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SUNDAY OCTOBER 7, 2001DINOSAUR BULLY!//UPGRADEmag// oct 7 2001 The UPGRADEmag (the Upgrade Emag, or just the "UP") is a global edutainment news round-up, 'broadcast' weekly to =[10,581]= Trance// New Age// Alternative// Activist folks who have 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 26,500+ 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+ H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H MAKE THE UPGRADE FIT YOUR SCREEN BY CLOSING ANY BOX ON LEFT REMEMBER THE SABBATH TO KEEP IT HOLY? DINOSASUR
BULLY!
"INSIGHTS OF A VERY SMART
GUY."RICHEST STATE ON PLANET BOMMS POOREST NATION SHOPPING IN WEST CONTINUES UNABATED AS INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST SOCIOPATHS BLOW OFF FIRST LEGS AND HEADS NEXT WAVE OF SUICIDE MARTYRS QUEUES ACROSS ARABIA / WESTERN CITIZENS BECOME "100%" TARGETS DIDN'T WE ELECT THESE PSYCHOPATHS TO MAKE US SAFER AND TO SOLVE PROBLEMS? "Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock." Sigmund Freud Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, President Clinton's drug czar, said in an online exchange on Sept 19 that those against the United States in its war on terrorism would "be killed suddenly, in significant numbers and without warning." Commander of the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division in the Persian Gulf War, he offered his blunt assessment to a cadet at West Point - a little more than a week after the terror attacks. He and others have since distributed the e-mail widely to friends and associates in the national security community. "We're going to disrupt these people through preemptive attack" the e-mail message read, "We'll deceive them, we'll run psyops on them, at selected points and times they will be killed suddenly, in significant numbers, and without warning. "Tomahawk missiles, 2000 pound laser-guided weapons dropped from B2's or F22's at very high altitude, remote control booby traps, blackmail and at places, small groups of soldiers or SEALs will appear in total darkness, blow down the doors and kill them at close range with automatic weapons and hand grenades. "We'll find their money and freeze it. We'll arrest their front agents. We'll operate against their recruiting and transportation functions. We'll locate their training areas and surveil or mine them. We'll isolate them from their families. "We'll try to dominate their communication function and alternately listen, jam or spoof it. We'll make their couriers disappear. If we can find out how they eat, or play or receive rewards, or where they sleep, we'll go there and kill them by surprise." There would need to be substantial and costly efforts to reduce the "environmental factors" that feed "extremist madness." Included would be "dramatically increased" international aid to address the poverty of Palestinians, Afghans, Sudanese and others. One US military official described his comments as the "insights of a very smart guy." Another said they didn't contain any national secrets, but do accurately reflect the US strategy. In the words of this official: "It's the plan." Frank Sesno / CNN Washington Bureau # "Going after terrorism and getting it by its branch and its root." Colin Powell's horticultural image of America's impending military response. "Military action to destroy terror will be like hitting a mature dandelion with a golf club." alternative horticultural metaphor sent in by linda rightmire NO LINKS FOUND BY FBI The FBI has found no links between any of the 19 alleged hijackers or their possible accomplices and any of the 1,000 to 2,000 suspected terrorist sympathizers in America, including known Al Qaeda supporters, lawmakers were told. The group that conducted the Sept. 11 attacks, and anyone who might have helped it, operated as a closed unit and there may be other such cells as yet undetected by law enforcement, some members of Congress were told. "The investigative case has to take a back seat to preventing the next terrorist act," senior law enforcement official said. "That comes right from the top, from the president of the United States on down." Washington Post, oct 5 # US leaders prefer using covert forces against the Taliban, which reduce anti-US protest and violence. Recent history says such efforts from abroad are doomed. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11633 A CHAMP FOR ALL THE PEOPLE? Christian reporters asked Muhammad Ali, as he visited the bombed Tower site, how he felt about the suspects sharing his Islamic faith. "How do you feel about Hitler sharing yours?" he punched back instantly, still the champ. # WELCOME TO NEW YORK TWINNED WITH KABUL Revenge, retaliation and retribution ignore THE SECOND LAW OF TERRORIST THERMO-DYNAMICS: for every violent action, there is an equal and opposing reaction of equal or greater violence Christopher Childs # Fast track and FTAA. Corporate tax cuts. Drilling in Alaska. Star Wars. These are some of the "solutions" to the terror attack offered by corporate mouthpieces. www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11638 GOD CLARIFIES POSITION ON KILLING... KABULResponding to recent and current events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other. "Look, I don't know, maybe I haven't made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again," said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference. "Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don't. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand." Worshipped by Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike, God said His name has been invoked countless times over the centuries as a reason to kill in what He called "an unending cycle of violence." "I don't care how righteous or holy somebody claims to be, if he tells you it's My will that you kill someone, they're wrong. Gottit? I don't care what religion you are, or who you think your enemy is." The press conference caught humankind on the hop, as God traditionally leaves the task of interpreting His divine will to clerics, rabbis, priests, ulemas, imams, and Biblical scholars. His decision to manifest on the material plane was motivated by the deep sense of shock, outrage, and sorrow He felt over the Twin Tower violence, the retaliation just launched in response, and over the dire potential ramifications around the globe. "I guess I figured I'd left no real room for confusion when I put it in a four-word sentence of one-syllable words, on the tablets I gave to Moses. How much clearer can I get? "To be honest, there's some contradictory stuff in the Bible, Torah, and Qur'an, okay? So I can see how it could be pretty misleading. Nobody's perfect, all right? I do My best to inspire them, but a lot of imperfect human agents have misinterpreted My message. Frankly, a lot of the stuff that got in there is dogmatic, doctrinal bullshit. He praised the overwhelming majority of His Muslim and Christian followers as "good, pious people," "This whole concept of the holy war had all but vanished from the Muslim and Christian worlds in, like, the 10th century, and with good reason," God said. "There's no such thing as a holy