, that I first proposed what would come to be called the Zero Option. It was a simple proposal--one might say disarmingly simple. Unlike treaties in the past, it didn't simply codify the status quo or a new arms buildup, it didn't simply talk of controlling an arms race. For the first time in history the language of arms control was replaced by arms reduction--in this case the complete elimination of an entire class of U.S. and Soviet nuclear missiles. Of course, this required a dramatic shift in thinking, and it took conventional wisdom some time to catch up. Reaction, to say the least, was mixed. To some the zero option was impossibly visionary and unrealistic and to others merely a propaganda ploy. But with patience, determination and commitment, we've made this impossible vision a reality. General Secretary Gorbachev, I'm sure you're familiar with [19th-century Russian writer and satirist] Ivan Kriloff's tale about the swan, the crawfish and the pike. It seems that once upon a time these three were trying to move a wagon-load together. They hitched and harnessed themselves to the wagon. It wasn't very heavy but no matter how hard they worked, the wagon just wouldn't move. You see, the swan was flying upward, the crawfish kept crawling backward and the pike kept making for the water. The end result was they got nowhere, and the wagon is still there to this day. Well, strong and fundamental moral differences continue to exist between our nations, but today, on this vital issue at least, we have seen what can be accomplished when we pull together. The numbers alone demonstrate the value of this agreement. On the Soviet side over 1,500 deployed warheads will be removed, and all ground-launched intermediate range missiles including the SS-20's will be destroyed. On our side our entire complement of Pershing 2 and ground-launched cruise missiles with some 400 deployed warheads will all be destroyed. Additional backup missiles on both sides will also be destroyed. But the importance of this treaty transcends numbers. We have listened to the wisdom in an old Russian maxim, and I'm sure you're familiar with it. Mr. General Secretary, though my pronunciation may give you difficulty, the maxim is doveryai no proveryai. Trust but verify. GORBACHEV: You repeat that at every meeting. REAGAN: I like it. This agreement contains the most stringent verification regime in history, including provisions for inspection teams actually residing in each other’s territory and several other forms of on-site inspection as well. This treaty protects the interests of America's friends and allies. It also embodies another important principle, the need for glasnost, a greater openness in military programs and forces. We can only hope that this history-making agreement will not be an end in itself but the beginning of a working relationship that will enable us to tackle the other issues, urgent issues, before us—strategic offensive nuclear weapons, the balance of conventional forces in Europe, the destructive and tragic regional conflicts that beset so many parts of our globe and respect for the human and natural rights that God has granted to all men.… To quote another Russian proverb—as you can see I’m becoming quite an expert in Russian proverbs—the harvest comes more from sweat than from the dew.… Well, now, Mr. General Secretary, would you like to say a few words before we sign the treaty? GORBACHEV: Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, comrades, succeeding generations will hand down their verdict on the importance of the events which we are about to witness. But I will venture to say that what we are going to do--the signing of the first-ever agreement eliminating nuclear weapons--has a universal significance for mankind, both from the standpoint of world politics and from the standpoint of humanism. For everyone and, above all, for our two great powers the treaty, whose text is on this table, offers a big chance at last to get onto the road leading away from the threat of catastrophe. It is our duty to take full advantage of that chance and move together toward a nuclear-free world which holds out for our children and grandchildren and for their children and grandchildren the promise of a fulfilling and happy life without fear and without a senseless waste of resources on weapons of destruction. We can be proud of planting this sapling which may one day grow into a mighty tree of peace. But it is probably still too early to bestow laurels upon each other. As the great American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said, the reward of a thing well done is to have done it. So let us reward ourselves by getting down to business. We have covered a seven-year-long road replete with intense work and debate. One last step toward this table and the treaty will be signed. May Dec. 8, 1987, become a date that will be inscribed in the history books, a date that will mark the watershed separating the era of a mounting risk of nuclear war from the era of demilitarization of human life. Treaty Excerpts Article I In accordance with the provisions of this Treaty which includes the Memorandum of Understanding and Protocols which form an integral part thereof, each Party shall eliminate its intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles, not have such systems thereafter, and carry out the other obligations set forth in this Treaty.… Article III 1) For the purposes of this Treaty, existing types of intermediate-range missiles are: a. for the United States of America, missiles of the types designated by the United States of America as the Pershing II and the BGM-109G, which are known to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by the same designations; and b. for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, missiles of the types designated by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as the RSD-10, the R-12 and the R-14, which are known to the United States of America as the SS-20, the SS-4 and SS-5, respectively. (2) For the purposes of this Treaty, existing types of shorter-range missiles are: a. for the United States of America, missiles of the type designated by the United States of America as the Pershing 1A, which is known to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by the same designation; and b. for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, missiles of the types designated by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as the OTR-22 and the OTR-23, which are known to the United States of America as the SS-12 and the SS-23, respectively. Article IV (1) Each Party shall eliminate all its intermediate-range missiles and launchers of such missiles, and all support structures and support equipment of the categories listed in the Memorandum of Understanding associated with such missiles and launchers, so that no later than three years after entry into force of this Treaty and thereafter no such missiles, launchers, support structures or support equipment shall be possessed by either Party. (2) To implement paragraph 1 of this Article, upon entry into force of this Treaty, both parties shall begin and continue throughout the duration of each phase, the reduction of all types of their deployed and non-deployed intermediate-range missiles and deployed and non-deployed launchers of such missiles and support structures and support equipment associated with such missiles and launchers in accordance with the provisions of this Treaty.… Article V (1) Each Party shall eliminate all its shorter-range missiles and launchers of such missiles, and all support equipment of the categories listed in the Memorandum of Understanding associated with such missiles and launchers, so that no later than 18 months after entry into force of the Treaty and thereafter no such missiles, launchers or support equipment shall be possessed by either Party. (2) No later than 90 days after entry into force of the Treaty, each Party shall complete the removal of all its deployed shorter-range missiles and deployed and non-deployed launchers of such missiles to elimination facilities and shall retain them at those locations until they are eliminated in accordance with the procedures set forth in the Protocol of Elimination. No later than 12 months after entry into force of the Treaty, each Party shall complete the removal of all its non-deployed shorter-range missiles until they are eliminated in accordance with the procedures set forth in the Protocol on Elimination.… Source: The New York Times, December 9, 1987. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Reason for Hope: The International Human Rights Movement at 50 By Marvin E. Frankel The concept of international human rights owes its beginnings to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. During World War II (1939-1945), the Nazis murdered millions of Jews and hundreds of thousands of others, including Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, Soviet prisoners of war (POWs), and the mentally ill in gas chambers, by firing squad, and other methods. The world had never faced such monumental crimes, and the Allied forces that were victorious in World War II set out to ensure that such a thing could never happen again. Both the concept and the word genocide—coined in 1944 by Polish legal scholar Raphael Lemkin to describe the horror of the Nazi Holocaust—were part of Hitler's legacy. In the waning days of the war, four Allied nations—China, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the United Kingdom, and the United States—began working to establish a representative world body with a mandate to maintain world peace. Their efforts culminated in the birth of the United Nations (UN) in 1945. Two years later the UN created the Commission on Human Rights, headed by Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. And on December 10, 1948, the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an event that marked the birth of the modern human rights movement. Before World War II, the actions of a sovereign government within its own borders were, with rare exceptions, no business of outsiders or foreign governments. When repressive governments abused their own people, individuals or leaders in other countries might express outrage, but such protests had no standing in international law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights gave the global community grounds on which to confront countries that fail to uphold human rights. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR), created in 1993 and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, directs the UN's human rights efforts. But despite the efforts of the UN, regional bodies, and private organizations, millions of people around the world still suffer from human rights violations. Nevertheless, the fight to bring human rights to every corner of the globe has made remarkable progress over the last 50 years. Defining and Codifying Human Rights At the end of World War II, the Allies convened tribunals to try those accused of war crimes (violations of international agreements governing the conduct of war) and crimes against humanity, such as torture and genocide. The first trials, based in Nürnberg, Germany, prosecuted about 200 Nazi leaders, military officials, and civilians. Several dozen were sentenced to death, and most of the rest were imprisoned. Trials of Japanese leaders and enlisted men resulted in the execution of several hundred defendants. These trials helped establish the principle of accountability before the international community. Three years later the UN declaration on human rights was created based on the shared values, the constitutions, and traditions of a number of countries, notably Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The universal human rights outlined in the declaration include the right to life, liberty, and security of person; to freedom of conscience, religion, opinion, expression, association, and assembly; and freedom from arbitrary arrest. But exactly what rights should be considered universal is a matter of continuing debate. Socialist countries, for example, often place a higher emphasis on the right to work and to adequate housing, while many liberal capitalist nations believe freedoms from government control—such as the right to privacy, a fair trial, and a free press—are more important. In some societies the concept of human rights is shaped by religion, such as in Islamic societies, where what many people from other cultures regard as the rights of women sometimes contradict religious teachings. And some governments claim that their citizens value social order over individual freedom. But despite these differences, there is wide agreement on fundamental rights such as protections against arbitrary arrest, torture, and summary execution. The universal declaration was followed by a series of conventions and covenants that addressed specific issues and codified the rights outlined by the declaration. Examples include the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (adopted in 1948 and signed by 42 countries); the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966, signed by 59 countries); and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966, signed by 61 countries). Other documents addressed racial discrimination, the status of refugees, discrimination against women, the rights of children, and the use of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading punishment. Unfortunately these steps did not quickly end human rights violations. The years since 1945 have seen gross violations by authoritarian regimes, including several instances of genocide. In the late 1970s about 1.7 million people died at the hands of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge movement. Indonesia's forcible incorporation of East Timor in 1976 reportedly led to the deaths of as many as 100,000 Timorese. And between 500,000 and 1 million members of Rwanda's minority Tutsi ethnic group and politically moderate members of the majority Hutu ethnic group were slaughtered by Rwanda's Hutu-led government in 1994.

Scrutiny and Enforcement The Universal Declaration of Human Rights catapulted the issue of human rights to the forefront of international politics and touched off a worldwide human rights movement. But nations that sign UN covenants and other international treaties do not always uphold their responsibilities. To combat violations, many international human rights organizations have means for confirming and enforcing compliance. Among the UN's most effective investigators are its “special rapporteurs,” who report on specific nations or on practices that violate human rights. Special rapporteurs have investigated violations in countries around the world. The light shed by these reports has helped expose and halt human rights abuses. The UN also uses other means, such as public censure and the threat of economic sanctions, to encourage violators to comply with international law. Regional organizations also play a role in enforcing human rights laws. Among the first were the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights, both created by the Council of Europe in 1950. The commission and court are empowered to enforce the rights outlined in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), established in 1950. Under the ECHR, member governments or individuals may bring charges of human rights violations against other member countries. Individuals may also charge their own government with violations. Disputes are resolved by the commission, or, if that fails, charges may be submitted to the court. The system has functioned well. In the majority of cases, member governments have accepted and complied with judgments issued by the court. Another significant step in the enforcement of human rights was the Helsinki Accords, a series of agreements reached between 1973 and 1975 among participants in the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), now known as the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Intended to ease Cold War tensions, the Helsinki Accords granted concessions to the USSR and its allies—such as official recognition of the division of Germany—in return for commitments from the USSR and Eastern European nations to respect human rights. The accords resulted in relaxed surveillance and reduced brutality by the Soviet secret police and in freedom for Jewish and human rights activist Natan Sharansky, human rights activist Vladimir Slepak, and others. Nations of the western hemisphere, united in the Organization of American States (OAS), followed the European example and created the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in 1959 and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 1978. These organizations play much the same roles as their European counterparts. But the United States, the OAS's largest and most influential member, has never fully participated in the system, thus weakening the OAS apparatus. Africa has also followed Europe's lead. In 1986 the Organization of African Unity (OAU) created the African Commission on Human and People's Rights. A human rights court is also planned. Nongovernmental Organizations Human rights play an important role in international relations, but the issue sometimes takes a back seat to other concerns. Compromises and tradeoffs on human rights are not always admirable, but they do happen. In the era of the Cold War, for example, the United States and its allies overlooked and downplayed human rights violations in anti-Communist countries such as Chile, Turkey, and the former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Meanwhile the United States vigorously assailed violations committed in Communist countries such as Cuba and the USSR. Unlike international and regional bodies, private human rights organizations focus exclusively on the issue of human rights. As a result, these nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have played a major role in exposing human rights violations and achieving remedies. The earliest and best-known NGO is Amnesty International (AI). Founded in the United Kingdom in 1961, AI primarily concerns itself with Prisoners of Conscience (defined by AI as “people imprisoned because of peaceful expression of their beliefs, politics, race, religion, color, or national origin”). Through letter-writing campaigns, fact-finding missions, annual human rights reports, and other means, AI has helped bring freedom to incarcerated people around the world. One of the most prominent human rights groups in the United States is Human Rights Watch (HRW), founded in 1978. HRW monitors human rights violations and issues annual reports assessing the state of human rights in countries around world. A number of other NGOs work patiently and sometimes in dangerous circumstances to protect human rights, including the International Commission of Jurists, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland; Article 19, a British organization; the French organization Fédération Internationale des ligues des Droits de l'Homme (International Federation of Human Rights leagues); Israel's B'Tselem (in the image of); and Argentina's Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (Center for Legal Studies). Besides monitoring violations and publishing studies, these organizations hold demonstrations, file legal actions, organize petitions and letter-writing campaigns, and testify before national and international committees. Their efforts are central to the human rights movement. One grim story, which unfolded over nearly two decades, illustrates the vital role these groups can play. On December 2, 1980, three nuns and a Catholic lay worker from the United States were seized, raped, and murdered in El Salvador. The family of one victim, together with members of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR)—a nonprofit human rights organization based in New York City—began investigating involvement by El Salvador's National Guard, an elite national security agency. In 1984 five low-ranking Salvadoran National Guardsmen were convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison. But the LCHR continued to press its belief that the order to kill the women came from higher up. Finally, in April 1998, four of the convicted guardsmen told the LCHR that they had acted on orders from superiors. Truth and Reconciliation Violations such as those committed in El Salvador often occur in secret, making it difficult to determine who was responsible for any single incident. The desire to unmask those responsible for human rights abuses such as those in El Salvador gave rise to institutions known as truth commissions, investigative bodies with a mandate to document and assign responsibility for abuses. Truth commissions work on the principle that airing the truth about what happened during a period of repression offers catharsis to a population and a chance for the rebuilding process to begin in a society. Sometime after 1950 the Spanish word desaparecido (disappeared) became a noun used to describe people who had been kidnapped and tortured or killed by government or rebel forces in Latin America. The thousands of tragic disappearances began in Guatemala in the 1960s. The practice spread to Chile following that country's U.S.-backed military coup in 1973, and into Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, and finally to countries outside of Latin America such as Afghanistan and the Philippines. Beginning in the late 1970s, however, many of these countries replaced dictatorial regimes with democratic governments. A key factor was popular pressure for human rights, generated by groups like Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the May Square, an Argentine group made up primarily of mothers whose children had disappeared) which marched through Buenos Aires with photographs of their loved ones, crying “Give us back our children!” For countries such as Argentina, which reverted from military rule in 1983, the transition to democracy introduced a new problem. Thousands of victims of abuse and the relatives of those who were murdered cried out for retribution. Punishment, these groups argued, would send a signal that human rights are valued and that violators would be brought to justice in the future. But others worried about the risks involved with putting the military on trial. In Argentina, as elsewhere, the change to more democratic governments had been achieved gradually, and the military remained powerful and often resentful of calls for prosecution. In some countries the military threatened to resist any efforts to punish them. Still others questioned whether it was right to seek retribution instead of reconciliation. It might take years to punish all those responsible for the violations, a period during which feelings of bitterness would continue to divide the population. Confronted with these arguments, Argentina developed a way of addressing the abuses that came to serve as a model for countries around the world. The Comisi?n Nacional para Investigatar el Destino de los Desparecidos (CONADEP, National Commission on the Disappeared) was created to recall and record abuses committed under military rule. Led by Ernesto S?bato, a distinguished writer, the commission heard testimony from hundreds who suffered or who lost relatives at the hands of the junta and reported on some 9000 persons who had disappeared. This process revealed some of the unspeakable acts committed by the junta, such as the practice of drugging victims and dropping them into the sea from airplanes, and the separation of children from parents. The commission's final report, titled Nunca M?s (1984; Never Again, 1986), catalogued the agonies inflicted by the military junta and became a best-seller. In it S?bato described the chilling effect that Argentina's so-called dirty war had on its society. A feeling of complete vulnerability spread throughout Argentine society, coupled with the fear that anyone, however innocent, might become a victim of the neverending witch-hunt…anyone was at risk—from those who were proposing social revolution, to aware adolescents who merely went out to the shanty towns to help the people living there. A few junta leaders, such as General Jorge Videla, president during the junta years (1976-1983), were tried and imprisoned. A few years later, however, President Carlos Menem granted pardons to those who had been convicted or were standing trial, a move triggered partially by pressure from the military and the need to curb military unrest. Argentina's commission was the first significant example of a truth commission. Not every such commission has been successful, but others have functioned effectively in Chile and El Salvador. In South Africa, the Commission of Truth and Reconciliation, formed in 1995, continues to play a vital role in the transition from minority to majority rule in that country. Chaired by Nobel Peace prize-winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African commission has a mandate to investigate human rights violations committed during South Africa's period of apartheid (Afrikaans for “separateness,” South Africa's system of racial separation that lasted from 1948 to 1990). To further that goal the commission has the power to grant amnesty to violators who provide full, detailed, and truthful accounts of the crimes they committed. The more famous cases documented by the commission include the 1977 murder in police custody of antiapartheid activist Stephen Biko. Those seeking amnesty from the South African commission have not been limited to officials from the former white-dominated government. Officials from the African National Congress (ANC), now South Africa's ruling party, have sought amnesty for instances of beatings, torture, and the execution of people believed to have spied or informed on the ANC. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, and the Need for Justice Some violations are so heinous that societies feel the only way to address them is to put the perpetrators on trial. In the early 1990s the breakup of the former Yugoslavia triggered savage fighting in the former republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The region split into areas controlled by three ethnic groups—Serbs, Croats, and Muslims—each of which participated, to varying degrees, in a genocidal practice known as ethnic cleansing: the elimination, through forced expulsion or murder, of rival ethnic groups. Thousands of civilians were killed outright or held in concentration camps where they were starved, beaten, raped, and murdered. These acts so shocked the world that in 1993 the UN Security Council ordered the creation of “an international tribunal…for the prosecution of persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991.” The first international war crimes court since World War II, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was granted the power to impose a maximum sentence of life in prison. In May 1997 the tribunal delivered its first verdict, convicting Dusan Tadic, a Bosnian Serb, of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But high-level figures such as Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karad?i?—one of the masterminds of the ethnic cleansing campaign pursued by the Bosnian Serbs—remained at large, and the ICTY came under fire from critics who deplored the slow pace of prosecutions. Nevertheless, the tribunal's existence served as some assurance that human rights violations would not be ignored or casually forgiven. By April 1998 the ICTY had publicly indicted 74 people and placed 26 in custody. Several others were named in sealed indictments. Meanwhile, in 1994, Rwanda was torn apart by civil strife. Members of the majority Hutu ethnic group slaughtered hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsi and politically moderate Hutus. In response, the UN Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in November 1994. The ICTR, located near Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania, has its own judges but shares its chief prosecutor and appeals judges with the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The ICTR registered its first conviction in May 1998 when Jean Kambanda, who was prime minister of Rwanda during the massacres, pled guilty to charges of genocide. Kambanda also agreed to testify against other members of the Rwandan government, a major breakthrough for the ICTR. A total of 35 people have been indicted by the ICTR, and 24 of those are in custody. Unlike the Nürnberg trials and those held in Japan at the end of World War II, the ICTY and ICTR cannot be accused of having been imposed by victors upon defeated nations. But they are less than perfect because they were established ad hoc (for the particular case at hand). Many experts believe it is necessary to establish a permanent court to consider cases involving allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. A movement to establish just such an institution has been underway for several decades, and UN delegates were scheduled to begin work on a proposal to establish a body known as the International Criminal Court (ICC) in June 1998. But concerns that an international criminal court would infringe on the sovereignty of individual nations mean that some countries, such as the United States, are likely to oppose its creation. International courts such as the ICTY and ICTR can be effective, but it is preferable, if possible, for affected countries to hold their own trials. This indicates a commitment by the country itself to human rights, rather than compliance forced by foreign countries. Another benefit is that the trials are generally more popular than those conducted by an international body. Rwanda began this process in January 1997. But because of inadequate jails and shortages of lawyers, prosecutors, and judges more than 100,000 prisoners still await trial. And those whose cases do come to trial often lack adequate defense counsel, leading some critics to question whether the trials are fair. Dozens of defendants have been convicted, and many of those have been sentenced to death. The first executions occurred in April 1998. Reason for Hope The last third of the 20th century has witnessed substantial improvements in worldwide respect for human rights. But hundreds of millions of people still live in societies where serious human rights violations occur. Sudan and Nigeria, under military dictatorships since 1989 and 1993, respectively, both suffer from widespread human rights violations, according to UN special rapporteurs, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR), and Human Rights Watch (HRW). Latin America has seen major improvements, but violent acts and official abuse by authorities continue. According to Amnesty International (AI), police brutality persists in varying degrees in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, Paraguay, and Venezuela. In addition, AI and others have reported that arbitrary arrests and detentions continue to occur in many Latin American countries. Human rights are respected throughout most of Europe, with some notable exceptions among the countries of the former Soviet Union. Authoritarian regimes and human rights abuses are found in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, according to AI and other organizations. Russia suffers from some police abuses, but experts generally agree that the general situation there is substantially improved over the Soviet era. Organizations such as the LCHR and HRW have argued that the Middle East and North Africa are also areas where human rights violations continue to occur. And human rights are not yet flourishing in Asia, home to a large segment of the world population. More than 1.2 billion people live in China, where, according to AI and HRW, government opponents are often subjected to corrupt and politically influenced trials. In addition, AI has reported that thousands are executed each year without the benefit of a trial. Nevertheless, there are sound reasons for optimism. The early efforts of the UN to define and codify human rights have given rise to a worldwide network of organizations maintaining a constant watch for violations. And when gross violations such as genocide occur, the international community has begun moving to punish those responsible. This has served to increase interest in human rights and has made the issue one of global importance. The trend is toward the elimination of human rights abuses. One factor behind this trend is economics. In the past, powerful countries exploited the peoples of developing nations, often encouraging repression rather than opposing it. Today, more and more international businesses recognize that in order to do business safely, reliably, and rewardingly they need decent, stable governments that respect the rule of law. The cause of human rights is gaining ground as people learn about and demand their rights. It is a process that has proven very difficult to stop. About the author: Marvin E. Frankel is a lawyer and former federal district court judge who has argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. He is chairman emeritus of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR) and coauthor of Out of the Shadows of Night: The Struggle for International Human Rights. Source: Encarta Yearbook, May 1998. