Today's Topics:
BO\B BE!
from Advertising Age, December 10, 1990
Statement To Paris Conference On Human Rights Violation
Subgenius Digest V2 #56
Tinker, tailor, soldier, market researcher.
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Date: Wed, 12 Dec 90 11:03:51 EST
From: Christopher Maeda <cmaeda@exxon-valdez.ft.cs.cmu.edu>
Subject: BO\B BE!
To: wan@eng.ufl.edu
I looked through the text of the bum-gif and found several occurrances
of the letters J,H,V, and H as well as the following:
M=&U_K"MGU[3]-:'U+K0GRZ,-EJ\13JHCF(P!K30BEY.8=;:#\9"_ML7<3&CI
^^^
Obviously a reference to the unity of JHVH-1 and JC!
M*_P%:N)`2]<,\PBO\B:Q#!.E3"BE!Z1PK49FD2W-#'8L\^2`<1I?0E@DDQM?
^^^^ ^^^
Bob be!
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Date: Wed, 12 Dec 90 11:25:38 EST
From: q <liza@media-lab.media.mit.edu>
Subject: from Advertising Age, December 10, 1990
To: subg@media-lab.media.mit.edu
"Anything bad to say about that new Nissan ad? No sirree, Bob!"
****************************************************************
A prominent image in a new spot for the Nissan Sentra SE-R sport
sedan is a yellow road sign bearing the message: YIELD TO BOB.
My sentiments exactly.
In this oppressive world of immovable Freds, intransigent Dennises
and unswerving Valeries, yielding to Bob has become something of a lost art.
More's the pity. Bob has a lot to contribute, if only people would put a-
side their petty self-interest, subordinate their own stubborn prejudices
and completely submit to Bob's will.
Leland Palmer notwithstanding, is that so wrong?
The enlightened creatives at Chiat/Day/Mojo, Venice, Calif., pro-
bably think they've just added a wrinkle to their yearlong fantasy campaign,
but they've actually stumbled onto a psychographic mother lode and a shining
proposition for the New World Order, by which I mean not a bankrupt Soviet
bloc but rather a thoroughly Bobcentric universe.
Even if "Twin Peaks" peters out, 1991 has all the makings of the
Year of Bob. Not only will the end of 1990 bring the first digital palin-
drome in 110 years - demanding a palindromic namesake like Bob to go with
it - events in Eastern Europe and the Persian Gulf will foment much hubbub
and commotion, which, of course, is bobbery.
Finally, in May, from Dell Publishing comes: "The Bob Book," the
definitive trade paperback on Bobness.
So when this 30-second commercial opens, with a shot of L.A. free-
way gridlock, the narrator's motoring fantasy is so much more than idle
daydream; it is the antidote to discombobulation.
"If I could afford a sports sedan," he says, "the road would belong
to me...Bob." Whereupon he jerks his sleek black Sentra into second gear
and pulls onto Bob's Expressway.
"I'd have one of those multivalve engines, independent suspension
[he zooms through a tollbooth with a BOB lane], and of course a spoiler on
the back ['Go Bob' green traffic signal]. Yeah, if I could afford a sports
sedan ['No Parking Except for Bob' sign], life would be a cruise."
Here a motorcycle cop approaches the car, apparently after having
flagged the Sentra down. "Oh," the CHiP says apologetically, "It's you,
Bob." Then the voice-over says," Introducing the new Nissan Sentra SE-R.
Because rich guys shouldn't have all the fun."
Note the attention to detail. In contriving the "Bob" props, art
director Corey Stolberg and director Bill Wertz are utterly faithful to
roadside reality. While precisely matching typefaces is, to borrow from
the foreword to an old collection of _Harvard Lampoon_ parodies, "about as
difficult as dialing a telephone," the fact is it's exactly the sort of
detail frequently forsaken - even in feature films - resulting in jarring
moments of compromised verisimilitude.
But this spot, written by Tom Witt, offers far more than a cute
premise and good signage. The tour de Bob is also a psychographic tour de
force, a sort of video aphrodisiac for the flaccid, benumbed, put-upon Bobs
of the world.
Anyone ever cut off by a speeding, traffic weaving young underachiever
recognizes the inverse relationship between worldly success and driving
aggression. His car is not only a phallic extension; it is a bludgeon,
wielded with impunity by an impotent working stiff empowered in no other
way. Bob is the frustrated Everyman who longs for a sport sedan in which
to have his way with the world, but Bob can't shell out $20,000 for the
Nissan Maxima of his dreams. That car's the province of guys named Garth
and Blake and maybe even Rance.