war, only unholy ones. "Read your relevant fookin book: I don't care what faith you are, everybody's been making this same mistake since the dawn of time. The Muslims massacre the Hindus, the Hindus massacre the Muslims. The Buddhists, everybody massacres the Buddhists. The Jews, don't even get me started on the hard-line, right wing, Meir Kahane-loving Israeli nationalists, man! And the Christians? You people believe in a Messiah who says, 'Turn the other cheek,' but you've been killing everybody you can get your hands on since the Crusades. "Lissen, you Humans don't need religion or God as an excuse to kill each other - you've been doing that without any help from Me since you were fookin apes, because the whole point of believing in God is to have a higher standard of behavior." "Do you hear Me?" His voice was rising to a shout. "I ..DON'T ..WANT ..YOU ..TO ..KILL ..ANYBODY! EVER! I'M FUCKING SERIOUS!" Upon completing His outburst, God fell silent, standing quietly at the podium for several moments. Then God's shoulders began to shake, and, as ministering angels helped him from the room, witnesses reported He wept. # the Tower Topple horrified me and reminded me of: January 16, 1991, when President Bush attacked Baghdad, and began producing 200,000 dead Iraqis, including the infamous "highway of death" in the last days of the slaughter when US pilots literally shot in the back retreating Iraqi soldiers and civilians. 1991-2001, during which the sanctions have resulted in 1,000,000 dead Iraqis, half of them children, whose deaths Madeline Allbright, after serious thought, considered "worth the cost". and back my memory travelled to: 1948 - 2001, during which the US "manufactured consent" for its support of Israel, to the exclusion of virtually any rights for the Palestinians in their native lands, resulting in ever worsening day-to-day conditions for the people of Palestine, and the hundreds of towns and villages literally wiped off the face of the earth in the early days of Israeli colonization. 1952-1979, when the brutal US sponsored coup to install the Shah of Iran produced over 70,000 dead Iranians. And the continuing shock as I learned that the Ayatollah Khomani, who overthrew the Shah in 1979, and who was the US public enemy of the 1980s, was also on the CIA payroll while he was in exile in Paris in the 1970s. 1954, when the US sponsored coup against democracy in Guatemala resulted in over 120,000 dead Guatemalan peasants under US installed dictatorships over the course of four decades. 1965, when the US helped overthrew the Dominican Republic government and murdered 3,000 people. 1965 when the US sponsored coup in Indonesia produced over 800,000 dead Indonesians. 1970's, when the US sponsored terror war against the peoples of Southern Africa (especially Angola) produced over 1,000,000 dead & mutilated Africans between then and today when it still continues. Xmas 1989, when the U.S killed over 8,000 Panamanians during their invasion to capture George Bush's CIA partner, now turned enemy, Manual Noriega. 1973, when the US sponsored coup against Chile's democratic government murdered 30,000 people, including US citizens. 1975, when the Indonesian regime, with the direct complicity of President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, produced over 250,000 dead Indonesians in East Timor. 1980s, when the US attacked and bombed Libya with impunity, including killing Khadafi's infant daughter. 1983, over the US military and CIA actions in Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan, Brazil, Argentina, and Yugoslavia which produced hundreds of thousands of dead human beings. 1980s, when the US sponsored terrorist contra war against Nicaragua for a decade harvested over 30,000 dead Nicaraguans (or, in pre US "collateral damage" speak, "soft targets") 1984, when the World Court declared the US government a war criminal for the mining of Nicaragua's harbors) 1980s, when the US war against the people of El Salvador resulted in over 80,000 brutally murdered people, or "soft targets". 1982, when the villagers of Sabra and Shatila were massacred by Israeli allies with direct Israeli complicity and direction. Untold thousands died on that day. But those scenes were not repeated over and over again on the national media to inflame the American public. 1980s, when Israel, with US backing, inflicted terror on Lebanon, harvesting tens of thousands of dead Lebanese people. and of course to: 1954-1975, the largest, most shocking war crime of the second half of the 20th century when the US assault on Indochina, especially Vietnam, which produced over 4,000,000 bombed, napalmed, crushed and shot people. Many Vietnam veterans were also victimized by this war and had the best of intentions, but the policy makers themselves knew the criminality of their actions as revealed in their own words in "The Pentagon Papers," released by Daniel Ellsberg of the RAND Corporation. Ellsberg noted that from Truman to Nixon our Presidents continually lied to the US public about the purpose and conduct of the war: "It is a tribute to the American people that our leaders perceived that they had to lie to us, it is not a tribute to us that we were so easily misled." EIGHT MILLION DEAD HUMAN BEINGS is a conservative total for the results of US terror and military action since World War II is. This does not include the wounded, the imprisoned, the displaced, the refugees, etc. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated in 1967, during the Vietnam War, "My government is the world's leading purveyor of violence." Nor is the above list of memories complete, It's merely a list that is not unknown, especially to the economic and intellectual elites, though it has been conveniently eliminated from the public discourse and public consciousness. Nor, for the most part, is the analysis that the US actions have resulted in the deaths of primarily civilians (over 90%) unknown to these elites and policy makers. All I have said is meant to put the recent outrage in a context. If we believe that the actions were those of "madmen", they are "madmen" who are able to keep a secret for 2 years among over 100 people, as they trained to execute a complex plan. While not the acts of madmen, they are apparently the acts of "fanatics" who, depending on who they really are, can find real grievances, but whose actions are illegitimate. Osama Bin Laden has been accused by the media and the government of being the mastermind, but, given the government's track record on lying to the America people, this should not be accepted as fact at this time. Ed Herman in his book The Real Terror Network: Terrorism in Fact and Propaganda does not justify any terrorism but points out that states often engage in "wholesale" terror, while those whom governments define as "terrorist" engage is "retail" terror. While qualitatively the results are the same for the individual victims, there is a clear quantitative difference. And, as Herman and others point out, the seeds, the roots, of much of the "retail" terror are in fact found in the "wholesale" terror of states. Bin Laden, if so it was, had significant training in logistics, armaments, and