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights—adopted by the United Nations (UN) in 1948—gave human rights a new international legal status. Building on precedents set by the British Magna Carta (1215), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), and the United States Bill of Rights (1791), the Universal Declaration also reflected the events of the 1930s and 1940s, particularly the Nazi Holocaust. Reports of Nazi atrocities shocked people around the world and gave momentum to an effort to codify human rights in international law. Universal Declaration of Human Rights Preamble Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people, Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law, Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations, Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms, Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction. Article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Article 2. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty. Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. Article 4. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms. Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Article 6. Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. Article 7. All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination. Article 8. Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law. Article 9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. Article 10. Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him. Article 11. (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence. (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed. Article 12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. Article 13. (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. Article 14. (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. (2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. Article 15. (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality. Article 16. (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses. (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State. Article 17. (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property. Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance. Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Article 20. (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association. Article 21. (1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. (2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country. (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures. Article 22. Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality. Article 23. (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests. Article 24. Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay. Article 25. (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection. Article 26. (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children. Article 27. (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author. Article 28. Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized. Article 29. (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. Article 30. Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein. The UN also operates the office of High Commissioner for Human Rights. The General Assembly created this position in 1993. The commissioner oversees all the UN’s human rights programs, works to prevent human rights violations, and investigates human rights abuses. The commissioner also has the power to publicize abuses taking place in any country, but does not have the authority to stop them. However, most publicity about human rights abuses does not come from the UN but from rival countries or from nongovernmental organizations, such as Amnesty International. The UN has also drawn up four international conventions (treaties) on human rights, which are legally binding but hard to enforce. The conventions address the problems of genocide, racial discrimination, civil and political rights, and economic and social rights. The treaties have been ratified by only about half of the world’s nations. The United States has only ratified the convention on genocide and has declined to ratify the others. Other countries have also refused to sign the conventions, citing concerns about the specific terms of the conventions and the loss of authority that such treaties imply. Nevertheless, there are sound reasons for optimism. The early efforts of the UN to define and codify human rights have given rise to a worldwide network of organizations maintaining a constant watch for violations. And when gross violations such as genocide occur, the international community has begun moving to punish those responsible. This has served to increase interest in human rights and has made the issue one of global importance. The trend is toward the elimination of human rights abuses. One factor behind this trend is economics. In the past, powerful countries exploited the peoples of developing nations, often encouraging repression rather than opposing it. Today, more and more international businesses recognize that in order to do business safely, reliably, and rewardingly they need decent, stable governments that respect the rule of law. The cause of human rights is gaining ground as people learn about and demand their rights. It is a process that has proven very difficult to stop. About the author: Marvin E. Frankel is a lawyer and former federal district court judge who has argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court of the United States. He is chairman emeritus of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (LCHR) and coauthor of Out of the Shadows of Night: The Struggle for International Human Rights. Freedom of Religion, right of a person to form personal religious beliefs according to his or her own conscience and to give public expression to these beliefs in worship and teaching, restricted only by the requirements of public order. Religious liberty differs from toleration in that toleration presupposes preferential treatment of a particular creed by the state because it is an established church or, in some cases, is the predominant religion of the population. The United States was the first, and for some time the only, nation to include the principle of religious liberty in its basic laws. The nations of antiquity permitted tolerance to individuals of minority religions, provided they took part in the public worship of the national gods. Soon after Christianity became established as the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, heresy and heterodoxy became equivalent to treason. After the Reformation this condemnation of atypical religious beliefs was continued by nations with established reformed churches, and those who disagreed with the established church were punished. The colonists immigrating to the New World brought with them the same doctrine of religious intolerance, and in many of the American colonies dissent from the established order of worship was regarded as sedition. The charter of Rhode Island, granted in 1663, is notable for being the first to include a declaration of the right to religious liberty. This doctrine gradually spread to the other colonies, and at the time of the American Revolution the principle of religious liberty was explicitly adopted in various state constitutions. The process culminated in the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, which in Article VI forbids the establishment of any religious test as a qualification for federal office, and in the 1st Amendment forbids the passage of laws “respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Large areas of the globe and beyond do not and legally cannot belong to any nation: most of the oceans and their resources, Antarctica, Earth’s atmosphere, outer space, and the Moon and other natural objects in space. These areas are known collectively as the global commons. The absence of political sovereignty for these areas means that international regulation is required to avoid conflict over them and to protect them from overuse, pollution, and other harm. International agreements for these areas are generally accepted as providing the legal framework for all those who conduct activities in them. See Aviation Law; Maritime Law; Freedom of the Seas. International law has no fixed content. New threats that cannot be addressed or resolved by a single nation constantly call for new international responses. For example, recent international agreements aim to combat terrorism, the distribution of illicit drugs across national boundaries, and the spread of infectious disease. The development of new technologies, such as the Internet, can also lead to the creation of new international legal frameworks. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Terrorism, the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear for bringing about political change. All terrorist acts involve violence or—equally important—the threat of violence. These violent acts are committed by nongovernmental groups or individuals—that is, by those who are neither part of nor officially serving in the military forces, law enforcement agencies, intelligence services, or other governmental agencies of an established nation-state. Terrorists attempt not only to sow panic but also to undermine confidence in the government and political leadership of their target country. Terrorism is therefore designed to have psychological effects that reach far beyond its impact on the immediate victims or object of an attack. Terrorists mean to frighten and thereby intimidate a wider audience, such as a rival ethnic or religious group, an entire country and its political leadership, or the international community as a whole. Terrorist groups generally have few members, limited firepower, and comparatively few organizational resources. For this reason they rely on dramatic, often spectacular, bloody and destructive acts of hit-and-run violence to attract attention to themselves and their cause. Through the publicity generated by their violence, terrorists seek to obtain the leverage, influence, and power they otherwise lack. WHAT IS TERRORISM? The word terrorism was first used in France to describe a new system of government adopted during the French Revolution (1789-1799). The regime de la terreur (Reign of Terror) was intended to promote democracy and popular rule by ridding the revolution of its enemies and thereby purifying it. However, the oppression and violent excesses of the terreur transformed it into a feared instrument of the state. From that time on, terrorism has had a decidedly negative connotation. The word, however, did not gain wider popularity until the late 19th century when it was adopted by a group of Russian revolutionaries to describe their violent struggle against tsarist rule. Terrorism then assumed the more familiar antigovernment associations it has today. Terrorism as a Political Act Aldo Moro, Prisoner of the Red Brigades Aldo Moro was a leading figure in Italy’s Christian Democrat Party and former prime minister. In March 1978 he was kidnapped by the leftist terrorist group the Red Brigades, who demanded the release of Red Brigade members from prison in return for Moro. In May Moro’s bullet-riddled body was found in an abandoned car. Terrorism is by nature political because it involves the acquisition and use of power for the purpose of forcing others to submit, or agree, to terrorist demands. A terrorist attack, by generating publicity and focusing attention on the organization behind the attack, is designed to create this power. It also fosters an environment of fear and intimidation that the terrorists can manipulate. As a result terrorism’s success is best measured by its ability to attract attention to the terrorists and their cause and by the psychological impact it exerts over a nation and its citizenry. It differs in this respect from conventional warfare, where success is measured by the amount of military assets destroyed, the amount of territory seized, and the number of enemy dead. Terrorists typically attempt to justify their use of violence by arguing that they have been excluded from, or frustrated by, the accepted processes of bringing about political change. They maintain that terrorism is the only option available to them, although their choice is a reluctant—even a regrettable—one. Whether someone agrees with this argument or not often depends on whether the person sympathizes with the terrorists’ cause or with the victims of the terrorist attack. The aphorism “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” underscores how use of the label terrorism can be highly subjective depending upon one’s sympathies. At the same time terrorist acts—including murder, kidnapping, bombing, and arson—have long been defined in both national and international law as crimes. Even in time of war, violence deliberately directed against innocent civilians is considered a crime. Similarly, violence that spreads beyond an acknowledged geographical theater of war to violate the territory of neutral or noncombatant states is also deemed a war crime. Government Definitions of Terrorism Legal statutes in most countries around the world regard terrorism as a crime. Yet there is considerable variation in how these laws define terrorism, even in countries whose laws derive from a common origin. In the United Kingdom, for example, legislation titled Terrorist Act 2000 states that terrorism is “the use or threat of action . . . designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public . . . for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.” The legal system and code of law of the United Kingdom has influenced those of the United States, Canada, and Israel. United States federal statute defines terrorism as “violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that . . . appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by assassination or kidnapping.” This definition appears in United States Code, Title 18, Section 2331 (18 USC 2331). Canada’s Anti-terrorism Act (Bill C-36) designates “terrorist activity” as “an act or omission . . . that is committed in whole or in part for a political, religious or ideological purpose, objective or cause and in whole or in part with the intention of intimidating the public, or a segment of the public, with regard to its security, including its economic security, or compelling a person, a government or a domestic or an international organization to do or to refrain from doing any act, whether the person, government or organization is inside or outside Canada . . . .” Israeli law does not address terrorism specifically. But in the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance No. 33, it defines a terrorist organization as “a body of persons resorting in its activities to acts of violence calculated to cause death or injury to a person or to threats of such acts of violence.” CAUSES OF TERRORISM Terrorism has occurred throughout history for a variety of reasons. Its causes can be historical, cultural, political, social, psychological, economic, or religious—or any combination of these. Some countries have proven to be particularly susceptible to terrorism at certain times, as Italy and West Germany were during the 1970s. Terrorist violence escalated precipitously in those two countries for a decade before declining equally dramatically. Other countries, such as Canada and The Netherlands, have proven to be more resistant, and have experienced only a few isolated terrorist incidents. In general, democratic countries have provided more fertile ground for terrorism because of the open nature of their societies. In such societies citizens have fundamental rights, civil liberties are legally protected, and government control and constant surveillance of its citizens and their activities is absent. By the same token, repressive societies, in which the government closely monitors citizens and restricts their speech and movement, have often provided more difficult environments for terrorists. But even police states have not been immune to terrorism, despite limiting civil liberties and forbidding free speech and rights of assembly. Examples include Russia under tsarist rule and the Communist-ruled Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as well as the People's Republic of China, Myanmar, and Laos. In broad terms the causes that have commonly compelled people to engage in terrorism are grievances borne of political oppression, cultural domination, economic exploitation, ethnic discrimination, and religious persecution. Perceived inequities in the distribution of wealth and political power have led some terrorists to attempt to overthrow democratically elected governments. To achieve a fairer society, they would replace these governments with socialist or communist regimes. Left-wing terrorist groups of the 1960s and 1970s with such aims included Germany’s Baader-Meinhof Gang, Italy’s Red Brigades, and the Weather Underground (see Weathermen) in the United States. Other terrorists have sought to fulfill some mission that they believe to be divinely inspired or millennialist (related to the end of the world). (See Millennium). The Japanese religious cult Aum Shinrikyo, responsible for a nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 that killed 12 people, falls into this category. Still other terrorists have embraced comparatively more defined and comprehensible goals such as the re-establishment of a national homeland (for example, Basque separatists in Spain) or the unification of a divided nation (Irish nationalists in Northern Ireland). Finally, some terrorists are motivated by very specific issues, such as opposition to legalized abortion or nuclear energy, or the championing of environmental concerns (see Environment) and animal rights. They hope to pressure both the public and its representatives in government to enact legislation directly reflecting their particular concern. Militant animal rights activists, for example, have used violence against scientists and laboratory technicians in their campaign to halt medical experimentation involving animals. Radical environmentalists have sabotaged logging operations and the construction of power grids to protest the spoiling of natural wilderness areas. Extremists who oppose legalized abortion in the United States have attacked clinics and murdered doctors and other employees in hopes of denying women the right to abortion. National governments have at times aided terrorists to further their own foreign policy goals. So-called state-sponsored terrorism, however, falls into a different category altogether. State-sponsored terrorism is a form of covert (secret) warfare, a means to wage war secretly through the use of terrorist surrogates (stand-ins) as hired guns. The U.S. Department of State designates countries as state sponsors of terrorism if they actively assist or aid terrorists, and also if they harbor past terrorists or refuse to renounce terrorism as an instrument of policy. State sponsorship has proven invaluable to some terrorist organizations—by supplying arms, money, and a safe haven, among other things. In doing so, it has transformed ordinary groups, with otherwise limited capabilities, into more powerful and menacing opponents. State sponsorship can also place at terrorists’ disposal the resources of an established country’s diplomatic, military, and intelligence services. These services improve the training of terrorists and facilitate planning and operations. Finally, governments have paid terrorists handsomely for their services. They thereby turn weak and financially impoverished groups into formidable, well-endowed terrorist organizations with an ability to attract recruits and sustain their struggle. The U.S. Department of State has designated seven countries as state sponsors of terrorism: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Cuba, North Korea, and Sudan. In the year 2000, it named Iran as the most active supporter of terrorism for aid to groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestine Islamic Jihad. Although the former Taliban government in Afghanistan sponsored al-Qaeda, the radical group led by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, the United States did not recognize the Taliban as a legitimate government and thus did not list it as a state sponsor of terrorism. Terrorism often targets innocent civilians in order to create an atmosphere of fear, intimidation, and insecurity. Some terrorists deliberately direct attacks against large numbers of ordinary citizens who simply happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. More selective terrorist attacks target diplomats and diplomatic facilities such as embassies and consulates; military personnel and military bases; business executives and corporate offices; and transportation vehicles and facilities, such as airlines and airports, trains and train stations, buses and bus terminals, and subways. Terrorist attacks on buildings or other inanimate targets often serve a symbolic purpose: They are intended more to draw attention to the terrorists and their cause than to destroy property or kill and injure persons, although death and destruction nonetheless often result. Despite variations in the number of attacks from year to year, one feature of international terrorism has remained constant: The United States has been its most popular target. Since 1968 the United States has annually led the list of countries whose citizens and property were most frequently attacked by terrorists. Several factors can account for this phenomenon, in addition to America’s position as the soul remaining superpower and leader of the free world. These include the geographical scope and diversity of America’s overseas business interests, the number of Americans traveling or working abroad, and the many U.S. military bases around the world. THE FUTURE OF TERRORISM Terrorist Attacks in Madrid Terrorist Attacks in Madrid On March 11, 2004, terrorists launched a series of coordinated bombings on commuter trains in Madrid, Spain. It was the deadliest assault by terrorists against civilians in Spanish history, killing at least 191 people and injuring more than 1,500. Terrorism has existed for at least 2,000 years and is likely to remain a fixture on political agendas, both domestic and international, for years to come. Terrorism provides a means by which the weak can confront much stronger opponents. It therefore has an enduring appeal to the alienated and the disenfranchised, the aggrieved and vengeful, the powerless and the would-be powerful. In addition, it is relatively inexpensive to conduct while offering a vast potential payoff: the ability to evoke fear and alarm and inflict pain and suffering in the hope of compelling agreement to demands made. Terrorism, moreover, is evolving constantly to overcome governmental countermeasures designed to defeat it. Terrorism thus involves an ongoing search for new targets and unidentified vulnerabilities in its opponents. This quest also raises the possibility that terrorists may pursue unconventional means of attack, such as chemical, biological, or radiological (radioactivity-spreading) weapons, or nuclear weapons. Future terrorist tactics could include cyberterrorism (sabotage using computers to destroy computer networks or systems) or electronic warfare that targets critical infrastructure, such as communications and power facilities, or societies in general. Throughout the world, terrorism reinvents itself in new and more dangerous forms. As older groups are defeated or exhausted, more radical and more violent successors often take their place. Although terrorism likely can never be completely eradicated, countering its threat requires continuing vigilance. The highly individual nature of terrorism’s causes, the diversity of its perpetrators, and the complexity of its fundamental characteristics present enormous challenges to those who must effectively counter this menace. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

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Human Nature: Lesbianism, sexual attraction or emotional and physical relationships between women. The term derives from the Greek island of Lesbos, home of the Classical female poet Sappho who wrote love poems addressed to women. There are no reliable statistics on the percentage of the population that is lesbian, because it has often been omitted from surveys of sexual behaviour. The American feminist Shere Hite, who has conducted several large-scale surveys into women's sexual behaviour, mainly in the United States, puts the figure at 11 per cent; more conservative estimates suggest that it may be a little under 1 per cent. History Lesbianism has been found in all cultures throughout history. Lesbian relationships were known in the Classical world, among intimate groups of women such as those who gathered around Sappho. Close relationships, including cohabitation, among women have been accepted but not recognized as lesbian for many centuries and in many cultures. The existence of lesbianism has often been ignored because many cultures do not accept the concept of female sexuality at all, or have seen it as something only practised in relation to men, or for the purposes of reproduction. For this reason, lesbianism has sometimes escaped persecution and sanctions: for example, when homosexuality was outlawed in England in the 19th century, lesbianism escaped the ban because Queen Victoria refused to recognize the concept. The disadvantage of this "invisibility" is that the needs of lesbians have often been overlooked, and lesbians have lacked historical role models for their lifestyle. Lesbians have sometimes been persecuted in situations where their way of life has appeared subversive. For example, many lesbians were expelled from China into Singapore in the 19th century for refusing to get married. Lesbianism has also incurred religious censure: there are many examples of Catholic nuns being punished for lesbian relationships or close female friendships. More recently, however, some branches of Christianity have begun to discuss the possibility of recognizing and accepting lesbianism as a way of life. Lesbianism came to public attention in the West in the late 19th century with the work of the sexologists Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis. These writers presented lesbianism-or "inversion"-as an abnormal condition, and their case studies tended to focus on lesbians who had committed murder or suicide. Their work raised public suspicion about female intimacy, leading to some instances of public prejudice against lesbianism. For example, The Well of Loneliness, a semi-autobiographical novel by the lesbian novelist Radclyffe Hall, was tried for obscenity in the United Kingdom and banned in 1928. Modern Activism Lesbians in North America, Western Europe, and Australia have been politically active since the early 1970s, asserting their legal rights and challenging the earlier invisibility of lesbianism by "coming out" to proclaim a recognizable lesbian identity. The movement is slowly spreading to the East, such as in India in the 1990s, although lesbianism remains invisible in Far Eastern countries, including China. The campaign for lesbian rights began in the United States with the rise of feminism and the gay liberation movement, but many lesbian activists felt that the gay movement was dominated by men and began to form separate lesbian organizations. Among the more extreme of these groups are lesbian separatists who view a lesbian lifestyle as a political choice and a way of resisting male power, choosing to live in women-only communities and eschewing all contact with men. Some lesbian activists have used lesbian pornography as a political gesture which enables them to take control over their own sexual pleasure. This is a contentious issue, as others argue that the use of pornography is a submission to male power structures and that pornographic images of lesbians are used by men, invariably making lesbians the objects of male eroticism. Legal Rights Although countries such as Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands allow ceremonies of commitment between same-sex couples, lesbian couples do not have equal legal rights with heterosexual married or cohabiting couples, regarding the ownership of property or the custody of children. While no Western country has specific laws against lesbian parenting, some lesbian mothers have found that judges are biased against them in custody hearings and that some social service agencies are reluctant to allow them to adopt or foster children. Lesbian couples are not legally prevented from bearing children by artificial insemination, but their access to this treatment is at the discretion of the agencies involved and may be denied. Lesbians have also experienced discrimination in employment, with limited scope for legal redress. They are barred from joining the armed forces in most countries, including the United States and United Kingdom. Homosexuality, sexual attraction to, and physical and emotional involvement with, someone of the same gender: male with male, female with female. As first used, the term referred to women as well as men, though more recently terms such as "gay" or "lesbian", with a variety of national variations, have been increasingly used to describe specific identities organized around homosexual desires. Homosexuality, like heterosexuality, is found in all cultures at all periods of history. However, it has been subject to thousands of years of prejudice, discrimination, and oppression, enshrined in religious and legal prohibitions and popular fear, and has often been met with violent opposition. Yet, there are many cultures that have managed to integrate some aspects of homosexuality into acceptable and recognized social forms, and, since the 1960s, in most Western countries at least, male and female homosexuals have become vocal advocates of their own cause. The term "homosexuality" was not invented until the 1860s, and its emergence reflected a growing awareness of the existence of diverse sexual patterns. The term was intended to be a more neutral alternative to the traditional language of sin, degeneracy, and perversion that had dominated thinking about same-sex activities in the West, and which had their roots in biblical prohibitions. However, the word soon became part of the new language of sexology (the scientific study of sexual behaviour); for many, homosexuality moved from being a sin to being a sickness. The Search for Causes The definition of homosexuality as a medical or psychological condition led to a preoccupation with the "causes" of homosexuality. The fact that few people have undertaken enquiry into the causes of heterosexuality indicates the dominance of the view that homosexuality was an abnormality that needed to be explained, while heterosexuality, which leads to procreation, was, and still is, seen as the unquestioned norm of human sexuality. However, after a century of debate and scientific enquiry, the question of causation remains as inconclusive as ever. The biological theory argues that homosexuality is an inbuilt, and probably hereditary, condition that affects some people and not others. Negatively, it can be seen as a pathological distortion of the natural sexual drive, caused perhaps by imbalances of hormones or chromosomal (genetic) accidents, or more recently, in a surprising rebirth of biological explanations-the result of a "gay gene" or a "gay brain", as suggested by the American scientists Dean Hamer and Simon LeVay. Such explanations have led in turn to more positive views of homosexuality. If homosexuality has a biological explanation, and is a specific sexual orientation, might it not be as "natural" as heterosexuality? Many homosexual activists have in fact argued this since the 19th century. However attractive such explanations are to homosexual activists, they-like the negative views-have the misfortune of being completely unproven, and one suspects, unprovable. The second approach has concentrated on understanding the psychological reasons for homosexuality. The most famous thinker associated with such explanations is Sigmund Freud, who, building on earlier sexological explanations, attempted to understand what he called "sexual inversion" in terms of the universal bisexuality of human beings rather than in terms of the biological make-up of a distinct group of people. Accordng to Freud, homosexuality resulted from the specific patterns of interaction with parents and the complex and universal processes through which the naturally bisexual infant became an adult. Homosexuality, then, like heterosexuality, in fact resulted from an inhibition of the sexual drive. As a working hypothesis this has been enormously influential, though in subsequent debates it has also led to enormous confusions. Does a child become homosexual because of a weak father and strong mother, or because of an over-dominant father and a weak mother? Both explanations have been frequently offered, and equally often fail to match the biographical facts of individual homosexuals. Cultural Variations in Attitudes One further problem is what is claimed as a universal process can be refuted by the sheer variety of patterns of sexuality on a world scale. Recent approaches have tended to try to understand homosexuality in social and historical terms, concentrating less on what causes homosexuality and more on what shapes attitudes towards it. Different cultures respond to homosexuality in different ways, and this in turn helps to determine whether it is possible to live a homosexual life or develop a distinctive homosexual identity. On a world