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TAKE oVEr! (\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/) the UP//:-) 115 may 22, 2002 la - la - la - lap-toppling da system! (\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/)(\o/) when bush comes to shove.. GREAT? WIRED? ZIPPY? HOAX? - p8. Jules Marshall, the journalist who wrote the original Wired article, responds. THE VAGINA BIOLOGUES - p7. Condom-free sex makes women happier! VIDEOS OF PEOPLE SAYING THINGS THEY NEVER SAID! - p17. IS AMERICA A NATION OF GUN NUTS, OR JUST NUTS? - p15. Michael Moore’s new film. 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 =[10,456]= 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 MAY 23-29 * * * * * * * * * * *
UP- "Of course I'm proud that you invented the electric light bulb. Now turn it off and get to bed!" THOMAS EDISON'S MOTHER.Major week coming up. The “reckless endangerment” of the US Administration’s foreign policy Is likely to come to a head. Our personal re-orientations will take a big step. Security is a very big issue. Check Daykeeper Journal for details. www.daykeeperjournal.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * when bush comes to shove the higher he’s risen, the further he’ll fall :) “to everything there is a season...” the ‘war coalition’ has begun to fall apart. the Last Stand of Dinosaur Culture, financially championed by george bush and the quadruple-heart-by-passed team installed to prop up and run him, has finally over reached itself. the only government left on the planet which is pumping up the War on Drugs (and Rave Culture) long after it’s been (thankfully) lost, to prepare for war in space, to pull out of every ‘multilateral’ agreement with other countries etc etc (everybody knows the list!), in short, the only government left on our increasingly tiny planet which , in thatcher’s words, “does not believe in society”. all, but the “traditionalists,” have been ready to accelerate (with discrimination) into the future (exactly what we were doing before the Dinos finally launched their Grand Stand!). america, the most materially developed and hence morally underdeveloped and conservative, has been holding history back. though i’ve struggled shoulder-to-shoulder as a True Friend of america to help kickstart her culture into Change, her material power was too great - i suppose it’s hard to concentrate on a penniless raver hippy guy’s passionate declarations when you’re effortlessly making $5000 profit on your 30 billion dollar holdings in the time it’s taking him to say it :) the proof? bush and the bully boys got elected! but, finally, i believe, last year’s Warning kicked off a process (Blatant Bushism?) which would channel this morality-free, greed-driven, dinosauric corporatism to the extreme end of its branch where it must inevitably collapse of its own contradictions. now is that moment, i believe and pray, or the beginning of what history will see as that Change, when the true evolutionary strain in Human Culture (including america, not included by it!) can return to a healthy, balanced course again. there is an inevitability about hubris, one watches it grow and grow and get further and further from what one thought was a ‘sane balance’ and then, just when it’s looking like the whole world’s toppling into madness, the Opposing Force comes into play and, as the song says, the higher you rise the further you fall. and when this one falls, 10,000 years of dinosaur dominance falls with it, make no mistake about that. the Meek (non-ego-dominant) will have inherited the earth. it was always theirs (and they it’s), only those dino types with their pushy competitive manner, their dodgy, inflation-funded, ill-considered, hare-brained ideas and their scary self-confidence (and salesman trickery) grabbed it when nobody was looking and then held it by sheer force of arms and propaganda until now. why will this one fall so far? because it’s the Last Stand, the Final and Worst and Biggest and Baddest of Them All, because, if u can remember, before ‘they’ bought the presidency for bush, things had been moving inexorably and even acceleratingly towards an increasingly liberal, fair and just international society. i even remember writing at the time that, after expecting a final struggle between the two cultures for decades, it was starting to look like the old guard were NEVER going to fight back. though it was probably too late for them to change as individuals, it was looking as if, like Old Warriors, they were just going to fade away. like thatcher has done, her hectoring voice not stilled but gradually fading into the background. most americans seemed to believe the evolution (not just of fookin technology!) would just sorta happen, quietly kick in again, like it would just arrive in the shops one day. (clinton’s blow job probably marked the beginning of the opening for the Dino’s Return (an uneducated, under-developed attempt by the world’s most materialistic culture to recover spiritual values, but by looking backwards to mere charlatans and spivs mouthing “compassionate,” “caring”. but that’s another story.) compassionate my ass! the renaissance was happening down there in the street among rave culture, (among the Youth, surprise! surprise!) with whom the “compassionate ones” were planning All Out War!! and then, in what looked to me like the last Charge of the Dark Brigade, they came blasting out of their bunkers with a whole new grand plan for a “NEW WORLD ORDER”. and then, as that was beginning to alienate the rest of the world, osama played into their hands (as they decided) by handing them the perfect excuse to go full blast for an Unholy Roman Empire Of Sword & Dollar (SHORT INTERLUDE. to remember who we are. and what we’re here for :). chaos science abandons advance prediction of which seemingly innocuous micro change will suddenly trigger a seemingly disproportional macro process-change such as that kicked off in america last week. why now? did a single drop finally overflow a vessel somewhere? take this email, which just popped into my in-box from that solitary brave u.s. congresswoman cynthia mcKinney who’s consistently refused to bend with the tide of fascist hysteria: “Several weeks ago, I called for a congressional investigation into what warnings the Bush Administration received before the terrorist attacks. I was derided by the White House, right wing talk radio, and spokespersons for the military-industrial complex as a conspiracy theorist. Even my patriotism was questioned because I dared to suggest that Congress should conduct a full and complete investigation into the most disastrous intelligence failure in American history. Senator Zell Miller even characterized my call for hearings as ‘dangerous, loony and irresponsible.’” how different everything suddenly looks with the passage