Comprehension questions and tasks. 1. Who, in your opinion, should make the decisions of life and death?

1. Who, in your opinion, should make the decisions of life and death?

2. What are the ethical, moral and legal issues of euthanasia?

3. Do you agree with the author that “we must not leave it to the doctors”?

4. Have a panel discussion on the problems of euthanasia.

It’s all a Conspiracy

By Sarah Cunningham and Peter Moor

In the 1997 film Conspiracy Theory, Mel Gibson plays Jerry Fletcher a New York cab driver obsessed with the idea of conspiracies – if it’s not a plot to change thought patterns through water fluoridation, it’s a secret plan to assassinate the President. The film was a box-office smash hit worldwide: perhaps a sign that there are many others who even if they don’t share Fletcher’s extreme paranoia, at least identity with the idea that there is some kind of high-level conspiracy going on out there, and that we’re all the victims of it. Access to the Internet, the international success of the paranormal thriller series The X-files, which bases many of its stories around conspiracy theories, and acts of terrorism such as the Oklahoma bombing in 1995, have given conspiracy theories a wider audience than ever. Jonathan Vankin and John Whaler, authors of the best selling Sixty Greatest Conspiracies of All Time called the 1990s ‘the conspiracy decade’.

Of course, conspiracy theories are nothing new: it’s who is behind the conspiracy that changes with the times. Once upon a time it was the Freemasons, now seen by most people as a harmless semi-secret religious society, but two hundred years ago taken seriously enough to be banned all over Europe as an international conspiracy to overthrow monarchies and begin social revolution. In the United States in the 1950s, it was the turn of the communists, who were supposedly responsible for (among other things) rock and roll (a plot to destroy the moral health of young people), and turning Hollywood into a Soviet propaganda machine. And where would the James Bond movies be without a whole succession of all-powerful mysterious figures striving for world domination?

With the communist ‘threat’ gone in the 1990s, encounters with UFOs now provide conspiracy theories with their richest source of paranoia. We have become used to hearing tales of alien landings, like the one in Roswell, New Mexico in 1948, the abduction of motorists on country roads late at night, and the inexplicable mutilation of cattle. This, according to conspiracy theories, all has a perfectly logical, if sinister, explanation.

According to former US intelligence man Milton William Cooper and his followers, there has been a kind of government within a government – the MJ12, or the Majestic Twelve – looking after the whole alien question since the 1950s, and keeping a whole lot of important information back from the poor ignorant public. The theory is – wait for it – that MJ12 has done a deal with one or more alien races. You may have through our rapid technological advances over the last decades were due to a lot of investment, research and a bit of human cleverness. Sorry, all this technology was actually donated by grateful aliens to MJ12. And in return for what? Well, that’s where the cattle mutilations come in. All over the United States and elsewhere, since the 1960s, there have been cases of cattle being found, their internal organs removed with surgical precision and their blood sucked out. This – according to Cooper – is our part of the bargain. The aliens are apparently afflicted with some mysterious illness and need these spare cattle parts to cure them.

If you find that one hard to believe, perhaps you’d prefer something a little closer to home. The mother of all conspiracy theories surrounds the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1962 (you can take your choice from the US Secret Service, the Mafia or even MJ12!), but similar theories have surrounded the deaths of Marilyn Monroe (possibly murdered at the orders of the US President), Elvis Presley (he didn’t really die, he just wanted to live like a regular person again), and even Diana, Princess of Wales (supposedly a victim of M16, the British Intelligence Service). It seems that any event nowadays can have a sinister explanation. When seven hundred Japanese children were reported to have suffered epilepsy-like symptoms as a result of watching a cartoon squirrel with flashing eyes known as Pikachu, conspiracy theorists immediately claimed this was a new mind-control weapon being tested on Japanese youngsters! But don’t worry. Even if the conspiracy theorists are right, you won’t become a victim of the great conspiracy just as long as you don’t drive, eat, drink water, or watch TV. Better safe than sorry!

From Moscow News, 2006