scale there seems to have been two social patterns that allowed a certain acceptance of some aspects of (usually male) homosexuality. The first, which can be seen historically in cultures as far apart as East Asia, Melanesia, the Islamic world, and the ancient Mediterranean, more or less tolerated homosexual behaviour as long as it was between an adult male and a youth, usually as part of the processes by which the young male was accepted as a full man. It did not normally affect traditional family life. The second great pattern, embracing cultures from the Philippines to Madagascar, and some tribal societies in Africa and North America, accepted some forms of same-sex behaviour as long as the homosexually inclined man "became" or lived as a woman, or the woman became or lived as a man. There have been various attempts to assess the percentage of the population that is predominantly or exclusively homosexual. The work of Alfred Kinsey in the late 1940s has been used to suggest that this was as many as 10 per cent, although more recent research has tended to suggest a much lower figure-perhaps 1 to 2 per cent in Britain, France, and the United States. However, the worldwide evidence suggests that this is a misleading way of posing the issue or assessing incidence; while Western-style identities have begun to spread throughout the world, they are by no means the dominant or only ways of living homosexuality. In many parts of the world, ranging from Turkey to large parts of East Asia, Africa, and South America, homosexuality remains a taboo. Even in Western countries, prejudice remains, and legal systems are often discriminatory. Recent Social Developments Neither the Mediterranean nor the tribal cultural pattern allowed the emergence of what has become the dominant Western pattern in the 20th century: the idea that homosexuality could form the basis for a separate sexual and social identity and way of life. This idea probably first emerged in the new urban cultures that developed from the early modern period. Cities allowed groups of people who felt differently to come together in relative anonymity, and develop alternative lifestyles. At first, these subcultures, usually of what were seen as effeminate men, and to a smaller extent masculine women, were secretive and subject to strong persecution. During the 20th century, however, they gave rise to ever more complex social networks, and to a strong sense of community among self-identified homosexuals, who were beginning to resist the hostile labelling of them as sick or inadequate. This was the basis for the gay liberation movement which emerged powerfully in the United States in 1969, symbolically originating in the New York Stonewall Riots in June of that year, and soon rapidly becoming influential throughout North America, Australia, and Western Europe. This movement has been very influential, even for the many who never took part. It asserted the equal validity of homosexuality with heterosexuality; it rejected medicalizing terms, and popularized new self-descriptions, such as "gay"; it emphasized the importance of "coming out"-becoming identified-as a lesbian or a gay man; and, above all, it affirmed the importance of pride in being lesbian and gay. The Effects of AIDS and Beyond The strength of these new identities, and the communities that were built around them, was demonstrated in the early 1980s with the sudden emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. First emerging in American cities, where the gay communities were strongest and most visible, it disproportionately affected gay men, and fed a growing moral backlash against the gains of the gay movement over the previous decade. This had the effect of producing a new solidarity among lesbians and gay men, which in turn provided the means for a concerted campaign to fight the epidemic. It was from within the gay communities themselves that care and support for the sick, the idea of "safer sex", and large-scale fund-raising emerged. In combating a frightening epidemic, the lesbian and gay community came of age. The idea that lesbians and gays are a distinct group of people has been challenged radically by "queer activists" who argue that sexuality is a matter of choice, and that the divide between homosexuality and heterosexuality is a social and historical one, rather than one based in any fundamental, essential, or biological reality. This has returned the focus of the debate to causation. It is possible that some people develop predominantly homosexual desires as a result of a variety of genetic, psychological, or social factors; this is still not known. In the end, however, causation is not the important question. What ultimately matters is whether homosexuality offers the possibility for viable life choices, and a fulfilling way of living. The evidence of recent years is clearly that it can, though resistance to this evidence is still very strong. Heterosexuality, sexual attraction to those of the opposite sex. The term was coined in the late 19th century to provide an alternative concept to the categories of homosexuality and bisexuality, newly defined by German sexologists. Until this period, there was no concept of heterosexuality; heterosexuals were simply seen as "normal", and those of other orientations as pathological. All societies seem to be predominantly heterosexual, presumably because of the association of sexuality with reproduction, although today's increased availability of birth control has meant that people are more likely to engage in heterosexual sexual behaviour for pleasure rather than primarily for procreation. Many forms of heterosexual behaviour are stigmatized just as homosexuality and bisexual behaviour have been. Such deviations from the predominant Christian ideology of "normal" sexual relations as fetishism or group sex are taboo in many cultures, and many religious faiths condemn any intercourse if it is outside marriage or for purely pleasurable reasons. Exactly what determines people's sexual orientation, heterosexual or otherwise, is unclear. Sexuality was typically seen as a natural, innate force until social influences became increasingly recognized as contributory factors. More recently, genetic predisposition to different types of sexuality has been considered. Some social scientists have suggested that heterosexuality is a social institution like marriage, and that most people live heterosexual lifestyles at least partly because it is the social norm. Radical feminists went even further and suggested that heterosexuality was an institutionalized means of oppressing women and in the 1970s some heterosexual feminists adopted homosexual lifestyles as a form of political action. Bisexuality, sexual attraction to both sexes. Bisexual people are able to fantasize about and enjoy both homosexual and heterosexual acts of lovemaking, although some bisexual people prefer one gender of partner more than the other. Bisexuality should not be confused with transvestitism, which is wearing the clothes and adopting the appearance of a person of the opposite sex, or with transsexualism, which is identification with the gender role of the person's opposite sex. However, it is not true to say that transsexuals or transvestites may not be bisexual. Bisexual people generally are content with the gender they were born to; as may have been believed, they do not possess both sets of sexual organs, as does a hermaphrodite. Background Historically, bisexuality was condoned and approved of in ancient Greece, specifically with regard to relationships occurring particularly between older, often married, men and youths as a form of friendship or as an initiatory and teaching relationship. In the Iliad and the Odyssey, Greek heroes are sexually active with partners of both genders. Among some Polynesian societies this is still the case. Research and anecdotal evidence suggests that bisexuality is far more prevalent than exclusive homosexuality, and that it is a sexual identity shared by millions of people worldwide. In the 1940s, in a major social research programme, Alfred Charles Kinsey examined patterns of sexual behaviour and found that 37 per cent of men in the United States had experienced homosexual orgasms; some 25 per cent of men had had incidental homosexual encounters (13 per cent for women). However, as only 5 to 10 per cent of men considered themselves homosexual, it is clear that same-gender sex is neither unusual nor exclusive to homosexuals. Kinsey found that some people had no preference as to their partner's gender; in others, sexual identity had not become fixed, or they had a sexual identity that included both. Theories of Bisexuality It has been suggested that human sexual orientation exists along a continuum. This has been an existing theory since scientific examination of sexuality began in the 19th century. Sigmund Freud suggested that sexual life included the child's capacity to gain pleasure from many different body zones. He described infants and children as "polymorphously perverse"-that they could gain sexual pleasure from almost anything. Carl Jung linked bisexuality to the presence in the unconscious of a person's opposite gender. This he called the "anima" (the woman in the man), and "animus" (the man in the woman), which he said exist as "potentials". Despite the widespread inclination of men and women to reproduce, there is no hard evidence that humans have an inborn instinct towards gender-specific sexual behaviour-that is, being attracted to one gender only throughout life. If this were not so, attachment to parents of the same gender would be difficult, as would close intimacy with same-gender siblings or friends. Adolescents often develop strong attractions ("crushes") for same-gender friends as part of normal sexual maturation. Hence, in psychoanalytical theories, bisexuality is a normal part of childhood experience. Its presence in adulthood may be non-differentiation from this state, or the fulfilment of more than one potential. Problems arise for bisexual people as most societies have particular taboos that make multiple or varied sexual choices difficult. This can lead to bisexual people feeling that they have to make a forced choice to enter into either exclusive heterosexual or homosexual relationships, which therefore possibly causes emotional distress to them and their partners. Guilt can arise from the difference between who they really are and how they want to live, and who they believe society expects them to be. Transsexualism, belief that one is born in the wrong gender. It is characterized by strong identification with the gender role of the opposite sex. Transsexuals adopt the dress, mannerisms, and, usually but not always, the typical sexual preferences of the opposite sex. The pre-operative transsexual may also be prescribed hormones prior to being offered, or actively seeking sex reassignment surgery (SRS; commonly known as sex-change) to alter their physical appearance further. SRS is available to male and female transsexuals in many countries, with the Netherlands in the forefront, and the numbers requesting such a transition are growing. In biological men, the penis and testicles are removed and a functional vagina is created. Feminizing hormones such as oestrogen are taken to enlarge the breasts, and electrolysis is used for hair removal. Oestrogen does not, however, make the male voice less deep. Biological females can choose to have a mastectomy (and nipple reconstruction) and a hysterectomy; male genitalia may be created, but this process involves many operations and it is not yet possible for such penises to become spontaneously erect. The male hormone testosterone is usually prescribed, producing secondary male characteristics such as body hair and deepening of the voice. It does not alter skeletal shape, and only alters muscular bulk if body-building is carried out. Unlike the effects of oestrogen on biological males, which can be reversed, the effects of male hormones on female-to-male transsexuals are irreversible. Some doctors believe the gender identification of transsexuals is pathological (abnormal)-it is often known as "gender dysphoria"-and that psychiatry to "treat" the patient, that is, to dissuade the individual from gender reassignment, is preferable treatment to surgery and the major social implications of changing gender. Others distinguish between "genuine" transsexuals and those who are confused about various things in their lives. A "true" transsexual is less likely to have other psychological disorders or psychoses and will not change their minds at a later stage. Pre-operative transsexuals are usually seen by a psychiatrist specializing in the field. Before recommending surgical intervention, and assured that the patient is not suffering from other mental disorders, the psychiatrist encourages the patient to adapt his or her appearance and adopt the mannerisms and perceived social behaviour of the chosen gender for a minimum of two years. The duration of this period may depend on how convincing the patients initially present themselves. During this transition period hormones may be prescribed, and the person should be medically monitored for side-effects and other health problems. For example, a female-to male transsexual may need to be assessed by an endocrinologist to check on pre-treatment testosterone levels (as some gynaecological ailments would be worsened by testosterone being introduced into the system) and have liver function and processes monitored. Therefore, the gender reassignment process is not simply based on psychological assessments and learning to adopt the appearance of the chosen gender, but to make the transition without endangering health. Transsexualism does not denote sexual preference; a transsexual of either type may be heterosexual or gay, although many assume that all are heterosexual. That is, a male-to-female transsexual, having become a woman, may prefer female partners; she is therefore a lesbian. Transsexualism should not be confused with transvestism, which is mimicry of the physical appearance of the opposite sex without necessarily having the desire to become it. Research recently carried out in the Netherlands suggests that the brains of transsexuals may have differences from other people in a tiny group of cells called the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST); samples taken from the bodies of six male-to-female transsexuals had smaller BSTs than the norm, but it remains to be seen whether these cells were thus sized from birth or reduced as a result of environment and experience. Mental Disorders, abnormal or unstable behaviour, thoughts, or feelings. People are defined as mentally disordered because they behave, think, or feel differently from most others. However, even the most bizarre and strange behaviour can often make sense, once it is understood why the person is thinking and feeling that way. It is impossible to identify the precise number of people suffering from mental disorders, but it has been suggested that they may affect some 15 per cent of the population in developed countries. Psychiatrists have developed systems for classifying mental disorders that describe the kinds of symptoms and behaviour which are commonly seen among those considered to be mentally disordered. These fall into two main groups: personality disorders, and psychoses. Another common group of disorders is usually termed anxiety disorders.

Personality Disorders Personality disorders are demonstrated in many forms. In severe cases it affects the person's ability to lead a normal life; in milder instances it may mean that a person is seen as being slightly eccentric, or as having mildly compulsive habits, or finding it difficult to make friends. Serious personality disorder is more often associated with anti-social behaviour, and problems in dealing with others. The most widely known form of personality disorder is psychopathic disorder. Personality disorders involve personality traits which are so inflexible that they make it impossible for the person to exist socially or to hold down a job and may cause considerable distress to others if not to the people themselves. Those with anti-social personality disorders have a history of violating the rights of others and failing to observe socially accepted norms. Borderline personality disorder is marked by unstable behaviour towards others, and in mood and self-image. A person with an avoidant personality disorder is hypersensitive to potential rejection, humiliation, or shame. The dependent personality is overly passive, always allowing others to assume responsibility. Compulsive personalities are perfectionists and unable to express warm feelings. The passive-aggressive personality resists demands indirectly by procrastination and dawdling. These latter four may be considered in the milder range of personality disorders. Personality disorder is not a mental illness that tends to develop quite suddenly and usually in response to particular stresses. Personality disorder develops slowly, as the person grows up, and is thought to be mainly due to environment and upbringing. For example, someone who grows up in a family where they are constantly criticized and shouted at may develop an anxious, neurotic personality. Similarly, someone who grows up in a family where everyone is aggressive and violent may develop an anti-social or paranoid personality. A growing body of evidence suggests that early sexual abuse also distorts personality development. The psychopathic personality, or psychopath, usually shows the signs of being abnormal very early in life. Truanting and stealing are common, and some will enjoy showing deliberate cruelty to animals or to other children. Typically such people have a long history of anti-social and violent behaviour by the time they become adults. Sometimes their violent behaviour includes sexual offences such as rape, and some become murderers. Research done mainly in the United States suggests that serious personality disorder, such as psychopathy, may be linked to brain abnormality. The cause of the abnormality is also disputed: while some believe it is genetic, others think that it is the result of brain injury which may have happened when the child was physically abused by a violent parent, or it may come from birth difficulties or an early head injury. Brain damage may also produce unusual behaviour and symptoms of mental illness. If the injury happens early in life, it can affect the later development of the sufferer's personality and behaviour. It is becoming accepted that the earlier the injury occurs, the more generalized the effect will be. Some forms of brain injury produce symptoms which mimic mental illness, and people who have suffered brain injury appear to be more prone to develop mental illness afterwards. Diseases of the brain can also produce symptoms of mental illness. Older people may suffer from destruction of the brain tissue as a result of dementia, often caused by Alzheimer's disease, and this can result in disturbed perceptions, speech, memory, or behaviour. Epilepsy, which is a disturbance of the electrical activity of the brain, is rarely associated with severe mental disorder, even though resulting fits may appear dramatic and frightening. For most sufferers drugs can now control these for much or all of the time. Intelligence, capacity to learn or to understand. It is generally synonymous with intellect but is usually differentiated from intellect in practice to emphasize ability or efficiency in dealing with concrete situations and in profiting intellectually from sensory experience. In psychology, intelligence is somewhat more narrowly defined as the capacity to acquire knowledge or understanding and to use it in novel situations. Under experimental conditions, the success of people in adjusting their behaviour to the total situation or in meeting the challenge of the specific situation may be studied and, to some extent, measured in quantitative terms. Psychologists believe that the capacities measured in testing or laboratory situations are necessary in everyday life, where individuals have to analyse or take in new sensory and mental information so that they can direct their actions towards desired goals. There are differing opinions, however, as to a precise definition of the comprehensiveness and functions of intelligence; for example, one school of thought considers it to be a sum of specific abilities best displayed in specific situations. In the formulation of intelligence tests, most psychologists tend to treat intelligence as a general ability operating as a common factor in a wide variety of special aptitudes. It is observed and measured by techniques focused upon these aptitudes singly or in combination. Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) Encyclopedia. ( Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Brain, portion of the central nervous system contained within the skull. The brain is the control center for movement, sleep, hunger, thirst, and virtually every other vital activity necessary to survival. All human emotions—including love, hate, fear, anger, elation, and sadness—are controlled by the brain. It also receives and interprets the countless signals that are sent to it from other parts of the body and from the external environment. The brain makes us conscious, emotional, and intelligent. II. ANATOMY The adult human brain is a 1.3-kg (3-lb) mass of pinkish-gray jellylike tissue made up of approximately 100 billion nerve cells, or neurons; neuroglia (supporting-tissue) cells; and vascular (blood-carrying) and other tissues. Between the brain and the cranium—the part of the skull that directly covers the brain—are three protective membranes, or meninges. The outermost membrane, the dura mater, is the toughest and thickest. Below the dura mater is a middle membrane, called the arachnoid layer. The innermost membrane, the pia mater, consists mainly of small blood vessels and follows the contours of the surface of the brain. A clear liquid, the cerebrospinal fluid, bathes the entire brain and fills a series of four cavities, called ventricles, near the center of the brain. The cerebrospinal fluid protects the internal portion of the brain from varying pressures and transports chemical substances within the nervous system. From the outside, the brain appears as three distinct but connected parts: the cerebrum (the Latin word for brain)—two large, almost symmetrical hemispheres; the cerebellum (“little brain”)—two smaller hemispheres located at the back of the cerebrum; and the brain stem—a central core that gradually becomes the spinal cord, exiting the skull through an opening at its base called the foramen magnum. Two other major parts of the brain, the thalamus and the hypothalamus, lie in the midline above the brain stem underneath the cerebellum. The brain and the spinal cord together make up the central nervous system, which communicates with the rest of the body through the peripheral nervous system. The peripheral nervous system consists of 12 pairs of cranial nerves extending from the cerebrum and brain stem; a system of other nerves branching throughout the body from the spinal cord; and the autonomic nervous system, which regulates vital functions not under conscious control, such as the activity of the heart muscle, smooth muscle (involuntary muscle found in the skin, blood vessels, and internal organs A. Cerebrum Most high-level brain functions take place in the cerebrum. Its two large hemispheres make up approximately 85 percent of the brain's weight. The exterior surface of the cerebrum, the cerebral cortex, is a convoluted, or folded, grayish layer of cell bodies known as the gray matter. The gray matter covers an underlying mass of fibers called the white matter. The convolutions are made up of ridgelike bulges, known as gyri, separated by small grooves called sulci and larger grooves called fissures. Approximately two-thirds of the cortical surface is hidden in the folds of the sulci. The extensive convolutions enable a very large surface area of brain cortex—about 1.5 m2 (16 ft2) in an adult—to fit within the cranium. The pattern of these convolutions is similar, although not identical, in all humans. The two cerebral hemispheres are partially separated from each other by a deep fold known as the longitudinal fissure. Communication between the two hemispheres is through several concentrated bundles of axons, called commissures, the largest of which is the corpus callosum. Several major sulci divide the cortex into distinguishable regions. The central sulcus, or Rolandic fissure, runs from the middle of the top of each hemisphere downward, forward, and toward another major sulcus, the lateral (“side”), or Sylvian, sulcus. These and other sulci and gyri divide the cerebrum into five lobes: the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes and the insula. The frontal lobe is the largest of the five and consists of all the cortex in front of the central sulcus. Broca's area, a part of the cortex related to speech, is located in the frontal lobe. The parietal lobe consists of the cortex behind the central sulcus to a sulcus near the back of the cerebrum known as the parieto-occipital sulcus. The parieto-occipital sulcus, in turn, forms the front border of the occipital lobe, which is the rearmost part of the cerebrum. The temporal lobe is to the side of and below the lateral sulcus. Wernicke's area, a part of the cortex related to the understanding of language, is located in the temporal lobe. The insula lies deep within the folds of the lateral sulcus. The cerebrum receives information from all the sense organs and sends motor commands (signals that result in activity in the muscles or glands) to other parts of the brain and the rest of the body. Motor commands are transmitted by the motor cortex, a strip of cerebral cortex extending from side to side across the top of the cerebrum just in front of the central sulcus. The sensory cortex, a parallel strip of cerebral cortex just in back of the central sulcus, receives input from the sense organs. Many other areas of the cerebral cortex have also been mapped according to their specific functions, such as vision, hearing, speech, emotions, language, and other aspects of perceiving, thinking, and remembering. Cortical regions known as associative cortex are responsible for integrating multiple inputs, processing the information, and carrying out complex responses. B. Cerebellum The cerebellum coordinates body movements. Located at the lower back of the brain beneath the occipital lobes, the cerebellum is divided into two lateral (side-by-side) lobes connected by a fingerlike bundle of white fibers called the vermis. The outer layer, or cortex, of the cerebellum consists of fine folds called folia. As in the cerebrum, the outer layer of cortical gray matter surrounds a deeper layer of white matter and nuclei (groups of nerve cells). Three fiber bundles called cerebellar peduncles connect the cerebellum to the three parts of the brain stem—the midbrain, the pons, and the medulla oblongata. The cerebellum coordinates voluntary movements by fine-tuning commands from the motor cortex in the cerebrum. The cerebellum also maintains posture and balance by controlling muscle tone and sensing the position of the limbs. All motor activity, from hitting a baseball to fingering a violin, depends on the cerebellum. C. Thalamus and Hypothalamus The thalamus and the hypothalamus lie underneath the cerebrum and connect it to the brain stem. The thalamus consists of two rounded masses of gray tissue lying within the middle of the brain, between the two cerebral hemispheres. The thalamus is the main relay station for incoming sensory signals to the cerebral cortex and for outgoing motor signals from it. All sensory input to the brain, except that of the sense of smell, connects to individual nuclei of the thalamus. The hypothalamus lies beneath the thalamus on the midline at the base of the brain. It regulates or is involved directly in the control of many of the body's vital drives and activities, such as eating, drinking, temperature regulation, sleep, emotional behavior, and sexual activity. It also controls the function of internal body organs by means of the autonomic nervous system, interacts closely with the pituitary gland, and helps coordinate activities of the brain stem. D. Brain Stem The brain stem is evolutionarily the most primitive part of the brain and is responsible for sustaining the basic functions of life, such as breathing and blood pressure. It includes three main structures lying between and below the two cerebral hemispheres—the midbrain, pons, and medulla oblongata. 1. Midbrain The topmost structure of the brain stem is the midbrain. It contains major relay stations for neurons transmitting signals to the cerebral cortex, as well as many reflex centers—pathways carrying sensory (input) information and motor (output) commands. Relay and reflex centers for visual and auditory (hearing) functions are located in the top portion of the midbrain. A pair of nuclei called the superior colliculus control reflex actions of the eye, such as blinking, opening and closing the pupil, and focusing the lens. A second pair of nuclei, called the inferior colliculus, control auditory reflexes, such as adjusting the ear to the volume of sound. At the bottom of the midbrain are reflex and relay centers relating to pain, temperature, and touch, as well as several regions associated with the control of movement, such as the red nucleus and the substantia nigra. 2. Pons Continuous with and below the midbrain and directly in front of the cerebellum is a prominent bulge in the brain stem called the pons. The pons consists of large bundles of nerve fibers that connect the two halves of the cerebellum and also connect each side of the cerebellum with the opposite-side cerebral hemisphere. The pons serves mainly as a relay station linking the cerebral cortex and the medulla oblongata. 