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TAKE oVEr! (\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/) the UP! //:-) 120 june 26, 2002 la - la - la - lap-toppling da system! (\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/) San Francisco’s legendary HUMAN BE-IN reincarnates in London p2 EXXONMOBIL-SPONSORED TERRORISM? p5 CARLYLE'S WAY - MAKING A MINT INSIDE "THE IRON TRIANGLE" OF DEFENSE, GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY. p17 ZEN BABA NEARLY FREAKS :) p25 { THE NEW SUICIDE BOMMER p9 { SIGNS OF SANITY FROM ‘A DIFFERENT ISRAEL’ p12 U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U UP P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P The UPGRADEmag (or just the "UP") is a global edutainment round-up, ‘broadcast’ weekly to =[10,497]= Alternative// Activist// Zippy// Trance// New Age folks who’ve been recommended to the Parallel YOUniversity//Megatripolis Dance Dept as "showing signs of life". Since many recipients choose to forward it to their own lists, we estimate 28,000+ recipients. Further, because of its less 'specialist' content, it's increasingly being posted on a variety of sites worldwide, making a total weekly ‘readership’ of 275,000+ U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U UP P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P
* * * * * * * * * * * * ASTRO ENERGY ANALYSIS june 26 july 2 * * * * * * * * * * * *
UP! MEET YOUR CHALLENGES The weekend is mellow, but on Monday the gloves are off. What are your challenges? Gather your resources and rise to those challenges. Information clampdown and distortion are special problems. For more, see the Daily Success Guide at www.daykeeperjournal.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * San Francisco Oracle LONDON EDITION San Francisco’s legendary HUMAN BE-IN reincarnates in London The original HUMAN BE-IN, “A Gathering of the Tribes” took place in 1967 in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, addressed by Tim Leary, Allen Ginsberg and Ken Kesey. It unified the peace-loving Haight Ashbury hippy tribe with the political anti-War activists of nearby Berkeley. Today, 35 years later, it’s the “fluffy spiritual” ravers and the anti-global activists. The Human Be-In will take new form in London on September 27, 2002. The Parallel YOUniversity, founded and run by Fraser Clark, the London-based producer of landmark cultural events such as Megatripolis and the 24 hour Warp Experience, is conspiring with the Digital Be-In, produced annually in San Francisco & Silicon Valley, to produce a NEW HUMAN BE-IN which will activate the San Francisco - London "ley line," bringing together the world's evolutionary youth cultures in a festival of hippy ideals, rave culture enthusiasm and techno-shamanism, all under the banner of THE ALTERNATIVE FYOUTURE. Today, technology plays an increasingly important role in the ability of youth to alter the cultural landscape. Clark’s weekly on-line newsletter The UPgrade (or just the UP!), brings spiritual, cultural and political awareness to over 200,000 readers worldwide, while the Digital Be-In has presented a showcase of cultural applications of technology from the heart of technological innovation and counter-cultural activism in the US for 14 years. And that’s why the NEW Human Be-In will launch at Ocean, a £20 million Lottery and Arts Council funded multi-cultural, multi-media super-arts complex possibly the best sound systems in Europe and video screens on almost every wall. In addition to 2 amazingly hi-tec dancefloors, the NEW Human Be-In will include speakers, ambient edutainment zones with information/inspiration booths, art exhibitions, interactive technology demonstrations, footage of past Digital Be-Ins (including Tim Leary’s original “Turn on, Tune in, and Drop out” speech), SF DJs, VJs and musicians, and live Internet link-ups with prophets and radicals in San Francisco and a Rainbow Tipi gathering called by Baba Ram Dass. Participate in the NEW HUMAN BE-IN, SEE WHO’S APPEARING & WHAT’S HAPPENING AT www.humanbe-in.com
Parallel YOUniversity (UK), Verbum (San Francisco) & Globalparty (USA)
UP! -present the NEW HUMAN BE-IN love tec going global a HANDS ON, FULLY IMMERSIVE, EXPERIMENTAL LIVING NEWSEUM OF OUR ALTERNATIVE FYOUTURE! and CELEBRATION of a shared Love History which never died & now returns in the planet’s HOUR OF NEED “all the most healing-edge arts & sciences under one roof!” uk ROBOT ESCAPES FROM EXHIBITION Scientists running a pioneering experiment with 'living robots' which think for themselves were amazed to find one escaping from the centre where it 'lives'. UP! - PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS FOR OUTSIDERS All you need is love right? Well yeah we all need a shag sometimes : ) But imagine if you were single and disabled, physically or socially. How would you get it on then? Well, fortunately, help has always been at hand (excuse the pun) in the form of the Outsiders charity, founded by the ‘Robin Hood of sex’ Tuppy Owens. Outsiders is a self-help group which enables the disabled to express their sexuality and eventually find a partner. This month saw the launch of the ‘revised and modernised’ edition of the Outsiders book Practical Suggestions, compiled by Tuppy Owens and Paul Nevitt, a handbook written by members of Outsiders, offering ideas on how to find a partner when you have a disability. Disabled people have become more integrated into society in recent years, and it is now ‘PC’ to be seen out with a friend in a wheelchair or dancing with a hearing impaired person. However at the same time it has become even more taboo too start an affair, let alone marry, a disabled person. Social convention and lookism have returned with a vengeance, just when we thought they were on the way out. Outsiders hope to reverse this trend and have updated their handbook with this in mind. The new edition is good news for the handicapped, but its also enlightening for all of us. Those like myself who have played an active role in the sexual liberation movement have quickly discovered just how alienated and repressed most people are in modern society. In some sense we are all handicapped when it comes to sex, its just a question of degree. This book not only helps the disabled, it also helps integrate us all into a free and inclusive sexual culture, particularly with its guide to sexual confidence and advice on how to become freely sexualised, even if you’re beginning from a starting point of alienation and depression. The book also carries a wider message, that of maintaining and furthering the sexual revolution. As Professor Petruska Clarkson observed in a recent sexual freedom conference in London, sexual ecstasy is not the privilege of a few, but everyone’s right to have life and have life and have it more abundantly. The evolutionary purpose of sex is to realise the heaven on earth which is between our legs. But today our right to sexual ecstasy, though less restricted by law, is still limited by our consent to the tyranny of mind control by sex-negative societies and their sexual misinformation. Groups like Outsiders and the allied Sexual Freedom Coalition are