of a few short weeks! u can be damn sure there will be a full investigation now nothing can stop it, though the network of corporate freemasonic oligarchs will delay the new forward process as much as they can. and u can also be damn sure that poor little Bushie is going to be given a far more ‘unfair’ time than Clinton ever faced. george bush junior could end up Schmuck of History. for it’s a battle to the death being engaged in here, at the end of which the old reaganite wing of republicanism will have been washed permanently away, and the current right wing of the democrat party will take its place (much as happened here in the UK after blair). there will be no turning back after this, evolution cannot allow it. why will it go so far? because everything goes too far, because the democrats have had it stuffed down their maws for so long, have had public acquiescence forced on them as they watched bush’s popularity soar to all-time heights, freed of even the slightest criticism, a john wain wannabe wallowing on the back of a terrifying american jingo tsunami that, in deed and word, threatened to swamp the sane world; so many many many unvoiced accusations, gnawing suspicions, half-hidden dodgy facts and outright plain lies (plus enronesque networks and revolving doors within networks within government within corporations within watchdog agencies and global banks policing themselves and corrupted accounting institutions till i, personally, ‘consciously question’ even the stock market and weather reports these days, and all with the sole purpose of spewing out obscene personal financial booty at the people’s expense) have been piling up in the wings, the Furies, Karma, Shiva Lord of Destruction and Death and all of it easy enuff to research and cross-reference (as the UP’s been doing these past 6 months) because nobody was really paying these areas any attention! crucially, bush and the bully boys started to believe they were untouchable now, caution was thrown to the wind as All Fell Before them, and so they were scarcely bothering to cover their tracks, they and their fathers had been screwing the dirty buck from the public purse all their lives why should anything change now? do you know the businessman’s real (tho now outdated) bottom line? “grab your billion any dirty way you can, then hire the most brutal lawyers to hold onto it”. hubris. from the real story behind enron, anderson, carlyle, unocal, chaves, the devastation rained unreported on afghanistan, iraq openly in the sights... and now, now that the dam has broken and the president’s finally being flushed into the open, into the firing line, i am absolutely predicting that the democrats will go EQUALLY TOO FAR in the opposite direction! with both boots they will jump into the hellish mass of corruption, of unanswered and unanswerable questions that go back at least as far as bush’s grandfather’s dealing with hitler. nothing will be out of bounds once ‘the investigative process’ has got rolling. compared to clinton’s near impeachment for telling whoppers about a mere blow job, bush could easily go down as the most conniving, dishonest, incompetent greedhead nixonite spiv in the entire history of american presidents. morally ‘fair’ it probably won’t be, but the fact bush’s best days are already behind him and all he has to look forward to is a lifetime of cruel and unusual punishment clearly shows a karmic balance in the affairs of men. as ‘totally ‘unfair’ as has been his positive treatment (as americans huddled touchingly inside their president’s wagon train) so now will he and his administration and ‘old buddies’ be tainted with the blame for just about everything that’s ever gone wrong, the scapegoat for corporate hegemony's and megamoney’s demise, from globalisation to the world banks! i mean, how can you ever prove that he did everything possible with the information he had?! once the press smells blood, they can pick out a single tiny fact from thousands of daily warnings and splash it all over the front pages for a week till jesus christ himself would look diabolic. and, friends, bush is no jesus christ :) but they are going to crucify him. and even though no democrats (including clinton) would have handled defence much differently (Osama’s Revenge was, after all, the elite american culture’s hard-earned karma, and democrats just its liberal wing), they’re going to be quite as hypocritical as bush (for they’re all 2nd Millennial politicians!) and they are.. going to.. stick ever goddamn unknown factor on him. because that’s what they do. george bush. sacrificial texan steer never mind the facts even, it’s the motives which will soon be ruthlessly and increasingly pitilessly questioned as the stench of political bloodletting rises. investigations of oil deals, a cabinet of oil and other corporate interests, the Florida Fix (just watch the poor bastards scuttle to plea bargain and make deals!) the wooing of the taliban, the illegal attempt at ‘accelerated globalisation’ of venezuela (wait till CNN gives chaves a platform!), the corporate IMF-scam bouncing & looting of argentina and so many other independent states, those ‘go easy’ blocks on the al queda investigation; bin laden’s financial connections with the bushes and this entire elite in fact etc etc, oh, and when they come to questioning ’real motives!! what were your ‘real motives’ for avoiding a full investigation of the biggest intelligence failure blah blah; ‘real motives’ are like a blunderbuss which can hit every damn thing in sight “and what were your real motives for withdrawing america from this international agreement, mr president? were your father’s financial interests in armaments/oil/Dealing with the Enemy one of your ‘real motives’ for opting out of that treaty?” etc and etc with every other international agreement. oh yes, and that irritatingly cocky foney-confident strut of his? watch both sides’ attempts to re-spin that body language as prison looms nearer with every year and sub-plot that passes. &, beyond ‘real motives,’ lies the ‘character question’ at which point all bets are off u can bring up anything the guy ever did does his drink-drive conviction as a youth show a “pattern” etc, was his pretzel panic caused by a guilt attack? chuck in the Pennsylvania plane which i’ve always reckoned was shot down on presidential command but kept hush-hush (“hidden from the american people”) to avoid undermining the desired and decided image of his great love for american citizens’ love of freedom blah blah, think how that will look in the investigations. ok, like the afghan war, rapid early success in their takeover fooled the bully boys into thinking they could hide any number of lies behind the legality of “a war situation” (“you’re saying, mr cheyney, that the bin Laden video was a case of the US government COUNTERFEITING