3. Medulla Oblongata The long, stalklike lowermost portion of the brain stem is called the medulla oblongata. At the top, it is continuous with the pons and the midbrain; at the bottom, it makes a gradual transition into the spinal cord at the foramen magnum. Sensory and motor nerve fibers connecting the brain and the rest of the body cross over to the opposite side as they pass through the medulla. Thus, the left half of the brain communicates with the right half of the body, and the right half of the brain with the left half of the body. 4. Reticular Formation Running up the brain stem from the medulla oblongata through the pons and the midbrain is a netlike formation of nuclei known as the reticular formation. The reticular formation controls respiration, cardiovascular function (see Heart), digestion, levels of alertness, and patterns of sleep. It also determines which parts of the constant flow of sensory information into the body are received by the cerebrum. E. Brain Cells There are two main types of brain cells: neurons and neuroglia. Neurons are responsible for the transmission and analysis of all electrochemical communication within the brain and other parts of the nervous system. Each neuron is composed of a cell body called a soma, a major fiber called an axon, and a system of branches called dendrites. Axons, also called nerve fibers, convey electrical signals away from the soma and can be up to 1 m (3.3 ft) in length. Most axons are covered with a protective sheath of myelin, a substance made of fats and protein, which insulates the axon. Myelinated axons conduct neuronal signals faster than do unmyelinated axons. Dendrites convey electrical signals toward the soma, are shorter than axons, and are usually multiple and branching. Neuroglial cells are twice as numerous as neurons and account for half of the brain's weight. Neuroglia (from glia, Greek for “glue”) provide structural support to the neurons. Neuroglial cells also form myelin, guide developing neurons, take up chemicals involved in cell-to-cell communication, and contribute to the maintenance of the environment around neurons. F. Cranial Nerves Twelve pairs of cranial nerves arise symmetrically from the base of the brain and are numbered, from front to back, in the order in which they arise. They connect mainly with structures of the head and neck, such as the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, tongue, and throat. Some are motor nerves, controlling muscle movement; some are sensory nerves, conveying information from the sense organs; and others contain fibers for both sensory and motor impulses. The first and second pairs of cranial nerves—the olfactory (smell) nerve and the optic (vision) nerve—carry sensory information from the nose and eyes, respectively, to the undersurface of the cerebral hemispheres. The other ten pairs of cranial nerves originate in or end in the brain stem. III. HOW THE BRAIN WORKS WORLD OF SCIENCE Brain Similarities Found in Chimpanzees and Humans Is the ability to learn language as unique to humans as people have always assumed? Or is it possible that other primates, such as chimpanzees, also have language? An article from the January 1998 Encarta Yearbook raises some interesting questions. The brain functions by complex neuronal, or nerve cell, circuits (see Neurophysiology). Communication between neurons is both electrical and chemical and always travels from the dendrites of a neuron, through its soma, and out its axon to the dendrites of another neuron. Dendrites of one neuron receive signals from the axons of other neurons through chemicals known as neurotransmitters. The neurotransmitters set off electrical charges in the dendrites, which then carry the signals electrochemically to the soma. The soma integrates the information, which is then transmitted electrochemically down the axon to its tip. At the tip of the axon, small, bubblelike structures called vesicles release neurotransmitters that carry the signal across the synapse, or gap, between two neurons. There are many types of neurotransmitters, including norepinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin. Neurotransmitters can be excitatory (that is, they excite an electrochemical response in the dendrite receptors) or inhibitory (they block the response of the dendrite receptors). One neuron may communicate with thousands of other neurons, and many thousands of neurons are involved with even the simplest behavior. It is believed that these connections and their efficiency can be modified, or altered, by experience. Scientists have used two primary approaches to studying how the brain works. One approach is to study brain function after parts of the brain have been damaged. Functions that disappear or that are no longer normal after injury to specific regions of the brain can often be associated with the damaged areas. The second approach is to study the response of the brain to direct stimulation or to stimulation of various sense organs. Neurons are grouped by function into collections of cells called nuclei. These nuclei are connected to form sensory, motor, and other systems. Scientists can study the function of somatosensory (pain and touch), motor, olfactory, visual, auditory, language, and other systems by measuring the physiological (physical and chemical) changes that occur in the brain when these senses are activated. For example, electroencephalography (EEG) measures the electrical activity of specific groups of neurons through electrodes attached to the surface of the skull. Electrodes inserted directly into the brain can give readings of individual neurons. Changes in blood flow, glucose (sugar), or oxygen consumption in groups of active cells can also be mapped. Although the brain appears symmetrical, how it functions is not. Each hemisphere is specialized and dominates the other in certain functions. Research has shown that hemispheric dominance is related to whether a person is predominantly right-handed or left-handed (see Handedness). In most right-handed people, the left hemisphere processes arithmetic, language, and speech. The right hemisphere interprets music, complex imagery, and spatial relationships and recognizes and expresses emotion. In left-handed people, the pattern of brain organization is more variable. Hemispheric specialization has traditionally been studied in people who have sustained damage to the connections between the two hemispheres, as may occur with stroke, an interruption of blood flow to an area of the brain that causes the death of nerve cells in that area. The division of functions between the two hemispheres has also been studied in people who have had to have the connection between the two hemispheres surgically cut in order to control severe epilepsy, a neurological disease characterized by convulsions and loss of consciousness. A. Vision The visual system of humans is one of the most advanced sensory systems in the body (see Vision). More information is conveyed visually than by any other means. In addition to the structures of the eye itself, several cortical regions—collectively called primary visual and visual associative cortex—as well as the midbrain are involved in the visual system. Conscious processing of visual input occurs in the primary visual cortex, but reflexive—that is, immediate and unconscious—responses occur at the superior colliculus in the midbrain. Associative cortical regions—specialized regions that can associate, or integrate, multiple inputs—in the parietal and frontal lobes along with parts of the temporal lobe are also involved in the processing of visual information and the establishment of visual memories. B. Language Language involves specialized cortical regions in a complex interaction that allows the brain to comprehend and communicate abstract ideas. The motor cortex initiates impulses that travel through the brain stem to produce audible sounds. Neighboring regions of motor cortex, called the supplemental motor cortex, are involved in sequencing and coordinating sounds. Broca's area of the frontal lobe is responsible for the sequencing of language elements for output. The comprehension of language is dependent upon Wernicke's area of the temporal lobe. Other cortical circuits connect these areas. C. Memory The Machinery of Thought Scientists do not completely understand how memory is stored in the human brain. Some researchers believe that short-term and long-term memories reside in separate regions of the brain. Memory is usually considered a diffusely stored associative process—that is, it puts together information from many different sources. Although research has failed to identify specific sites in the brain as locations of individual memories, certain brain areas are critical for memory to function. Immediate recall—the ability to repeat short series of words or numbers immediately after hearing them—is thought to be located in the auditory associative cortex. Short-term memory—the ability to retain a limited amount of information for up to an hour—is located in the deep temporal lobe. Long-term memory probably involves exchanges between the medial temporal lobe, various cortical regions, and the midbrain. D. The Autonomic Nervous System The autonomic nervous system regulates the life support systems of the body reflexively—that is, without conscious direction. It automatically controls the muscles of the heart, digestive system, and lungs; certain glands; and homeostasis—that is, the equilibrium of the internal environment of the body (see Physiology). The autonomic nervous system itself is controlled by nerve centers in the spinal cord and brain stem and is fine-tuned by regions higher in the brain, such as the midbrain and cortex. Reactions such as blushing indicate that cognitive, or thinking, centers of the brain are also involved in autonomic responses. IV. BRAIN DISORDERS Quiet Miracles of the Brain This article taken from National Geographic discusses the functions of the brain, and the new medical techniques that help the brain recover from serious injury and disease. The brain is guarded by several highly developed protective mechanisms. The bony cranium, the surrounding meninges, and the cerebrospinal fluid all contribute to the mechanical protection of the brain. In addition, a filtration system called the blood-brain barrier protects the brain from exposure to potentially harmful substances carried in the bloodstream. Brain disorders have a wide range of causes, including head injury, stroke, bacterial diseases, complex chemical imbalances, and changes associated with aging. A. Head Injury Head injury can initiate a cascade of damaging events. After a blow to the head, a person may be stunned or may become unconscious for a moment. This injury, called a concussion, usually leaves no permanent damage. If the blow is more severe and hemorrhage (excessive bleeding) and swelling occur, however, severe headache, dizziness, paralysis, a convulsion, or temporary blindness may result, depending on the area of the brain affected. Damage to the cerebrum can also result in profound personality changes. Damage to Broca's area in the frontal lobe causes difficulty in speaking and writing, a problem known as Broca's aphasia. Injury to Wernicke's area in the left temporal lobe results in an inability to comprehend spoken language, called Wernicke's aphasia. An injury or disturbance to a part of the hypothalamus may cause a variety of different symptoms, such as loss of appetite with an extreme drop in body weight; increase in appetite leading to obesity; extraordinary thirst with excessive urination (diabetes insipidus); failure in body-temperature control, resulting in either low temperature (hypothermia) or high temperature (fever); excessive emotionality; and uncontrolled anger or aggression. If the relationship between the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland is damaged (see Endocrine System), other vital bodily functions may be disturbed, such as sexual function, metabolism, and cardiovascular activity. Injury to the brain stem is even more serious because it houses the nerve centers that control breathing and heart action. Damage to the medulla oblongata usually results in immediate death. B. Stroke A stroke is damage to the brain due to an interruption in blood flow. The interruption may be caused by a blood clot (see Embolism; Thrombosis), constriction of a blood vessel, or rupture of a vessel accompanied by bleeding. A pouchlike expansion of the wall of a blood vessel, called an aneurysm, may weaken and burst, for example, because of high blood pressure. Sufficient quantities of glucose and oxygen, transported through the bloodstream, are needed to keep nerve cells alive. When the blood supply to a small part of the brain is interrupted, the cells in that area die and the function of the area is lost. A massive stroke can cause a one-sided paralysis (hemiplegia) and sensory loss on the side of the body opposite the hemisphere damaged by the stroke. C. Brain Diseases Epilepsy is a broad term for a variety of brain disorders characterized by seizures, or convulsions. Epilepsy can result from a direct injury to the brain at birth or from a metabolic disturbance in the brain at any time later in life. Some brain diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson disease, are progressive, becoming worse over time. Multiple sclerosis damages the myelin sheath around axons in the brain and spinal cord. As a result, the affected axons cannot transmit nerve impulses properly. Parkinson disease destroys the cells of the substantia nigra in the midbrain, resulting in a deficiency in the neurotransmitter dopamine that affects motor functions. Cerebral palsy is a broad term for brain damage sustained close to birth that permanently affects motor function. The damage may take place either in the developing fetus, during birth, or just after birth and is the result of the faulty development or breaking down of motor pathways. Cerebral palsy is nonprogressive—that is, it does not worsen with time. A bacterial infection in the cerebrum (see Encephalitis) or in the coverings of the brain (see Meningitis), swelling of the brain (see Edema), or an abnormal growth of healthy brain tissue (see Tumor) can all cause an increase in intracranial pressure and result in serious damage to the brain. Scientists are finding that certain brain chemical imbalances are associated with mental illness such as schizophrenia and depression. Such findings have changed scientific understanding of mental health and have resulted in new treatments that chemically correct these imbalances. During childhood development, the brain is particularly susceptible to damage because of the rapid growth and reorganization of nerve connections. Problems that originate in the immature brain can appear as epilepsy or other brain-function problems in adulthood. Several neurological problems are common in aging. Alzheimer's disease damages many areas of the brain, including the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes. The brain tissue of people with Alzheimer's disease shows characteristic patterns of damaged neurons, known as plaques and tangles. Alzheimer's disease produces a progressive dementia (see Senile Dementia), characterized by symptoms such as failing attention and memory, loss of mathematical ability, irritability, and poor orientation in space and time.

V. BRAIN IMAGING Several commonly used diagnostic methods give images of the brain without invading the skull. Some portray anatomy—that is, the structure of the brain—whereas others measure brain function. Two or more methods may be used to complement each other, together providing a more complete picture than would be possible by one method alone. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), introduced in the early 1980s, beams high-frequency radio waves into the brain in a highly magnetized field that causes the protons that form the nuclei of hydrogen atoms in the brain to reemit the radio waves. The reemitted radio waves are analyzed by computer to create thin cross-sectional images of the brain. MRI provides the most detailed images of the brain and is safer than imaging methods that use X rays. However, MRI is a lengthy process and also cannot be used with people who have pacemakers or metal implants, both of which are adversely affected by the magnetic field. Computed tomography (CT), also known as CT scans, developed in the early 1970s. This imaging method X-rays the brain from many different angles, feeding the information into a computer that produces a series of cross-sectional images. CT is particularly useful for diagnosing blood clots and brain tumors. It is a much quicker process than magnetic resonance imaging and is therefore advantageous in certain situations—for example, with people who are extremely ill. Changes in brain function due to brain disorders can be visualized in several ways. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy measures the concentration of specific chemical compounds in the brain that may change during specific behaviors. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) maps changes in oxygen concentration that correspond to nerve cell activity. Positron emission tomography (PET), developed in the mid-1970s, uses computed tomography to visualize radioactive tracers (see Isotopic Tracer), radioactive substances introduced into the brain intravenously or by inhalation. PET can measure such brain functions as cerebral metabolism, blood flow and volume, oxygen use, and the formation of neurotransmitters. Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), developed in the 1950s and 1960s, uses radioactive tracers to visualize the circulation and volume of blood in the brain. Brain-imaging studies have provided new insights into sensory, motor, language, and memory processes, as well as brain disorders such as epilepsy; cerebrovascular disease; Alzheimer's, Parkinson, and Huntington's diseases (see Chorea); and various mental disorders, such as schizophrenia. VI. EVOLUTION OF THE BRAIN In lower vertebrates, such as fish and reptiles, the brain is often tubular and bears a striking resemblance to the early embryonic stages of the brains of more highly evolved animals. In all vertebrates, the brain is divided into three regions: the forebrain (prosencephalon), the midbrain (mesencephalon), and the hindbrain (rhombencephalon). These three regions further subdivide into different structures, systems, nuclei, and layers. The more highly evolved the animal, the more complex is the brain structure. Human beings have the most complex brains of all animals. Evolutionary forces have also resulted in a progressive increase in the size of the brain. In vertebrates lower than mammals, the brain is small. In meat-eating animals, particularly primates, the brain increases dramatically in size. The cerebrum and cerebellum of higher mammals are highly convoluted in order to fit the most gray matter surface within the confines of the cranium. Such highly convoluted brains are called gyrencephalic. Many lower mammals have a smooth, or lissencephalic (“smooth head”), cortical surface. There is also evidence of evolutionary adaption of the brain. For example, many birds depend on an advanced visual system to identify food at great distances while in flight. Consequently, their optic lobes and cerebellum are well developed, giving them keen sight and outstanding motor coordination in flight. Rodents, on the other hand, as nocturnal animals, do not have a well-developed visual system. Instead, they rely more heavily on other sensory systems, such as a highly developed sense of smell and facial whiskers. VII. RECENT RESEARCH INTERVIEWS Encarta Interview: Steven Rose British neurobiologist Steven Rose, professor of biology and director of the Brain and Behavior Research Group at The Open University in the United Kingdom, is a leading researcher into the nature of memory and a well-known science commentator. Scientific understanding of the brain was dramatically changed in late 1998 when two independent discoveries revealed that brain cells can regenerate and that the fetal human brain contains master cells, known as neural stem cells, which can grow into any type of brain cell. Previously, scientists believed human brain cells could never regenerate themselves, although earlier studies of rodents, fish, reptiles, and birds had demonstrated that brain cell regeneration occurred in these animals. The new findings gave medical researchers hope that many brain disorders, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson, could one day be cured, either by finding new drugs that encourage cell regeneration, or through brain cell transplants made possible by stem cell research. In 2006 researchers reported the first computer interface device that can directly link a human brain to a computer. The BrainGate Neural Interface System allowed a paralyzed man to perform tasks simply by imagining the movements, including using a computer and manipulating robotic limbs. A sensor implanted in the man’s brain detected electrical activity from his motor cortex. An external processor then converted the signals into computerized form. The discovery that the brain signals that originally controlled a limb remain available and usable years after a spinal cord injury is a breakthrough. This pioneering neuroprosthetic system is seen as a first step toward computer interfaces with the brain that could bypass spinal cord injuries or disease-damaged nerves to reactivate paralyzed limbs. The Human Genome Project also helped shed new light on the brain. When it was completed in 2003, scientists realized that about half of the estimated 20,000 to 25,000 genes that make up human beings are devoted to the development, function, and structure of the brain. Medical researchers also continue to investigate the effect of stress on the human brain and its influence on the human immune system. For example, stressful events can activate the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system and divert blood from the internal organs and skin to the brain and muscles. The stress response also affects the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland, which regulate hormones, particularly the stress hormone cortisol. A better understanding of the brain-body connection may help medical researchers devise treatments for stress-related disorders. Finally, recent research in brain function suggests that there may be sexual differences in both brain anatomy and brain function. One study indicated that men and women may use their brains differently while thinking. Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to observe which parts of the brain were activated as groups of men and women tried to determine whether sets of nonsense words rhymed. Men used only Broca's area in this task, whereas women used Broca's area plus an area on the right side of the brain. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Although extensive research has been conducted on the brain’s role in cognition and memory, scientists have only recently begun to study the link between memory and emotions, particularly emotions such as fear. In this 1994 article for Scientific American, Joseph E. LeDoux explains what he and his fellow researchers have discovered about how animals learn fear and about how this understanding may help treat human patients with certain types of mental disorders. Emotion, Memory and the Brain The neural routes underlying the formation of memories about primitive emotional experiences, such as fear, have been traced By Joseph E. LeDoux Despite millennia of preoccupation with every facet of human emotion, we are still far from explaining in a rigorous physiological sense this part of our mental experience. Neuroscientists have, in modern times, been especially concerned with the neural basis of such cognitive processes as perception and memory. They have for the most part ignored the brain's role in emotion. Yet in recent years, interest in this mysterious mental terrain has surged. Catalyzed by breakthroughs in understanding the neural basis of cognition and by an increasingly sophisticated knowledge of the anatomical organization and physiology of the brain, investigators have begun to tackle the problem of emotion. One quite rewarding area of research has been the inquiry into the relation between memory and emotion. Much of this examination has involved studies of one particular emotion—fear—and the manner in which specific events or stimuli come, through individual learning experiences, to evoke this state. Scientists, myself included, have been able to determine the way in which the brain shapes how we form memories about this basic, but significant, emotional event. We call this process 'emotional memory.' By uncovering the neural pathways through which a situation causes a creature to learn about fear, we hope to elucidate the general mechanisms of this form of memory. Because many human mental disorders—including anxiety, phobia, post-traumatic stress syndrome and panic attack—involve malfunctions in the brain's ability to control fear, studies of the neural basis of this emotion may help us further understand and treat these disturbances. Most of our knowledge about how the brain links memory and emotion has been gleaned through the study of so-called classical fear conditioning. In this process the subject, usually a rat, hears a noise or sees a flashing light that is paired with a brief, mild electric shock to its feet. After a few such experiences, the rat responds automatically to the sound or light, even in the absence of the shock. Its reactions are typical to any threatening situation: the animal freezes, its blood pressure and heart rate increase, and it startles easily. In the language of such experiments, the noise or flash is a conditioned stimulus, the foot shock is an unconditioned stimulus, and the rat's reaction is a conditioned response, which consists of readily measured behavioral and physiological changes. Conditioning of this kind happens quickly in rats—indeed, it takes place as rapidly as it does in humans. A single pairing of the shock to the sound or sight can bring on the conditioned effect. Once established, the fearful reaction is relatively permanent. If the noise or light is administered many times without an accompanying electric shock, the rat's response diminishes. This change is called extinction. But considerable evidence suggests that this behavioral alteration is the result of the brain's controlling the fear response rather than the elimination of the emotional memory. For example, an apparently extinguished fear response can recover spontaneously or can be reinstated by an irrelevant stressful experience. Similarly, stress can cause the reappearance of phobias in people who have been successfully treated. This resurrection demonstrates that the emotional memory underlying the phobia was rendered dormant rather than erased by treatment. Fear and Emotional Memory Fear conditioning has proved an ideal starting point for studies of emotional memory for several reasons. First, it occurs in nearly every animal group in which it has been examined: fruit flies, snails, birds, lizards, fish, rabbits, rats, monkeys and people. Although no one claims that the mechanisms are precisely the same in all these creatures, it seems clear from studies to date that the pathways are very similar in mammals and possibly in all vertebrates. We therefore are confident in believing that many of the findings in animals apply to humans. In addition, the kinds of stimuli most commonly used in this type of conditioning are not signals that rats—or humans, for that matter—encounter in their daily lives. The novelty and irrelevance of these lights and sounds help to ensure that the animals have not already developed strong emotional reactions to them. So researchers are clearly observing learning and memory at work. At the same time, such cues do not require complicated cognitive processing from the brain. Consequently, the stimuli permit us to study emotional mechanisms relatively directly. Finally, our extensive knowledge of the neural pathways involved in processing acoustic and visual information serves as an excellent starting point for examining the neurological foundations of fear elicited by such stimuli. My work has focused on the cerebral roots of learning fear, specifically fear that has been induced in the rat by associating sounds with foot shock. As do most other investigators in the field, I assume that fear conditioning occurs because the shock modifies the way in which neurons in certain important regions of the brain interpret the sound stimulus. These critical neurons are thought to be located in the neural pathway through which the sound elicits the conditioned response. During the past 10 years, researchers in my laboratory, as well as in others, have identified major components of this system. Our study began at Cornell University Medical College, where I worked several years ago, when my colleagues and I asked a simple question: Is the auditory cortex required for auditory fear conditioning? In the auditory pathway, as in other sensory systems, the cortex is the highest level of processing; it is the culmination of a sequence of neural steps that starts with the peripheral sensory receptors, located, in this case, in the ear. If lesions in (or surgical removal of) parts of the auditory cortex interfered with fear conditioning, we could conclude that the region is indeed necessary for this activity. We could also deduce that the next step in the conditioning pathway would be an output from the auditory cortex. But our lesion experiments in rats confirmed what a series of other studies had already suggested: the auditory cortex is not needed in order to learn many things about simple acoustic stimuli. We then went on to make lesions in the auditory thalamus and the auditory midbrain, sites lying immediately below the auditory cortex. Both these areas process auditory signals: the midbrain provides the major input to the thalamus; the thalamus supplies the major input to the cortex. Lesions in both regions completely eliminated the rat's susceptibility to conditioning. This discovery suggested that a sound stimulus is transmitted through the auditory system to the level of the auditory thalamus but that it does not have to reach the cortex for fear conditioning to occur. This possibility was somewhat puzzling. We knew that the primary nerve fibers that carry signals from the auditory thalamus extend to the auditory cortex. So David A. Ruggiero, Donald J. Reis and I looked again and found that, in fact, cells in some regions of the auditory thalamus also give rise to fibers that reach several subcortical locations. Could these neural projections be the connections through which the stimulus elicits the response we identify with fear? We tested this hypothesis by making lesions in each one of the subcortical regions with which these fibers connect. The damage had an effect in only one area: the amygdala. Filling in the Picture That observation suddenly created a place for our findings in an already accepted picture of emotional processing. For a long time, the amygdala has been considered an important brain region in various forms of emotional behavior. In 1979 Bruce S. Kapp and his colleagues at the University of Vermont reported that lesions in the amygdala's central nucleus interfered with a rabbit's conditioned heart rate response once the animal had been given a shock paired with a sound. The central nucleus connects with areas in the brain stem involved in the control of heart rate, respiration and vasodilation. Kapp's work suggested that the central nucleus was a crucial part of the system through which autonomic conditioned responses are expressed. In a similar vein, we found that lesions of this nucleus prevented a rat's blood pressure from rising and limited its ability to freeze in the presence of a fearcausing stimulus. We also demonstrated, in turn, that lesions of areas to which the central nucleus connects eliminated one or the other of the two responses. Michael Davis and his associates at Yale University determined that lesions of the central nucleus, as well as lesions of another brain stem area to which the central nucleus projects, diminished yet another conditioned response: the increased startle reaction that occurs when an animal is afraid. The findings from various laboratories studying different species and measuring fear in different ways all implicated the central nucleus as a pivotal component of fear-conditioning circuitry. It provides connections to the various brain stem areas involved in the control of a spectrum of responses. Despite our deeper understanding of this site in the amygdala, many details of the pathway remained hidden. Does sound, for example, reach the central nucleus directly from the auditory thalamus? We found that it does not. The central nucleus receives projections from thalamic areas next to, but not in, the auditory part of the thalamus. Indeed, an entirely different area of the amygdala, the lateral nucleus, receives inputs from the auditory thalamus. Lesions of the lateral nucleus prevented fear conditioning. Because this site gets information directly from the sensory system, we have come to think of it as the sensory interface of the amygdala in fear conditioning. In contrast, the central nucleus appears to be the interface with the systems that control responses. Mapping the Mechanism These findings seemed to place us on the threshold of being able to map the entire stimulus response pathway. But we still did not know how information received by the lateral nucleus arrived at the central nucleus. Earlier studies had suggested that the lateral nucleus projects directly to the central nucleus, but the connections were fairly sparse. Working with monkeys, David Amaral and Asla Pitkanen of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego demonstrated that the lateral nucleus extends directly to an adjacent site, called the basal or basolateral nucleus, which, in turn, projects to the central nucleus. Collaborating with Lisa Stefanacci and other members of the Salk team, Claudia R. Farb and C. Genevieve Go in my laboratory at New York University found the same connections in the rat. We then showed that these connections form synaptic contacts—in other words, they communicate directly, neuron to neuron. Such contacts indicate that information reaching the lateral nucleus can influence the central nucleus via the basolateral nucleus. The lateral nucleus can also influence the central nucleus by way of the accessory basal or basomedial nucleus. Clearly, ample opportunities exist for the lateral nucleus to communicate with the central nucleus once a stimulus has been received. The emotional significance of such a stimulus is determined not only by the sound itself but by the environment in which it occurs. Rats must therefore learn not only that a sound or visual cue is dangerous, but under what conditions it is so. Russell G. Phillips and I examined the response of rats to the chamber, or context, in which they had been conditioned. We found that lesions of the amygdala interfered with the animals' response to both the tone and the chamber. But lesions of the hippocampus—a region of the brain involved in declarative memory—interfered only with response to the chamber, not the tone. (Declarative memory involves explicit, consciously accessible information, as well as spatial memory.) At about the same time, Michael S. Fanselow and Jeansok J. Kim of the University of California at Los Angeles discovered that hippocampal lesions made after fear conditioning had taken place also prevented the expression of responses to the surroundings. These findings were consistent with the generally accepted view that the hippocampus plays an important role in processing complex information, such as details about the spatial environment where activity is taking place. Phillips and I also demonstrated that the subiculum, a region of the hippocampus that projects to other areas of the brain, communicated with the lateral nucleus of the amygdala. This connection suggests that contextual information may acquire emotional significance in the same way that other events do—via transmission to the lateral nucleus. Although our experiments had identified a subcortical sensory pathway that gave rise to fear conditioning, we did not dismiss the importance of the cortex. The interaction of subcortical and cortical mechanisms in emotion remains a hotly debated topic. Some researchers believe cognition is a vital precursor to emotional experience; others think that cognition—which is presumably a cortical function—is necessary to initiate emotion or that emotional processing is a type of cognitive processing. Still others question whether cognition is necessary for emotional processing. It became apparent to us that the auditory cortex is involved in, though not crucial to, establishing the fear response, at least when simple auditory stimuli are applied. Norman M. Weinberger and