Things You Are Not Supposed To Know
ONE OF THE POPES WROTE AN EROTIC BOOK
Before he was Pope Pius II, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini was a poet, scholar, diplomat, and rakehell. And an author. In fact, he wrote a bestseller. People in fifteenth-century Europe couldn’t get enough of his Latin novella Historia de duobus amantibus. An article in a scholarly publication on literature claims that Historia “was undoubtedly one of the most read stories of the whole Renaissance.” The Oxford edition gives a Cliff Notes version of the storyline: “The Goodli History tells of the illicit love of Euralius, a high official in the retinue of the [German] Emperor Sigismund, and Lucres, a married lady from Siena [Italy].”
It was probably written in 1444, but the earliest known printing is from Antwerp in 1488. By the turn of the century, 37 editions had been published. Somewhere around 1553, the short book appeared in English under the wonderfully old-school title The Goodli History of the Moste Noble and Beautyfull Ladye Lucres of Scene in Tuskane, and of Her Louer Eurialus Verye Pleasaunt and Delectable vnto ye Reder. Despite the obvious historical interest of this archaic Vatican porn, it has never been translated into contemporary language. (The passages quoted below mark the first time that any of the book has appeared in modern English.)
The 1400s being what they were, the action is pretty tame by today’s standards. At one point, Euralius scales a wall to be with Lucres: “When she saw her lover, she clasped him in her arms. There was embracing and kissing, and with full sail they followed their lusts and wearied Venus, now with Ceres, and now with Bacchus was refreshed.” Loosely translated, that last part means that they shagged, then ate, then drank wine.
His Holiness describes the next time they hook up:
Thus talking to each other, they went into the bedroom, where they had such a night as we judge the two lovers Paris and Helen had after he had taken her away, and it was so pleasant that they thought Mars and Venus had never known such pleasure…. Her mouth, and now her eyes, and now her cheeks he kissed. Pulling down her clothes, he saw such beauty as he had never seen before. “I have found more, I believe,” said Euralius, “than Acteon saw of Diana when she bathed in the fountain. What is more pleasant or more fair than these limbs?… O fair neck and pleasant breasts, is it you that I touch? Is it you that I have? Are you in my hands? O round limbs, O sweet body, do I have you in my arms?… O pleasant kisses, O dear embraces, O sweet bites, no man alive is happier than I am, or more blessed.”…
He strained, and she strained, and when they were done they weren’t weary. Like Athens,
who rose from the ground stronger, soon after battle they were more desirous of war.
But Euralius isn’t just a horndog. He waxes philosophical about love to Lucres’ cousin-in-law:
You know that man is prone to love. Whether it is virtue or vice, it reigns everywhere. No heart of flesh hasn’t sometime felt the pricks of love. You know that neither the wise Solomon nor the strong Sampson has escaped from this passion. Furthermore, the nature of a kindled heart and a foolish love is this: The more it is allowed, the more it burns, with
nothing sooner healing this than the obtaining of the loved. There have been many, both in our time and that of our elders, whose foolish love has been the cause of cruel death. And many who, after sex and love vouchsafed, have stopped burning. Nothing is better when love has crept into your bones than to give in to the burning, for those who strive against the tempest often wreck, while those who drive with the storm escape.
Besides sex and wisdom, the story also contains a lot of humor, as when Lucres’ husband borrows a horse from Euralius: “He says to himself, ‘If you leap upon my horse, I shall do the same thing to your wife.’”
Popes just don’t write books like that anymore!
THE FIRST CIA AGENT TO DIE IN THE LINE OF DUTY WAS DOUGLAS MACKIERNAN
As of the year 2000, 69 CIA agents had died in the line of duty. Of these, the identities of 40 remain classified. Former Washington Post and Time reporter Ted Gup spent three years hacking down information about these mysterious spooks who gave their lives for the Agency. (Mm resulting publication, The Book of Honor, names almost all of them.)