today in the forefront of the drive to liberate us from this tyranny and ignorance. The book Practical Suggestions is given to all new members of Outsiders, it can also be bought (in print or on tape) at Coco de Mer, 23 Monmouth St, London, WC2, or obtained as an online text at www.practicalsuggestions.org.uk www.outsiders.org.uk Sexual Freedom Coalition http://www.sfc.org.uk/ Steve A (Sexual Freedom Campaigner) UP! - EXXONMOBIL-SPONSORED TERRORISM? QUESTION: Why are villagers in the Aceh province of Indonesia - or their lawyers - worrying about contributions from Exxon Mobil to George W. Bush and the Republicans? ANSWER: A year ago, the Washington-based International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit against the energy behemoth, claiming the Mobil half of the conglomerate paid and supported Indonesian military troops in the 1990s that committed human rights abuses in the war-torn province. Representing eleven unnamed residents of Aceh who say they or their husbands were brutalized by troops underwritten by Exxon Mobil, the ILRF maintained that under the Alien Tort Claims Act and Torture Victims Protection Act, the oil company and its Indonesian subsidiary could be held liable for the murder, torture, sexual crimes, and kidnapping conducted by these soldiers. As part of a joint venture with Pertamina, Indonesia's state-owned oil and gas company, Exxon Mobil - which owns 35% of this enterprise - operates a major natural gas facility in this province in northern Sumatra, where Acehnese separatists have been fighting Indonesian troops for decades. According to human rights organizations, in the 1990s Indonesian troops committed extensive abuses. Human Rights Watch reports that over 1000 people were killed, tortured or disappeared: "Thousands of Acehnese were detained without charge, often for years at a time, in military camps; many never returned." The ILRF suit says that, per an agreement with General Suharto, the former strongman-leader of Indonesia, Mobil paid the Indonesian military for providing ‘security’ for its facilities there. These troops, the ILRF contends, picked up one of the plaintiffs, held him at a structure at a Mobil plant, and for three months tortured him. Before they released him, the soldiers showed him a large pile of human heads. Another plaintiff claims he, too, was tortured by Indonesian soldiers at a building inside the company's compound. The other plaintiffs offer similar accounts of abuse. Exxon Mobil argues it has not "in any way directly caused, intended, conspired to commit, or participated in any" acts of brutality alleged and that there is "no basis" under US law for this lawsuit. When the suit was initiated, the president of Pertamina denied the joint venture had financed troops in Indonesia, conceding however that it provided health, housing and transportation facilities for the military. But in 2000, Kontras, an Indonesian human rights group, said it had conducted an investigation that determined that Exxon Mobil subsidised at least 17 military and police stations in Aceh with a personnel total of 1000. Last August, the Asian edition of Time published an article that Exxon Mobil does pay the soldiers that protect its sites and that townspeople "literally lineup to tell stories of abuse and murders committed by the troops they call Exxon's Army." (In 1998, several Indonesian human rights groups accused Mobil of being "responsible for human rights abuses" committed by the military, and maintained it provided logistical support to the army, including earth-moving equipment used to dig mass graves. That year, Business Week reported that the tales told by Acehnese who survived military abuse "raise questions about what Mobil knew and when.") NATIONAL SECURITY EH ANTI TERRORISM The lawsuit against Exxon Mobil had been moving along slowly (as is normal) in a Washington federal court, but took a turn that could threaten its continuation. At a hearing in April, federal district judge Louis Oberdorfer asked the oil company's attorneys whether the State Department had expressed an interest in the matter. Martin Weinstein, an Exxon Mobil lawyer, said that "this is a very difficult time in Indonesian-American relations" because al Qaeda fighters are residing in that large Muslim nation. He argued that if the judge allowed the lawsuit to proceed, Oberdorfer "would be forced to judge the conduct of the Indonesian government, an ally with whom America's relationship has never been more important, in order to determine whether the allegations in this complaint are those of murder or legitimate warfare against fundamentalist insurgents trying to break a country apart by bombings and other terrorist activities." That is, Exxon Mobil was telling the judge he might end up interfering with the war on terrorism. Weinstein suggested Oberdorfer contact the State Department and ask for its advice on how to handle the case. Lawyers for the victims opposed this, arguing: "If at any point the State Department believed the litigation harmed the foreign policy interests of the United States, it would have made its views known to the Court." Earlier this year, the State Department, in another case, informed a federal court that its pursuit of a lawsuit involving human rights abuses in Papua New Guinea would harm US relations with that country, and the court dismissed the case. OILMONEY BUSH CORRUPTION CARLYLE ANDERSON ENRON The ILRF's legal team also worried about Exxon Mobil's influence in the Bush administration, filing a motion with exhibits noting that * Exxon Mobil was the second largest campaign contributor, after Enron, in the current election cycle (giving almost entirely to Republicans) * James Rouse of the company's Washington office donated $100,000 to the George W. Bush inauguration * the company pressured the White House to oust the head of an international climate panel (and the White House did decide to oppose that fellow). "This is a bad precedent," says Terry Collingsworth, executive director of the ILRF. "If a human rights case has to go to the State Department, that will give defense lawyers another tool to slow it down or dismiss it." Still, Oberdorfer took Exxon Mobil's suggestion and wrote to the department: "Out of an abundance of caution, in the tense times in which we are living, I inquire whether the Department of State has an opinion (non-binding) as to whether adjudication of this case at this time would impact adversely on interests of the United States." He asked for the department to answer by July 1. As of yet, there's no sign from the administration how the State Department might reply. Career officials at the department, the plaintiffs' lawyers speculate, are not likely to be sympathetic to the oil company. In 2000, the State Department collaborated with human rights outfits and major energy and mining companies to develop a code of conduct for businesses working in developing nations where governments might engage in human rights abuses. The prominent hold-out was Exxon Mobil, which refused to sign the code - a fact not forgotten by the department's career lawyers. But the decision will probably be rendered at a higher - more political - level. Several human rights organizations and the United Steelworkers of America have requested that State Department not intervene in the case. So before a federal court can determine whether Exxon Mobil indeed supported troops that engaged in horrific abuses and bears responsibility for that, another important matter must be decided: can a transnational company accused of corporate-sponsored terrorism hide behind the war on terrorism? UP! - new york WED JUNE 26 Who knows what to make of Goldie and he likes it that way! He cut his teeth in the '80s as a Rastafarian, breakdancer, b-boy, professional graffiti artist (in London and the Bronx), and then a pill-popping UK raver (it sez here :) Later he re-incarnated as producer of the seminal drum 'n bass album Timeless. Fully stocked with fresh dubplates for the start of the Metalheadz World Tour his first DJ appearance in NY in over 2 years, he should deliver a slamming breakbeat set of the sound no one can quite pin down. MC Rage will accompany this Man with the Golden Grin, and local jungle stars Reid Speed, DJ Seoul, and Doomer (aka Sara Walker) round out the outfit. Centro-Fly, 45 W 21st St. 212.627.7770 $20 at door. UP! POEM FOR THE DRUM by Niall McDevitt “Let them make my skin into drum-heads for the Bohemian cause” Jan Zizak We have drummed the Millennium, out-there, cultic, weird, in the nocturnal city of sha-manic cabaret,
in shoes that tap-danced the boards of the true theatre; the TAZ, the Temple of Thespos, the Drunken Boat, the floating pirate utopia whose burgundy decks - slanted were impossible to walk when sober. for the cut-throats and their fungi mundi cargoes... Hakim the wise man our cachinnating figurehead, Mongrel the moon-faced one ranting from his dog-wild abdomen, rave strobes to navigate the black cavernous gulf, treasure maps and sea scrolls charting the anti-trade routes to the last ungoverned, unpoliced clods of earth in the fizgig interzones of these our Left-Hand Isles. Ingenious illnesses we carried on our backs, absconding from the fatal state-approved Work Dome, invading the Drome of the shape-shifters, time-travellers, The Millennium Drome goblin hordes in the skunk-perfumed dust tunnels; the Elfin Crew, glimmering eyes made of conjuration. All spaces were sacred, all rituals were site-specific Kingsley Hall?William Morris Soc where the wild children lived and laboured... At Cathedral, Satan strapped on her red-hot dildo, At Globe, our Christ-on-a-bike drank Tennants’ Super. and Shakespeare’s Globe T’was a sex-organic Hot Tub rebirthing in a soft-womb of time for the mad families of Chaos, Gaia, Eros who once were disconnected in the Mordoresque dark of the all-pervasive brainwash; mediation. Land animals we became, lords of the air... Jesus Complexes swooped, absailed, parachuted into the leper temples for rites, libations and much public healing of the Body Anarchic. Shamanic Clinics, Multiversities, Moral Brothels (deregulated) were established and disestablished to the deranged laughter of the ludicrous bureaucratic rat-race. Others fed the Monster: BALOR... We fed the grid. Celtic Cyclops Stallholders sold the nectars of the earth. Players gyrated in paleolithic penis gourds The Pidgin Players lost in a glossolalia of Queen’s English and Pidgin, Captain World in the trickster’s helmet a wolf-skin headdress Ken Campbell inciting us to haka-summon the ancestor spirits. Everyone was infamous, black-listed, death-listed for being sworn to the EcoTort... the Duty of Care. Saint Nick It was insufficient to see it with your own two eyes... Only Eye 3 could apprehend the colour-bombs, the fulgurations, the fire-balls, the orbs of night, the self-transforming elves, the hyper-spaceships and the ear was the eye that saw the piped music. “War on all muzak!” was the logos of the drum as the numbers spun on time’s axis: 99.. 00.. 01 Genius was collective: Genie? US! We turned the islands upside-down for justice. Drum was the rule. Drum was the politics and in all minds was hung a drumskin of goat and in all hands was a witchdoctor’s stick: Brotherhood of Bodhran, Sisterhood of the Singing Bowl. UP! - israel WE REALLY HATE TO SAY WE TOLD U SO BUT WE TOLD U SO, AND WE’RE TELLING U A LOT MORE THINGS TOO! AND WE FIND DEEP REASSURANCE IN THE FACT THAT THE HUMAN SPIRIT CANNOT BE SO EASILY BROKEN! WHAT KINDA FUTURE WOULD WE HAVE IF IT COULD?! THE NEW SUICIDE BOMBER Arien Ahmed, 20, skipped a marketing lecture at Bethlehem University on May 22 to carry out a suicide bombing in Israel, but she changed her mind on the way. Her face adorns no martyr's poster, but this Palestinian student of business administration, has one of the many profiles of the new suicide bomber. ** She did NOT go through months of ‘indoctrination’ (or even weeks) before setting out on last month’s suicide bombing mission. ** She had NO connection to militantly Islamic groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad who once orchestrated most such attacks. ** She received little more preparation than a demonstration of how to push a button. ARIEN AHMED’S CASE IS BECOMING TYPICAL Experts on both sides say that, under pressure from the grinding conflict with Israel, Palestinian society itself appears to be providing the only necessary indoctrination. A survey by Israel's national security service of Palestinian suicide bombers identified no particular pattern. All the suicides and would-be suicides have been Muslim, and most have been unmarried, but their ages and levels of education vary. For Ms. Ahmed, reasons as personal as lost love and as political as the hate-soaked conflict led her to act. Last month, as she described it in a jailhouse interview, she found herself walking through an Israeli town wearing a T-shirt that was too tight and a backpack that was too heavy, laden as it was with nails and a bomb. A CHAIN OF EVENTS WAS DRAGGING ARIEN DOWN WITH A SPEED THAT LEFT HER FROZEN, UNTHINKING It was only 5 days before that she’d offered her services (and maybe her life) to a member of a violent Palestinian group in Bethlehem. It was only the day before, she recalled, that her offer had been suddenly accepted. It was only on this day, Wednesday, May 22, that she’d been pulled away one of her marketing lectures, shown the backpack and how to trigger the bomb inside, put in a beat-up car with another would-be killer, and sent on, dressed to pass as an Israeli woman. She wondered if she was in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. She was actually in the town of Rishon le Zion. MORE AND MORE INSTANT KARMA Once it took months of training to prepare to commit suicide in the course of killing Israelis. The attackers were strictly from the fundamentalist Hamas and Islamic Jihad, envisioning a covey of virgins and automatic passes to paradise for loved ones left behind. A Palestinian psychiatrist in Gaza City, Dr. Iyad Sarraj, who has watched this trend with growing alarm, says that having grown up with the idea of suicide attacks, Palestinian children were equating death with power. - witness the ‘automatism’ of the other side who are the only ones with the power to stop the accelerating process. And, like