his colleagues at the University of California at Irvine have performed elegant studies showing that neurons in the auditory cortex undergo specific physiological changes in their reaction to sounds as a result of conditioning. This finding indicates that the cortex is establishing its own record of the event. Experiments by Lizabeth M. Romanski in my laboratory have determined that in the absence of the auditory cortex, rats can learn to respond fearfully to a single tone. If, however, projections from the thalamus to the amygdala are removed, projections from the thalamus to the cortex and then to the amygdala are sufficient. Romanski went on to establish that the lateral nucleus can receive input from both the thalamus and the cortex. Her work in the rat complements earlier research in primates. Once we had a clear understanding of the mechanism through which fear conditioning is learned, we attempted to find out how emotional memories are established and stored on a molecular level. Farb and I showed that the excitatory amino acid transmitter glutamate is present in the thalamic cells that reach the lateral nucleus. Together with Chiye J. Aoki, we showed that it is also present at synapses in the lateral nucleus. Because glutamate transmission is implicated in memory formation, we seemed to be on the right track. Long-Term Potentiation Glutamate has been observed in a process called long-term potentiation, or LTP, that has emerged as a model for the creation of memories. This process, which is most frequently studied in the hippocampus, involves a change in the efficiency of synaptic transmission along a neural pathway—in other words, signals travel more readily along this pathway once LTP has taken place. The mechanism seems to involve glutamate transmission and a class of postsynaptic excitatory amino acid receptors known as NMDA receptors. Various studies have found LTP in the fear-conditioning pathway. Marie-Christine Clugnet and I noted that LTP could be induced in the thalamo-amygdala pathway. Thomas H. Brown and Paul Chapman and their colleagues at Yale discovered LTP in a cortical projection to the amygdala. Other researchers, including Davis and Fanselow, have been able to block fear conditioning by blocking NMDA receptors in the amygdala. And Michael T. Rogan in my laboratory found that the processing of sounds by the thalamo-amygdala pathway is amplified after LTP has been induced. The fact that LTP can be demonstrated in a conditioning pathway offers new hope for understanding how LTP might relate to emotional memory. In addition, recent studies by Fabio Bordi, also in my laboratory, have suggested hypotheses about what could be going on in the neurons of the lateral nucleus during learning. Bordi monitored the electrical state of individual neurons in this area when a rat was listening to the sound and receiving the shock. He and Romanski found that essentially every cell responding to the auditory stimuli also responded to the shock. The basic ingredient of conditioning is thus present in the lateral nucleus. Bordi was able to divide the acoustically stimulated cells into two classes: habituating and consistently responsive. Habituating cells eventually stopped responding to the repeated sound, suggesting that they might serve to detect any sound that was unusual or different. They could permit the amygdala to ignore a stimulus once it became familiar. Sound and shock pairing at these cells might reduce habituation, thereby allowing the cells to respond to, rather than ignore, significant stimuli. The consistently responsive cells had high-intensity thresholds: only loud sounds could activate them. That finding is interesting because of the role loudness plays in judging distance. Nearby sources of sound are presumably more dangerous than those that are far away. Sound coupled with shock might act on these cells to lower their threshold, increasing the cells' sensitivity to the same stimulus. Consistently responsive cells were also broadly tuned. The joining of a sound and a shock could make the cells responsive to a narrower range of frequencies, or it could shift the tuning toward the frequency of the stimulus. In fact, Weinberger has recently shown that cells in the auditory system do alter their tuning to approximate the conditioned stimulus. Bordi and I have detected this effect in lateral nucleus cells as well. The apparent permanence of these memories raises an important clinical question: Can emotional learning be eliminated, and, if not, how can it be toned down? As noted earlier, it is actually quite difficult to get rid of emotional memories, and at best we can hope only to keep them under wraps. Studies by Maria A. Morgan in my laboratory have begun to illuminate how the brain regulates emotional expressions. Morgan has shown that when part of the prefrontal cortex is damaged, emotional memory is very hard to extinguish. This discovery indicates that the prefrontal areas—possibly by way of the amygdala—normally control expression of emotional memory and prevent emotional responses once they are no longer useful. A similar conclusion was proposed by Edmund T. Rolls and his colleagues at the University of Oxford during studies of primates. The researchers studied the electrical activity of neurons in the frontal cortex of the animals. Functional variation in the pathway between this region of the cortex and the amygdala may make it more difficult for some people to change their emotional behavior. Davis and his colleagues have found that blocking NMDA receptors in the amygdala interferes with extinction. Those results hint that extinction is an active learning process. At the same time, such learning could be situated in connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. More experiments should disclose the answer. Placing a basic emotional memory process in the amygdalic pathway yields obvious benefits. The amygdala is a critical site of learning because of its central location between input and output stations. Each route that leads to the amygdala—sensory thalamus, sensory cortex and hippocampus—delivers unique information to the organ. Pathways originating in the sensory thalamus provide only a crude perception of the external world, but because they involve only one neural link, they are quite fast. In contrast, pathways from the cortex offer detailed and accurate representations, allowing us to recognize an object by sight or sound. But these pathways, which run from the thalamus to the sensory cortex to the amygdala, involve several neural links. And each link in the chain adds time. Conserving time may be the reason there are two routes—one cortical and one subcortical—for emotional learning. Animals, and humans, need a quick-and-dirty reaction mechanism. The thalamus activates the amygdala at about the same time as it activates the cortex. The arrangement may enable emotional responses to begin in the amygdala before we completely recognize what it is we are reacting to or what we are feeling. The thalamic pathway may be particularly useful in situations requiring a rapid response. Failing to respond to danger is more costly than responding inappropriately to a benign stimulus. For instance, the sound of rustling leaves is enough to alert us when we are walking in the woods without our having first to identify what is causing the sound. Similarly, the sight of a slender curved shape lying flat on the path ahead of us is sufficient to elicit defensive fear responses. We do not need to go through a detailed analysis of whether or not what we are seeing is a snake. Nor do we need to think about the fact that snakes are reptiles and that their skins can be used to make belts and boots. All these details are irrelevant and, in fact, detrimental to an efficient, speedy and potentially lifesaving reaction. The brain simply needs to be able to store primitive cues and detect them. Later, coordination of this basic information with the cortex permits verification (yes, this is a snake) or brings the response (screaming, sprinting) to a stop.

Storing Emotional Memory Although the amygdala stores primitive information, we should not consider it the only learning center. The establishment of memories is a function of the entire network, not just of one component. The amygdala is certainly crucial, but we must not lose sight of the fact that its functions exist only by virtue of the system to which it belongs. Memory is generally thought to be the process by which we bring back to mind some earlier conscious experience. The original learning and the remembering, in this case, are both conscious events. Workers have determined that declarative memory is mediated by the hippocampus and the cortex. But removal of the hippocampus has little effect on fear conditioning—except conditioning to context. In contrast, emotional learning that comes about through fear conditioning is not declarative learning. Rather it is mediated by a different system, which in all likelihood operates independently of our conscious awareness. Emotional information may be stored within declarative memory, but it is kept there as a cold declarative fact. For example, if a person is injured in an automobile accident in which the horn gets stuck in the on position, he or she may later have a reaction when hearing the blare of car horns. The person may remember the details of the accident, such as where and when it occurred, who else was involved and how awful it was. These are declarative memories that are dependent on the hippocampus. The individual may also become tense, anxious and depressed, as the emotional memory is reactivated through the amygdalic system. The declarative system has stored the emotional content of the experience, but it has done so as a fact. Emotional and declarative memories are stored and retrieved in parallel, and their activities are joined seamlessly in our conscious experience. That does not mean that we have direct conscious access to our emotional memory; it means instead that we have access to the consequences—such as the way we behave, the way our bodies feel. These consequences combine with current declarative memory to form a new declarative memory. Emotion is not just unconscious memory: it exerts a powerful influence on declarative memory and other thought processes. As James L. McGaugh and his colleagues at the University of California at Irvine have convincingly shown, the amygdala plays an essential part in modulating the storage and strength of memories. The distinction between declarative memory and emotional memory is an important one. W. J. Jacobs of the University of British Columbia and Lynn Nadel of the University of Arizona have argued that we are unable to remember traumatic events that take place early in life because the hippocampus has not yet matured to the point of forming consciously accessible memories. The emotional memory system, which may develop earlier, clearly forms and stores its unconscious memories of these events. And for this reason, the trauma may affect mental and behavioral functions in later life, albeit through processes that remain inaccessible to consciousness. Because pairing a tone and a shock can bring about conditioned responses in animals throughout the phyla, it is clear that fear conditioning cannot be dependent on consciousness. Fruit flies and snails, for example, are not creatures known for their conscious mental processes. My way of interpreting this phenomenon is to consider fear a subjective state of awareness brought about when brain systems react to danger. Only if the organism possesses a sufficiently advanced neural mechanism does conscious fear accompany bodily response. This is not to say that only humans experience fear but, rather, that consciousness is a prerequisite to subjective emotional states. Thus, emotions or feelings are conscious products of unconscious processes. It is crucial to remember that the subjective experiences we call feelings are not the primary business of the system that generates them. Emotional experiences are the result of triggering systems of behavioral adaptation that have been preserved by evolution. Subjective experience of any variety is challenging turf for scientists. We have, however, gone a long way toward understanding the neural system that underlies fear responses, and this same system may in fact give rise to subjective feelings of fear. If so, studies of the neural control of emotional responses may hold the key to understanding subjective emotion as well. About the author: Joseph E. LeDoux is interested in the neural foundation of memory and emotion. He studies the anatomy, physiology and behavioral organization of these aspects of mental functioning. LeDoux, the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at New York University, is the recipient of two National Institute of Mental Health distinctions: a Merit Award and a Research Scientist Development Award. He has also received an Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association. Source: Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 1994 by Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Quiet Miracles of the Brain: This article taken from National Geographic discusses the functions of the brain, and the new medical techniques that help the brain recover from serious injury and disease. Quiet Miracles of the BRAIN By Joel L. Swerdlow Aristotle believed that the center for thought lies in the heart and that the brain helps cool the body. Drowsy people hang their heads, he said, because brain-created heaviness forces the head downward. We laugh now, but many experts agreed with Aristotle as recently as the late 19th century. Indeed, we still know relatively little about the three pounds of flesh that makes us human. This is not surprising given that the human brain, with its many billions of cells, is the most complex object in the known universe. But we have learned more in the past ten years than in all previous history, thanks to technologies that allow researchers to see inside living brains and examine brain functions at the subcellular level. That we have entered an era of extraordinary discovery becomes clear moments after I ring the doorbell of eight-year-old Matthew Simpson's home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The scene is a Hollywood version of how childhood is supposed to be: Bikes on the driveway, a green lawn, and next-door neighbors playing basketball. Matt stands beside his mother as we chat on the porch. He can see that I am feeling the New Mexico heat. “Would you like a glass of water?” he asks. It is the last day of second grade, and Matt is proud of his report card. It shows respectable grades, good behavior, and steady improvement. Two years ago surgeons removed nearly half of Matt's brain. Matt's first three years were textbook normal. Just before his fourth birthday, he began to experience seizures—electrical misfirings that impede brain functions. Medicines did nothing as seizures threatened to turn fatal. The eventual diagnosis: Rasmussen's encephalitis, a rare and incurable condition of unknown origin. Desperation brought his parents, Jim and Valerie Simpson, to Ben Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Carson recommended a hemispherectomy, removing the left hemisphere of Matt's brain. Matt would lose half his cortex, tightly packed folds that handle thought processes and most of what makes us human. The empty area of the skull, Carson explained, would fill with cerebrospinal fluid at about a teaspoon every five minutes and would remain filled. The operation could lead to crippling, coma, death, or recovery. Carson would not guess at odds. Nor would he say how much of Matt would remain with half his cortex gone. Although hemispherectomies were performed in the 1940s, few patients lived. Pediatric neurosurgeons revitalized the procedure in the mid-1980s, because of advances in brain scans and in ability to combat bleeding. Several dozen hemispherectomies are performed each year now in the United States, usually as treatment for Rasmussen's encephalitis and forms of epilepsy that destroy the cortex but do not cross the groove separating left and right hemispheres. Patients can live because neither the disease nor the operation touches areas that control basic functions: the cerebellum, which coordinates movement; the diencephalon, which facilitates emotions and regulates body functions; and the brain stem, which maintains breathing, heart rate, and other life-support systems. As Matt began to suffer worsening seizures, sometimes every three minutes, the Simpsons had no choice. Matt's parents and half sisters, 16-year-old Stacy and 13-year-old Jamie, show me a scan of Matt's brain. I see the outline of a skull. One side has shapes in white, gray, and black. The other is all black, entirely filled with fluid. The operation left a scar that runs along one ear and disappears under his hair. But his face has no lopsidedness. The only visible effects of the operation are a slight limp and limited use of his right arm and hand. He also has no right peripheral vision in either eye. Matt and his mother drive out on errands. “I see a sailing ship and a huge elephant,” he says, looking at shapes in clouds. She discusses details with him and asks if he sees anything else. Matt describes a clown and a frog. I appreciate such brain-stimulating games when I join his weekly session of speech and language therapy. One typical activity is word games. Therapist Joan Harden places cards in front of him. Matt turns one over. It says “fast things.” He must now name as many fast things as he can in 20 seconds. “Car ... truck ... train ... plane,” he says. The next card says “soft things.” Matt says “Butter ... the middle of bread” and stops. A child his age should name from six to eight things each time. Matt names only four and two. Is this because he has half a brain or because he suffered seizures between ages 3 y and 6 y? No one knows. In the past two months Matt has made nine months' progress in language use. “In the improvement he has made it appears he is fostering and accelerating the growth of dendrites, threadlike extensions that grow out of neurons, the specialized cells of the nervous system,” Harden explains. “The neurons seem to be making better connections.” More connections among the brain's estimated hundred billion neurons mean a better functioning brain. Connections come from inherited growth patterns and in response to stimuli, including internal stimuli like imagined sensations. The body receives information at the “periphery”—the neuroscientists' chauvinistic word for everything that is not the brain—and encodes it as nerve impulses. When these electrical impulses reach the brain, they trigger the release of messenger chemicals such as glutamate, which in turn induce electrical impulses as they travel from one neuron to another. This electrochemical process, the basis of brain communication, sometimes stimulates growth of new dendrites. Thus rats raised in cages full of toys have more brain mass—probably from more dendrites—than do rats in empty cages. The brains of infants suffering from some forms of mental retardation have fewer dendrites than do the brains of healthy babies. Brain-imaging studies conducted by Harry T. Chugani, a pediatric neurologist at Children's Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, suggest that dendrite production rises rapidly after birth and remains at a peak level from about age four to age ten. In fact, during these years a child's brain has many more connections than does an adult's and uses twice as much energy. Until recently, experts believed that genes program most dendrite growth. People like Matt demonstrate that the brain has unexpected flexibility—what scientists call plasticity. This plasticity promises to redefine basic concepts. The left side of the brain of a right-handed person—precisely what was cut out of Matt—specializes in handling music, poetry, and mathematics. Yet Matt enjoys piano lessons, and math is his strongest subject in school. Somehow, knowledge and capability traveled from one side of his brain to the other. Such transfers seem to defy biology. Does an undiscovered conduit exist, or does each side have dormant capacity to assume functions of the other? The ability to transfer is highest before adolescence, during the years of peak dendrite growth. But transfer, albeit limited and slow, also occurs when strokes kill portions of an adult brain. Other evidence of transfer comes after amputations. Every part of the body is connected to the cortex. Touching something with your left hand, for example, activates a particular part of your right cortex, and touching something with your right hand stimulates a mirror-image portion of your left cortex. Next to these sections of the cortex, for reasons no one understands, are areas connected to the nostrils. After his hand was amputated, one man reported tingling in his missing pinky when researchers dripped warm water under his nostrils. The part of his cortex connected to his nostrils had seized areas of the cortex that had received signals from the now missing fingers. Likewise, brain scans of Braille readers show that their reading fingers stimulate more cortical area than do fingers of sighted people. Presumably, extra use of these fingers prompts expansion into neighboring cortical territory. The Simpson family says that Matt's personality never changed through seizures and surgery—an observation made by most families whose children have had hemispherectomies. “He started as a nice, caring child and he stayed a nice, caring child,” Valerie says. For me, the best moment comes one evening while Matt is drawing with crayons and the adults are talking. Matt interrupts us. Jim asks him to stop. Interruptions continue. Jim warns Matt he will be punished. Matt persists. “Why are you smiling?” Jim asks me. “Because he acts like a normal eight-year-old,” I reply. “He is a normal eight-year-old,” says Jim. Many people learned in school that we use only 10 percent of our brains, a belief that may have been based on psychologist William James's assertion in 1910 that we use “only a small part” of our mental powers. People like Matt certainly indicate that much of the brain is redundant. I can imagine Matt telling his dates ten years from now, “You won't believe this, but I have half a brain.” Matt's resiliency is dramatic, yet no more so than a common occurrence: the development of new human brains. I look into a microscope at an eight-cell human pre-embryo, the product of laboratory, or in vitro, fertilization. The egg and sperm were taken from a husband and wife whose family history includes a fatal genetic disease. If scientists at the Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago determine that this gene is not present, they will implant the pre-embryo into the mother. The pre-embryo resembles a transparent bubble floating in space. Although I feel like a voyeur, I cannot stop looking through the microscope. Each cell is rounded, the cell walls are thick lines, and dark smudges are cell nuclei—exactly what I expect. But why does each of the eight cells look exactly the same? Some will grow into the brain, others into the heart and skin. Maybe the microscope is not strong enough to reveal differences. “They are the same,” geneticist Yury Verlinsky explains. “From each of these cells, every cell in the body will grow. The differentiation begins once the cells have divided into about a hundred, about three days after the egg is fertilized. No one knows how it happens. There is no 'master builder' cell.” During early pregnancy, neurons can grow at a rate of 250,000 a minute. Perhaps half die before a baby is born. This “pruning down” may eliminate flawed neural connections. Gerald Edelman, a neurobiologist at the Neuroscience Institute in La Jolla, California, sees a tropical rain forest in which “neural Darwinism” selects the fittest neurons. Whatever triggers brain development, it is the most sensitive part of fetal growth. Vitamin deficiency, maternal smoking, or prenatal exposure to alcohol, chemicals, or too much heat may prevent neural development or cause damage to neurons. Women who have influenza while pregnant, some studies suggest, are more likely to have children who develop schizophrenia, as are women who suffer severe malnutrition during pregnancy. Other evidence, like family histories, indicates that inherited genetic malfunctions contribute to schizophrenia. Advancing knowledge about the role of the brain's physical structure in mental illness should change our perceptions about such diseases. Including depression and manic depression, mental illnesses afflict more than 20 percent of all Americans. “That's the frontal cortex of Steven Elmore, a 33-year-old schizophrenic,” says Dan Weinberger, a neurologist and psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health, as he flips an image onto his computer. We are in the den of his home in Washington, D. C. Weinberger flips an image from Steve's identical twin, David—who is not schizophrenic—next to the first image. “Brains normally differ more from one another than do fingerprints,” Weinberger says. “But these brains are genetically identical and should look the same. They don't.” The differences between Steve's and his brother's are clear. Steve's has less cortex and larger fluid-bearing ventricles. “The part of the cortex he's missing,” Weinberger says, “serves as perhaps the most evolved part of the human brain. It performs complicated tasks such as thinking organized thoughts. This might help explain why paranoid delusions and hallucinations are characteristic of schizophrenia.” Weinberger clicks further into both brains. The images also show that Steve's has a smaller hippocampus. The hippocampus, from Greek for “seahorse” because of its shape, facilitates memory storage. Such an abnormality may be why some schizophrenics have memory problems. “The loss of brain tissue does not worsen with time, and it does not improve with medication,” Weinberger says. “It may be there from birth, and it may be partly the product of genes that make a person vulnerable. It's hard to know what's really going on since schizophrenia doesn't usually manifest until late adolescence.” Writing in the fourth century B.C., Hippocrates said that “madness” comes from too much “moistness” in the brain—exactly what Weinberger has just shown me. For Hippocrates, this was a lucky guess based on the belief that four “humors”—earth, fire, air, and water—control health. As is common when a scientific venture is in its infancy, discoveries raise more questions than they answer. “How do genetic characteristics interact with environmental influences?” Weinberger asks me. “Why doesn't schizophrenia appear sooner? Can we devise a way to treat patients before symptoms appear?” Western medicine used to blame schizophrenia on upbringing or the patients' self-indulgence. “Now at least we know it has physical aspects,” Weinberger says. “The same is true of manic depression and many other so-called mental illnesses.” Such insights have led to drugs that affect brain chemistry. Key to many of these drugs is dopamine, a naturally occurring chemical in the body that responds to external and internal stimuli by saying to neurons, “Attention must be paid.” Neurons have at least eight different types of receptors for dopamine; each absorbs a different message. Restricting the actions of dopamine reduces schizophrenic symptoms. This physical aspect of schizophrenia should prompt changes in our attitudes—many people still see mental illness as a stigma—and in insurance policies that grant less coverage for mental illness. Whatever the cause, about one in every hundred Americans—including as many as one-third of homeless adults—have schizophrenia. At a busy corner I see telltale traits: Some homeless people stand alone and look particularly disheveled, strange even among the strange. One woman wears a wire-and-foil hat. “To keep my skull from opening,” she says. What went wrong for these people? Lack of money and bad luck are likely suspects. About 40 percent of Americans with severe mental illness receive no treatment. “I'd be on the street myself if it weren't for my family, doctors who care, and medicine,” Steve Elmore tells me a few days later when I visit his Indianapolis, Indiana, apartment. He owns his own car, handles his own finances, and works for a mental-health agency that understands a schizophrenic's need to avoid stress. Steve's apartment has few books, mostly biographies of the Beatles, because Steve can concentrate only long enough to read in short spurts. Shelves of rock-and-roll discs line every wall. “When an episode starts, I lie down and listen to rock,” Steve says. “I feel like a nothing, like I'm falling apart, like I'm not on this planet. My brain gets stuffy, like people are trying to stuff cotton balls in it. I can feel the brain pressing against the skull. If I went off my meds, I'd be weird in about a week.” Steve asks if I have ever had to work hard at something. “That's how it is,” he says. “The medicines don't do all the work. It's a struggle.” That evening we stay up late. Steve describes how his life changed at 19: anger at noises only he heard, walks through the neighborhood screaming. During childhood, he said, he was a little wilder than his twin but not significantly different. I tell him about a recent study showing that home movies of children who later became schizophrenic reveal jerky body movements when compared with siblings. “Maybe,” Steve says with a smile, “but I was always a better basketball player than my brother.” Steve still hears voices. “Have they been talking now?” I ask. “Sure,” he says. “I told them you manage my rock band.” I take out an empty pad and ask him to write what he hears as our conversation proceeds. Soon, “Jerk,””Shut up!””You're a creep,””Get out of here,” and similar statements fill the page. “Do you realize that no one is saying those things?” I ask. He shakes his head, exasperated. “Maybe not,” he says, “but I know the voices are likely real.” Later that night he takes out a plastic pillbox and swallows extra Stelazine, a drug that blocks binding of dopamine to receptors and helps silence the voices. Treatment of his schizophrenia as a physical illness fits in with a larger pattern: Scientists increasingly argue that everything we experience can be reduced to a physical component. These “reductionists” are the ultimate cartographers: Everything, they say, exists at a particular point on the brain map. Some reductionists stake out an extreme position. Francis Crick, who along with two colleagues won the 1962 Nobel Prize in medicine for deciphering the DNA code that defines genes, says that “You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells.” The uniquely human “consciousness”—variously defined as language, introspection, self-awareness, and abstract thinking—eludes scientific measurement. Albert Einstein conceived of the theory of general relativity after imagining a person taking a ride in a box through space. Yet postmortem study of Einstein's brain has indicated nothing that explains how he used such visualizations to devise abstract theories. And who will map the mixture of myth, morality, faith, pain, and joy that make up our spiritual geography? “We will never find a satisfactory mechanistic explanation” for such phenomena, said Lewis Thomas, the late physician and biologist who wrote best-sellers such as The Lives of a Cell. Is this because measurements are too crude or because scientists are trying to measure the immeasurable? Examining animals suggests a relationship between brain size and intelligence. Human brain size leveled off about 100,000 years ago, perhaps limited by what can fit through the female pelvis—the brain is approximately one-quarter its final size at birth; the rest of the body is one-twentieth. But among humans, no size-intelligence relationship exists. “Bigger is not necessarily better,” Stephen Kosslyn, a Harvard University psychologist who studies how the mind creates mental images, explains to me. “Bigger could be worse because it impedes rapid communication between neurons within the brain.” But the size of a certain brain part might be crucial. How did Michelangelo see, Shakespeare feel, and Mozart hear? One study reveals that the planum temporale in the left hemisphere, a part of the brain associated with auditory processing, is larger in musicians than in nonmusicians, and is larger still in musicians with perfect pitch. Howard Gardner's influential Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences argues that every individual has one or more of seven distinct intelligences—such as spatial, linguistic, and musical. Does each “intelligence” have its own physical manifestation? Gardner resists putting too much faith in physical findings. “Intelligence is a capacity,” he says. “To ask ‘Where in the brain is intelligence?’ is like asking, ‘Where is the voice in the radio?’” Vincent van Gogh may have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, which triggered electrical hyperactivity of the brain. Did it affect works, such as “Starry Night,” noteworthy for their hallucinatory imagery? “Remember not to carry such assertions too far,” says Harry Rand, an art historian and a senior curator at the Smithsonian Institution. “Every artistic genius does not have a brain anomaly, and everyone with a brain anomaly is not a great artist. Art is far more than something that automatically results from a physical characteristic.”