evidence to the whole world?!”) but, when they’re in the dock instead of the presidential office, it will look like the shit it is, and a rationalisation when the Force is running with you looks worse than pathetically ignoble and self-serving when it’s running against. lastly, like chaves, the internet brought bush low. why? because, as the inevitable Fall Into The Opposite built up steam over these last couple of weeks before the Story broke, Chaos Science predicts that there will have been a shattering moment, pregnant with ‘change’, in some key player’s life, or several (perhaps it was when Dan Rather broke ranks in the BBC interview last week which we publish below) a sickeningly scary moment when he or she found themselves staring into the Abyss, and tried to calculate its depth: how much shit is there really on these guys? how far is this counter-movement going to go? and they THEY WOULD HAVE FOUND THEMSELVES STARING INTO A CATALOGUE OF SINS, CRIMES AND GENERAL AND SPECIFIC MURKINESS (and all enthusiastically and obsessively researched, all cunningly calculated and cross-referenced, all lovingly and efficiently forwarded, and all widely and slightly bravely beamed around the world’s web) THAT COULD PUT THEM AWAY FOR SEVERAL LIFETIMES! had all that damning information not already leaked, thence to disperse slowly but quite unstoppably among the global public (beyond american control!), then that shattering, pregnant moment might have birthed in them a resolve to hold steady, to brazen it out as so often before in the Good Ol’ Dinosaur Days, secure in the knowledge that (at whatever price) they’d be a safe cog (with a stiff slice of materialist pie) in an efficiently successful Cover-UP :) u know who george bush most reminds me of? harvey oswald, the patsy in the kennedy assassination. fraser. may 27, 2002 UP- "Can't you paint on walls like other children? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get that stuff off the ceiling?" MICHELANGELO'S MOTHER. ARE THE RATS DESERTING THE SINKING SHIP? CBS STAR DAN RATHER SAYS AMERICAN MEDIA HAVE BEEN COWED TOO LONG BY PATRIOTIC FEVER Network news veteran admits national mood caused him to shrink from tough questions on war in Afghanistan Dan Rather, star news anchor for the US television network CBS, has broken ranks to say that "patriotism run amok" was in danger of trampling the freedom of American journalists to ask tough questions. And he admitted that he too had shrunk from taking on the Bush administration over the war on terrorism. In the weeks after September 11 Rather wore a Stars and Stripes pin in his lapel during his evening news show in an apparent display of total solidarity with the American cause. However, in a BBC interview last week, he graphically described the pressures to conform that built up after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon: "It’s an obscene comparison, but you know there was a time in South Africa when people would get flaming tires put around their necks if they dissented. And, in some ways, the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. It is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest questions." Rather did not exempt himself from the criticism, and said the problem was self-censorship. "It starts with a feeling of patriotism within oneself. It carries through with a certain knowledge that the whole country - and for all the right reasons - felt and continues to feel this surge of patriotism within themselves. And one finds oneself saying: 'I know the right question, but you know what? This is not exactly the right time to ask it.'" Such a confession is astonishing, bearing in mind its source. Rather is almost as famous in the US as the president, but more secure in his tenure, far better paid and probably more pampered. Now 70, he’s held what used to be regarded as the top job in American journalism for two decades, since he was chosen to succeed the revered and avuncular Walter Cronkite as CBS News's anchorman. The White House had failed to provide adequate information about the war, Rather said. "There has never been an American war, small or large, in which access has been so limited as this one. "Limiting access, limiting information to cover the backsides of those who are in charge of the war, is extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted. And I’m sorry to say that, up to and including the moment of this interview, it has been overwhelmingly accepted by the American people. And the current administration revels in that, they relish that, and they take refuge in that." His view of patriotism, Rather said, differed from that of the administration. "It's unpatriotic not to stand up, look them in the eye, and ask the questions they don't want to hear - they being those who have the ultimate responsibility - of sending our sons and daughters, our husbands, wives, our blood, to face death." Matthew Engel / The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story/0,7369,717097,00.html UP- Life’s most powerful channel of communication.. Prayer monsieurfraser clark, i’ve always felt that i knew you through your writing... finding it quite a delight. I have been on your list for so long knowing that we knew somehow. i’m about to go global to study da people, take off to travel for the most of me 29th year here. i have enjoyed your perspective of the world around us. the world we thrive and dance and write and sing for is lucky to have your voice so eloquent, honest & out there real. loads of light and love to all you do. Yours in Service, Catelyst Eleven / new york UP- Life’s worst thing to be without ..... Hope
A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A ADVERTISING G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G
HERE’S A PERFECT EXAMPLE, WHICH JUST CAME IN, OF THE EXTREME POSITION, FROM SOMEONE WHO’S BEING SILENCED BY THE POWERFUL SPELL OF PATRIOTISM AND PARANOIA AROUND HER. JUST AS SHE WITHDRAWS IN FEAR FROM FREELY VOICING OPINIONS ON THE NET, THE BUSH SPELL STARTS UNRAVELING!Siouxsie and the Banshees Play Europe... JULY 1 : Greece Rockwave Festival JULY 3 : Dublin Ambassador JULY 5 : Glasgow Barrowlands JULY 6 : Sheffield Octagon JULY 9 : London Shepherds Bush Empire Tickets from usual outlets After this the band take a big break.. more news later from Sioux Records - A Truly Independent Label Sioux Records, Po Box 23137, London SE1 3ZW United Kingdom <www.thecreatures.com> A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A ADVERTISING G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G THE FEAR OF BEING LISTED Too sad...so much for Free Speech in America... I would advise everyone to be extra careful from now on regarding what he says and what he forwards to the lists because unfortunately "lists with names" Iike “potentially dangerous anarchist" for individuals against the