many Palestinians, even he could not challenge the social acceptance of this ideal. "You can say `I condemn terror, I condemn killing civilians,' but you can't say `I condemn martyrs' because martyrs are prophets." Ms. Ahmed had expected training, had expected to be questioned about why she wanted to kill and die. Nothing of the sort happened. But though she called suicide bombing a mistake, she said she understood it. "It's a result of the situation we live in, innocent people are killed on our side too." From 1993 until late September 2000, Israeli officials counted 61 attempted and successful suicide attacks; from the beginning of this conflict until the middle of this month, it counted almost twice that number, 116. Mr. Shaibat repeatedly returned to Ms. Ahmed's upbringing: Her father died when she was 6 months old. Her mother remarried when she was 6 and left her in Beit Sahur; she now lives in Jordan. Ms. Ahmed made friends and was an excellent student, earning a partial scholarship to Bethlehem University. But it seemed to her family that she hid a great deal behind her bright smile. In an effort to understand the changing nature of suicide bombing, the Israeli defense minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, recently met separately with Ms. Ahmed and a would-be suicide bomber who was intercepted. He said he found little commonality but despair. "Our aim first is to show the world that we no longer love this life without our land," said Dr. Nizar Rayan, a Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip. One of Dr. Rayan's sons died last fall in a suicidal shooting attack on a Jewish settlement. Eventually Ms. Ahmed hopes to make a new life in Jordan, because if she is eventually released, "they will refuse me," as a coward. Asked who would refuse her, she replied, "My nation." UP! - DONUTS, DYING STARS’N RETINA NEBULA http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/2002/14/ The Hubble telescope reveals a rainbow of colors in this dying star, called IC 4406. Like many other so-called planetary nebulae, IC 4406 exhibits a high degree of symmetry. The nebula's left and right halves are nearly mirror images of the other. If we could fly around IC 4406 in a spaceship, we would see that the gas and dust form a vast donut of material streaming outward from the dying star. We don't see the donut shape in this photograph because we are viewing IC 4406 from the Earth-orbiting Hubble telescope. From this vantage point, we are seeing the side of the donut. This side view allows us to see the intricate tendrils of material that have been compared to the eye's retina. In fact, IC 4406 is dubbed the "Retina Nebula." UP! - israel SIGNS OF SANITY FROM ‘A DIFFERENT ISRAEL’ Thousands of college kids and young Israeli professionals are flocking to join a new political party called "Israel Akheret" or "A Different Israel." And what they want is quite different than what they've got. “We started at the end of February with just 10 people," said Boaz Nol, 25, one of the founders. "We haven't had any media - word just got around from one friend to another. Now we have more than 10,000 members. "Our idea is that you can't sit still in front of the TV and cry about how bad things are - you have to do something. The young generation, the future of this country, should take matters into its own hands to create a new vision for Israel." The movement's very existence is surprising in an apathetic student population dedicated to "passive protest," a nice euphemism for whining. "We have always been accused of caring only about ourselves," said Danny Frishman, a 24-year-old student in Jerusalem and one of the party's first members. "Now you see hundreds of people coming and saying they’re willing to work for change. Everywhere people tell us, 'We've been waiting for something like this to happen.' "We all share the feeling that something is going terribly wrong in this country. Not just the situation between us and the Palestinians. The problems within our own society are much bigger, but the government only worries about Arafat. "This is not a party just for young people. Some in their thirties or even forties are joining us. The most important thing is to have a young spirit." IDEALISM WITH A PRACTICAL BASE Nor is it all about a dream of a new, blue Israel. The economic reality in Israel today is bad. Tens of thousands of Israeli businesses have gone under since the current Intifada began. Unemployment has rocketed, with 271,000 people now without work - shocking in a nation of only 6 million. And tourism, surprise surprise, a mainstay of the economy, is at its lowest point in a decade. The shekel has depreciated nearly 17%, seriously cramping the style of young travelers. Taxes are high, and soar to a whopping 50% for those who make a decent living. But the astronomical cost of the ‘war’ is not the biggest bloodsucker. There are 19 political parties in Israel today, most representing special interest groups like Russian immigrants, the settlers, the ultra-religious, etc. With that many butts to kiss, the government survives by issuing kosher certificates to an outrageous amount of pork barrel legislation. Every special interest group, the ultra-religious in particular, demands a disproportionate slice of the pie and holds the government hostage with constant threats to resign from the coalition. When Ariel Sharon tried to form a government, every coalition member demanded ministerial-level jobs. When he ran out of titles, he began naming "ministers without portfolio," "deputy ministers," and "senior officials." So, on any given day, there are 40 people in the cabinet room. "The government, the politicians, live on their own planet and care only about their own selfish interests," said Boaz. "We need new, clean, young blood. I tell all my friends who are leaving for New York, 'Stay and fight with me for a new country.' " UNILATERAL, PHYSICAL SEPARATION BETWEEN THE 2 PEOPLES Israel Akheret is preparing for elections scheduled for 2003, and their platform makes good reading. "We’re very concerned and angry at how the vision of the founders of the State of Israel has been derailed. National priorities are determined by the intensity of sectarian pressure and not on the basis of long-range goals." The first thing they plan to do is replace the politicians with professionals. "We talked to business people, academics - the people who built this country and fought in all its wars," said Boaz. "We found that they think like us. So we’re going to ask the best, most experienced professionals to come and do 'reserve duty' in the government for a limited term." The party also promises to stop subsidising "vast layers of society while productive citizens carry the load." That means ending the huge subsidies paid to the settlers, to those who prefer to pad welfare rolls rather than work, and to the ultra-religious "breadwinners" who spend their days studying Torah in yeshivas. The saved funds would be channeled into infrastructure projects, creating employment. "Employers will receive incentives to replace foreign workers with Israeli employees at a dignified salary," the platform