Still, the mapmakers' growing success demands attention. One gene produces an enzyme, monoamine oxidase A, that helps brain cells communicate. Some men inherit an abnormal gene that fails to produce enough monoamine oxidase A. Other neurotransmitters accumulate, and the person—for unknown reasons—becomes violent when faced with stress. If a young boy is known to carry this gene defect, should he receive special treatment? Should family or society impose restrictions upon him? As brain discoveries mount, who will make such decisions? Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, noted humankind's emergent manipulation of its basic biology in the 1950s and warned in 1961, “For heaven's sake be careful.” The need for care is particularly acute as researchers discover the physical basis for what may define us most as humans, our emotions. Candace Pert, a former National Institutes of Health pharmacologist who now heads her own research firm, has pioneered much of this work. To explain it, she takes me back to high school biology. “We were all taught that synapses, the distance between two neurons, are crucial,” Pert says. “We now realize there's a communications network that operates via receptors and their ‘informational substances.‘ Communications between cells occur via chemical reactions and transfer of electrochemical energy. “When trying to find why morphine affects the brain,” she continues, “we found that the brain also relies on neuropeptides, strings of amino acids that float throughout the body and convey information by attaching themselves wherever they find a welcoming receptor. These are extraordinary, because they trigger emotions. During the 1950s, experiments revealed that electrical stimulation of certain areas of the cortex provoked emotions—exactly the areas that are filled with neuropeptides. At least 60 neuropeptides have been discovered so far.” She pauses and repeats one sentence because she knows it must sink in slowly. “Emotions,” she says, “are neuropeptides attaching to receptors and stimulating an electrical change on neurons.” We traditionally perceive the brain in terms of prevailing technology. It has been a mechanical water clock, hydraulic pump, telephone switchboard, and liquid-cooled parallel supercomputer. For Pert to describe a communications network therefore makes sense. But I resist. “Joy? Grief? Love? All biochemical?” I ask. She nods, yes. “All love, for everyone, involves the same peptides?” I ask. Again, she says, “Yes.” Pert's husband, immunologist-virologist Michael Ruff, joins us for lunch. They began to date while working together at the National Institutes of Health. “Are neuropeptides popping right now because you're next to each other?” I ask. “Of course,” Pert says, putting one arm around Ruff. He looks away, trying to hide his smile. “When I fell in love with my wife, I gave her my heart, not my neuropeptides,” I tell Pert. “Neuropeptides are in your heart too,” she says. “Experiments show that the spleen, thymus, bone marrow, lymph glands, and dorsal horn of the spine also produce neuropeptides.” Neuropeptides, she says, even come from the stomach, giving new validity to the expression “gut feeling.” The mind is not only in the brain, Pert argues. It is also in the flow of neurocommunicators throughout the brain, glands, and immune system. Some of Pert's theories may be incomplete, but they illustrate—as do the experiences of every researcher and patient I have met—that we must look at ourselves in new ways and accept new truths. The blood-brain barrier is a typical example. These tightly packed capillaries, located throughout the brain, restrict access, because the brain is sensitive to small fluctuations in bloodborne material. Communications between brain and immune system, however, imply a steady flow of peptides and more openness than experts have believed thus far. Once we accept this possibility, we may better understand the dramatic increase of brain cancer in industrialized countries. Whether the brain is unusually susceptible to carcinogens remains unclear, but carcinogens do seem to cross the blood-brain barrier. Some new truths are not as new as they seem. The flow of substances between our brain and body seems like a radical idea, but for 4,000 years Chinese medicine has said that control over the brain rests with the liver, heart, spleen, lungs, and kidneys. These organs communicate, according to Chinese medicine, via energy channels that form the basis for treatments such as acupuncture. Likewise, modern science has just started to examine links between the brain and immune system. Eastern philosophy and the Old Testament, however, have always linked mental processes and health. “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine,” says the Book of Proverbs, “but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” Thus, Pert and colleagues are on old terrain when they demonstrate that immune and brain cells constantly chatter via neuropeptides. Peptides from the brain cause immune cells to proliferate, and some immune cells release peptides that affect brain function. Macrophages, the immune cells that usually reach an invader first, are, in effect, mobile synapses, carrying and releasing neuropeptides throughout the body. Implications are obvious. Stress, for example, increases susceptibility to disease by compromising the immune system. Thus, participation in support groups—which presumably reduces stress—may increase the longevity of cancer patients and the production of cancer-fighting cells. A group of men and women with a variety of life-threatening cancers meets weekly in the Cancer Resource and Support Center in Pasadena, between Baltimore and Annapolis, Maryland. Their chairs are circled as they discuss symptoms, pain, and fear. Even such depressing topics evoke laughter. Al Smith, 64, whose colon cancer has spread throughout his body, gets loud roars when he describes the doctor who said he had six months to live. “That was five years ago,” Al says. “My goal is to go to him in five more years and say, ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire.’” Donna Seafolk-Kopp, 43, who has ovarian cancer, grabs everyone's attention with “It keeps getting bigger,” and then reveals that she means a party celebrating her upcoming master's degree. As the meeting adjourns, I notice Hugh McLeod's T-shirt: two fingers about to touch—a reproduction of God giving life to Adam in Michelangelo's ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. Hugh has thick arms, wide shoulders, a healthy aura. His story: “I'm a 41-year-old retired Air Force officer now working as a consulting engineer. For six years doctors treated me for a fungus infection under my right big toe. When the toe finally split open, they diagnosed 'level III melanoma with a large satellite node.' Four months ago they cut off the toe. They said that blood or lymph could carry the cancer anywhere, and that it is very aggressive and could appear in my brain. The doctors say scans will definitely find the new cancers, and they have no treatments to offer.” I ask what percentages the doctors gave him. Hugh strokes his beard. Silence. “Why haven't you given in to despair or terror?” I ask. He smiles. “I believe that I am fine and will stay fine,” he says. Hugh then describes two weeks at Getting Well, a behavioral medicine program in Orlando, Florida, designed to help people with the emotional and spiritual aspects of serious illnesses. “I had believed that to have emotions is a sign of weakness and illness,” he says. “I have experienced an awakening that could not have happened without the illness. Whatever I deal with, relationships with my children from my first marriage, the fact that career opportunities have taken me to another city, problems with my current boss, I strive to be honest with myself and others about my feelings. This honesty helps my body protect itself. I have also learned to use mental imaging to produce anticancer chemicals such as killer T cells and interferon. I image two or three times a day.” Several years ago a friend of mine underwent coronary artery surgery. Every night he visualizes brushes scrubbing his artery walls. He then follows the yellow plaque through his kidney until it is flushed from his body. “I don't talk much about this,” he once told me. “People aren't ready to understand.” My friend emphasizes, as Hugh does, that he images in addition to standard medical care. Hugh's living room has a dog-eared copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.”He had a zest for life,” Hugh says, opening the book to • The thin red jellies within you or with- • in me, the bones and • the marrow in the bones, • The exquisite realization of health; • O I say these are not the parts and po- • ems of the body only, but of the soul, • O I say now these are the soul! Hugh darkens the room, lights two candles, and sits on the sofa. When he takes off his shoes, I see that the end of one sock is empty. “You use what works best,” he explains. “Some people say they ‘breathe in color.’ I have created a neon bug whacker that goes into my brain.” He puts his feet on the coffee table, punches on a tape recorder and closes his eyes. I sit on the other end of the sofa and close my eyes too. Music on the tape plays in the background as a soft voice says, “Imagine an opening on top of your head. The light of stars, suns, galaxies, heavens, of love enters your body.” I soon float out with the words. Is Hugh tapping into some primal ability when the tape tells him to “take a moment to explore all the routes and highways of your brain and mind. You'll find one that has to do with your immune system, and circulation, and so on. Turn the right valves. Turn off those that carry nourishment to the disease.” Or is he calming himself with a harmless exercise? All we know for sure is that he is entering terra incognita. As I leave, I notice some pills. “What are those?” Hugh hesitates. “Muscle relaxers for my shoulder,” he says. “It's been getting stiffer. I can't move my neck well. It's been going on for about two weeks. I have a scan scheduled for next week.” He sees the look on my face and adds, “I sure hope it's nothing bad.” I call Hugh six months later. He tells me that the shoulder pain was a pulled muscle. “Everything's going well with me,” he says, “but the group lost a couple of people.” Once, when driving with Hugh, I asked why he so diligently puts on his seat belt. If death creeps within, why worry about an accident? He said he is working hard to live and does not want to crash his head through the windshield. Hugh is right. Despite increased use of seat belts and helmets, brain injury disables or kills someone in the United States every two and a half minutes. Although the brain is the only organ covered mostly by bone, it floats in a thin cushion of fluid and can bounce against the skull. Even shaking a baby can cause permanent brain damage. On October 13, 1986, Patsy Cannon was driving her nine-year-old daughter to school when another woman's car collided with them. Only Patsy was hurt. Her seat belt came loose and her head hit the windshield and then the side window. Patsy awoke several hours after the accident. She felt fine but had severe amnesia. Her amnesia is “retrograde”: She has no difficulty remembering events after the accident but can remember nothing from before. The only visible evidence of injury is a slight indentation along the top of her forehead. A photograph taken a week before the accident shows Patsy between two other young women. All are laughing. “I apparently was a workaholic in corporate America,” Patsy says. “That person is dead; I am a new person.” Ironically, Matt Simpson lost half his brain and kept his personality. Patsy has all her brain and lost her entire self. Patsy stayed in Birmingham, Alabama, her hometown, and reinvented herself as an advocate for people with brain injuries. United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Birmingham has hired her to design and direct supported living and employment programs that allow adults with brain injuries to regain control of their lives outside institutions. She invites me to join a group for young adults. “We took a lickin' and keep on tickin',” one tells me. As they discuss failures and triumphs, I witness the hardest type of courage—not the flash of bravery but the daily resolve not to quit. For my slow-speaking companions, courage is willingness to speak, write a poem, get an apartment, hold your hand to make twitching stop, ride a bicycle, ask a question, laugh, and, most important, let yourself be who you are. Patsy and I visit the Spain Rehabilitation Center, a not-for-profit facility of the University of Alabama Hospital System. An automobile accident survivor who recently emerged from a two-month coma wears a hospital gown and a baseball cap. Neurons can resprout dendrites throughout life, so hard work and encouragement could restore much of his brain function. But he slumps in a wheelchair, his eyes unmoving. Drops of spittle edge down his chin. “He doesn't respond much,” a nurse says. Patsy kneels. Her lips unleash a stream of chatter, part purring and part pep talk. His mouth moves, but nothing comes out. By shaking his head, he communicates a strong preference for the Auburn University football team over the University of Alabama. He accepts her offer of an alphabet board so he can point to letters, and spells the names of his two children. Patsy does not tell him that the automobile accident killed one of them. Shortly after one of my visits with Patsy, my nine-year-old son, Aaron, comes home with a bad headache. He had banged his forehead and apparently lost consciousness. He has no outward injuries, but six hours later his headache and dizziness are still getting worse. At the emergency room his name goes on the chalkboard followed by “head injury.” When the doctor says “a concussion, no brain damage,” I hug Aaron—and realize why people I have met on this story hug so often. They know too well how fragile we all are. For Patsy, fragility means the need to relearn everything. “I learned to speak through tapes and friends,” she says without emotion. “Once a friend told me it was ‘raining cats and dogs,’ and I panicked. I ran to the window expecting to see flying animals.” Four months after the accident she was hospitalized again with bleeding ulcers. “No amount of learning,” she tells me, “could silence the internal screams.” Relearning love came hardest. “When I saw my nine-year-old daughter, Leah, I felt nothing,” Patsy says. “It could have been any child off the street.” She squints as though trying to see through some fog that separates us, and asks, “How do you explain love to someone who has no memory of love?” Leah describes her mother's return from the hospital. Patsy and Leah's father were divorced before the accident, and no other adult was around. “Can you cook?” Leah asked. Patsy said “show me” and almost burned the house down. Leah easily convinced her mother that children never do homework and all mothers take their daughters shopping every day after school. “At the mall my mother bought herself dresses with floral patterns,” Leah tells me. “It scared me, because I realized she was a different person. The mother I knew wore only black and blue basic suits.” Before, Patsy hated bananas. Now she loves them. Such changes after head injuries are mysterious but common. Patsy is still learning about human failings. Walking through a Birmingham park, we encounter statues showing fire hoses knocking down civil rights demonstrators. Across the street is the church where a bomb killed four young girls in 1963. Patsy knows nothing about either event. “A few years ago someone asked if I thought they should hire a ‘colored’ nurse,” Patsy says. “That's when I learned about racism. I said I did not understand the problem. They then told me about colored bathrooms. I still did not understand. I said my home has three colored bathrooms, and I enjoy all three.” The accident may have biochemically destroyed Patsy's memory. The more likely explanation is that it disrupted connections to the hippocampus, which seems to play a crucial role in the long-term storage of information. Different aspects of memory reside in various parts of the brain, images in one place, for example, and emotions in another. People like Patsy help researchers map this geography. When shown a picture of a rhinoceros, one stroke victim, for example, says, “Enormous, weighs over one ton, lives in Africa.” But he cannot say what it is. When asked what “rhinoceros” means, he responds “animal.” These various memory centers cannot function unless connected to the hippocampus. This means the old Patsy may still be inside but unable to assert herself. Do pieces of old Patsy appear in dreams? “No,” Patsy says, “and I don't worry about her. I'm happy with the person I am now.” No one knows what memories are. Several decades ago, scientists looked for what they called the “grandmother neuron.” Then they concluded that one neuron holds grandmother's face, another her smell, and still another the sound of her voice. Now they think she is in none of these places. Memory of grandmother's face, they say, probably does not reside in a particular neuron. It exists in the changed connections between different sets of neural networks. Why do we remember some things and forget others? “Memory is not a video camera or a tape recorder,” says Ulric Neisser, an Emory University psychologist. “There is no ‘total recall.’ All memories, even very vivid ones, are more or less accurate reconstructions. Unusual experiences tend to be remembered better, because they are less confusable with other events. But even they often change to fit what we later believe must have happened.” Smell and taste are associated with many memories, because neural pathways link them directly to the hippocampus. You smell a perfume and flash back to a high school date. Novelist Marcel Proust once tasted a madeleine—a little butter cake—and was swept away by memories that resulted in the eight-volume Remembrance of Things Past. “I fail to see why a chap needs 30 pages to describe how he tosses and turns in bed before falling asleep,” one publisher's rejection letter said. But Proust's work is a literary classic. “After the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered,” he writes, “taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest.” Most of us fear losing memory. We know the name of a famous artist but can say only “the guy who went to Tahiti.” Then we think, “I'm getting old.” Not necessarily. Neurons die every day, starting from the day we are born. “Even though many types of human cells—for example, the skin, liver, immune system, and stomach lining—renew themselves, the body never replaces neurons,” says Pasko Rakic, a Yale University neurobiologist. “New neurons would have none of your memory. They would be another person, with a different life history. Some songbirds develop new neurons in adulthood but must relearn parts of the same songs every spring.” As brain research progresses, however, the no-new-neurons assertion cannot be made with absolute certainty. Evidence indicates that our brains may contain “progenitor cells” that could become neurons if exposed to growth-stimulating hormones. Would they perform only tasks that require new learning? No one knows. Neural loss is continuous as we age. Older people, however, retain capacity to generate new connections and to keep old ones via mental activity. Major memory loss with age usually indicates illness or injury. My uncle's mind remained clear until his mid-70s, when he suffered small strokes during heart surgery. He began to confuse words. A “lid” instead of a “cork” sealed bottles of wine. Simple addition frustrated him, and he no longer knew the rules of chess. The most common known cause of severe memory loss, or dementia, is Alzheimer's disease—brain lesions first identified by German neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer in 1906. It strikes between 5 and 10 percent of all people over 65 and one-quarter to one-half of those over 85. Genetic mutation is a suspect but accounts for only 10 percent of all cases. “Early-onset” Alzheimer's, which begins around 40 or 50, runs in some families. Some Alzheimer's in older people is associated with defects in another gene that makes a protein, apolipoprotein E, that ferries cholesterol in the bloodstream and helps regenerate nerve cells. No one yet knows how it relates to neural tangles and nerve cell death. Environment may also be significant. Studies of identical twins where one develops Alzheimer's and the other does not provide additional proof that Alzheimer's is a disease and not just the inevitable consequence of aging. Whether genetic or environmental, among primary biological suspects are tau, a protein that may play a part in forming tangles that choke neurons, and amyloid, a protein that sticks to neurons like glue. Amyloid accumulates when neurons, for unknown reasons, begin to generate more than the brain can flush out, forming plaques. No effective treatment exists, although Allen D. Roses, a neurologist who heads the Duke University research team that discovered a gene associated with Alzheimer's, says, “In 10 or 15 years we hope to have a safe medication that a 50-year-old could take every day to prevent Alzheimer's.” If they live long enough, Alzheimer's victims forget how to chew food. Until then, the disease slowly steals the tissue that defines them. A diseased heart can be replaced with another, and life goes on, but our brains, filled with ever shifting collages of memory, define us. “It is,” says one minister who works with people who have Alzheimer's, “almost as though the soul of the person changes.” I stand in the back of the room at a day-care program run by the Greater Palm Beach, Florida, chapter of the Alzheimer's Association. The room is sunny with comfortable chairs. Approximately 20 patients listen as a volunteer reads to them from the morning newspaper. Nothing outward indicates illness, except that they wear name tags and keep looking at their own. “We try to provide mental stimulation,” Mark Cornett of the Alzheimer's Association whispers. I show him a recent newspaper story. An 84-year-old man, exhausted from caring for his Alzheimer's-afflicted wife, killed her and himself. “Maybe people feel as if they're losing whatever makes them human,” I say. Mark shakes his head. “Look around,” he says. “There's a lot of happiness left.” The patients do not remember their spouses or children but know the names of state capitals and other information they learned at a young age. Long-term memory is the last to go. Likewise, the brain may encode music in areas that resist Alzheimer's. Everyone joins hands and sings “I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover” and “Let Me Call You Sweetheart.” A man taps my shoulder. “Have you seen my letter?” he asks, holding it out. Dear Dave, You are in a day-care center. There are many people there who are your friends and will take good care of you. Please cooperate with everyone, and you will have a pleasant day. I will pick you up at 3 o'clock. Jeannette I am going full blast with “when the moon hits your eye” when Dave asks again, “Have you seen my letter?” The moment a conversation ends he has no memory of it. What impresses me most is the dignity people retain. My lunch partner wears a suit and has a neatly trimmed mustache. His expressions suggest a successful business deal. He sounds earnest and sincere, but his sentences are incomprehensible. “It gets 20 to 40 percent just for them to get what they want. They will do the same things as they gave. Then nothing comes out of them.” He touches the window. “If you feel this,” he says, “then you get the idea. Boy, do I get it.” I comfort myself by thinking that such people forget their own deterioration. But Alzheimer's is unforgiving: It allows enough awareness to torment its victims. One man bangs his head on a table. His wife watches, love on her face. She tells me about courtship, raising children, running a business, and then, this. “We're talking about you,” I say to him. “Do you know that?” “Of course,” he says, still banging. “Your wife looks like she wants to give you a big smooch.” He smiles at her and says, “I know.” Then he asks her, “What's happening to me?” I have been seeing quiet miracles: the brain itself, growing medical mastery of it, and, perhaps the greatest, the power of courage and of love. All form the foundation for the new era we are entering. New clinical treatments will emerge amid dissolving distinctions between “physical” and “mental.” Mapmakers will redefine inner geography, forcing us to reexamine how we perceive ourselves and raise our children. At the same time, our brain maps will constantly change as new discoveries challenge old truths. The brain's marvelous adaptability, especially during childhood, is firmly established. This adaptability, coupled with the brain's immeasurable potential, encourages faith in dreams—no matter what our age or life circumstance. Valerie Simpson calls with an update on Matt. He is doing well in third grade—lots of B's and some A's. He gets along well with other children and is happy. Matt can use his right arm better. He still limps, but less. Brain scans show that control over his right arm and leg has settled into the cortical area that controls his left arm and leg—the brain seems to have a strong sense of consistency. He is enjoying school, but there are those who insist that he will never do as well as his contemporaries. They make Valerie angry. “Who's to define the sky for Matthew?” she asks. Who's to define the sky for any of us? Source: National Geographic, June 1995. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Scientists do not completely understand how memory is stored in the human brain. Some researchers believe that short-term and long-term memories reside in separate regions of the brain. In this August 1997 Scientific American article, staff writer Tim Beardsley summarizes the results of studies that have sought to discover which areas of the brain are involved in short-term memory and how that memory is organized. The Machinery of Thought By Tim Beardsley In a darkened basement laboratory on the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., volunteers earn $100 by lying for two hours with their head inside a huge magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine while they gaze at a screen reflected in a mirror. The screen periodically displays black-and-white pictures: some are faces, others scrambled blocks of light and shade. When a face appears on the screen, the subject signals by pressing buttons whether the face is a new one or the same as one that was shown a few seconds earlier as a 'target' to be remembered. As the test proceeds, the MRI machine bombards the volunteer's brain with radio-frequency waves that excite hydrogen atoms in the bloodstream, causing the atoms to emit signals of their own. Later, the machine transforms the resulting electromagnetic cacophony into color-coded maps of oxygen consumption levels throughout the subject's brain. Because increased oxygen consumption results from heightened neural activity, researchers can analyze these brain maps to learn what parts of the brain work hardest when a person recognizes a face. With experiments such as these, researchers are beginning to fathom the neural processes underlying 'working memory'—the limited, short-term store of currently relevant information that we draw on when we comprehend a sentence, follow a previously decided plan of action or remember a telephone number. When we bring to mind the name of Russia's president, for instance, that information is temporarily copied from long-term memory into working memory. Psychological studies have demonstrated that working memory is fundamental to the human ability to reason and make judgments that rely on remembered contextual information. There are compelling humanitarian reasons for understanding working memory. Schizophrenia, one of the most devastating mental illnesses, is believed to be caused in part by a defect of this system. Studies of the molecular basis of working memory 'have implications for drug treatment in mental illness,' says Patricia Goldman-Rakic of Yale University, one of the most prominent investigators of working memory. An intensive research effort has started to produce detailed information about the areas of the brain involved when we engage this vital intellectual faculty and is illuminating the patterns of neural activity that allow it to operate. The important role of specific brain chemicals in working memory is also becoming clear. Yet for all the progress, researchers have still to agree on how working memory is controlled and organized. From Electrodes to Fast MRI The prototypical test for working memory involves what is called delayed choice. An animal or a person signals where some specific cue was previously seen, before an imposed period of waiting. Thus, a monkey might be given a choice of two jars in separate positions and be rewarded for pointing to the one in which it previously saw food placed. The task provides no clue to the correct response at the time of testing, so the monkey must rely on its recollection of the correct location. A related challenge rewards an animal for remembering which of several images it saw presented initially as a target. The NIH volunteers who were recalling faces were engaged in a variant of this test. Technological advances have greatly enhanced researchers' ability to probe the neural underpinnings of such capacities. Investigators began studying cerebral activity in working memory some 40 years ago by inserting electrodes into individual neurons within the brains of monkeys. This method has its limits, however. Although monkey brains have clear anatomical similarities to human brains, the animals' behavior is vastly simpler, making detailed comparisons with human thinking problematic. Lacking language, the animals must be patiently trained over a period of weeks to master tasks that a person would pick up in a minute. Electrode-recording techniques are also ethically unacceptable for use on people. Researchers try to learn which parts of our species' brain do what by studying the effects of damage caused by injury, disease or therapeutic surgery. Yet patients have different medical histories—and their brains vary in exact shape—so interpreting this clinical data is tricky at best. Earlier this decade, positron emission tomography, or PET scanning, made enormous strides by showing which parts of the human brain are busiest when performing different tasks, such as hearing words or speaking. But PET requires exposing the human subjects to radioactive tracers, and to keep radiation doses within acceptable levels, researchers have to use techniques that can resolve brain areas only about a centimeter apart. Also, during a delayed-choice task, PET scans are too slow to distinguish between the neural activity pattern of a target being held in mind and the pattern that follows a few seconds later when the target is recognized. The new technique used at NIH and elsewhere, called functional MRI, can resolve the position of active neurons to about two millimeters and is fast enough to study activity before and after the brain recognizes a cue on a screen. The rapidly improving technique has over the past two years become the state of the art for functional brain imaging. Monkey Puzzle Experiments involving electrodes implanted in monkeys still provide crucial information, however, because they reveal in fine detail and on a millisecond-by-millisecond timetable what happens as these primates respond to cues and rewards. When animals perform such feats of working memory, several brain regions can play a role, but as Joach’n M. Fuster of the University of California at Los Angeles showed in the 1970s, one area that is always involved is the prefrontal cortex.