established regime) have started to be formulated again in the 21st century. Freedom is an Illusion.... Democracy too... Big Brother is watching... so sad... no true civil rights any more... the 'terrorist' threat” was the perfect excuse to completely violate true freedom here. We all live in an illusion: the illusion of Western Democracy which is Democracy in name ONLY. And having said that, I am zipping it too from now on for obvious reasons... have no other choice unfortunately. effie / another america - while we certainly don’t live in a truly democratic state (which should actually be Participatory Democracy instead of our current outdated Representative Democracy model, but that’s another story!) we don’t live in a truly autocratic state either. so which way it goes depends on you! if we’re all like you, we’re doomed, but, luckily, even Dan Rather has found his balls again :) UP- THE VAGINA BIOLOGUES IT’S OFFICIAL. Sex without a condom makes women happier! Indeed, recent research has proved (which some of us suspected already) that, rather than the shagging itself, it’s the mood-changing chemicals in male sperm which actually act as an anti-depressant for women. I’m not making this UP, honest! In Archives of Sexual Behaviour, published last week by doctors at New York University, psychologists logging the sexual activities and depression scores of 300 women, found that those who had unprotected sex tended to be less depressed than those who used condoms or abstained altogether. Women who took the sweety wrapper off were also less likely to attempt suicide :) Condom users tended to get more depressed the longer they went without sex. Note there are 2 findings here, the first being about condom use; the second was this: “Women who engaged in sexual intercourse without condoms evidenced significantly lower levels of depressive symptoms than those who abstained from sexual intercourse. ”The vagina absorbs several biological products contained in seminal fluid that can be measured in the blood stream. Our findings are consistent with the suggestion that semen in the female reproductive tract may play a role in modulating depressive symptoms.” Not considered, however, is the possibility, even probability, that happier women are less likely to use a condom, or even that men with happier women are less likely to use condoms. :) Another area crying out for research is whether oral application is equally effective. Several volunteers here at the YOUniversity office are willing to help support any such research. UP- "I don't care what you've discovered, you still could have written!" COLUMBUS' MOTHER. THE GREAT? WIRED? ZIPPY? HOAX? by Jules Marshall, the original Wired mag writer who made the Zippy site the most visited internet site of that year :) On my return from a technically-caused email fast, I was astounded that this story has risen again, years after it seemed to have gone away. I have also received mails from the editor/publisher of Wired, and Fraser Clark on the subject, so I have taken a little time to tell how I saw it. Yes, I conceived of, pitched and wrote the Zippies Are Coming! story, so for the record, here's my part in it, and a little of the wonderful madness after it broke :) First, to clear up any confusions of ‘zippy’ with pinheads, yippies, etc... “Zippy stands for Zen-inspired professional pagan, according to 50-year-old Fraser Clark, shamanic zippie spokesperson, club manager of Megatripolis and editor of Encyclopaedia Psychedelica (EPi), the magazine that first identified these "hippies with zip." According to EPi, "A Zippie is someone who’s balanced their hemispheres to achieve a fusion of the technological and the spiritual. The techno-person hemisphere understands that rationality, organisation, long-term planning, consistency and single-mindedness are necessary to achieve anything solid on the material level. The hippie hemisphere understands that vision, individuality, spontaneity, flexibility and open-mindedness are crucial to realize anything on the spiritual scale. Harmonised Hemispheres are healthier." - from the original article at www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.05/zippies.html?person=richard_dawkins&topic_set=wiredpeople Now return with me, if you will, to the Summer of Love, 1989... the summer of 1989 I was living in London but my heart was sick with Thatcher's Bloody Britain. Specifically, the only topic of conversation being the price of houses, the Green Party gaining 24% of the vote in a European Parliament election - and no seats, due to the first-past-the-post system used in the UK - and for whom I'd voted, been politically active for the only time in my life. Add the number of homeless I had to step over to get to work, grim tales from friends a year or two further down the line in their career path that things didn't get any easier, and I was ready to bail. My reading before leaving London had been pretty left wing - Marxism Today, one of the best lefty mags ever to come out of the UK, both in design and content, not least of which it having launched the New Labour/Third Way debate in Britain while at the same time putting Gramscian ideas of cultural hegemony into play for a large, non-academic community. I arrived to find my editor firmly - nay, fervently - committed to free market liberalism. Let’s just say we had some interesting discussions; I added the likes of Business Week, Reality Hackers - later Mondo2000, Whole Earth Review then edited by Kevin Kelly, and the Economist to my reading diet, read people such as Peter Drucker and George Gilder, along with Howard Rheingold, and so on. acid house parties Running parallel to my ‘career’, however, my ‘Life’ was leading me into raves, or house parties as they were still called back then. It was the tail-end of the great Amsterdam squat scene and there were awesome parties. Busloads of Brits would cross the North Sea to accompany their DJ heroes such as Andy Weatherall, Pete Tong, Sasha - pretty much all the early rave DJs who wenton to become international megastars. future in all this computer stuff, certainly as a mainstream publication. After a horrendous last issue in which we left our old offices for new loaned premises, followed a while later by a further move into Louis’ apartment, during which time I split with my own girlfriend who was also working on the magazine. Louis and his partner, Jane Metcalfe went back to the US to try and raise money for his ultimate dream, a magazine he wanted to call Wired which he hoped would be the Rolling Stone of its generation, treating computers as the electric guitar was treated in the ‘70s in terms of cultural resonance and impact. Having been kicked out of every publisher’s office in New York, they turned to the nascent New Economy for funding and - well, the rest is history. - this i didn’t