says. "Taxes will be set at a maximum of 40%." The party insists that all Israeli citizens, ultra-religious and non-Jews alike, should serve in the army or do alternate national service in schools, hospitals, and national parks. The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians "constitutes a strategic and moral liability. To end the violence and protect civilians from terror attacks, we advocate a unilateral, physical separation between the two peoples while both sides continue to strive for an equitable political resolution.” “ We should withdraw from the territories," added Boaz. "We should do what is good for us. We are tired of Arafat deciding what we do. We should make a fence border until there is a new leadership there that we can talk to about peace." Boaz's merry band has a pretty good track record. Before founding the party, they started the "Awakening" movement which battled a proposed law to exempt ultra-religious Hasidim from the military draft. “We had a 10-day hunger strike and 200,000 people came to sign a petition supporting us," Boaz said. "The law didn’t pass and now there are Hasidim in special army units." "Jewish people in the Diaspora should play a real part in creating a new vision for Israel," he concluded. "We want a populist government with professionals running the country." Sylvana Foa UP! - yorkshire, uk THURS JULY 4 NOON 4PM ANNUAL INDEPENDENCE FROM AMERICA DEMO CAMPAIGN FOR THE ACCOUNTABILITY OF AMERICAN BASES (CAAB) supported by Yorkshire CND At the Main Entrance to the Base, Menwith Hill near Harrogate North Yorkshire SPEAKERS: Mark Thomas (satirist), Caroline Lucas Green MEP, Dr Lynne Jones Labour MP, and the wonderful food by VEGGIES Anni Rainbow/CAAB - 01943 466405 Lindis Percy - 01482 702033 - mobile: 07949897904 Yorkshire CND - 01274 730795 UP! - "The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are NOW the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes" John Swinton (New York Times reporter for 30 years) - NOW READ THE UP! WHICH DOESN’T GET PAID AND DOES IT FROM LOVE OF TRUTH :) UP! - glastonbury, uk SAT JUNE 30 alternative to the alternative presented by Universal Love Productions in association with Elemental Productions... on, off, keep your eyes on the web site to get the latest ... Live local bands & DJs. 2 Sound Systems + acoustic acts plus amazing lighting and visuals. Live coverage of the World Cup on a big projection video screen. Outdoor cafe (Tea Bar). Compost toilets & water. Green-conscious waste policy is enforced on-site - our festival is NOT to become a giant dustbin, the way so many people treat the Worthy Farm site. Waste collection and recycling facilities will be made available, and are to be used. Those who do not have an environmentally responsible attitude are not welcome. CAMPING AND CAR PARKING: with local co-operation there will be camping and car parking fields available. CALLING ALL STEWARDS: if you have any kind of stewarding experience, and would like to help, give ‘me a call or e-mail. LOCATION: will be made public on the saturday at 9am, in the Glastonbury area and outside the Pilton Festival site. You’ll have no problem finding it as it will be very well sign posted. It’s within a few miles from the town, in a rural area. Please avoid hanging around the centre of Glastonbury Town, we don't want our town grinding to a halt! FREE! 01458)831489 fringe@glastonburyfestival.fslife.co.uk http://www.glastonburyfestival.fslife.co.uk/ UP! - AL-QAIDA NETWORK PLANNING FOR LONG-TERM Paul Rogers sees the evidence in recent Pakistan attacks and Moroccan arrests. http://www.opendemocracy.net/forum/document_details.asp?CatID=103&DocID=1524 UP! - THE CREATIVE COMMONS - COPYRIGHT FREE Because so many projects never take off due to copyright holders refusing to license their works, an Internet clearinghouse has been launched to overcome some of the copyright barriers to creativity. settings, but they won't be able to veto individual projects. http://www.creativecommons.org/ UP! - HOW CIA FAKED 'HOW SADDAM FAKED BABY FUNERALS’ STORY? Mr Sweeney I am appalled at your piece in yesterday's Observer 'HOW SADDAM STAGED FAKE BABY FUNERALS'. The Bush administration propaganda machine could not have done better. I have heard the true story on Iraq from Voices in the Wilderness UK, who have done extensive on-the-ground research into the effects of the US/UK sanctions. Their work confirms earlier reports from such reputable sources as UNICEF, and the former directors of the UN's Oil for Food Programme, Dennis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck ('THE HOSTAGE NATION', Guardian, 29 November, 2001), both of whom resigned over the issue, that these sanctions are indeed responsible for tens of thousands of excess child deaths in Iraq (half a million between 1991 and 1998 and continuing). Why didn't you interview these well informed and well respected sources, as opposed to the enemies of Iraq, such as the Prime Minister of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan - from my understanding (having recently seen a documentary film about the treatment of women in Kurdistan) a highly suspect organisation? The continuing baby death toll is not just the 'claims of Saddam' as you state in your article, but documented fact from sources with great integrity. Your report is not only misleading, therefore, it is dangerous, supporting as it does the US call for war against the Iraqi regime. Such unilateral aggression will not serve the interests of the Iraqi people any more than the current sanctions. I am equally dismayed with the Observer for publishing your piece, and so am copying this letter to the editor Roger Alton for his comments. Sincerely Penny Gray (Dr) Oxford, UK UP! - MEETING THE GREAT (ALCOHOL) SPIRIT? General Norman Schwartzkopf was asked recently if he didn't think there was room for forgiveness toward the people who have harbored and abetted the terrorists who perpetrated the September 11th attacks on America. His answer was classic Schwartzkopf. "I believe that forgiving them is God's function. Our job is simply to arrange the meeting." UP! - san francisco FRI JUNE 28 Presented by non-profit Musicians for Medical Marijuana, dedicated to raising public awareness of the challenges facing medical cannabis patients, their caregivers and physicians, artists will include The Venusians (Interplanetary Emissaries of Sonic Shamanism), DJ Dragonfly and guitar virtuoso Danny Heines. SPEAKERS include Dr. Frank Lucido and Freedom Fighter and Ganja Guru Ed Rosenthal ('Ask Ed'). Cellspace, 2050 Bryant St. 8.45pm. $15 min donation (under 12 free). Proceeds from this show will go to support: public education efforts, medical cannabis research and financial assistance for patients and their caregivers facing legal challenges. www.cellspace.org www.m4mmj.org UP! - london SAT JUNE 29, SUN 30TH A series of workshops and gatherings with Yasmin Perez, exploring the magic of being alive. SAT 7pm to 11pm will include live music, ecstatic dance, energy and voice work, creative meditation and circle of sharing our experiences. £11 / £7 concs. Just come along! SUN 11am to 7pm workshops consist in a creative