The first to die was Douglas Mackiernan. Undercover as a State Department diplomat, the US Army Air Corps Major worked in the capital of China’s Xinjiang (Sinkiang) province, which Gup says “was widely regarded as the most remote and desolate consulate on earth.” He went there m May 1947 to keep an eye on China’s border with the Soviet Union and to monitor the Husskies’ atomic tests.
In late September 1949, during the Communist takeover of China, Mackiernan left, but it was too late to use normal routes. Incredibly, he decided to go by foot during winter all the way to India, which would take him across a desert and the Himalayas. He, three White Russians, and a Fulbright scholar slogged the 1,000-mile trek in eight months. On April 29, 1950, they managed lo reach the border of Tibet, but guards there thought the men were commies or bandits, and
opened fire on them.
Hitting the ground, the bedraggled travelers waved a white flag, which stopped the gunfire. They slowly walked toward the border guards with their hands over their heads, but the Tibetans shot them, killing Mackiernan and two of the Russians. To add insult to injury, the guards cut the heads off the corpses. Their remains are buried at that spot.
With documents from the National Archives, Mackiernan’s widow, and other sources, Gup pulled the CIA’s first casualty out of the classified shadows. To this day, the Agency refuses to acknow-ledge Mackiernan’s existence.
THE US IS PLANNING TO PROVOKE TERRORIST ATTACKS
Perhaps the government won’t need to inflate its terrorism-arrest stats after it implements the Defense Science Board’s recommendation. This influential committee inside the Pentagon has proposed a terrifying way to fight evil-doers: Goad them into making terrorist attacks. Yes, you read correctly. Instead of waiting for a plot to be hatched and possibly executed, go out and make it happen.
In summer 2002, the Defense Science Board outlined all kinds of ways to fight the war on terrorism around the world. The scariest suggestion involves the creation of a new 100-man, $100-million team called the Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group, or P2OG.
This combination of elite special forces soldiers and intelligence agents will have “an entirely new capability to proactively, pre-emptively provoke responses from adversary/terrorist groups,” according to the DSB’s report.
Just how the P2OG will “provoke” terrorists into action is not specified, at least in the unclassified portions of the report. United Press International — which apparently has access to the full, classified version of the report — says that techniques could include “stealing their money or tricking them with fake communications.” The Moscow Times offers further possibilities, such as killing family members and infiltrating the groups with provocateurs, who will suggest and even direct terrorist strikes.
Once the terrorists have been provoked, what then? UPI says that by taking action, the terrorists would be “exposing themselves to ‘quick-response’ attacks by US forces.” In other words, the plan is to hit the hornet’s nest with a stick, while waiting nearby with a can of bug spray. The flaws in this approach are obvious. Although not spelled out in the UPI article or the report itsef, the idea seems to be that the P2OG will cause terrorists to make an attack but supposedly stop
them light before the attack actually occurs. Will the P2OG always be able to prevent terrorism it creates from taking place? Will it always be able to “neutralize” all of the terrorists during that crucial window after a plan has been put into motion but before it’s been carried out? I wouldn’t want to bet lives on it. But that’s exactly what’s happening.
Whenever any future terrorist attack occurs — an embassy is truck-bombed, a nightclub is blown to smithereens, prominent buildings are hit with hijacked passenger jets — we’ll never be 100 percent sure that this wasn’t an operation the P2OG provoked but then was unable to stop in time.
ADOLPH HITLER’S BLOOD RELATIVES ARE ALIVE AND WELL IN NEW YORK STATE
Adolph Hitler never had kids, so we tend to take for granted the idea that no one alive is closely related to him. But historians have long known that he had a nephew who was born in Britain and moved to the United States. Alois Hitler, Jr., was Adolph’s older half-brother (their common parent was Alois Sr). Alois Jr. — a waiter in Dublin — married an Irish woman, and, after moving to Liverpool, they had a son, William Patrick Hitler.