Enter the Sentra SE-R - the R, I suppose, being for Robert.
Or maybe for relief, from middle-class pressure and advertising
convention. This spot proves that you can unabashedly exploit simmering
class envy without either talking down to the working man or resorting to
sophomoric caricatures of the well-to-do. Thrumming Bob's throttle, in
other words, without running Rance off the road.
Restraint in car advertising, like the affordable performance sedan
and Bob's Expressway, is an idea whose time has come. Granted, 1990 was
kind of rough for the car industry and Laura Palmer. But speaking for Bobs
everywhere, 1991 promises to be a hell of a year.
-written by Bob Garfield
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 90 16:11:07 EST
From: John Covici <covici@ccs.portal.com>
Subject: Statement To Paris Conference On Human Rights Violation
To: csf@postgres.berkeley.edu, @andrew.cmu.edu:china-nn@asuacad.bitnet
IMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM;
: * Executive Intelligence Review * :
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM<
EIR Global Strategic News
("Quan Qiu Chi Lue Xin Xi")
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
[The following statement was issued by American polItical prisoner Michael
Billington on the occasion of the recent conference of the International
Commission to Investigate Human Rights Violations, held in Paris, France.
The conference heard from representatives of Western European nations,
Poland, Hungary, Czechoslavakia, China, African nations, Lebanon, the United
States and Canada.]
STATEMENT TO THE EUROPEAN HUMAN RIGHTS CONFERENCE
from Michael Billington
Nov. 7
I am sending this greeting to this historic conference from my prison
cell in the United States where I am serving a three-year sentence from the
U.S. government and a 77-year sentence from the State of Virginia, for my
political collaboration with Lyndon LaRouche. This barbaric sentence
illustrates the depravity of the U.S. elites, and their fear that our battle
for the human rights of every human being may succeed in overturning their
destructive grip on world power.
The most fundamental human right is the right to the development of
the full potential for creative reason inherent in every human being. It was
this moral commitment that I saw in Lyndon LaRouche, in 1972, upon my return
from a two-year teaching assignment in Asia, that above all persuaded me to
ally myself with his political efforts. That moral commitment is manifest
today in this gathering, representing the international resistance to the war,
pestilence, and starvation brought in the wake of the economic collapse in
both the Soviet and the Anglo-American empires.
My energies in jail have been focused once again on Asia, including a
close monitoring of the heroic Chinese revolution in the spring of 1989,
immediately following our incarceration. In the course of historical research
it was with great joy that I discovered that Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the
seminal figure whose whole life and works inspired generations of republican
leaders, including Lyndon LaRouche, had deeply involved himself in the battle
over European and Church policy towards China. It was his profound belief that
the human mind, which uniquely enabled man to participate, through reason, in
the unfolding creation of the universe, demonstrated that man was created in
God's image. It was thus a source of great joy to {Leibniz} to discover in
China what he called ``an admirable public morality conjoined to a
philosophical doctrine, or rather, a doctrine of {natural theology,} venerable
by its antiquity, established and authorized for about 3,000 years, long
before the philosophy of the Greeks.''
He saw in China a mass of humanity with a scientific and cultural
history which, precisely because of its separation from the development of
Western culture, proved that the mind, when applied to discovering the laws of
the universe and the ordering of society's development, must necessarily tend
towards the truth, to knowledge of the One God. He characterized the Confucian
beliefs as follows:
``To offend Heaven is to act against reason, to ask pardon of Heaven
is to reform oneself and to make a sincere return in work and deed in the
submission ones owes to this very law of reason. For me, I find this all quite
excellent and quite in accord with natural theology.... Only by strained
interpretation and interpolation could one find anything to criticize on this
point. It is pure Christianity, insofar as it {renews the natural law
inscribed in our hearts}--except for what revelation and grace add to it to
improve our nature.''
The last point was crucial to Leibniz. While he recognized the natural
theology of the Confucians, he also recognized that Christianity, which
inspired man to act in the imitation of Christ, to exercise his divine spark
of reason, represented a superior knowledge of the universe. One proof of this
lay in the enormous scientific breakthroughs of the Renaissance. This was not
something to lord over the Chinese, but rather represented a knowledge held by
the Christian nations in trust for all mankind. Bringing Christianity to the
Confucians was a moral responsibility, best carried out by conveying
Renaissance science to China, demonstrating the coherence between a Christian
view of man with the increasing perfection of our knowledge of the laws of the
universe.
At a higher level, Leibniz saw the tremendous potential for all
mankind inherent in the enormous Chinese population if their rich and profound
culture were to be joined with the fruits of Christian humanist science.
So what went wrong?