group-dynamic to deepen our experience as conscious beings, integrating our different aspects into a sense of wholeness and unity. £50/£35 concs The Jam Factory, Green Walk (off Tower Bridge Road) SE1 (Borough tube) INFO: Yasmin on 020 8858 4647 or 020 7358 1756 yasminsprout@hotmail.com UP! - CARLYLE'S WAY - MAKING A MINT INSIDE "THE IRON TRIANGLE" OF DEFENSE, GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY. Like everyone else in the United States, the group stood transfixed as the events of September 11 unfolded. Present were former secretary of defense Frank Carlucci, former secretary of state James Baker III, and representatives of the bin Laden family. This was not some underground presidential bunker or CIA interrogation room. It was the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C., the plush setting for the annual investor conference of one of the most powerful, well-connected, and secretive companies in the world: the Carlyle Group. And since September 11, this little-known company has become unexpectedly important. That the Carlyle Group had its conference on America's darkest day was mere coincidence, but there is nothing accidental about the cast of characters that this private-equity powerhouse has assembled in the 14 years since its founding. Among those associated with Carlyle are former U.S. president George Bush Sr., former U.K. prime minister John Major, and former president of the Philippines Fidel Ramos. And Carlyle has counted George Soros, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud of Saudi Arabia, and Osama bin Laden's estranged family among its high-profile clientele. The group has been able to parlay its political clout into a lucrative buyout practice (in other words, purchasing struggling companies, turning them around, and selling them for huge profits) - everything from defense contractors to telecommunications and aerospace companies. It’s a kind of ruthless investing made popular by the movie Wall Street, and any industry that relies heavily on government regulation is fair game for Carlyle's brand of access capitalism. Carlyle has established itself as the gatekeeper between private business interests and U.S. defense spending. And as the Carlyle investors watched the World Trade towers go down, the group's prospects went up. In running what its own marketing literature spookily calls "a vast, interlocking, global network of businesses and investment professionals" that operates within the so-called iron triangle of industry, government, and the military, the Carlyle Group leaves itself open to any number of conflicts of interest and stunning ironies: ** it’s hard to ignore the fact that Osama bin Laden's family members, who renounced their son ten years ago, gained financially from the war being waged against him - until public criticism of the relationship forced them in late October to liquidate their holdings in the firm. ** U.S. president George W. Bush is in a position to make budgetary decisions that could pad his father's bank account. But for the Carlyle Group, walking that narrow line is the art of doing business at the murky intersection of Washington politics, national security, and private capital; mastering it has enabled the group to amass $12 billion in funds under management. But while successful in the traditional private-equity avenue of corporate buyouts, Carlyle has recently set its sites on venture capital with less success. The firm is finding that all the politicians in the world won't help it identify an emerging technology or a winning business model. Surprisingly, Carlyle has avoided the fertile VC market in defense technology, which now, more than ever, comes from smaller companies hoping to cash in on what the defense establishment calls the revolution in military affairs, or RMA. Thus far, Carlyle has passed up on these emerging technologies in favor of some truly awful Internet plays. And despite its unique qualifications for early-stage funding of defense companies, the firm seems to have no appetite for the sector. Despite its VC troubles, however, the Carlyle Group's core business is set for some good times ahead. Though the group has raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill in the past, the firm's close ties with the current administration and its cozy relationship with several prominent Saudi government figures has the watchdogs howling. And it's those same connections that will keep Carlyle in the black for as long as the war against terrorism endures. A CRUSADE FOR BIGGER PROFITS? For the 11th-largest defense contractor in the United States, wartime is boom time. No one knows that better than the Carlyle Group, which a month after U.S. troops began bombing Afghanistan filed to take public its crown jewel of defense, United Defense, a company it has owned for nearly a decade. That this company is even able to go public is testament to the Carlyle Group's pull in Washington. United Defense makes the controversial Crusader, a 42-ton, self-propelled howitzer that moves and operates much like a tank and can lob ten 155-mm shells per minute as far as 40 kilometers. The Crusader has been in the sights of Pentagon budget cutters since the Clinton administration, which argued that it was a relic of the cold war era - too heavy and slow for today's warfare. Even the Pentagon had recommended the program be discontinued. Yet remarkably, the $11 billion contract for the Crusader is still alive, thanks largely to the Carlyle Group. "This is very much an example of a cold war-inspired weapon whose time has passed," notes Steve Grundman, a consultant at Charles River Associates, a defense and aerospace consultancy in Boston. “Its liabilities were uncovered during the Kosovo campaign, when the Army was unable to deploy it in time. It is exceedingly expensive, and it was a wake-up call to the Army that many of its forces are no longer relevant." But the Carlyle Group was having none of it. While it’s impossible to say what U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld was thinking when he made the decision to keep the Crusader program alive, people close to the situation claim to have a pretty good idea. Mr. Carlucci and Mr. Rumsfeld are good friends from their undergraduate days at Princeton University. And while Carlyle executives are quick to reject any accusations of them lobbying the current administration, others aren't so sure. "In this particular effort, I felt that they were like any other lobbying group, apart from the fact that they are not," said one Washington, D.C., lobbyist with intimate knowledge of the Crusader negotiations, noting the fine line between lobbying and having a drink with a old friend. According to Greg McCarthy, a spokesperson for Representative J.C. Watts Jr. (R: Oklahoma), whose district is home to one of the Crusader's assembly plants, the Carlyle Group's influence was indeed felt at the Pentagon. "Carlyle's strength was within the DoD, because as a rule someone like Frank Carlucci is going to have access," says Mr. McCarthy. "But they have other staff types that work behind the scenes, in the dark, that know everything about the Army and