Pat, as he was called, moved to Germany as a young adult to take advantage of his uncle’s rising political stature, but Adolph just gave him minor jobs and kept him out of the limelight. After being subtly threatened by Rudolph Hess to become a German citizen, and having gotten tired of being dissed by Adolph, Pat came to America in 1939 and went on a lecture tour around the US, denouncing his uncle. (For his part, Adolph referred to his nephew as “loathsome.”) While
World War II was raging, Pat joined the US Navy, so he could fight against Uncle Adolph. Afterwards, he changed his last name, and this is where the trail goes cold.
That is, until US-based British reporter David Gardner was assigned to track down and interview William Patrick. Originally given two weeks to file the story, Gardner realized that finding Hitler’s long-lost nephew was tougher than it first appeared. He worked on the story during his spare time for several years, unearthing old news clippings, filing requests for government documents, interviewing possible relatives, and chasing a lot of dead ends.He finally discovered that William Patrick had ended up in a small town in Long Island, New York. Pat had died in 1987, but Gardner showed up unannounced on the doorstep of his widow, Phyllis, who confirmed that her late husband was Adolph Hitler’s nephew. She also mentioned that she and Pat had sons, but she quickly clammed up and asked Gardner to leave. The two never spoke again.
After more legwork, Gardner found that Pat and Phyllis produced four children, all sons. The eldest, born in 1949, is named Alexander Adolph. (Just why Pat would name his firstborn after his detested uncle is one of many mysteries still surrounding the Hitler kin.) Then came Louis in 1951, Howard (1957), and Brian (1965). Howard — a fraud investigator for the IRS — died in a car crash w 1989, and Louis and Brian continue to run a landscaping business in the small New York community. Alex lives in a larger Long Island city. He twice spoke to Gardner but didn’t reveal very much, saying that the family’s ancestry is “a pain in the ass.” Alex said that his brothers made a pact never to have children, in order to spare their progeny the burden of being related to a monster. He denied having made such a vow himself, despite the fact that he is still childless.
Gardner sums it up: “Although there are some distant relations living equally quiet lives in Austria, the three American sons are the only descendants of the paternal line of the family. They are, truly, the last of the Hitlers.”
THE SUPREME COURT HAS RULED THAT YOU’RE ALLOWED TO INGEST ANY DRUG, ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE AN ADDICT
In the early 1920s, Dr. Linder was convicted of selling one morphine tablet and three cocaine tablets to a patient who was addicted to narcotics. The Supreme Court overturned the con-viction, declaring that providing an addicted patient with a fairly small amount of drugs is an acceptable medical practice “when designed temporarily to alleviate an addict’s pains.” (Linder v. United States.)
In 1962, the Court heard the case of a man who had been sent to the clink under a California state law that made being an addict a criminal offense. Once again, the verdict was tossed out, with the Supremes saying that punishing an addict for being an addict is cruel and unusual and, thus, unconstitutional. (Robinson v. California.)
Six years later, the Supreme Court reaffirmed these principles in Powell v. Texas. A man who was arrested for being drunk in public said that, because he was an alcoholic, he couldn’t help it. He invoked the Robinson decision as precedent. The Court upheld his conviction because It had been based on an action (being wasted in public), not on the general condition of his addiction to booze. Justice White supported this decision, yet for different reasons than the others. In his concurring opinion, he expanded Robinson:
If it cannot be a crime to have an irresistible compulsion to use narcotics,… I do not see how it can constitutionally be a crime to yield to such a compulsion. Punishing an addict for using drugs convicts for addiction under a different name. Distinguishing between the two crimes is like forbidding criminal conviction for being sick with flu or epilepsy, but
permitting punishment for running a fever or having a convulsion. Unless Robinson is to be abandoned, the use of narcotics by an addict must be beyond the reach of the criminal law.
Similarly, the chronic alcoholic with an irresistible urge to consume alcohol should not be punishable for drinking or for being drunk.