The prefrontal cortex is a layer of tissue that lies just behind the forehead. With neural connections to almost all the areas of the brain that process sensory information, it is well situated to maintain a flexible store of information relevant to any task at hand. It is also the part of the brain that has grown the most in humans, as compared with monkeys. Monkeys missing some parts of their prefrontal cortex preserve their long-term memory but perform miserably on delayed-choice tests. Humans similarly afflicted suffer a reduced attention span and ability to plan. Fuster and, separately, Kisou Kubota and Hiroaki Niki of the Kyoto Primate Center made electrical recordings from a variety of neurons in the monkey prefrontal cortex, including some that apparently were active only while the animals were holding information in working memory. Subsequently, Goldman-Rakic and her colleagues have explored working memory in monkeys with more sophisticated tests. They established that prefrontal neural activity during a delayed-choice task indeed corresponds well to the functioning of working memory. Goldman-Rakic and her associate Graham Williams have taken the analysis all the way to the subcellular level, showing that receptors for the neurotransmitter dopamine pivotally influence the responsiveness of cells in the prefrontal cortex and their actions in working memory. 'There is no other example I know' of research that spans the gulf between behavior and subcellular function, Goldman-Rakic notes. She and her colleagues have recently shown that administering antischizophrenic drugs to monkeys for six months leads to specific changes in the numbers of two different types of dopamine receptors in that region, further evidence that schizophrenia—or its treatment—alters normal function there. Research by other scientists supports the view that the prefrontal cortex could sustain working memory. Robert Desimone of the National Institute of Mental Health, along with Earl K. Miller, Cynthia Erickson and others, has discovered in the monkey's prefrontal cortex neurons that fire at different rates during the delayed-choice task, depending on the target the animal saw previously. Neurons in other parts of the brain generally 'forget' the target when a distracting stimulus appears—their rate of firing changes. Prefrontal neurons detected by Desimone and his colleagues, in contrast, maintain their rate of activity during a delayed-choice task even after the animal is presented with irrelevant, distracting stimuli. Activity in some prefrontal neurons, then, appears to embody directly the temporary working memory of the appearance of a target the animal is seeking. Other researchers have found prefrontal neurons that seem to maintain locations in working memory: Giuseppe Di Pellegrino of the University of Bologna and Steven Wise of the National Institute of Mental Health have found prefrontal neurons that are busiest when an animal has to remember where it saw a cue. Stimuli fail to excite the same frenzy unless they are in the location that is the current target for the task. Neurons in the prefrontal cortex could thus apparently control how animals respond in a delayed-choice task. Fuster, one of the pioneers in the field, says the prefrontal cortex 'serves the overarching function of the temporal organization of behavior' by driving networks that maintain currently important information in an active state. And neurons in the prefrontal cortex might exert their influence in more subtle ways, too. Besides controlling directly the responses in delayed-choice tests, Desimone believes, the prefrontal cortex might tune the visual and possibly other perceptual systems to the task at hand. 'What's loaded into working memory goes back to sensory processing,' he suggests. Hundreds of experiments with both animals and people have shown that organisms are far more likely to perceive and react to cues relevant to their current needs than to irrelevant stimuli. This effect explains why we are more likely to notice the aroma wafting from a neighbor's grill when we are hungry than just after eating. If Desimone is right, the prefrontal cortex could be responsible for focusing an animal's attention and thus possibly steering awareness. Imaging studies with PET and functional MRI corroborate the evidence from brain injuries that the human prefrontal cortex, like that of monkeys, is central to working memory. Several research groups have now imaged activity in the prefrontal cortex when people remember things from moment to moment. Different tasks may also require various other brain regions closer to the back of the head, but for primates in general, the prefrontal cortex always seems to be busy when target information is kept 'in mind.' The Devil in the Details Having shown that the prefrontal cortex is crucial to working memory, investigators naturally want to understand its internal structure. Goldman-Rakic and her associates at Yale have found evidence that when an animal retains information about a spatial location, the prefrontal activity is confined to a specific subregion. A separate area below it is most active when an animal is remembering the appearance of an object. These findings, together with observations of the anatomy of neural pathways, led Goldman-Rakic to propose that the prefrontal cortex is organized into regions that temporarily store information about different sensory domains: one for the domain of spatial cues, one for cues relating to an object's appearance and perhaps others for various types of cues. There are, moreover, some indications that the human prefrontal cortex may be organized along similar domain-specific lines. A PET study reported last year by Susan M. Courtney, Leslie G. Ungerleider and their colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health found that in humans, as in the monkeys studied earlier by Goldman-Rakic, certain brain areas are especially active during exercises that challenge working memory for visual details and for locations. Moreover, the most active brain regions lie in similar relative positions in both species. Goldman-Rakic's proposal about the organization of the prefrontal cortex argues against the standard view of the various components of working memory. The British psychologist Alan Baddely proposed in 1974 that working memory has a hierarchical structure, in which an 'executive system' in the prefrontal cortex allocates processing resources to separate 'slave' buffers for verbal and spatial information. The memory buffers were supposed to be well behind the prefrontal cortex. But Goldman-Rakic is unconvinced that the brain's executive processes are confined to any particular location. Moreover, in the traditional model, memories organized by domain would lie somewhere behind the prefrontal cortex, not within it. The high-speed imaging capability of functional MRI is now able to help resolve the question. A study that Courtney and Ungerleider and their colleagues published in April in Nature pinpoints the part of the brain that is liveliest while working memory holds an image of a face. That region—the middle part of the prefrontal cortex—has been fingered as the crux of working memory in a variety of studies. Yet the face-recognition task Courtney and company used does not involve any obviously executive functions, Ungerleider notes. Their findings thus contradict the view that only executive functions reside within the prefrontal cortex, but they do fit with Goldman-Rakic's scheme. Similarly, Jonathan D. Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University and his co-workers found a region of the prefrontal cortex partly overlapping the one identified by Courtney that is active while subjects remember letters seen in a sequence. The more the subjects had to remember in the Cohen experiment, the more active their prefrontal regions. So Cohen's result also suggests that working memories are actually stored, in part, in the prefrontal cortex. Domain-specific organization 'is the dominant view' of the prefrontal cortex, Wise says. Wise himself does not subscribe to that dominant view, however. He points, for example, to a study reported in Science in May by Miller and his associates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The researchers recorded from neurons in the prefrontal cortex of monkeys while they solved delayed-choice tasks that required them to remember information about both the appearance and spatial locations of objects. Over half the neurons from which Miller recorded were sensitive to both attributes, a result not expected if domain-specific organization prevails. 'It argues against Goldman-Rakic's view that identity and location are processed in different parts of the prefrontal cortex,' Miller says. Goldman-Rakic responds that she and her colleagues have recently found hundreds of cells in part of the prefrontal cortex that respond selectively even in untrained animals to objects or faces—further evidence, she asserts, that the information in that area is organized in part by sensory domain. 'We do feel the evidence is overwhelming that the functions of neurons in the prefrontal cortex are dictated in large part by the neurons' sensory inputs,' she says. Moreover, Goldman-Rakic believes technical problems cast doubt on Miller's experiment. She maintains the targets he used were too close to the center of the visual field, which could produce spurious firings. Keeping Self-Control Michael Petrides of McGill University, another leading figure in the field, has mounted a different challenge to the standard view. Petrides's studies point to two distinct levels of processing, both within the prefrontal cortex. In his view the levels are distinguished primarily not by whether they maintain information about place or objects, as Goldman-Rakic holds, but rather by the abstractness of the processing they perform. The lower level in the hierarchy—physically lower in the brain as well as conceptually lower—retrieves data from long-term memory storage elsewhere. The higher 'dorsolateral' level, in contrast, monitors the brain's processes and enables it to keep track of multiple events. This higher monitoring level is called on when subjects are asked, for example, to articulate a random list of each number from 1 to 10, with no repetition: a subject has to remember each digit already chosen. Petrides finds that both humans and monkeys with lesions in the dorsolateral part of the prefrontal cortex are crippled in their ability to monitor their own mental processes: they perform badly on special tests he has devised that require subjects to remember their earlier responses during the test. He also cites PET studies of healthy humans that find heightened activity in the same region when subjects are performing the tasks he uses. The finding is the same whether the tasks involve spatial cues or not. 'The material does not seem to matter—the process is crucial,' Petrides says. Other researchers have found evidence to support the notion that the higher parts of the prefrontal cortex are key for self-monitoring. In an experiment by Mark D'Esposito and his associates at the University of Pennsylvania, volunteers performed either one or both of two tasks that, separately, did not require working memory. One task required subjects to say which words in a list read aloud were the names of vegetables, whereas the other asked them to match a feature of a geometric figure seen in different orientations. Functional MRI showed that the dorsoventral prefrontal cortex became active only when subjects attempted both tasks simultaneously. And in April at a meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, D'Esposito presented a meta-analysis of 25 different neuroimaging studies. The analysis supported Petrides's general notion that tasks involving more computation involve higher regions of the prefrontal cortex. 'It was amazing that this came out,' D'Esposito says. D'Esposito's analysis also confirmed earlier indications that humans, far more than monkeys, represent different types of information in different halves of the brain. The meta-analysis did not, however, detect the upper/lower distinction between spatial and object working memory that Goldman-Rakic espouses. Asymmetry of the human hemispheres is becoming apparent to other researchers as well. John D. E. Gabrieli and his colleagues at Stanford University have used functional MRI to study the brains of volunteers who were solving pictorial puzzles such as those often found on intelligence tests. The puzzles were of three types. One group was trivial, requiring the subject simply to select a symbol identical to a sample. A second group was a little harder: people had to select a figure with a combination of features that was absent from an array of sample figures. The third group contained more taxing problems that required analytical reasoning. Gabrieli's study sheds some light on the debate over the organization of the prefrontal cortex. When volunteers pondered the intermediate class of tasks, which most resembled the tasks other investigators have used when studying working memory, the right side of the higher part of the prefrontal cortex was prominently active. Moreover, the activity was in areas that other researchers have found to be used when cues about spatial location are stored. This result fits Goldman-Rakic's idea that working memory for spatial location is stored in the higher regions of the prefrontal cortex, because these intermediate tasks all demanded that subjects visualize features in different locations. When the volunteers in Gabrieli's experiment worked on the hard problems, however, the prefrontal cortices of the subjects became even more active, on the left as well as the right side. The added complexity produced a pattern of activation like that Petrides has found during his tests of self-monitoring. Gabrieli's data thus provide some support for Petrides's theory of a higher executive level in the prefrontal cortex, as well as for Goldman-Rakic's view that domain-specific regions exist there. 'There are definitely domain-specific places,' Gabrieli says. 'And there are others that rise above that.' In other words, both sides in the debate over domain-specific organization of the prefrontal cortex may have a point. Yet in June, Matthew F. S. Rushworth of the University of Oxford and his colleagues reported in the Journal of Neuroscience that monkeys with large lesions in their lower prefrontal cortex could still perform well on delayed-choice tests. The finding casts new doubt on the theory that object working memory resides there and seems to support Petrides. It may take years before the outstanding questions about the prefrontal cortex are settled and the operation of the brain's executive functions are pinned down to everyone's satisfaction. 'If you put a theory out, people will attack it,' Goldman-Rakic muses. 'Everyone is contributing.' And the modus operandi of the brain's decision-making apparatus is slowly becoming visible. 'We are getting,' Goldman-Rakic observes, 'to the point where we can understand the cellular basis of cognition.' Source: Reprinted with permission. Copyright © August 1997 by Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Never Insult a real religion man (Holy): In accordance to what I have gone through & wrote in this CD, studying the religions history, studying those behind the shadows, studying what kind of many people in life & their believes (action reaction) & (causes caused by causalities that each cause has a variety of causes), studying peace & war history, studying movies & learning from. I reached to a definite conclusion, that there should not be any war between religions & those who causes such corruptions having lack of information about God even & Satan been plying with their brains. Christianity to be respected by all religions & is a must. Jesus Christ of Nazareth is not only a profit but also is an angel. Soul definition is there in all religions & those who believe in any religion suppose to respect souls. God the one who created Jesus from mother called marry without the influence of a father but by a holy spirit. This Jesus was there & yet to come as it is written. This Jesus belongs to all mankind. Once a lady came to Jesus they told him that she's prostitution a hour! She kneeled before Jesus & cried deeply with so many tears over his feet's. She started to wipe her tears with her hair. Jesus said, stand lady, God just blessed you & forgiven, go & sin no more. They said, who is he to speak on behalf God? The question is, her sins were forgiven & she became without any sins. Was that a blessing or a punishment to her? What do you think! This is the answer. God is angry guys. This Earth of ours turned 11 times since the year of 2000, I was there at that time as I am now. Suffering from satellites that plays with my brain, entire body & destiny other than people brains & their talk Bla Bla Bla. Trying to find my way in life just like any of you. Be aware from the unknown. Be good to your souls for God to remain. Thank you & God bless. By: Nabil Zegord Konz Kurt Polaski Satellite scans the indoor human brain & they broadcast in Satellite TV Channels & Radio on the spot of what comes to the indoor human brain & sound matching mixing along with char’s effect to use eyes & mouths of actors & actresses or singers on screen to fool around with human soul.And later on in News Papers as well! Using block on the brain where ever goes & misusing their secret weapon of NASA Package “Rain Brain Scan, dynamic eyes & tele-transport” zoom with rays & waves from above space sky acting as God’s & involving the surrounding people by tele-transport “input-output data from brain to brains using our skulls & minds to start wondering to start bla bla about each others to create corruptions & to act as God’s as well”. They can trap us all & they are in command. Who are they? They are Satellites Net Works. Umbrella of what? In whose law they to do this? Where is the truth? It is around the globe “world wide” as if war of extermination of all populations of all nations. I call them Satanic Net Works to scan our pasts, present & our destiny in life. People to scan on people brains as if living in electro magnetic field! God to help us all. They made us to live in fake life. Assuming electronic bomb or some virus of different types in all times took over our brains & bodies. What a slavery time for us to live in it in the 21st century! حقل التنويم المغنطيسى بواسطة الأقمار الصناعيه لعمل الشغب بين المواطنين وأخذ الأسرار من العقول الإنسانيه وبثها على الهواء مباشره لأى منطقه كانت ومشاركتها مع أقمر صناعيه أخرى وحتى فى داخل بيوت الناس. وكلهم مع سبق الإصرار والترصد. إنه لفعل الشيطان. فايروس الشيطان. سياسة تطفيش وقتل متعمد. أى رب؟ أى دين؟ أى قانون وأى سلام فى مجتمع متعدد الأصول الوراثيه المتجنسه ومختلف الجنسيات الساكنه بالمجتمع بعقول متشابكه بالشعور الذهنى ومداخلات الأصوات؟ (لعبه الشيطان والشياطين) فرأس الحكمه مخافة الشيطان والشياطين ومحبة الله. وكأننا مقيدون بخيوط الشيطان والشياطين ولا فرق بين عربى وعجمى إلا بالتقوى فهل الإنسان مخير ولا مسير؟ أرواح الناس مش لعبه بدول العالم أجمع. هذا هو الخطر الحقيقى العالمى لكل المسكونه. فعقل الإنسان وقلب الإنسان بهما كهرباء. فلماذا زياده الكهرباء فى جسم الإنسان وتخويفه من الموت دائما؟ فهذا هو الإرهاب. عالم الشيطان والإجرام والتكبر على رب العباد وزراعه الخوف المستمر (التشرد والتشريد). حرب الإباده والتشكك والتشكيك. أين هو الإنسان أغلى ما نملك؟ وأنتم ماذا وكلنا عائلات؟ الخارى والقارىء واحد وطعه قايمه ومفاخره وعلى إيش يا حسره لا وخاوى كمان. أهلا وسهلا بكم فى الأردن وأنستم وشرفتم كلكم. الأردن أولا وكلنا الأردن. شبكات الأقمار الصناعيه التجسسيه هى الفيروسات العالميه. نزرع الحب واالسلام ويزرعوا فينا الخوف الدائم على طول بسجن منزلى (بعقر داره) ومن ثم (زنجا زنجا, دار دار, بيت, بيت) مع تعذيب نفسى وجسدى ووجدانى وروحى مبرح بأى حق بأى قانون بإستعمار الروح البشريه وإستغلالها. كل العقول فى خلاط! ماذا يبقى بعد الخلط؟ وكم خلاط؟ وكل عقل يهوس فينا فلماذا الملامه حتى ونحن فى بيوتنا وتعذيبنا من خلال التلفزيون؟ كل هذا ليه وحياة الإنسان قصيره. وما ذنبى أنا بهذ كله؟ كلها كفر بكفر وأين إحترام الله والأديان وقانون الخلق والخالق؟ فهذا أسوء الحروب بتاريخ البشريه. فالأسى ما بتنسى. ذكريات عذاب بتاريخ العقل المتواصل (عذاب متواصل حين التذكر). فهذا الخوف ذكرى متواصله بعقل الإنسان. أما من ناحيه التلفزيون فلماذ نصدق ما نراه أو نسمعه عندما يكون متصل ببرامج إلكترونيه وأصوات مستفزه لأهل البيت مع مساعده أقمار صناعيه تجسسيه مشتركه مستفزه شيطانيه تدخل فى عقل الإنسان وأخذ الذكريات؟ بتعذيب الإنسان بعذاب القبر وسكرات الموت وإختلال توازن العقل والأذن الوسطى. شياطين كانوا أو ألاهات مصيرهم نار جهنم. فخ بعد فخ! على طول كمان! أين الوطن والإنتماء؟ وكله هات وهات! كلها خراب بيوت بخراب. فأين الثقه بين الناس وعوائلهم؟ فهذا هو العار الذى سجل بالتاريخ. إستفزاز الروح الإنسانيه! ده يبقى أيه يا عرب؟ إبر تخديريه وعلى طول! وما دخلى أنا بالملك أوالملكه أو الحكومه أو الوزراء أو الشعب؟ لا أحب مشاركه أفكارى! وكلهم بعقولهم يستعملون الحاسه االسادسه وغير الهوس الذى به يشاركون أفكارى غير المسبات والكلام الغير لائق عنى وعن الأردن وكل شىء فيها بالهمس المتواصل والممحنه الجنسيه عن طريق الفكر وإستعمال الصفن بعقلى ومكانى وبمبدأى بحياتى وكلهم ألاهات. اللعبه مكشوفه عالميا. إيمانى بربى وبالسلام العالمى. Today Tuesday, June 24, 2014 getting up from fully tensioned sleep by the surrounding voices from the neighbors with less pain in the head after being targeted by some stroke or strike to my brain during sleep. I felted & it hurt me much just like burning the fuses in the brain by huge electric choke. Butchers still damaging my brain & with threatening whispers. Still wondering why they did this. It is a terror activity. Killing or trying to kill people during their sleep, just because thinking or dreaming or remembering. Autohypnosis, hypnosis, hypnotism by electro magnetic radiation field combining brains even to share with mine. All are guilty in this case. This is a terror activities all times (SATAN VIRUS) & many times same tries to my head & heart. Still I'm having pain in the brain. Still hearing voices from previous relationships & some might be recorded voices. How should I know? They bring me to think about them. Who is judging & punishing a human brain? The question is did they all got hurt as me last night at almost 1:00 am? What did I do to get it last night? This is fear at home. Where is home land once all bringing me to full tension all times while & at home alone? This is Satanic & Satan work from above Electronic Harassment & from surrounding brains. Memories remains or wanting to delete my memories or formatting it by doing so (Boom Boom Sounds even in neighborhoods every day!). They create fear to brains, hearts & then to entire body. Who is gaining? They creating hopeless life as if there is no tomorrow to live for. Sky Nets & Surrounding Brain Nets is the virus. All of it is traps. What I got to do with any of King or Queen or Government or Ministers or people? I don’t like brain sharing or brain connections or whispers! I like to live my normal life. Once all creating this! Life of Harassment. What I got to do with them or with any of it? Judging my brain! Go to hell all of you, creating me what? What on-off , comes & goes radiation from above! Strokes & strikes! For what? Hitting my head while sleeping! Fuck you. Welcome to Jordan. One thing left to speak about, Those who dies by such Electronic Harassment from above satellites & from surrounding whispers & people bla bla what is their Insurance? What Insurance companies can do? Let them think bout. & those death certificates been issued by doctors! Let them think bout. Why they don’t mention the real cause of death about those who died before us once strokes & strikes targeting their heads & hearts? Till now I have pain in the brain since last two days. Such shocks & whispers can create what? • شلل نصفي [n] hemiplegia • شلل مزدوج [n] diplegia • شلل رعاشي [n] Parkinson, Parkinson's disease • شلل رباعي [n] quadriplegia • شلل الأطفال [n] polio, poliomyelitis • شلل أحادي [n] monoplegia • الشلل المخي [n] cerebral pals • الشلل السفلي [n] paraplegia • شَلَليّ [adj] paralytic • مصاب بالشلل [adj] paralyzed As well as madness. • جلطة دمويّة [n] blood clot In brains & in hearts! & entire body due to middle ear the compass of the human. Who is doing this to humanity? Killers, Butchers, beasts & Predators. Lets say my insurance Amount is 500,000,000 Billions not Millions (Five hundred millions billions) USA$ worth & when I die this amount goes to UN Budget because I believe in God & in peace! Killing me fucking shit terrorists! I also having family, they can do the same. What about you all & your families? Any individual can do the same. Its my life not yours. Whispers still! For how long? Stop sticking to my brain & stick to yours. Later on people wants their rights, revenge & compensations. Would it stop once started? Yes brain suckers, whispers & subjects creators? All of you are guilty. Network of Satanic. Once brain a connection all brains is shit due to electro-magnetic Radiation field & everything is shit. I call it Satan Virus in your brains. Stop focusing on me. I got nothing to do with any brain of yours. Stop hurting me shit brains. Brain Courts on a daily bases! What is God, what is religion, what is law, what is Judge, what is lawyer or advocate in such cases? All are guilty & all are Godless. Like saying life of fake, harassment & jungle with much of traps & trappers. Once I'm connected with many brains from all over, I used to hear that I a native son. A human self respect is a National Security. The whole thing is shiting on you all. Where is a normal life of facts & logic with God, love, trust & peace? Umbrella of what? delusion, fantasy, illusion, phantasm, phantasm Of deadly mafia of virus creators. Creating War, corruptions & much of misunderstandings. Who is under attack? & who has the right to judge a human brain? & I also used to her, yes baby we will build you a nice fortune while I was under attack since the year of 2000. I used to say fuck you killer with cold blood. What I'm afraid of is all are killers. And all learning from my brain. Would any court in this planet agrees with terror activates & terrorists? This umbrella creating no where to go & no where to hide. All in danger & everything in danger. Stop approaching my brain or my location. Shit Apes. Honesty speaking, God remains the greatest the only hope for tomorrow. Understand how to protect your selves & your families from SATAN Work. Where is a normal home land once they are living under this Umbrella of what? Yes Dead Skulls in the Predator movie are we still living in it? Yes courts! & Hollywood movies & many songs from all over explaining it all. They also guilty or victims? What business with Satan work mafias, Zionists, piracy? Nerve system always under attack? For how long? Life time shit Apes? Release me at once before you all lose more than what you can think about. Approaching to human conscious & Judging? Brain hacking? All of you are thieves & Butchers. Doing this for what brain suckers? Is this a human nature? What I can do? Let go, life like this is waste. Stop bringing me into tension & stop creating fear in me. I did not ask for any fortune. Plus not interested to share with bank accounts that don’t have any owners. (Spam Emails). Stop wasting my time brains. Get lost shit Umbrella. Nice Business? I'm not apart of it. Leave me alone. And I got nothing to do with it shit brains or any of your business. I'm trying to live my life. Yes Gods? Can I live my life or not? Who any among any of you can compensate my loses from a long time shit Satan network & still. Welcome to Jordan.

