<ul style="background-image:none;list-style-type:none;"> <li style="background-image:none;list-style-type:none;">Apples</li> <li style="background-image:none;list-style-type:none;">Bananas</li> <li style="background-image:none;list-style-type:none;">Pears</li> </ul>
and the white graphical discs remain steadfastly.
Not considering the inline/cacheing problem that seems to have been solved elsewhere, I needed ID specifiers to get this to work:
#header #nav-primary li { list-style-type: none; background-image: none; }
This is probably because the existing Garland CSS statement
ul li, ul.menu li, .item-list ul li, li.leaf { background: transparent url(images/menu-leaf.gif) no-repeat scroll 1px 0.35em; /* ... */ }
typically has two tag specifiers and a classname specifier, so you need either 2+ classnames or an ID to beat that.
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/cascade.html#specificity should help, although it doesn't make any explicit statement on the super-specificity of inline styles that I can see.
Cheers, J-P