Commenting on these cases, Superior Court Judge James R Gray, an outspoken critic of drug prohibition, has recently written:
What difference is there between alcohol and any other dangerous and sometimes addictive drug? The primary difference is that one is legal while the others are not. And the US Supreme Court has said as much on at least two occasions, finding both in 1925 and 1962 that to punish a person for the disease of drug addiction violated the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. If that is true, why do we continue to prosecute addicted people for taking these drugs, when it would be unconstitutional to prosecute them for their addiction?
Judge Gray gets right to the heart of the matter: “In effect, this ‘forgotten precedent’ says that >ni! can only be constitutionally punishable for one’s conduct, such as assaults, burglary, and driving under the influence, and not simply for what one puts into one’s own body.”
If only the Supreme Court and the rest of the justice/law-enforcement complex would apply these decisions, we’d be living in a saner society.
SMOKING CAUSES PROBLEMS OTHER THAN LUNG CANCER AND HEART DISEASE
The fact that smoking causes lung disease and oral cancer isn’t exactly news, and only tobacco industry executives would express (feigned) shock at being told. But cigarettes can lead to a whole slew of problems involving every system of your tar-filled body, and most people aren’l aware of this.
The American Council on Science and Health’s book Cigarettes: What the Warning Label Doesn’t Tell You is the first comprehensive look at the medical evidence of all types of harm triggered by smoking. Referencing over 450 articles from medical journals and reviewed by 45 experts — mainly medical doctors and PhDs — if this book doesn’t convince you to quit, nothing will.
Among some of the things that cancer sticks do:
- Besides cancers of the head, neck, and lungs, ciggies are especially connected to cancers of the bladder, kidney, pancreas, and cervix. Newer evidence is adding leukemia and colorectal cancer to the list. Recent studies have also found at least a doubling of risk among smokers for cancers of the vulva and penis, as well as an eight-fold risk of anal cancer for men and a nine-fold risk for women.
- Smoking trashes the ability of blood to flow, which results in a sixteen-fold greater risk of peripheral vascular disease. This triggers pain in the legs and arms, which often leads to an inability to walk and, in some instances, gangrene and/or amputation. Seventy-six percent of all cases are caused by smoking, more than for any other factor, including diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure.
- Smokers are at least two to three times more likely to develop the heartbreak of psoriasis. Even if that doesn’t happen, they’ll look old before their time. The American Council tells us, “Smokers in their 40s have facial wrinkles similar to those of nonsmokers in their 60s.”
- Smokers require more anesthesia for surgery, and they recover much more slowly. In fact, wounds of all kinds take longer to heal for smokers.
- Puffing helps to weaken bones, soft tissue, and spinal discs, causing all kinds of musculoskeletal pain, more broken bones and ruptured discs, and longer healing time. “A non-smoker’s leg heals an average of 80 percent faster than a smoker’s broken leg”
- Smoking is heavily related to osteoporosis, the loss of bone mass, which results in brittle bones and more breaks
- Cigarettes interfere with your ability to have kids. “The fertility rates of women who smoke are about 30 percent lower than those of nonsmokers.” If you’re an idiot who continues to smoke while you’re expecting — even in this day and age, some people, including stars Catherine ZetaJones and Courtney Love, do this — you increase the risks of miscarriage, stillbirth, premature birth, low birth weight, underdevelopment, and cleft pallet. If your child is able to survive outside the womb, it will have a heavily elevated risk of crib death (SIDS), allergies, and intellectual impairment
- Smoking also does a serious number on sperm, resulting in more deformed cells, less ability of them to swim, smaller loads, and a drastic decrease in overall number of the little fellas. The larger population of misshapen sperm probably increases the risk of miscarriages and birth defects, so even if mommy doesn’t smoke, daddy could still cause problems. What’s more, because smoking hurts blood flow, male smokers are at least twice as likely to be unable to get it up
- Besides shutting down blood flow to the little head, smoking interferes with the blood going to the big head in both sexes. This causes one quarter of all strokes. It also makes these strokes more likely to occur earlier in life and more likely to be fatal.