Capitol Hill." THE KOREAN AFFAIR Perhaps even more disconcerting than Carlyle's ties to the Pentagon are its connections within the White House itself. Aside from signing up George Bush Sr. shortly after his presidential term ended, Carlyle gave George W. Bush a job on the board of Texas-based airline food caterer Caterair International back in 1991. Since Bush the younger took office this year, a number of events have raised eyebrows. Shortly after he was sworn in as president, he broke off talks with North Korea regarding long-range ballistic missiles, claiming there was no way to ensure North Korea would comply with any guidelines that were developed. The news came as a shock to South Korean officials, who had spent years negotiating with the North, assisted by the Clinton administration. By June, Mr. Bush had reopened negotiations with North Korea, but only at the urging of his own father. According to reports, the former president sent his son a memo persuasively arguing the need to work with the North Korean government. It was the first time the nation had seen the influence of the father on the son in office. But what has been overlooked was Carlyle's business interest in Korea. The senior Bush had spearheaded the group's successful entrance into the South Korean market, paving the way for buyouts of Korea's KorAm Bank and Mercury, a telecommunications equipment company. For the business to be successful, stability between North and South Korea is critical. And though there is no direct evidence linking the senior Bush's business dealings in Korea with the change in policy, it is the appearance of impropriety that excites the watchdogs. "We are clearly aware that former President Bush has weighed in on policy toward South Korea and we note that U.S. policy changed after those communications," says Peter Eisner, managing director at the Center for Public Integrity, a watchdog group in Washington, D.C., which has an active file on the Carlyle Group. "We know that former President Bush receives remuneration for his work with Carlyle and that he is capable of advising the current president, but how much further it goes, we don't know." While the Center for Public Integrity looks for its smoking gun, others in Washington say hard evidence is unimportant. "Whether the decisions made by the former president are a real or apparent conflict of interest doesn't matter, because in the public's eye they're equally as damaging," says Larry Noble, executive director and general counsel of the Center for Responsive Politics. "Bush [Sr.] has to seriously consider the propriety of sitting on the board of a group that is impacted by his son's decisions." SAUDI ARABIA: A THOUSAND AND ONE DEALS The controversy is expected only to increase as Carlyle's investments in Saudi Arabia are scrutinized during the war on terrorism. Mr. Eisner says that very little is known about Carlyle's involvements in Saudi Arabia, except that the firm has been making close to $50 million a year training the Saudi Arabian National Guard, troops that are sworn to protect the monarchy. Carlyle also advises the Saudi royal family on the Economic Offset Program, a system designed to encourage foreign businesses to open shop in Saudi Arabia and uses re-investment incentives to keep those businesses' proceeds in the country. But the money flowing out of Saudi Arabia and into the Carlyle Group is of even more interest. Immediately after the September 11 attacks, reports surfaced of Carlyle's involvement with the Saudi Binladin Group, the $5 billion construction business run by Osama's half-brother Bakr. The bin Laden family invested $2 million in the Carlyle Partners II fund, which includes in its portfolio United Defense and other defense and aerospace companies. On October 26, the Carlyle Group severed its relationship with the bin Laden family in what officials termed a mutual decision. Mr. Bush Sr. and Mr. Major have been to Saudi Arabia on behalf of Carlyle as recently as last year, and according to reports, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is currently looking into the flow of money from the bin Laden family. Carlyle officials declined to answer any questions regarding their activities in Saudi Arabia. But for all the questions, Carlyle has stayed clean in the eyes of the law. Lobbying laws in Washington, D.C., are ambiguous at best, requiring only that former politicians observe a one-year "cooling-off period" before they re-enter the lobbying scene on behalf of industry. It is playing within this gray area that has given the Carlyle Group some of the best returns in the business. SO WHERE DID CARLYLE COME FROM? After David Rubenstein, a former aide in the Carter administration, and William Conway Jr., former chief financial officer of MCI Communications, hooked up at New York's Carlyle hotel in 1987 to form the company, the Carlyle Group spent two lost years investing in a hodgepodge of companies. It wasn't until 1989, when the company brought in Mr. Carlucci, fresh off his two-year stint as U.S. secretary of defense, that Carlyle got serious in government. In 1991 the company made a name for itself by facilitating a $590 million purchase of Citicorp stock for Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Shortly thereafter, Carlyle snatched up defense contractors Harsco, BDM International, and LTV, turning the companies around and selling them to the likes of TRW, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. The Carlyle Group has diversified its holdings since then, investing in everything from bottling companies to natural-food grocers. In the process, it has become one of the biggest, most successful private-equity firms in business, with annualized returns of 35%. (Judging by the early numbers from some of their funds, however, like many other private-equity funds, 2001 will be a considerably less profitable year for Carlyle.) "They are the new breed of private equity, acting more like a large mutual fund of private companies," says David Snow, editor of PrivateEquityCentral.net, a Web site that tracks private-equity firms. The numbers are impressive: Carlyle employs 240 people, as opposed to the 10 or 12 typical of most private-equity firms. It has ownership stakes in 164 companies, which collectively employ more than 70,000 people. George Soros invested $100 million in the group's funds; the California Public Employees' Retirement System is in for $305 million. Carlyle has succeeded by raising money first, then finding the talent to manage it. For instance, it raised a fund for buying out telecom companies and hired William Kennard, the former U.S. Federal Communications Commission chairman, to run it. Accused early on of being nothing more than a bunch of Washington grip-and-grinners, Carlyle has proven its critics wrong. At a Salomon Smith Barney private-equity conference last March, a panel of professional investment managers were asked who the best fund managers are. Carlyle cofounder Mr. Conway was one of two managers chosen. THE WAR ON TERRORISM With its size and success, questions about the firm's ability to grow revenue has arisen. Carlyle has placed its bets for future