military training by expert military and CIA personnel in Afghanistan; Saddam Hussein was a CIA asset during the 1980s; Manuel Noriega of Panama was a contemporary and CIA partner of George H. Bush whose main crime for Bush, the father, was not that he dealt drugs (he did, but the US and Bush knew this before 1989), but that he was no longer going to cooperate in the ongoing US terrorist contra war against Nicaragua. This information is not unknown or really controversial among elite policy makers. As shocked and horrified as the Tower Topple events made me, it looks like they will generate even qualitatively and quantitatively more horrific actions by the US government that will add significantly to the 8,000,000 dead stated above. The New York Times headline of 9/14/01 states that "BUSH AND TOP AIDES PROCLAIM POLICY OF ENDING STATES THAT BACK TERROR" as if that was a rational, measured, or even sane option. States identified for possible elimination are "a number of Asian and African countries, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, and even Pakistan." This is beyond shocking and horrific - it's just as potentially suicidal, homicidal, and more insane than the hijackers themselves! The retail terror is that of desperate, sometime fanatical small groups and individuals who often have legitimate grievances, but engage in individual criminal and illegitimate activities; but the wholesale terror is that of "rational" educated men where the pain, suffering, and deaths of millions of people are contemplated, planned and, too often, executed, for the purpose of furthering a nebulous concept called the "national interest". Colin Powell is an unrepentant participant in the Vietnam War, the terrorist contra war against Nicaragua, and the Gulf war, at each level becoming more responsible for the planning and execution of the policies. Those affected, all of us, must do everything in our power to prevent a wider war and even greater atrocity, do everything possible to stop the genocide if it starts, and hold those responsible for their potential war crimes during and after the war. The crimes of a Great War in 2001 will be revisited upon the US over the next generation. That is not some kind of religious prophecy or threat but a straightforward political analysis. If indeed it is Bin Laden, the world must not deal only with him as an individual criminal, but eliminate the conditions that create the injustices and war crimes that will inevitably lead to more of these types of attacks in the future. The phrase "NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE" is more than a slogan used in a march, it is an observable historical fact. It's time to end these horrors I've no more room for memories! # IF YOU CAN KEEP YOUR HEAD WHEN ALL ABOUT ARE LOSING THEIRS AND BLAMING IT ON YOU, THEN IT BECOMES INCUMBENT TO CONSIDER RECENT & CURRENT EVENTS IN AS WIDE A PERSPECTIVE AS POSSIBLE. BEYOND EVEN THE SOCIAL, POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND RELIGIOUS CAUSES AND EFFECTS LIE THE COSMIC-MYTHO-HISTORICO-PSYCHO-POETIC-EVOLUTIONARY. ALL THESE LEVELS ADD YEAST TO HELP US COOK THE LARGEST (AND MINUTEST) UNDERSTANDING OF THESE TERRIBLE EVENTS. WE MAKE NO APOLOGY, THEN, FOR SOME OF THE ITEMS IN THIS WEEK'S UP. BUT WE DO GIVE FAIR WARNING: SOME OF THE VIEWPOINTS EXPLORED HERE ARE NOT FOR THE WEAK, SQUEAMISH, HYPOCRITICAL, BOURGEOIS OR MEALY MOUTHED, AND NEITHER DO WE AGREE WITH ALL POINTS OF VIEW INCLUDED. BUT EACH, WE BELIEVE, OFFERS INSIGHTS THAT COULD STOP SUCH DARK DEEDS EVER BEING DONE BY MEN UPON MEN AGAIN. # The World Wide Web may be a landing zone for a creature made of pure information.
You may catch an alien intelligence in the Web - an intelligence which may not Perhaps all advanced intelligences exist solely as information. be able to rest in the human mind or any environment other than digital. The real issue with alien intelligence is knowing when you have it in front of you because it is alien! _ Terence McKenna_ # Hi Fraser, You know when you have a great dream, so intense and vivid that you wake up believing it and the excitement and anticipation stays with you all day, and you keep forgetting why.... that's how the UP makes me feel. I must get out more! Thanks again for your sterling work - if I 'd've known I was going to be quoted (in last week's UP) I would have thought of something essential and enlightening! with kind regards, SueOK / euorope # PAPA BUSH WORKS FOR BIN LADEN FAMILY! Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes US government corruption and abuse, has reacted with disbelief to a Wall Street Journal report of yesterday that George H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm. Papa Bush had met with the bin Laden family at least twice, and other top Republicans are also associated with the Carlyle Group, such as former Secretary of State James A. Baker. The terrorist leader Osama bin Laden had supposedly been "disowned" by his family, which runs a multi-billion dollar business in Saudi Arabia and is a major investor in the senior Bush's firm. Other reports, however, have questioned whether members of his Saudi family have truly cut him off. Indeed, the Journal also reported yesterday that the FBI has subpoenaed the bin Laden family business's bank records. Judicial Watch had strongly criticised Papa Bush's association with the Carlyle Group earlier this year, pointing out in a March 5 statement that it was a "conflict of interest (which) could cause problems for America's foreign policy in Middle East and Asia." Judicial Watch called for the senior Bush to resign from the firm then. "This conflict of interest has now turned into a scandal. The idea of the President's father, an ex-president himself, doing business with a company being investigated by the FBI over the terror attacks of September 11 is horrible. President Bush should not ask, but demand, that his father pull out of the Carlyle Group," stated Judicial Watch Chairman Larry Klayman. "This has the potential of making 'Billygate" (Jimmy Carter's brother's dealings with Libya) "look like small potatoes," added Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. http://www.rense.com/general14/WSJbushsenior.htm # From the Gandhi Option to the Dr. Strangelove Option, the US could take at least six paths in our War on Terrorism -- none perfect, one actually insane and all worth examining. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11614 SIX FACTS YOUR REP NEEDS RE-MINDING OF RE THE WAR WHICH HAS JUST BEGUN 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. [ARROW Anti-War Briefing]