Bohemia History ENG

My origin from: Bohemia (Czech. Cechy; German Böhmen), historical region of central Europe and former kingdom, forming roughly the westernmost two-thirds of what is now the Czech Republic. It is bounded by Poland on the north, the region of Moravia on the east, Austria on the south, and Germany on the west and northwest. Bohemia (Czech, Cechy; German, B?hmen), historical region of central Europe and former kingdom, forming roughly the westernmost two-thirds of what is now the Czech Republic (formerly part of Czechoslovakia), and covering an area about 52,060 sq km (20,100 sq mi). It is bounded by Poland on the north, the region of Moravia on the east, Austria on the south, and Germany on the west and north-west. Bohemia is a plateau surrounded by lofty mountain ranges, namely, the Bohemian Forest, the Erzgebirge, the Bohemian-Moravian Heights, and the Riesengebirge. The main rivers are the Elbe, known locally as the Labe, and its tributaries, the Vltava and the Ohre. Agriculture, manufacturing, and mining are the main sources of economic wealth. The chief crops are rye, hops, sugar beet, and wheat. The principal industries produce iron and steel, cars, chemicals, foodstuffs, machinery, and textiles. The main industrial centres are Prague, Plze?, and Liberec. Bohemia has large deposits of coal; graphite, iron ore, silver, and uranium are also mined. The name Bohemia is derived from the Boii, a Celtic people who inhabited the area around the 5th century BC. The Boii were expelled by the Marcomanni, a Germanic tribe, about the 1st century AD. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, Slavic settlers, and later the Avars, occupied Bohemia. During the 9th century Christianity was introduced to the region, which was then part of the Moravian Kingdom. The first Bohemian (Czech) dynasty, the Premysl family, came to power in the 10th century. In 950 Bohemia was forced to recognize German supremacy and become part of the Holy Roman Empire. From 1310 to 1437 the country was ruled by kings of the House of Luxembourg. During the latter part of this period, the Hussites, a Bohemian religious group that in many ways prefigured the Protestants of the 16th century, rebelled against the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. This led to foreign intervention and a long period of warfare, known as the Hussite Wars. The Bohemians were forced to accept a compromise agreement with the Church in 1436. Most of the fundamental political and religious issues involved in the struggle remained unsolved, but the Hussite movement stimulated nationalist sentiments among the Bohemians, checking an earlier trend towards Germanization. A line of Hungarian kings ruled Bohemia between 1471 and 1526. During this period the religious situation was tense but quiet. In 1526 Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I of the Habsburg family was elected king of Hungary and Bohemia. Under Habsburg rule, which lasted until 1918, the history of Bohemia was merged with that of Austria. During the Reformation (1517-1648) the Catholic Habsburgs were intolerant of the growing Protestant movement in Bohemia. An incident known as the Defenestration of Prague, when angry Czechs threw two representatives of the Habsburgs out of a window, was the immediate cause of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). The Battle of the White Mountain (1620) restored the Habsburgs and was followed by the merciless extirpation of Protestantism, the suppression of all national privileges, and the enforced use of German as the national language. The reforms of Joseph II (reigned 1765-1790) brought about a revival of nationalism in Bohemia; after 1848, when a nationalist rebellion was swiftly suppressed, the struggle continued for Czech autonomy within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With the collapse of that empire after World War I and the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, Bohemia became a province of the new republic. On January 1, 1993, Bohemia became part of the independent Czech Republic. Bohemian Brethren, religious society established in Prague about the middle of the 15th century and originally composed of remnants of the Hussites. They were also known as Unitas Fratrum. In the 1450s the Brethren settled on the borders of Silesia and Moravia. In the 1600s the group was almost extinguished by forced conversion to Roman Catholicism during the Counter-Reformation. The Brethren survived, however, and in 1722 some migrated, settling in Herrnhut in Saxony, on the estates of the religious reformer Nikolaus von Zinzendorf. Bohemian Forest (German, B?hmerwald), highland region, rising mainly along the border between the Czech Republic and Germany, and also in Austria. Component ranges of the heavily forested region include the ?umava in Bohemia and the Oberpf?lzer Wald in Germany; the highest point is Grosser Arber (1,457 m/4,780 ft) in Germany. The Regen and Vltava (German, Moldau) rivers rise in the Bohemian Forest, and the region is noted for its glassmaking. Bohemian Language. See Czech Language. Czech Language, language spoken by most of the inhabitants of the Czech Republic written in the Roman alphabet. It forms, together with Slovak, Polish, and High and Low Sorbian (called also Wendish), the Western branch of the Slavic languages. Slovak, the language of Slovakia, closely resembles Czech. Both Czechs and Slovaks used the Czech literary language until the middle of the 19th century, when a separate Slovak literary language, based on a dialect of central Slovakia, was created. In current usage, the two languages show only slight phonetic and syntactic differences. Slovak has a somewhat more archaic sound system, whereas Czech is more conservative in its inflections. Czech differs from some other Slavic languages in the characteristic sentence intonation, the first-syllable word accent, the absence of elision, the use of the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic, the exceptionally free word order, and the prominence given to vocalic r and l. The quality of a ringing, staccato speech distinguishes it from other Western Slavic languages. Before the 11th century Czechs wrote in Old Church Slavonic, the first Slavic literary language, which had been developed by SS Cyril and Methodius for missionary work in Greater Moravia (now Slovakia and the eastern region of the Czech Republic). In the 11th century two important linguistic events took place: In the West, including Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia, Latin replaced Old Church Slavonic for Church and literary use, and the regional Slavic dialects began to develop into separate languages. After centuries in which Czech was a despised and suppressed peasant tongue, the 14th-century Bohemian religious reformer Jan Hus standardized Czech spelling. His stature as a national hero endowed the peasant vernacular he used with a new dignity. The work of Hus was consolidated and advanced during the 15th and 16th centuries by the Unity of Brethren, a Protestant sect later known as the Moravian Brethren. The writings of this sect stabilized the Czech language and determined its future as a literary language. By 1593, the Czech bible translation became the standard of usage. Except for the growth of vocabulary, the Czech and Slovak languages have not changed significantly since the 16th century. Modern Czech has seven noun cases, three persons in the verb, three tenses (past, present, and future) and three moods (indicative, imperative, and conditional). zech Literature, writings in the Czech language or in the related Old Church Slavonic language. Czech literature, one of the oldest of the vernacular literatures of central and eastern Europe, may be divided into six chronological periods. 865-1410 Czech literature began with the introduction of Christianity into Moravia about 863 by Cyril and Methodius, the apostles of the Slavs. The earliest extant literary monument (11th century) is the hymn Hospodine, pomiluj ny (Lord, have mercy upon us). Latin writing, including an important chronicle of Bohemia by the monk Cosmas, prevailed during the next two centuries. At the beginning of the 14th century a Czech translation was made of the Latin Alexandreid, a life of Alexander the Great, by the 12th-century French poet Gautier de Lille. A rhymed Czech chronicle marked by strong nationalist feeling appeared about the same time, along with several religious legends in Czech verse, culminating in a great verse Life of St Catherine. A verse dialogue, The Groom and the Student, full of colourful details of medieval daily life, and a novel with a romantic plot, Tkadlecek (The Weaver), appeared about 1400. 1410-1620 This period is marked by the Hussite religious reformation carried out by the Bohemian preacher Jan Hus and his followers. Hus, an ardent nationalist who wrote popular theological works in Czech, demonstrated his concern for the language by writing such studies as his De Orthographia Bohemica (Czech Orthography, c. 1412). His follower Petr Chelcick? wrote S?t v?ry (The Net of Faith, 1440), a satire of contemporary life. Chelcick?'s followers formed the Church later known as the Moravian Brethren. Jan Blahoslav, bishop of the Brethren, a poet and writer on musical and poetic theory, was the author of a scholarly Czech Grammar. Along with others, he took part in the compilation of the Czech Protestant Kralice Bible (1579-1593), which served as a literary model of classical Czech. Printing was introduced into Bohemia in 1468, and during the next 150 years humanism and Renaissance culture spread throughout the Czech lands. The outstanding humanist writer was perhaps Daniel Adam of Veleslav?n, who combined the talents of a historian, philologist, orator, and publisher. His most famous work is a Historical Calendar (1575). 1620-1774 In 1620 the Czechs lost political independence, and in 1627 their new king, Ferdinand II, Holy Roman emperor, made Roman Catholicism the state religion of Bohemia. The outstanding writer of these times was Jan Komensky, latin name John Amos Comenius, the last bishop of the Moravian Brethren. In exile, Komensky continued the suppressed Hussite tradition, also writing in Czech and Latin on a great variety of subjects from philology to philosophy. Most important were his works on educational theory and methods, and his textbooks, including Janua Linguarum Reserata (The Gates of Language Unlocked, 1631) and The Great Didactic (1628-1632; trans. 1896, 1931). In Bohemia itself, under Habsburg rule, a "dark time" set in during which the use of the Czech language in writing and printing diminished greatly; Czech nationalist sentiment was almost totally repressed, and society became Germanized. In 1774 Maria Theresa, queen of Hungary and Bohemia, decreed the use of German as the language of instruction. National Revival (1774-1918) The forcible suppression of the Czech language produced results entirely contrary to those intended by the Habsburg rulers. Czech nationalism revived, and writers took a renewed interest in the history of their country, stressing kinship with the other Slav peoples. The leader in the study of the Czech language and history was Josef Dobrovsk?. He collected extensive lexicographic materials and established the richness of classical Czech. Josef Jungmann compiled a great Czech dictionary (1834-1839) that helped lay the foundations for the development of modern Czech literature. In 1811 he translated the epic Paradise Lost by the English poet John Milton, and his translation served as a model for the new poetry. Another important writer was the Slovak pastor J?n Koll?r, famous for his Sl?vy dcera (Daughter of Sl?va, 1824); this collection of sonnets provided an ideology and romantic inspiration for the Czech Revival movement. Franti?ek Ladislav Celakovsk? wrote romantic poems in the style of Czech and Russian folk songs. Franti?ek Palack?, called the father of the nation, wrote a monumental history of Bohemia (1836-1867) in five volumes. The greatest poet of the period was Karel Hynek M?cha. His romantic narrative poem M?j (May, 1836) evokes the tragic paradox of young love and death. Karel Jaromir Erben wrote tragic folk ballads. Karel Havl?cek Borovsk? laid the foundations of modern Czech journalism and criticism. He attacked Austrian absolutism in his newspaper articles and in humorous satirical poems. Bo"ena Nèmcov? created the forms of the Czech prose tale and novel, blending the influence of the rural stories of the French novelist George Sand with her own observations of Czech peasant life. The Austrian political reaction of the 1850s discouraged the growth of Czech literature, but during the 1860s a new national school of writers emerged led by Jan Neruda, who created the newspaper essay as a medium for education of his people. Neruda also wrote cryptic, ironic poetry and colourful stories about the life of the Prague middle classes. The next generation of Czech writers split into two camps. The Parnassians, led by the great poet Jaroslav Vrchlick? (pseudonym of Emil Frida), introduced exotic foreign themes and subjects into Czech literature. The Nationalists, led by the poet Svatopluk Cech, continued the predominantly nationalistic and patriotic tradition. This conflict was resolved in the following generation by the great Czech thinker and political leader Thom?? Garrigue Masaryk and by the leading Czech critic Franti?ek Xaver ?alda. Masaryk laid down the principles of a new realism, which, while avoiding the excesses of both the nationalist and Parnassian groups, would offer Czechs a realistic sense of their national aspirations and possibilities. ?alda introduced avant-garde trends, including Symbolism, into Czech literature. Czech Symbolist and impressionistic poetry was cultivated by such writers as Otokar Brezina (pseudonym of V?clav Jebav?, a poet of mystical, ecstatic visions, and Anton?n Sova, who wrote a highly musical and at the same time spiritualized poetry. National Independence (1918-1938) After 1918, with the establishment of an independent Czechoslovak republic, a note of social optimism became evident in Czech literature. Stanislav Kostka Neumann, Jir? Wolker, and Josef Hora devoted their poetry to proletarian themes. In 1924 Vitèzslav Nezval and Franti?ek Halas founded a new movement that they called poetism, which emphasized "pure" poetry devoid of social content. The novel of this period was marked by experiments in form and an emphasis on social problems. Marie Majerov? dealt with workers and the industrial scene, and Marie Pujmanov? specialized in portrayals of adolescent psychology. Jaroslav Ha?ek achieved international success with his The Good Soldier Schweik (4 vols., 1920-1923, trans. 1930), a bitterly satirical account of the adventures of a Czech dog-catcher serving in the Austrian Imperial Army during World War I. Perhaps the greatest writer of this period, as well as the best known abroad, was Karel Capek, famous for his fantastic dramas The Makropoulos Affair (1922; trans. 1927), an ironic discussion of human immortality, and R.U.R. (1921; trans. 1923), which first popularized robots. His science-fiction novel Krakatit (1924; trans. 1948) foresaw the explosive use of atomic energy. Capek later turned to exploring the psychology of average citizens and their relation to society in a trilogy of novels: Hordubal (1933; trans. 1934), Meteor (1934; trans. 1935), and An Ordinary Life (1934; trans. 1936). Another outstanding writer of fiction in this period was Vladislav Vancura, who experimented with Surrealism in the novel. 1938-1968 Literature suffered during the German occupation (1938-1945) of Czechoslovakia. Stultification as a result of Russian domination occurred after the coup d'état of 1948, which established the rule of the Communist party in Czechoslovakia. Previous Western cultural influences were thereafter attacked as "formalist", "decadent", or "cosmopolitanist". Czech writers were mobilized to advocate the building of a socialist regime and socialist society. After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, these controls were relaxed somewhat, and a period of liberalization began in the arts. One consequence of this change was a lively interest in the writings of the Austrian writer Franz Kafka, who had lived in Prague, and whose works became a principal source of influence on the new Czech writing. This tendency to liberalization reached its culmination in 1968, with the celebrated "Prague Spring" and its short-lived flowering in the arts, including fiction, drama, and the cinema. In his novel The Axe (1966; trans. 1973), Ludv?k Vacul?k produced a sensitive study of the writer's own spiritual development amid the apparently insoluble contradictions of a socialist society. Well-known abroad was the dramatist V?clav Havel, whose plays, such as The Garden Party (1963; trans. 1969) and The Memorandum (1965; trans. 1967), used the style of absurd comedy to mock socialist bureaucracy and bureaucratic language. Imprisoned from 1979 to 1983 and again in 1989 for his anti-government stance, Havel was president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 to 1992 and was elected president of the Czech Republic in 1993. After the "Prague Spring" The flowering of liberalism came to an end in August 1968, with the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Some writers subsequently emigrated and continued to publish abroad. Josef ?kvoreck? tells of his fellow Czech immigrants in Canada in The Engineer of Human Souls (trans. 1977); Milan Kundera went to France in 1975. Such novels as The Joke (1967; trans. 1969) and The Farewell Party (1976; trans. 1976) are witty and ironic treatments of the paradoxes of modern life and love. Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (trans. 1984) is a blackly humorous story of modern Prague. Jaroslav Seifert, considered one of Czechoslovakia's greatest poets, remained in his homeland. In 1984 he became the first Czech to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. His first book of poetry, City in Tears, appeared in 1920; Clothed in Light (1940), about wartime Prague, is his most popular work. Because of his opposition to the political regime, his later works-such as The Plague Monument (trans. 1980) and The Casting of Bells (trans. 1983; revised 1984)-were available only in underground printings or abroad in translation. Seifert's memoirs were published in Czech in Canada in 1981. As the pace of political change quickened in the USSR and Eastern Europe during the 1980s, Communist parties throughout the region began to relinquish power. In Czechoslovakia the Communist party stepped down at the end of 1989 due in large part to massive public demonstrations against the regime. Vaclav Havel, the famed playwright and leader of the opposition group, Civic Forum, encouraged these demonstrations. In December 1989 the Czechoslovak people rewarded his leadership by electing him president of the republic. Havel's government removed the censorship common under the Communists. As a result, previously underground literature flourished. In 1993 despite Havel's attempts to the contrary, Czechoslovakia was dissolved and the independent republics of Slovakia and the Czech lands emerged. Elizabeth (of Bohemia) (1596-1662), queen consort of Frederick, King of Bohemia (1619-1620), born in Fife, Scotland, daughter of James VI, King of Scotland, later James I of England. At the age of 17 she was married to Frederick V, elector of the Palatinate. Frederick, a Protestant, was chosen King of Bohemia in 1619. In the following year he was defeated and deposed by the Roman Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, a rival claimant to the Bohemian throne. Frederick and Elizabeth were forced to seek asylum abroad, eventually settling in The Hague. After her husband's death in 1632, Elizabeth was active in the Protestant cause on the Continent, but she finally returned to England, where she died and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Because of her long struggle, many in Protestant Europe regarded her as a heroine. Her 13 children included Sophia, electress of Hanover, who was the mother of George I of England. Bohemond I (c. 1057-1111), prince of Antioch, leader of the First Crusade, and founder of a Crusader dynasty in Syria. The eldest son of Robert Guiscard, Norman duke of Apulia and Calabria in southern Italy, Bohemond distinguished himself in a war (1081-1085) against the Byzantine Empire. After Robert Guiscard's death (1085), the Norman domain was divided between Bohemond and his brother. Bohemond joined the First Crusade to try to extend his possessions. As long as he remained with the Crusaders, Bohemond was their leader, although he was not officially recognized as such. Antioch was captured in June 1098, and Bohemond received it as a principality. He was captured by the Muslims in 1100 and held prisoner until 1103. After suffering a great defeat the following year, he returned to western Europe to seek help. During his stay in France, he married the daughter of Philip I of France. By 1107 he was head of a large army of adventurers who had been attracted by his military renown, but instead of returning to Antioch, he led his forces against the Byzantine Empire, which had restricted the expansion of his principality after 1098. His attack was unsuccessful, and Bohemond was forced to accept a peace that made him a vassal of the Byzantine emperor. Bohemond's descendants ruled Antioch until 1268 and Tripoli from 1187 to 1289. John (of Bohemia) (1296-1346), king of Bohemia (1310-1346), the son of Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg. He became Count of Luxembourg in 1309. In the struggle between Austria and Bavaria for the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, John won a victory for Emperor Louis IV of Bavaria in the Battle of Mühldorf in 1322. From 1333 to 1335, John waged an unsuccessful campaign in Italy on behalf of the Guelphs. He became blind around 1340 but continued his active life. He was killed while assisting the French against the English at the Battle of Crécy. His son became Holy Roman emperor as Charles IV and king of Bohemia as Charles I. Louis II (of Hungary and Bohemia), in Hungarian, Lajos II (1506-1526), King of Hungary (1516-1526) and Bohemia (1509-1526), son and successor of King Ladislas II of Bohemia and Hungary. Louis assumed actual control of state affairs in 1516, but he was not formally declared king until he came of age in 1521. Weak both in physique and in character, he was an ineffectual sovereign. He surrendered Belgrade to the Turks in 1521, lost the Battle of Moh?cs to them in 1526, and probably drowned in the Danube escaping after the battle.

What a big mafia still going on!

Love you all & God Bless. Bye.