know till now. looks like Wired got the development money on condition of being ‘proper corporatised’ and chucked the guitars, the cultural resonance, the impact... and the zippies :) up against the berlin wall, motherluvvers! The emotional fallout from the end of Electric Word resulted in my electing to stay in Europe; besides, with the Berlin Wall just down, it seemed like a good time to be there. One historical aside you might be interested in: during the two years of looking for funding, Louis and Jane, both broke, only managed to continue by Louis flying back to Holland monthly to sign on and collect his generous (social democratic) unemployment benefit. So if anyone bangs on about getting the government off our backs, courage of investors, all-seeing hand of the Market etc, in Wired's case, they're at least partly wrong! art magazine, Mediamatic, and started my freelance career, and a couple of years later I was asked to write for the new Wired. megatripolis with fraser Louis was enthusiastic about the idea, and two weeks later I was in London for the first of two trips to Fraser's Megatripolis, a weekly “festival in a club” night that had been picking up praise from magazines like Time Out, i-D, and large sections of the overground media as one of the top nights out in the capital. That was the first time I met Fraser Clark, and over about 10 days I spoke to many of the bands and individuals who’d been inspiring me at Amsterdam parties, from Mixmaster Morris, whose Synergy tour with the Shamen had been legendary in Europe, to Future Sound of London, Black Dog, Aphex Twin. London, in short, was full of a whole new buzz. Re-reading the text, I don't really see anything to withdraw from my claims that they were not only wringing the most innovative, inspirational music from technology, but inspiring a genuinely new cultural fusion, part Deadhead-style familial gathering , part Semi Autonomous Zone, part Pleasure Dome, part new religion, with its own economy, rituals, zines, look and mix of memes, which were also name-checked in my article. - jules has discreetly avoided mentioning the ‘invitation to join a conspiracy’ which in those days i used to work with the media. none of my alternative allies seemed to have noticed that relations with the press had drastically changed since rave had come along; reporters by now were all basically ravers and on our side: “now it’s us and you conspiring together to get the good news past the media owners” i used to say to them. they loved it, at last they had a chance to get involved on the side of good instead of just being neutral observers! indeed i used to encourage their rebellion by reminding them that science had proved the impossibility of the Neutral Observer. that approach seemed, to me, a quintessential aspect of the pronoia concept which i’d just decided to feature large in the tour’s mission mantra the sneaking suspicion that others are conspiring behind your back to help you. Well (who writes the script?!) John Batelle, Exec Ed at Wired at the time, phoned to say he liked the piece, but could I play up the tour a bit more. I’d finished the article with a typically tongue-in-cheek, flippant Wiredism that the Zippies would be the biggest cultural invasion from the UK since the Beatles. I was more referring to the aforementioned music culture/social movement (which I genuinely believed was an explosive kettle of fish, and just the kind of inflammatory getting-up-the-nose of the nerds that the technology scene needed) rather than Fraser’s specific physical tour. But I certainly also felt that whatever events the zippies managed to get involved in, they could only be a better reflection of the Woodstock spirit than the concurrent Woodstock 2. In light of the following summer’s events, I stand by that claim too. W2 became emblematic of the corporate. I knew we had some great visuals from the parties we’d attended, but the loons in space goggles and iridescent clothing - another aspect the story was hammered for - were simply the window dressing for the ideas of zippiness - putting tools & tech, whether pharmaceutical, computer or conceptual, more at the service of spiritual and social goals including hedonism, as well as what would come to be termed the anti-globalisation movement, rather than weaponry and commerce. I was also motivated in part by the body-hating pose of Cyberpunk - the term “Meat” I found particularly appalling, and partly by the tendency of American techheads to be rather desk-bound and dismissive of fripperies like dancing to that bleepy electronic stuff. I just wanted to say: hey, give it a go, there’s some things you can only learn by being there, perhaps but not necessarily off your face, at 3am Eternal, filled with ravelatory energy, sweaty shoulder to shoulder with some ex-hip hopper, grunge kid or Suit-with-a-conscience. THE ZIPPY PRONOIA TOUR TO US So on publication in summer the following year, about 5 months after I’d written it, I start getting these emails - some asking where to catch the tour, others telling me I was a no-good commie hypenik, a laughably talentless blah blah. Some of these negative letters made it into the next issue of Wired. Then again in the following issue - jeez, a guy could get paranoid indeed. -do, jules, tho don’t let it stop u. america’s ruling elite saw us coming (we weren’t hiding) and tried to scupper us from every angle, not excluding kevin, whether he’s conscious of it or not. (we know a whole lot more about how they penetrate the underground now here’s george monbiot’s comment on the subject in this week’s Guardian: ”While, in the past, companies have created fake citizens' groups to campaign in favour of trashing forests or polluting rivers, now corporations and some government departments create fake citizens. Messages purporting to come from disinterested punters are planted on listservers at critical moments, disseminating misleading information or opinions.” ask mark moore, whose site was closed down by sheer number of angry rednecks writing in (many of whom i assume are retired fbi making an extra buck) we were there to tell them their culture had to evolve, but most of them were not ready to hear it at the time (one tekhead actually told me he had a computer, nice clothes and occasional sex what more could anyone want?! and he was on our side!) and now they have the Twin Terrors. if only they’d listened! but they’re starting to listen now, no doubt there’s a damn good reason why this zippy stuff has all fired up again :) I’d planned to go to the US to see what happened with the tour, and to catch England in the World Cup. When they didn't make it knocked out by Holland, ironically the zippies still hadn’t been knocked out and I decided to go anyway, but to do some work to pay my way. Went to SIGGRAPH, did some interviews for stories on nanotech, bionomics, gave a talk to some grad students in Toronto and a bizarre experience where I had to wake up at 6am to do a phone interview with an Australian radio show, with Fraser on another line in Vancouver - my weirdest media moment ever. lot of prominence, and it seems, the Invasion Meme really got under the skin of the mainstream press, from the New York media to the LA Times (though it later gave one of their Colorado raves a 2 page spread). I hear from Jane Metcalfe that Wired did not really benefit from the story. I quote: 1.Advertisers revolted when they saw the Zippy cover they absolutely DID NOT want to associate with Zippies. 