#LEGALISE DRUGS TO WIN THE WAR ON TERROR America and the West should legalise all drugs to bring about world peace, former Times editor Simon Jenkins suggested this week, in a detailed attack on the consequences of prohibition. "The War on Drugs has been lost but defeat is not admitted. Its battle plans still lie on dusty shelves, its ships are mothballed, its generals cashiered," said the leading establishment opinion-former (writing in the London Times). "Yet the two wars are closely linked. They finance each other. Just as the IRA was recently arrested talking to FARC guerrillas in coca-growing Colombia, so 95 per cent of Europe's heroin came last year from Afghanistan. The Taliban regime would not exist were it not for opium." His comments preceded reports that the Taliban this week told Afghan farmers they're free to grow opium again if Afghanistan is attacked, which has already prompted a massive reduction in the wholesale price of opium in Pakistan from £525 to £105 per kilo. With the new annual growing season set to begin in weeks, the opium and heroin markets are likely to be deluged with oversupply. "Rather than have the courage to admit that the criminalisation of a staple world product is now counter-productive to social stability and world peace, the American Government sticks to a failed policy and asserts that victory is just round the corner," Jenkins continued. "I know of nobody involved in the War on Drugs who believes it has been won, despite a quarter-century in the waging. Since the trade is by definition confined to criminals, it has become the prime sponsor of conflict and terror." Britain's drug business is now worth £6.6billion a year (US$10billion). An estimated 270,000 regular heroin users spend £2.3billion while 3.2 million cannabis users splash out £1.57billion (US$2.3 billion) on weed. "The repeal of inter-war alcohol prohibition had been a testament to American democracy's ability to admit and rectify mistakes," said Jenkins. 'Democracy appears to have regressed." # Even before the dust had settled around the site of the Toppled Tower, drug war hawks were trying to link the drug war to terrorism to further their own political goals. www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=17 AMERICAN WOMEN UNITE
The President has asked that we unite for a common cause. Since hard-line Islamic people cannot stand nudity, and consider it a sin for their eyes to fall on a naked woman who is not their wife, tonight at 7pm all patriotic women of all ages and social backgrounds should run out of their houses naked to help weed out the terrorists.- IT'S FOR A GOOD CAUSE - The United States appreciates your efforts, & salutes you! # "Many people will use this terrible tragedy as an excuse to put through a political agenda other than my own. To those I say, 'Shame on you!''' John Montoya, Adequacy.org. ANYONE NOT BEEN SENT A BAD TASTE BUSH FOTO? Fraser, we were looking at the mail yesterday, in particular the "bad taste" pictures that have been going round lately, and had a few thoughts. One in particular, "make love not war," has really made the rounds, we've both had it from several unconnected people we know since we sent it to you. Many people, despite their sympathy for those who died or lost friends and family, obviously feel GW + recent American foreign policy had it coming. Anyway, we noted that, while there are pro- and anti-American retaliation images, the anti's seem to be getting wider circulation. may depend on who u hang out with We also noticed the attachment name rarely changes. We are also starting to see poems. What's my point? A picture is worth a thousand words - and maybe a hundred focus groups. Imagine you're planning a war, and daily indicators of public opinion are crucial, how would your echelon-type systems monitor it? You could scan zillions of texts gradually paring down to a game plan for monitoring opinion-formers, but the more you refine the less it really reflects broad public opinion, and also the filtering/ evaluation takes time, which makes your result dated. Or you could just scan for attachment names and keep league tables of the most forwarded images and their content - way easier for human operators who'd just program their system to look for the most forwarded attachments. Then, having made a one-off evaluation, they'd decide whether to add them to the league table search system databases, and for how long. Voila! a real-time daily public opinion indicator! Why, a really tricky humint head of dept. with a few psychologists on the firm, could even inject his own images into the system to check what's pushing peoples' buttons. OR TURN THE WHOLE THING ROUND Lampooning politicians with altered images is becoming quite an artform on the net. It's always been there with newspapers and cartoons, of course, but this new medium's not only accessible to far more potential authors, it's also more immediate, and is not controlled by any one publisher. Taken to its logical conclusion, then, a public opinion monitor can just as easily function as an e-referendum system to modify government policy! Even if the authorities realised, could they afford to ignore it? (I suspect you're already sniffing round this idea with the YOUfotomag. ) (an occasional ting we send out to a restricted list) As anarchosydicalists, we're well in favour of such a mechanism, and rather fancy the idea of collecting all the pics together in a gallery so folk can use them to make friends/enemies and influence people. Echelon Power to the People? What do you think? richardandcarrie@hedgemonkey.org i fookin luvvit # Fabulous. so glad to have the whole Caspian Sea scenario laid out in B&W (or red white and blue, as the case may be). Here in the U(by rabid patriotism)S of A, we only see this info rarely rarely... wish we could convince the CBS not-so-news to announce it. Would that be a kick? To hear it said in those inane, measured tones. clarinda / usa # GOOD (OR EVIL) FOR A LAFF? There's not much left to laff at is there? Nevertheless I managed to the other day. It was the news. The news actually made me laugh. It was a TV report on the possibility of terrorists employing Chemical Weapons. Film of men in weird rubber suits, with peculiar breathing apparatus' attached in some secure zone in a laboratory somewhere, being sprayed by chemicals. Then there were scenes from a hospital. Again those weird suits, and inflatable decontamination units. The NHS were buying such units in their thousands, seemingly. Cue in scenes from a military exercise involving a supposed chemical attack. Again those suits, making the people wearing them look like alien beings, and people around falling down in an ordinary street, holding their throats and going pop-eyed. An interview with a so-called "expert" followed; while stating that, in fact, it was highly unlikely any terrorists will employ chemical weapons, he nevertheless went on to describe the kind of equipment they'd need, where they would get it from, and what the effects would be. Finally, the news reporter, summing up, said, something like "Although it's unlikely that very many people would die in a chemical attack, nevertheless the terrorists would have won because they'd have terrified millions of people." That's when I laughed! I slapped my thigh and gave a hoot, thinking "who the hell needs terrorists to scare us when you're bizzy doing it for them?!" chris stone / kent # AMERICA'S NEW (improved) WAR or: Brummbaer's problem with patriotism Being born at the end of World-War Two and growing up in a carpet-bombed Germany I had no problem with patriotism - there was none! The Nazis had played the concept of Nationalism and Patriotism to its cruel and logical end - total destruction! The educators