growth on the VC markets, which it entered in 1996. But to date, it has found that venture capital is a game with far different rules than that of corporate buyouts. Carlyle executives admit as much. But the struggles in its VC business may be offset, at least temporarily, by the expected windfall from the war on terrorism. The federal government has already approved a $40 billion supplemental aid package to the current budget, $19 billion of which is headed straight to the Pentagon. Some of the additional government spending is likely to find its way into Carlyle's coffers. The Bush administration isn't afraid to mix business and politics, and no other firm embodies that penchant better than the Carlyle Group. Walking that fine line is what Carlyle does best. We may not see Osama bin Laden's brothers at Carlyle's investor conferences any more, but business will go on as usual for the biggest old boys network around. As Mr. Snow puts it, "Carlyle will always have to defend itself and will never be able to convince certain people that they aren't capable of forging murky backroom deals. George Bush's father does profit when the Carlyle Group profits, but to make the leap that the president would base decisions on that is to say that the president is corrupt." by Dan Briody UP! Maybe I'm wrong, but I believe there’s a paradigm shift rippling through America about these issues. Americans are changing the way they think about big corporations and their excessive influence over government. People are talking about things that were practically unheard of 10 years ago, like fascism, corporate welfare, class warfare. Now these terms are becoming part of common parlance. Though the mass media seems more tightly controlled than ever, an alternative public discourse is developing through the Internet. Alternative views are surfacing in books like Michael Moore's "Stupid White Men," a runaway bestseller that represents a radical view the polls don't detect. Such events as the Rolling Thunder Tour will create forums for people to meet face to face and to realize that those who oppose the Bush agenda are the majority, and the wishes of the majority are very different from how they are portrayed on the corporate media. This shift in perception could reach a critical mass at which point it crystallizes like the frost on a glass pane that breaks into glorious, intricate patterns all catalyzed by a single particle of dust. Whether or not the canalization occurs or whether it is effectively suppressed remains to be seen. But there is an electrifying potential in the atmosphere. America could be on the verge of a new social revolution that will be so powerful it will sweep out the old power brokers through a nonviolent democratic tidal wave. John Judge, Red Herring UP! - new york THURS JUNE 27 Housing Works Used Books Cafe, 126 Crosby St. 212.334.3324 FREE 6.30pm UP! - london JUNE 4-29 With his extraordinary company, Ken Campbell has taken up residence to support the theatre's fundraising efforts to avoid permanent closure from September,: @ The Little Angel Theatre, 14 Dagmar Passage, Islington, N10 8pm Tickets £5 (on the door only) 0207 226 1787 For further info contact Colin Watkeys on 0208 670 1232 UP! - WOTTABOUT CHINA IN ALL THIS?! The globalisation of China is one of the huge stories of the 21st century. Jean-Pierre Lehmann, just returned from Beijing, writes a generous, historically-informed survey of the country's condition, concluding with a qualified optimism that this immense country is on the road to an open society. http://www.opendemocracy.net/forum/document_details.asp?CatID=99&DocID=1514 UP! - //YOU FEEDBACK DOUBTS ABOUT 'DIRTY BOMBER' So Many dirty tricks by the BushWacks! Why does this not surprise most of us? Stop and go back to the election time. Funny how the big mess-up with counting theballots happened in the same state where Bush's brother was, hey? Just like "Deep Throat," things have a way of surfacing further on down the trail. Guess we'll all be wearingthat new perfume now, its called "Toss Me in the Bushes"; and so the story goes....yada, yada, yada lilhunky / Michigan, us. UP! - "It's not the strongest of the species who survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change." Charles Darwin UP! - ZEN BABA NEARLY FREAKS :) The other day I was having an out-of-body experience, so I grounded myself and got centered with the help of my spirit guides and almost astral projected anyway, but the phone rang. I sensed the negative vibrations so I threw the I-Ching and checked my numerology chart and nearly had a primal, but my energy was too blocked, so I did some bioenergetics and self-parenting, took some flower essence and ate an organic oat bran ginseng muffin, but my inner child wasn't feeling nurtured yet so I had a Rice Dream Frozen Pie, too, but that made me hyper so I did the relaxation response while listening to my subliminal tapes, but I was feeling depersonalized so I did some polarity work, foot reflexology and past life regression, then rebirthed myself and called Moon Beam, the bodyworker, to make an appointment for a Shiatsu, Reike, Rolfing, Feldenkreis, Swedish, Japanese deep tissue massage, but she flaked out and never returned my call, so I decided to energize my crystals and do some positive imagery because all my visualization techniques and affirmations made my space feel invaded, so to get empowered, I got a psychic reading from Mother HeartLove around the issue of my assertiveness so I could feel my radiance and have some energy for my psychocalisthenics and inversion swing before my harmonic brain-wave synergy session, which made me more focused for my actualization seminar, holistic healing class and dream workshop, so I'd be more clear for my Gestalt behavioral cognitive transpersonal Reichian Jungian Freudian Ericksonian session at the hot springs but my aura was weak for my trance-channeling group so I fasted until noon to recharge my chakras and I sensed my intuition was high and my cycle was focused, so I turned on my ion generator to open up for my neuro-linguistic programming session, but I needed to have my pyramid recharged before my guided synchronicity meditation, so I got some craniosacral therapy, which aligned me for the fire walk, which was between my tarot card reading and my sensory deprivation tank appointment, but after all that I felt what I truly needed was a meaningful relationship to mirror myself so I went to my personal shaman, and then to my guru, but they were no help, so instead I went to the Intensive Whole Life Earth Rebirth Cosmic Expo Symposium Workshop to find someone who really knew what was going on, but that didn't work either, so I locked myself in a calcium coated Orgone Box and went to sleep so I could "get it" in the dream state... zenbaba / los angeles U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U U UP P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P P the UP! //:-) la - la - la - lap-toppling da system! TEXT JOCKEY // TJ PHRASER (fraser clark) cyberslut // TJ PHRASER & THE MEDIA EVOLUTION MIXING THE TRACTS LIVE ON THE KEYBOARD @ A MEDIA-MEME RATE OF 160 IPP * * Ideas Per Paragraph |