Although the primary Jesuit missionaries who had brought the
renaissance to China were in close collaboration with Kepler, Leibniz, and
other leading Christian scientists, there were also powerful enemies of this
policy. The Venetian circles that spawned the destructive divisions of the
Protestant Reformation and the Counter Reformation despised the ecumenical
policies identified with Cusa and Leibniz, as they still do to this day. The
emperor Kang-Shi had granted the Jesuits and other Christians full rights to
spread their religion and their science throughout the empire, requiring only
that Christian converts not be expected to give up the traditional Chinese
rites honoring their ancestors and the Confucian moral and social codes. The
oligarchy used this condition to denounce the Jesuits for pandering to so-
called ``pagan beliefs,'' demanding that converts denounce Confucius and end
the rites of ancestor worship. When these spokesmen were granted an audience
with emperor Kang-Shi, he eloquently explained the concepts of Chinese belief,
confirming the Jesuits' contention that they were coherent with Christianity.
These opponents in response denounced the emperor for not understanding his
own language!
Some of the opposition showed the anti-Christian source of their
efforts by denouncing the Jesuits for taking the positions of top advisors to
the court in astronomy and science, calling this a diversion from their
Christain mission--preferring to leave science policy in the hands of the
Moslems who had controlled it for several centuries.
Unfortunately, the Pope was won over to the opposition, ruling
essentially that mere rites and ceremonies were more important than the power
of reason. The Jesuits were commanded to end their ecumenical policy, and the
emperor was forced to rescind his open policy to the Christians. Ultimately,
China was cut off from renaissance science, and thus weakened, became
vulnerable to destruction by British opium sales and colonization a century
later.
New methods have been found to prevent the world's citizens from
exercising their human right to knowledge, like the environmental hoaxes which
denounce scientific progress as dangerous in the hands of Third World peoples.
But the old methods of economic strangulation and military conquest are still
at hand. To defeat it today requires the worldview of Leibniz, of LaRouche--
that which sparked the revolutionary spirit that has swept from China through
Eastern Europe over the last year; requires that we must not rest until each
and every child is provided the full opportunity to develop his potential
genius; requires that the tyranny that holds nations in ignorance to better
control them, must be extirpated from this planet. The truth is, indeed,
``inscribed in our hearts''--and to paraphrase another great Chinese statesman,
Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, if we can but learn to read that inscription, then acting
upon that knowledge will be easy. Thank You.
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Date: Wed, 12 Dec 90 14:18:25 EST
From: Michael Turyn <mturyn@psyche.mit.edu>
Subject: Subgenius Digest V2 #56
To: Subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
uhhh, how does one convert the GIF file given to a usable form?
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Date: Wed, 12 Dec 90 20:11:00 -0500
From: valis@athena.mit.edu
Subject: Tinker, tailor, soldier, market researcher.
To: Subgenius@mc.lcs.mit.edu
(Moscow, via _The Economist_, 8 Dec 1990) - The conversion of the
defence industries into places that make useful products for civilians
is all the rage in the Soviet Union. It conjures up images of the
factories that once built lumbering tanks devoting themselves to
lumbering combine-harvesters, or nuclear-weapons plants churning out
glow-in-the-dark teddy bears. But one development in the
swords-into-ploughshares trend is more bizarre than that. The KGB has
set up a business-information service.
In a recent television interview, Major Andrei Oligov said that the
KGB wants to sell information of "an economic character" to Soviet
companies engaged in foreign trade: industrial espionage at its
purest. He went on to tell a Soviet business newspaper called
_Commersant_ that his organisation has been flogging such a service
since the spring, checking on the credit-worthiness of foreign
partners and providing market information for state firms, joint
ventures, co-operatives, and anyone else with the cash to pay for it.
All this has the imprimatur of General Vladimir Kryuchkov, the KGB
chief, who first floated the idea in an interview with _Pravda_ in
April.
"Monitoring" business rivals should be right up the KGB's street. With
lots of telephone tappers at home and an extensive network of
unemployed agents abroad, the KGB has resources to spare. It is also
facing demands from reformers in parliament, who want to cut its
budget by 20%, so a little ready money could come in handy.
Of course, hiring an institution whose employees carry Kalashnikov
rifles might be a bit risky, especially for anyone liable to fall
behind in their payments. No need to worry. Major Oligov says that all
contracts concluded so far are "gentlemen's agreements". Whew. Any
gentlemen seeking more information about this new service should write
to: The KGB, 2 Dzerzhinsky Street, Moscow, or call Moscow 921 0762 and
ask for Andrei.
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End of Subgenius Digest
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