and role models in my childhood didn't have much of a chance to get me into flag-waving for anybody or any ideology. I was vaccinated! But how patriotism all begin? Once upon a time someone claimed authority and drew a line in the sand, from which point on everybody born east of the line belonged to the BLUE people - West to the RED people. Now, for some reason the BLUE people are very proud to be born BLUE; and the same happened with the RED people. So ever since they've been happily waving their red and blue flags! This befuddles me because I was taught to be proud of something I'd achieved myself, not of a gift or a coincidence. Should I be proud that the sky's blue - or that the night's dark - or if I'm white I'm proud I'm white - and was I black, proud to be that? Proud to be an American? Just because I was born here? Is it hereditary then? And the symbol for all this pride is the swastika, eh, the star-spangled banner. Now the country's knee-deep in flags, you can't help noticing what a helplessly garish design we got here. Aesthetically, it's a barber-pole color patchwork with stars on it, like a list of 'all states present.' Sure, not everybody can have a powerful, arrogant red dot like the Japanese, and I suppose powerful symbols like the swastika show up only once every thousand years. But I like the Canadian leaf, and the Lebanese cedar. And flags with moons on them look romantic. Perhaps I'm jealous because no flag or nation infatuates me. I prefer to be infatuated with people, directly, not because of a group-identification - and trust me on this: there are wonderful enlightened people everywhere - just as there are assholes! America, Europe, Israel, Afghanistan, wherever I go I find them. Different flags all of them! So, why shortchange yourself by loving just 5% of the world's population (America); particularly when the rest of the world needs your love way more urgently? When the Berlin wall came down Timothy Leary predicted severe symptoms of enemy-deprivation for this government. It's never been clearer than now - we can't even reliably name our enemies. I pity the World War Two soldiers we see every night on TV so bravely staggering around, missing limb in one hand, in Spielberg's "Band of Brothers"-war fantasies. Motivated by Pearl Harbor, Captain America, Mickey Mouse and Bob Hope, they find themselves dying on the beaches of Normandy - not to liberate Jews from concentration-camps, but to make sure the Communists don't get all of Europe's loot. These soldiers were wonderfully heroic people, but innocent, ignorant and misled - to call them the Greatest Generation is an obviously patriotic exaggeration. If I may be so bold, the '60s generation was the Greatest Generation because they were the first who didn't try to win a war but win a peace. I just wish I could see reflected on Wall-Street a little of the same naïve, sweet patriotism that's conducting candle-lit vigils across America and appearing at the blood-banks. But if you're a CEO you're responsible for your stockholders and can't be patriotic - that's for the little people, who take it seriously, and are ready to die for it. In the immortal words of Peter Tosh: "Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die." Well, the Muslims have 'em - people who don't mind dying! It's their own unique weapon, only available when a population's so decimated that suddenly there's a contingent of highly skilled people who, with their families killed, don't mind dying. America has nothing - absolutely nothing with which to defend themselves against such suicide-terrorism. My secret hope is women - when men fall in love they become completely useless as terrorists. So, we should build up the infrastructure of Afghanistan, sell everybody a TV, blast them with Baywatch, and when that precious moment comes when Bin Laden, at the sight of Britney Spears, spontaneously ejaculates, we know we've won! # YOU FEEDBACK >>I find it very disturbing that people have written rude messages to the magazine demanding to be removed from the mailing list because they disagreed with the views of some of the contributors. Well it isn't that hard to understand really is it? I mean the posts came within days of the attack when emotions, particularly on the part of those within the US were running extremely high... And one would have to be a zombie not to have been deeply shocked, angry and emotional in the wake of what happened. I find this mailing list very interesting and agree with much of what is expressed here, although not all by any means. But I thought sending out this stuff so soon after the event was... well... a bit insensitive. I mean would you attend a funeral then offer your condolences to the grieving widow by saying "I'm sorry, it's such a tragedy, but you have to admit, he was a dick wasn't he." It might have been kinder to wait a tad longer and allow the situation to calm itself somewhat before declaring that the Americans got what they deserved because of their government's foreign policies in the past. Which is what some of these posts seemed to be driving at. Mark Namaste i do c what u r saying on the insensitivity issue, mark. one point that hasn't been mentioned so far is that the internet is an international medium almost by definition and in a way that no other medium yet is. implying: every time there's a disaster somewhere does everybody everywhere "wait a tad longer"? we may be largely dealing with a netiquette prob here. or does the internet actually supply that very overview that will HELP maintain perspective to many events that once totally and dangerously involved us? i'm not sure myself, and have quite deliberately refused to go far down the road on expressing regret or whatever. trillions of column inches and airwave time have been filled with regret. i don't see the UP's role as adding more. would i be overstating the case to say that the UP's premise is based on doing something about this suffering which, in general, keeps happening daily because of the developments that the UP is always trying to track and describe and analyse? yeah maybe :) and specifically the point i've been making is that nobody was there waiting a tad longer when lots of america's victims were getting killed - the list being, as we know, near endless. what was suddenly different? personally speaking, the UP was due to go out on the very night of the Tower Topple and i had to write it up alone, way into the small of the night (normal enuff) and in a fine old state of mixed and heightened emotion. obviously if i'd been located in new york ("attending the funeral" as u put it)) rather than in london i might have treated it differently, as something personal and not as, well, basically ongoing history - like tonight's killings in palestine. don't forget also that when the docklands bombing happened i actually heard a boom in the distant distance. i don't remember anything in america coming to a stop tho there were a couple of half hearted, half reported senatorial speeches regarding that organisation's financing from the states. and don't let me give the wrong message on those issues! i largely sympathise with sinn fein's aims (against colonialist britain) BUT if that's the case then americans must also accept that someone over here could 'largely sympathise' with wotever is the legal equivalent of aladdin's forty thieves (bin laden?). # An arcane provision of NAFTA (if you can believe that) could set a precedent for the forthcoming free trade zone for all of the Americas -- it allows corporations to sue governments if new laws threaten future earnings. www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=21 THE DOMINO EFFECT:
"I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?" Luke 12:49 TWIN TOWERS, HIDDEN POWERS, FINAL HOURS, LORD OF THE FLOWERS JASON WYND There has been a tear in the fabric of consensus reality. This is not a movie; or if it is, then we're on the wrong side of the screen, with no Hero forthcoming. After all, the twin towers, as the second highest buildings on the planet, could hardly be a better symbol of man's hubris, his overreaching attempt to erect idols in his own image (or that of his penis), and so compete with the gods themselves for air space. The World Trade Center is, or rather was, the modern day, schizophrenic equivalent of that ancient Tower of Babel by which man (once before, and equally unsuccessfully) tried to reach the stars (godhood) by the most base, ill-founded, and materialist of methods. Had God wished to demonstrate to the Western world the fatal folly of its consumer-demented ways, He could hardly have picked a more effective and succinct manner of doing so than by demolishing both World Trade Towers between the rising and setting of a single sun. So let us cease, for God's sake and for our own, to prattle and moan about Terrorist Action. The terrorists are working for God. As David Byrne put it in The Gates of Paradise "Terrorists are acting out of love, sweet love, to bring us home again" It does not matter WHO is responsible. It only matters WHY. And the why, as ever, is found at our own front door. This happened because it had to happen, because our way of life is wrong, wrong, wrong. Build an edifice of glass and steel a quarter of a mile into the air and fill it with 20,000 people, what do you THINK is going to happen? The only miracle is that it took so long to fall. Lighting candles and keeping silence, fine. But are our thoughts of pity for the victims and hatred for the victimizers really helping towards or blinding us from a real understanding of the meaning of this world-shaking event? If this is the beginning of the end of the World Empire - and by extension of the Psychic Snare of Consensus Reality - then ought we not to be grateful, as much as mournful, for this Opportunity? *
"Never again will the hordes of humatons be able to take their safe little Matrix for granted. . . Funny how those towers looked like big dominoes." Joseph Kerrick The North tower was hit first. Those in the South tower who understandably tried to leave were told to return to their offices; the first strike was assumed to have been an accident, therefore the South Tower was in no immediate danger. Some ignored these instructions and fled anyway, doubtless to their everlasting relief. Those who obeyed and sat tight must have experienced, as the flames crept closer, an overwhelming rage that their docile complicity had overridden their infinitely more trusty instincts. In the North tower, hit at the hundredth floor level, those in the floors above were trapped, helplessly witnessing the foundation collapse beneath them. They knew they were doomed beyond any doubt; no Bruce Willis or Batman was coming to save them. They had no option but to let the flames devour them, the rubble crush them, or to jump to their almost certain deaths. It's hard to imagine a more sheerly romantic image of love and death for our schizophrenic times than the couple who were witnessed holding hands and making the leap together. Had they had done this in a movie, it would have been laughed off the screen. The image of stockbrokers trapped atop a skyscraper gazing helplessly down as their doom approaches is quintessential: a metaphor for our times. Are we not all likewise situated? Have not we all entered an uneasy alliance with a mechanized, soulless edifice-society for the dubious rewards of comfort and "success"? Is not the very loftiness of our material status inseparable from its precariousness? The center cannot hold, the foundation won't support us, and the very structures we have built to house and protect us will be the death of us. Picture a whole civilization watching the agent of its doom approach, awaiting the moment of impact. This is us. Picture us looking to the heavens and asking WHY?, praying for a miracle to swoop down and deliver us. Picture us looking down at the crumbling superstructure beneath us, at the searing flames as they approach ever closer, and realizing we have only one sane option: to leap, wings or no, into the Abyss. This is the fate that awaits us, collectively; and the New York catastrophe is indeed a harbinger and a blueprint of what is to come, dear friends; and soon. They've already started plans for rebuilding the twin towers. Though this may seem inevitable on reflection, it is no less incredible for all that. It is to be done, we are told, "for our children and grandchildren." The blind madness of our society is only compounded by this all-too-brief moment of lucidity. The rebuilding of the twin towers will not be completed. What is so bewildering and saddening is that it will even be attempted. Never underestimate the power of denial. "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." Matthew 5:44-5 In the movie The Matrix, Morpheus, Trinity, and the Team were seen as Terrorists. And so they were, hell-bent upon destroying the soul-enslaving Illusion of "the System," which was not merely Capitalist or Democratic or Consumer rule, but reality itself! If none of this is real, then catastrophes of this scale and nature are what it takes to wake us up. They are the only way for us to realize the truth. So 10,000 people died. But were they really living, encased in a giant steel tombstone, their lives devoted to upholding a Tyranny of Lies? I do not suggest they deserved what happened, but nor can it be seen as any great tragedy, either. Now they have died for a cause: the awakening of humanity to its true nature and destiny. Is this not poetic justice? These people made their choices; if they could not live with them, they at the very least died with them. (The Arab terrorist chosen for a kamikaze mission is made to write letters to family and friends and is videotaped saying his farewells. Sometimes this is done years before he is actually martyred, but once the testimony has been given, he's considered dead; he's called al-shahid al-hai, meaning "the living martyr.") And what is all this lamentation for? For the lost lives? If so, how is it that a hurricane can claim as many lives in Central America with nary a twinge of sorrow in the Western world? More to the point, what about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi innocents destroyed by American intervention? Who sheds a tear for slaughtered Arab children, every bit as much the victims of