2.The Zippy cover was one of our worst newsstand selling issues ever. the grand canyon mega rave I could write a whole chapter on the Grand Canyon Mega Rave that did eventually take place at a Rainbow Gathering outside Flagstaff, south of the Grand Canyon - National Guards massed in the next door valley, CNN was bouncing around in a 4X4 looking for zippies, Newsweek posing Fraser with a laptop sitting backwards on a donkey, the editor from an Australian magazine discovering who I was and practically blaming me for dragging him over to the US under false pretenses, the bearded middle aged guy dressed all in white who’d changed his name to Jesus and wondered if he could get these ravers to follow him, the local native Americans who were campaigning to stop Peabody from strip mining their ancestral lands, me, my photographer buddy and my girlfriend living out of a rented Buick for a week, getting stoned with Fraser in an apartment on Haight Street - one more teenage ambition ticked off - discussing whether we should try and get Oliver Stone to drop everything and bring a crew out to Flagstaff - just in case. The rave eventually went ahead after a Dukes of Hazard-esque cat and mouse game across the mountains as Fraser, Earth Girl (now in Foxgluv) DJ Goa Gil and assorted zippies hauled a sound system through the line of Forest Rangers trying to stop what became amplified music’s first appearance at a Rainbow Gathering, an event deemed by Fraser, who’d stated this as his main aim for the tour - a symbolic marriage between the earth tribes and the techno posses. It goes on - an Amsterdam features agency had re-sold the story all over the world for me, from Spanish ELLE to Polish Playboy. Oh how we laughed; it was bee-ootiful. It was a crazy few weeks, then I was home. I’d used up my 15 minutes. I never wrote for Wired again, at first I thoughtbecause my ideas were rejected, but also I suspect because I was blacklisted by Kevin Kelly - my old Whole Earth hero - heard to shout around the Wired office that he wanted no more fucking zippies anywhere near ‘his’ magazine. Soviet style, my name disappeared from the list of contributors. I went up the Brazilian Amazon to take part in and write about Santo Daime ayahuasca rituals, went back to the UK and covered the Ecowarriors’ anti-roads protest movement, came back and started a family. I'm trying to find a good way of putting what has happened to my career versus what has happened to my life, but it keeps sounding wrong so Ill keep away from there. THE ZIPPY EVOLUTION CONTINUES?! Fraser stayed on in San Francisco to open Megatripolis West, and also created rave parties for John Morgenthaler and Dan Joy’s new book on Smart Sex Drugs (called Chemica Sutras) and a launch party for Tim Leary’s last book, Chaos and Cyber Culture. You would have to ask people involved what was good and what went wrong with that. I gather Fraser pissed a few people off, sometimes by seeming to dream too big for his capabilities, but mostly for leaving large unpaid phone bills behind (either him or other zippies). Me, I can well understand that less than savory individuals would have tried to grab some of that zippy wave for themselves - HEY THIS IS A BONA FIDE YOUTH TREND DAMMIT, WHY AIN'T WE CLEANING UP?!! - while i’m happy to allow History to fine-tune most of the details of it all, jules is actually misquoting the Fourth Zippy Principle: ‘SAVING THE PLANET BY MAKING A BILLION BY SAVING THE PLANET.’ this is obviously true since the whole AIM of the Zippy is to BALANCE Hippy with Tecnoperson. well, the planet is not yet saved, ergo i haven’t made a billion :( the truth is that the Great Rock’nRoll Swindle of pre-rave days had made zippies, who were unquestionably LESS personally ambitious than most who spout idealism (promoters, DJs, dealers, weekend ravers, music labels etc) determined to unhypocritically admit they were planning a fair reward for “catering for people’s REAL needs”. and also, since their aims were “GLOCAL,” they chose to force themselves to face up to a present reality where funding can be so critical, where “money doesn’t talk it swears”. “PEACE, LOVE AND A FAIR PROPHET” is another Zippy principle! The guy’s 59 and has been at the positive shamanic consciousness-raising-through-fun lark for more than 30 of them. He's been stitched up more times than a prize fighter’s eyebrow, and he keeps coming back with more. Over the past couple of years his Parallel YOUniversity has been publishing the often controversial ‘rave culture’ UPGRADEmag. And, certainly not unconnected with the old zippy tour, he’s planning a London version of the HUMAN BE-IN with San Francisco’s Michael Gosney etc who've been doing the Digital Be-In there for 12 years now. Friday September 27th @ an amazingly hi-tec new venue called Ocean (www.ocean.org.uk). It just became official today when the promised but delayed start-up funds arrived from San Fran :) As for dashed hopes, disillusionment, enlightenment, mirth, disdain, detachment and other reactions good and bad to the whole episode, I guess everyone found the zippiness they wanted within the article and acted according to their inner desires, fears, hopes, trips, etc. In some ways it really was a sort of Woodstock - a chaotic, divisive, brief, inspiring, mythologised, misinterpreted, hype-filled load of glorious rave nonsense that I'm still coming back to 8 years later. If only Oliver had made it! UP- "Again with the stovepipe hat? Can't you just wear a baseball cap like the other kids?" ABE LINCOLN'S MOTHER berkeley, usa SUN MAY 26 DANCING for FREEDOM! Spiderwoman Stomp! A benefit for the BIG MOUNTAIN support group Ethno-Futurist Dance extravaganza with BEASTS OF PARADISE, featuring Stephen Kent, Barbara Imhoff, Eda Maxym, Geoffery Gordon & Jeff Mooney…. ROOTS & BRANCHES SOUND SYSTEM with DJs Lichen I & Stefan G. in special session with THE HAMPSTERS OF TIME! Diane Patterson & Kelle Green…. A.I.M. Drummers… Native American word performer Tom La Blanc & NY performance Chanteuse Cara Vida Blacklite visuals by A WAKING DREAM… Live Multimedia by CULTURELAB M.C. Miguel Molina (KPFA) In Honor of Arlene Hamilton & Roberta Blackgoat Sliding Scale $10 - $50 ASHKENAZ 1317 San Pablo, Berkeley Ca. 9pm - 2am 510 525 5054 UP- Life’s greatest natural resource.... Our youth london SAT JUNE 1 SUN JUNE 2 14TH ANNUAL ZIPPY PICNIC ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH Held on the “first weekend in June” every year since the launch of the Encyclopaedia Psychedelica, this year Hampstead sees the 14th legendary Zippy Picnic on Bank Holiday Weekend. It’s varied in size from several thousands to a score or so, but last year’s was great, and this year we hope to make it even better WHERE? Viaduct Pond on the West Heath. “BRING WOT U EXPECK 2 FIND”. To join the organising ‘connective’, or attend as a spectatorial participant, email Steve Ash Steveash1@hotmail.com UP- Life’s most beautiful attire ........ SMILE! BLAMING THE VICTIMS Don't expect objectivity from me. You see, for the last few weeks I have not had the benefit of the mainstream media to give me a balanced picture of the situation in Palestine. Instead, I have been living in the middle of the events in Bethlehem, witnessing army brutality and civilian misery While staying at the Al-Azzeh camp, I obviously missed all the terrorists, anti-Semites and fanatics that the Israeli army and the BBC see as infesting the refugee camps. It doesn't take a genius to be suspicious of the capitalist media - anyone who's been on a political action is used to being misrepresented and smeared. But the campaign of lies waged against the people of Palestine beggars belief. Resting on old colonial prejudices and modern Islamophobia and racism, it has the objective of blaming the victims in this conflict; presenting Israel as a democratic state under attack from unreasonable semi-humans. I’m too angry to even going talk about Jenin. Rejecting this picture leads us on to a more complex analysis of the conflict, and of the Israeli and Palestinian societies. It leads us towards seeing the divisions and contradictions within each camp, rather than accepting Sharon and Arafat as the only protagonists, perfectly representing "their" people. It leads one to see the crux of the problem as lying, not in the outbreaks of violence that are presented as spectacles to be passively consumed, but in the everyday lives of the millions of Palestinians who are living under conditions of great hardship. To quote a recent Israeli peace slogan: "the Occupation is killing us all!" During my time here, I’ve become aware of just how little I can achieve, and of how short my involvement has. Yet I’m proud to be part of a movement that offers direct solidarity against genocide, and fights for social justice and ecological harmony at home. There will be another ISM campaign in June which I expect will be massive. There will be ecological and anti-capitalist protests across the globe. This year will see both the European Peoples' Global Action Conference and the European Social Forum, which should both be massive and inspiring. I cannot detach these struggles, or indeed my own struggle for day-to-day survival, from the fight of the Palestinian people to live in peace and security. Loukas Christodoulou / Red Pepper http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20020516015802323 UP- Life’s most prized possession ....... Self esteem IS AMERICA A NATION OF GUN NUTS, OR JUST NUTS? MICHAEL MOORE WANTS TO KNOW! A new TV documentary by Michael Moore about the US love of firearms makes history at Cannes. The United States is lampooned in a powerful film that premiered at Cannes last night for being not so much the land of the free and the home of the brave but a fearful and gun-crazy nation obsessed with violence,. Bowling for Columbine, by American film-maker Michael Moore, author of best selling Stupid White Men, is the first documentary to be entered in competition at Cannes for 46 years. Its moving, occasionally funny analysis of America’s gun violence was greeted warmly by critics. It’s a topical and, for Cannes, explicitly radical political film linking what Moore calls the "paranoid mentality" of Americans who love guns to the violent nature of postwar US foreign policy. Moore, 48, said that the question he set out to ask was "ARE WE A NATION OF GUN NUTS OR JUST NUTS?" The picture starts with Moore opening a bank account and receiving a free gun! He discloses that the bullets used to kill 12 students and a teacher at the Columbine high school, were bought for 17 cents each from a Wal-Mart supermarket, and then encourages two teenage boys who still have bullets lodged in their spines to return bullets to the chain. After meeting them, Wal-Mart announced it would no longer sell such guns and bullets. “It's an American responsibility to be armed" a member of an armed militia tells Moore. But the denouement comes when Moore confronts Charlton Heston, the National Rifle Association vice president, over his defence of the second amendment to the US constitution that allows Americans to bear arms. He attacks Heston for taking part in NRA rallies backing gun ownership near schools where children had also recently been shot dead. Why, he asks, do so many Americans kill each other with guns and why do so many of them feel they need to be armed? "We have a history of violence," replies Heston, "perhaps more than most other countries." When Moore retorts that Germany and Britain also have violent histories, but currently a relatively tiny number of gun-related killings, Heston walks out. "I think Bowling for Columbine is the most provocative thing in terms of film that I've ever made," said Moore yesterday. It’s hard to disagree, especially as the film expands from an analysis of US gun culture into a revisionist history of the United States, suggesting the country was born in fear of outsiders and that that fear continues to influence US foreign policy. "The very first sentence you learn about US history is 'The Pilgrims came to America because they were afraid of being persecuted'. Then what happened? They encounter the Indians and are afraid of them, so they kill them; then they start becoming afraid of each other and start seeing witches and burn them; then they win the revolution, but they're afraid the British are going to come back. So someone writes the second amendment that says 'Let's keep our guns because the Brits could come back'. "The genesis of fear in America came from having a slave population that in just 86 years from the time of the revolutionary war in 1775 to the civil war in 1861 grew from 700,000 to 4 million. In parts of the rural south, blacks outnumbered whites by 3/1 and there were a lot of slave rebellions. So in 1836 Samuel Colt invented the six-shooter..." Stuart Jeffries / The Guardian http://film.guardian.co.uk/cannes2002/story/0,11895,716923,00.html UP- "All right, if you aren't hiding your report card inside your jacket, take your hand out of there and show me." NAPOLEON'S MOTHER.
