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... GLOBAL NEWS ... NEWS at a recycling plant, the bottle radios its "last words" to a robotic separator that lifts it from a pile of plastic and newspaper and tosses it into a container of broken gla At the heart of this scenario is a little device called a "radiofrequency identifica- tion tag"—a silicon chip that boots up and transmits a signal when exposed to the energy field of a nearby reader. The ulti- mate goal is to put a radio tag on virtually every manufactured item, each tracked by a network of millions of readers in factories, trucks, warehouses and homes, transform- ing huge supply chains into intelligent, self-managing entities. Manufacturers hope to use these tags as a next-generation barcode, linking manufac- tured items to online databases containing product-specific information. Steve Halliday, Vice-President of Technology at AIM, a trade association for manufacturers of tagging technology, said: "If I talk to companies and ask them if they want to replace the barcode with these tags, the answer can't be anything but yes. It's like giving them the opportunity to rule the world." (Source: By Charlie Schmidt, March 2001, via www.rense.com) mega single currency by blending the euro a conference in Paris in November 1999. and the dollar. (Source: European Foundation Intelligence The central bank for this super-currency Digest, no. 117, 6-19 April 2001, website would be the Bank for International —www.europeanfoundation.org) Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland, to whose board the United States has recently THANKS FOR THE MEMORY: appointed members after many decades of BENVENISTE VINDICATED neglect. Alan Greenspan, the US Federal bout homoeopathy, Professor Reserve Chairman, said as far back as 1994 Madeleine Ennis of Queen's that the BIS was likely to assume greater University, Belfast is, like most scientists, importance in the future. deeply sceptical. That a medicinal com- In 1995, following the Maastricht Treaty pound diluted out of existence should still signing, the Americans took up their seats exert a therapeutic effect is an affront to together with the Canadians and Japanese, conventional biochemistry and pharmacol- thus starkly changing the composition of ogy, based as they are on direct and palpa- the BIS. This move was not least because ble molecular events. The same goes for a the Maastricht Treaty removed most of the possible explanation of how homoeopathy BIS's raison d'étre. It had previously been works: that water somehow retains a used for intra-bank settlements in Europe. "memory" of things once dissolved in it. It was also the clearing centre for the ecu, This last notion, famously promoted by the forerunner of the euro. With the intro- French biologist Dr Jacques Benveniste, duction of the single currency, this function resulted in his excommunication from the ceased to have any significance. On 11 _ scientific mainstream. More than a decade September 2000, moreover, the BIS rid _ later, Professor Ennis jumped at the chance itself of its private shareholders by compul- _ to join a large pan-European research team, sorily buying them out. This had the hoping finally to lay the Benveniste effect of closing the bank's books to public "heresy" to rest. But she was in fora scrutiny. shock, for the team's latest results contro- It is also relevant that Robert Mundell— __versially suggest that Benveniste may have the Nobel Prize-winning economist who _ been right all along. was awarded his prize for being the "intel- A consortium of four independent lectual godfather of the euro" (even though _ research labs in France, Italy, Belgium and many economists have argued that his the- Holland, led by Professor M. Roberfroid at ory of optimal currency zones precisely | Belgium's Catholic University of Louvain, proves why the euro is a bad idea)—called used a refinement of Benveniste's original for a link between the dollar and the euro at experiment that examined another aspect of basophil activation. The team knew that activation of basophil degranulation by algE leads to powerful mediators being released, includ- ing large amounts of histamine, which sets up a negative feedback cycle that curbs its own release. So the planned experiment involved comparing inhibition of basophil algE-induced degranulation with "ghost" dilutions of histamine against control solu- tions of pure water. The result, soon to be published in Inflammation Research, was the same: his- tamine solutions, both at pharmacological LV Nicene CEN ING concentrations and diluted out of existence, fal ONSUNERISM led to statistically significant inhibition of We Bas ‘ basophile activation by algE, confirming previous work in this area. ee Jacques Benveniste is unimpressed. — — "They've arrived at precisely where we a Se started 12 years ago!" he said. 20 minutes (Source: By Lionel Milgrom, Guardian, 15 id it tome?” March 2001, www.guardian.co.uk) a conference in Paris in November 1999. (Source: European Foundation Intelligence Digest, no. 117, 6-19 April 2001, website www.europeanfoundation.org) THE EURODOLLAR: A SINGLE WORLD CURRENCY? he anti-euro newsletter Deutschlandbrief (April 2001) reports—strictly as an unconfirmed rumour—that plans are afoot to create a ao ! = | | Ture Mie aia pine MTT} My N Ti, am } $4 Bool LATE aoe HN eq if = KOS ape mi Waa I} ; pl _ hf = = ee Se es Tack nous [i= ANS CEND! NG [ifiorens M $39-9s 7. 2 “How ‘bout I come in for 20 minutes each day and you just read it to me?” 8 = NEXUS JUNE — JULY 2001 www. nexusmagazine.com