terrorism, only a terrorism sanctified by the Christian banner of "democracy"? Those Americans and British who suffered a terrifying death, were they not already complicit in the deaths of these Iraqi children, if only for their lack of awareness of America's genocidal foreign polices? As such, for pledging their allegiance to a murderous nation, they got only and precisely what they (and we all) deserve. Our sympathy is misplaced: no one's innocent, not even the children (dancing in the streets of Palestine as the towers fall). All this is perhaps too obvious to merit our attention, were it not for all the crocodile tears, tears not of empathic grief for the lives that were lost, but of pity for ourselves, as we realize with crushing intensity our mortality and vulnerability in the face of this awful unknown. Beyond that, we are weeping not for lost persons but for objects, for those twin towers and the "sacred" New York skyline, treasured symbol and image of the modern world, so cruelly and utterly annihilated without warning. The murderous act of terrorism has offended us most deeply of all for being such a cataclysmic act of vandalism. Had the terrorist attack occurred two hours earlier, when the buildings were empty, I'm quite sure the "grieving," though less, would still have been momentous, and certainly markedly more heartfelt than anything expressed over Hurricane Mitch's mass destruction (which was non-existent. And to describe Mitch as an act of Nature evades the issue, especially since the US government now has the technology for creating and directing hurricanes). At base and bottom of all the reactions and responses to the Great Catastrophe, there is one common factor: ignorance. No commentator seems to be looking at the deeper, more resounding implications. They're either howling for "justice" (revenge) or wailing over the "loss," like trauma babies demanding the titty, wounded parties seeking compensation. But there is no "compensation" that can be separated from the "tragedy" itself. You cannot separate the trauma from the initiation, the crisis from the opportunity, because the crisis IS the opportunity, to those who know how to use it. *
"A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world." John 16:21 Sifting through the rubble of the catastrophe may uncover clues to the message it contains, the true reason behind it (whoever really "did" it; and of course, as good, functioning paranoids, we must suspect everyone, not just the "obvious" suspect - Israel - but the US government itself). "President" Bush assures us the perpetrators "will be punished," and "America will win." Who is he kidding? America will not win. Might is not right. If he'd asked "Why is God punishing us?" he'd have come considerably closer to the truth; and the American people would have listened, too. But of course he could not ask this, not even privately, for it would be to acknowledge that America and its government, and by extension its people, are the enemies of God. Not Allah, but God. This Holy War is not between Christ and Allah, or God and the Devil. It's between Humanity and the God which humanity's bid to replace with its own false God has denied, the false "all-good God" made in its own withered image, who can only preside, helplessly, over ever spiraling acts of negligence and contempt. If 10,000 died that the Earth might live, it's a small sacrifice indeed; and heavy as our hearts may be, we must accept it. But many more must die for the Earth to live, and be it Afghani terrorists, Israelis, the UN Global Green Gestapo, or the force of Nature Herself who performs the sacrifices does not matter. If you cry over spilt milk, instead of salvaging what you can and cleaning up what you can't, then the loss is infinitely greater. There is no time for crying. "Why?" is the cry of the conceited person who feels he deserves better. We do not deserve better. Instead, hear the cry of God and His prophets, be they even disguised as child-slayers and terrorists, for it is not wolf that they cry. As the cry of the ages unchanged by progress, their cry is more urgent than ever. And now, finally, events give credence to the cry: "Repent, for the end is at hand." Actions speak immeasurably louder than words. We must face the possibility that life-threatening catastrophes are all that really get through to us anymore. My feeling is that, whatever the next phase in human evolution may amount to, this is precisely what is occurring at a species level now. Hence the preponderance of sickness and madness and general social collapse. Civilization's skin (humanness) is being shed. The birth of the New Man is being induced. Last Tuesday's (Mars') "little" demonstration was but an opening push of the cosmic surgeon's hand on the outside of the womb, an early wobble of the matrix. Therefore we must rejoice, for the birth is imminent: and, though much travail shall we suffer, there will be joy to follow, for all those with the courage to leave the old world, and inherit the new. *
"Novelty Overload.... Reality System Collapse Immanent...! I think the world just went through a 'history warp,' we switched dimensions and entered another timeline. The 'Manhattan Transfer Effect' punched a hole in the fabric of the space-time continuum, History is now different and we are literally in a parallel universe where 'mass death events' and our responses to them will now be the defining moments of our civilization. NEXT LEVEL: ASYMMETRIC WARFARE! Nuclear Terrorism. Nuclear Assassination of the terrorist enemy. We are now on the wrong side of History. The dark side. May God save our souls." Peter Solomon.The Empire is committing suicide. Of course we know, and I think have known for a long time, that this is the only realistic hypothesis, the only real possibility for us lonely Wangsters biding our time at our respective outposts: since we are not terrorists ourselves and (I trust) have no interest in (or capacity for) becoming such, we must trust that the Empire WILL destroy itself, in good time. The Matrix is self-imploding. This is symbolically suggested by the very nature of the catastrophe: United and American Airlines planes crashing into the World Trade Center (the crashed plane was flight 93, no less; the one that hit the tower was AA11: both covert, if inadvertent, references to the Aiwa-Lucifer current). The "terrorists" used Uncle Sam's own arms against him. This was strategically brilliant, of course, but also poetically apt. Since a State of Emergency was declared after the attack, it follows that Martial Law can now be applied at the drop of a hat. This means that anything perceived as a "threat against the State" will be punished immediately with incarceration or death, without hearing or trial. After the explosive event of 11/9/01, the American (and world) public will gratefully accept such severe and unconstitutional measures, anything at all in fact, if only some of their lost sense of security and stability can thereby be restored. But Humpty has fallen, shattered into a million trashy pieces; and all the President's Horses and all the President's men cannot put Humpty together again. These are the