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//YOU FEEDBACK: YOU'VE GOT MALES!aladdin-travels. com Come rub your lamp and make a wish Need a break, want a holiday? Heard of the Legend of the Lamp? of magic carpets, flutes, oases, camels, wandering sufis, nomad berber poets and musicians? OPEN SESAME: WE SPECIALIZE IN one day - one month berber tent holidays @ our base camp on the desert’s edge, with afternoon or month long camel trips to other desert oases - bivouac with berber nomads, glimpse the mysterious blue people and ancient wandering camel trains... sun, sand, pure air, perfect silence, the melodyof a thousand shooting stars sprinkling wonder from the milky way upon you. Let aladdin-travels whiskyou there by train boat or plane, direct or via Spain. Click and check oursite and already you’re feeling better! Our very reasonable prices and other tantalising tidbits are at www.aladdin-travels.com A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A ADVERTISINGG G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G >>.. stupid computer keeps saying, "YOU'VE GOT MAIL!" - confession: this was sent in with the gender roles reversed. i spotted that and changed them to what u just read. did it make a difference? tell me! Hi Frase! Really interesting. I instantly liked the joke. Men can be incredibly dull. As I am working as an editor for an electronic music mag, I often use different pseudonyms, my favorite being Katamin which I use for everything technoid, as well as da Katalyst for Drum'n'Bass. I like the idea that neither name reveals or conceals my gender. Especially DJs, when they’re female, always seem to deem it necessary to show how very female they are by adding a Miss or Lady or whatever to their name. However, whenever I write saucy or hard stuff when I call myself Katamin, everyone responds to me as a "he". "He should not compare music with sex" or stuff.... Hehe. If only they knew. Whatta misconception. Girls can be saucy too. How profound. That´s it. Hehe. K@AList / germany :-O No. It's still a crappy joke! Peter Johnson / europe UP- "After all that money your father and I spent on braces, that's the biggest smile you can give us?" MONA LISA'S MOTHER.
MIT INVENTS VIDEOS OF PEOPLE
By Gareth CookSAYING THINGS THEY NEVER SAID! Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created the first realistic videos of people saying things they never said - a scientific leap that raises unsettling questions about falsifying the moving image. In one demonstration, the researchers taped a woman speaking into a camera, and then reprocessed the footage into a new video that showed her speaking entirely new sentences, and even mouthing words to a song in Japanese, a language she does not speak. The results were enough to fool viewers consistently, the researchers report. The technique's inventors say it could be used in video games and movie special effects, perhaps reanimating Marilyn Monroe or other dead film stars with new lines. It could also improve dubbed movies, a lucrative global industry. But scientists warn the technology will also provide a powerful new tool for fraud and propaganda - and will eventually cast doubt on everything from video surveillance to presidential addresses (not excluding the recent osama bin laden video!!) ''This is really groundbreaking work,'' said Demetri Terzopoulos, a leading specialist in facial animation who is a professor of computer science and mathematics at New York University. But ''we’re on a collision course with ethics. If you can make people say things they didn't say, potentially all hell breaks loose.'' UP- Life’s greatest loss ............... Self-respect I was most impressed to see my self quoted at the beginning of your "Zippy" e-mag. However, i’m interested to know how you decided I was from Paris? I'm actually based in London & Bournemouth. To be entirely honest, I was slightly disconcerted to see this misinformation in the UP (even if it’s harmless) as, given the UP’s content and editorial style, I would like to be able to assume you would be puritanical in your journalistic ethics and your attention to accuracy. - please do not make such an assumption, matt. if i’m about anything, it’s to tell people to MAKE THEIR OWN MINDS UP. don’t put too much trust in ANYONE :) also whilst reading the aforementioned UP, one of those tangents I was telling you about struck me and I thought I'd share it with you. and finally, whilst I'm on the subject of language use in the media as a tool for stirring up cerebral activity, I wonder if some small but significant change in the minds of the masses might not be achieved if the expression "drugs and alcohol", which you so often hear & see in the media, were to be universally changed for "alcohol and other drugs"????? L8rz, matt / bournemouth & london UP- "That's a nice story. Now tell me where you've really been for the last forty years." JONAH'S MOTHER. london FRI MAY 31 SAT JUNE 1 raingods become me written and performed by John Constable John Crow goes AWOL in Bali - a comedy about meeting your demons and messing with your map of reality BAC, Lavender Hill, Battersea, LONDON SW11 8.30pm BOX OFFICE 020 7223 2223 TICKETS £4.75 (£3.50 CONCS) Buses: 35, 37, 345, 77, 77a, 115, 319, 337, C3, G1 Rail: CLAPHAM JUNCTION more info at www.bac.org.uk ** ALSO APPEARING AT THE ‘ZIPPY PICNIC ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH’ ON SAT JUNE 1 AND SAT JUNE 2. INFO: Steveash1@hotmail.com UP- "But it's your senior picture. Can't you do something about your hair? Styling gel, mousse, something...?" ALBERT EINSTEIN'S MOTHER: Fraser, Thanks for the Upgrades - so refreshing! Loved that Hubble photo of the Earth. Just to let you know that even Greenpeace is using pagan imagery (well, they should after all!). See the great Cerne Abbas giant in their latest attempt to get Exxon/Mobil to stop trying to accidentally destroy the world's climate. www.greenpeace.org or www.stopesso.org/posting/1021548525 Great stuff. Just think - if the entire planet (e.g. say 3 billion people) joined Greenpeace, perhaps we could really take on the corporates properly and save the world??? Glyn Walters Greenpeace NZ UP-
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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 P london WED MAY 29 Art Meets Music night featuring the latest artwork from the RCA, Central St. Martins, The Slade, Goldsmiths & Chelseaart colleges, PLUS Mellina (NY) & other live performances, PLUS dj's and drop-by guests. Host: Sarb. Queues from 8.30pm, and the buzz of conversation inside! @ nottinghillartsclub, 21 Notting Hill Gate, W11 (Notting Hill Gate tube) 6pm-1am, Entry FREE before 8pm, £4 after. 0207 460 4459 info@nottinghillartsclub.com A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A ADVERTISINGG G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G 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 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 P FEATURING exclusive rewrites re-takes & re-productions of da freshest deepest hacks ancient and modern, SAMPLES from media & mentalities all over, & bubbling up from da public DNA herself! 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 P YOUR PLANET NEEDS //YOU! this HipList grows by recommendation. RECOMMEND SOMEONE 2DAY!!!!!!!!!! * TO DEBATE ANYTHING in the UP, visit the GroupMind Debating Board on www.parallel-youniversity.com * YES, YES, SEND US EDUTAINING NEWS’N VIEWS no need to ask! :-) |