World Briefs

GREAT chaps, these Americans. Let’s look at Indonesia. According to its Food & Horticultural Minister, a Mr Saefuddin, the ferocity of that country’s economic collapse has pushed the ranks of the poor up to 40% of the population, or a staggering 80 million people, from only 11% last year. Suffering a banking collapse together with a prolonged killer drought Indonesia - so recently one of South East Asia’s most promising emerging "tigers" - now suffers 50% inflation and rising; widespread starvation and rising social unrest. Who connived to bring all this about?

JUST what sort of disinformation does the SABC think it is churning out? On July 13 arrests were made in Bloemfontein and Welkom involving R3 million in counterfeit R200 and R100 notes: one of the biggest busts ever in SA in this type of offence. SABC/TV duly carried footage of the alleged arrest operation. In this, both the police and those arrested were shown as Whites. Yet when the suspects appeared in a Bloemfontein court in connection with the crime, all were Blacks. I could be wrong, but it appears to me that the first footage was actually a re-enactment of the arrest scene. A deliberate attempt by the SABC to mislead the public into believing that it was Whites, not Blacks, who were responsible for the counterfeiting?

ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE: Smoking more than doubles the risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study by Dutch researchers and reported in last month’s British medical journal, The Lancet. Based on work undertaken by researchers at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, the study is described as the largest effort yet to investigate such a link, and the first major project to evaluate people before they develop brain disease. In all, the researchers followed 6 870 men and women aged 55

Who but SA’s good ol' friends, the ideologues of the US State Department and CIA. We already know it was the US-dominated IMF that began the run on the rupiah by demanding the simultaneous closure of 16 dodgy banks, precipitating suicidal financial panic. But now it has also been confirmed that the Clinton Administration, channelling funds through the US Agency for Development (AID), sent $26 million to hard left and radical student groups seeking the overthrow of the Suharto regime.

Asked by The New York Times for comment, Peter Galbraith, a former senior counsel to AID, said: "The idea was to send a message that the US was concerned about something other than banks and the economic issues, that we thought about the ordinary people of Indonesia, and to prepare for a transition from Suharto to what we hoped would be a more democratic and stable system." Same old story. Jakarta papers now report that foreign "robbers" are taking over major Indonesian companies at knock-down prices. Anti-American feeling is said to be running very high.

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GLEAM IN SOMEONE’S EYE. "Surely one of the great advantages of ageing is a deeper appreciation of cerebral pleasures. Isn’t it sad, then, that instead of celebrating the expansion of mind and spirit in our later years and the waning power of hormones, we choose to lower ourselves to the level of medicated laboratory rats? Thanks to Viagra we face a possible army of octogenarian studs with drug-induced gleams in their eyes, a sight that would make any lady worthy of the name head for the hills. Before the birth control pill, women had a good excuse to go to bed with a book. Before Viagra, so did men." - Letter signed Ruth Lamberisi, Brussels, and published in The International Herald Tribune, 19.6.98.

or older, living in a suburb of Rotterdam. It found that smokers were 2,2 times more likely to develop dementia of any kind and had a risk for Alzheimer’s 2,3 times higher than those who had never smoked cigarettes. Former smokers had a slightly higher risk than lifelong abstainers, but not significantly so. Alzheimer’s disease, characterised by the degeneration of brain cells, is the most common form of dementia. None of the Rotterdam people studied had dementia when first examined. They were asked about their smoking habits and divided into smokers, former smokers and those who had never smoked. Two years later, 146 of them had developed dementia, and of these 105 had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

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THE British Press is getting cheesed off with the persisting idolatry of the late Diana. In her London Daily Mail column, 1.7.98, Lynda-Lee Potter observes: "One hundred bouquets of flowers are left every week outside Kensington Palace and another 100 at Althorp. At around Ł10 a bunch - and many cost far more - this means that every year at least Ł104 000 will be dumped virtually in the gutter. It’s the triumph of sentimentality and emotional sogginess over realism and sense. It’s a demonstration of the worst kind of lachrymose emotion inspired by Princes Diana’s death. Sadly, all too often the money is being spent by those who can ill afford it. This country’s growing army of victims worshipped Diana because she made them feel nothing was ever their fault."

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