birth pangs. The sky is rent, the pillars of the Western world have tumbled. It is only a matter of time before the entire edifice follows. Amen. So you see that the worst news is ever the best. The reign of antichrist is a necessary preliminary for the intervention of Astarius-Pan, the Lord of Flowers; for only when the adversary has fully shown his hand can he be exposed and overthrown for what he is, and so cast into the bottomless pit, forever. It's time to shift allegiance, by a great leap of faith and imagination, away from Man and all his illusory follies, back to God and his one, all-redeeming, all-destroying Reality. Verily, I say unto you: Unplug, or forever hold your peace. # At a meeting of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, those who know the Taliban best talk about how the US should respond to the September 11 attacks. http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11640 NEO McCARTHYISM? OR FASCISM'S DEATH RATTLE? IT'S YOUR DECISION! For the second time in my life, a group that I belong to is being investigated by the FBI. The first was the Weavers. The Weavers were a recording industry phenomenon. In 1950 we recorded a couple of songs from our American/World folk music repertoire, Leadbelly's Goodnight Irene and, ironically, the Israeli Tzena, Tzena, Tzena and sold literally millions of records. Folk music entered the mainstream, and the Weavers were stars. But within 2 years it was over. The record company dropped us, eager TV producers stopped knocking on our door. The Weavers were on a private, yet well-publicized roster of suspected entertainment industry "reds". The FBI came a-calling. Well, I just found out this week that Women in Black, another group of peace activists I belong to, is the subject of an FBI investigation. Women in Black is a loosely knit international network of women who vigil against violence, often silently, each group autonomous, each focused on the particular problems of personal/ state violence in its part of the world. Because my group's composed mostly of Jewish women, we focus on the Middle East, protesting the cycle of violence and revenge in Israel and the Palestinian Territories. The FBI is threatening my group with a Grand Jury investigation. Of what? That we publicly call the Israeli military's occupation of the mandated Palestine lands illegal? So does the World Court and the United Nations! That destroying hundreds of thousands of the Palestinians' olive and fruit trees, blocking roads and demolishing homes promotes hatred and terrorism in the Middle East? Even President Bush and Colin Powell have gotten around to saying so. So what is to investigate? That some of us are in contact with activist Palestinian peace groups? This is bad? The Jewish Women in Black of Jerusalem have stood vigil every Friday for 13 years in protest against the Occupation; Muslim women from Palestinian peace groups stand with them at every opportunity. We praise and honor them, these Jewish and Arab women who endure hatred and frequent abuse from extremists on both sides for what they do. We are not alone in our admiration. Jerusalem Women in Black is a nominee for the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, along with the Bosnia Women in Black, now ten years old. If the FBI cannot or will not distinguish between groups who collude in hatred and terrorism, and peace activists who struggle in the full light of day against all forms of terrorism, we are in serious trouble. I've seen such trouble before in my lifetime. It was called McCarthyism. In the hysterical atmosphere of the early Cold War, anyone who had signed a peace petition, joined an organization opposing violence or racism, or had tried to raise money for the refugee children of the Spanish Civil War, in other words who'd openly advocated what was unpopular at the time, was fair game. In my case, the FBI visited The Weavers' booking agent, the recording company, my neighbors, my dentist husband's patients, my friends. As our careers waned, the Weavers were followed down the street, accosted onstage by drunken "patriots," warned by friendly hotel employees to keep the door open if we rehearsed in anyone's room so as not to become targets for the vice squad. It was nasty. Every two-bit local wannabe G-man joined the dragnet searching out and identifying "communist spies." In all those self-debasing years how many spies were pulled in by that dragnet? Nary a one. Instead it pulled down thousands of teachers, union members, scientists, journalists, actors, entertainers like us, who saw our lives disrupted, our jobs and careers go down the drain, our standing in the community lost, even our children harassed. A scared population soon shut their mouths up tight. Thus came the silence of the 1950s and early '60s, when no notable voice of reason was heard to say, "Hey, wait a minute. Look what we're doing to ourselves, to the land of the free and the home of the brave," when not one dissenting intelligence was allowed a public voice to warn against zealous foreign policies which we'd later come to regret - would be regretting now, if our leaders were honest. Today, in the wake of the worst hate crime of the millenium, a dragnet is out for "terrorists" and we are told that certain civil liberties may have to be curtailed. Which ones? I'm very curious to know. The First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech or of the press? The right of people peaceably to assemble? Suddenly, deja vu - haven't I been here before? Hysterical neo-McCarthyism doesn't equal security and never will. The bitter lesson September 11 should have taught us and our government is that only an honest re-evaluation of our foreign policies and careful, focused and intelligent intelligence work can hope to combat operations like the one that robbed all of us and their families of 6,000 decent working people. We owe the dead that, at least. As for Women in Black, we intend to keep on keeping on. Ronnie Gilbert, as conveyed by Marcia Freedman, a well-known Israeli feminist, who stands together with Ronnie in the Bay Area Women in Black. # the sad news has reached us of john lilly's death - sunday sept 30 @ 9.30 "from complications caused by an infection in his chest" (the usual description doctors give when the person died of plain old age.) dolphin dr john gave me courage and boosted my self-belief by reminding me that we 'alternative people' are scientists in the true sense. i'm sure he's resting in the centre of the cyclone. check out the quotes below for... relevance. fraser. "The computational power of the human brain can construct internal realities and project them upon the external reality very effectively. A group of humans can agree upon certain beliefs and then reinforce them sufficiently so that they are willing to fight for them against all other groups with diverse beliefs." "Man's narcissistic worship of dangerous beliefs generated in his own small past endangers long-term survival not only of man but of all species." Somehow, sometime, somewhere, we must agree with one another or we follow the great reptiles into our own extinction, self-inflicted." John Lilly. YOU 2606 |