- “Depression — whether viewed as a trait, a symptom or a diagnosable disorder — is overrepresented among smokers.” Unfortunately, it’s unclear how the two are related. Does smoking cause depression, or does depression lead to smoking? Or, most likely, do the two feed on each other in a vicious cycle?
- “Smokers experience sudden hearing loss an average of 16 years earlier than do never smokers.”
- Smokers and former smokers have an increased risk of developing cataracts, abnormal eye movements, inflammation of the optic nerve, permanent blindness from lack of blood flow, and the most severe form of macular degeneration
- Lighting up increases plaque, gum disease, and tooth loss.
- It also makes it likelier that you’ll develop diabetes, stomach ulcers, colon polyps, and Crohn’s disease
- Smoking trashes the immune system in myriad ways, with the overall result being that you’re more susceptible to disease and allergies
- And let’s not forget that second-hand smoke has horrible effects on the estimated 42 percent of toddlers and infants who are forced to inhale it in their homes:
THE SUICIDE RATE IS HIGHEST AMONG THE ELDERLY
If you judge by the media and the public education programs, you might be inclined to think that teenagers and young adults (aged 15 to 24) are the age group most likely to kill themselves. Actually, they have the second-lowest rate of suicide. (The absolute lowest rate is among kids aged 5 to 14; children younger than that are apparently deemed incapable of consciously choosing to end their lives.) It is the elderly, by far, who have the highest rate of suicide.
In the US, of every 100,000 people aged 75 to 79, 16.5 kill themselves. For those 80 and over, the rate is 19.43. This compares to a rate of 8.15 per 100,000 for people between the ages 15 and 19, and 12.84 for people aged 20 to 24.
As with every age group, men are far more likely to kill themselves, but among the elderly this trend reaches extreme proportions. Of people 65 and older, men comprise a staggering 84 percent of suicides.
Because men commit the vast majority of hara-kiri among old people, looking at these male suicide rates makes for extremely depressing reading. For guys aged 75 to 79, the suicide rate is 34.26 per 100,000. In the 80 to 84 group, men’s suicide rate is 44.12. When you look at men 85 and older, the suicide rate is a heart-breaking 54.52. Compare this to the suicide rate for dudes in their mid to late teens: 13.22 per 100,000.
It is true that suicide ranks as the second or third most common cause of death in young people (depending on age group), while it is number 15 and under for various groups of the elderly. Still, the suicide rate among the young is equal to their proportion of the population, while the elderly are way overrepresented as a group. And old people are cut down by a great many diseases and disorders virtually unknown to the young, which naturally pushes suicide down in the rankings.
The reasons why this suicide epidemic is ignored are highly speculative and would be too lengthy to get into here. However, we can rule out one seemingly likely explanation — suicide among the aged is invisible because they usually O.D. on prescription drugs or kill themselves in other ways that could easily be mistaken for natural death in someone of advanced years. This doesn’t wash, primarily because guns are the most common method of dispatch. Of suicides over
65, men used a gun 79.5 percent of the time, while women shot themselves 37 percent of the time. It’s hard to mistake that for natural causes.
The sky-high suicide rate among the elderly applies to the entire world, not just the US. Plotted in a graph, suicide rates by age group around the globe gently curve upward as age increases. When the graph reaches the final age group, the line suddenly spikes, especially for men. Worldwide, men 75 and over have a suicide rate of 55.7 per 100,000, while women in the same age group have a rate of 18.8. This rate for old men is almost three times the global rate for guys
aged 15 to 24, while the rate for old women is well over three times the rate for young gals in that age group.
Source: 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know [2003] | Download
Tags: 50 Things You're Not Supposed to Know, article, E-book, Paper Book, Secrets, SECRETS about America, Things You Are Not Supposed To Know