Click Here to read the next UP!

contents:

horribly possible scenarios in IRAQ  pp3 & 4

Dear America, from  Your Worried Friends in the Rest of the World. p.5

DENNIS KUCINICH for PRESIDENT?  SUPPORT FROM RALPH NADER   +  some doubts p.9

THE SAN FRANCISCO PEACE DEMO  p.13

Writers Against War   John Le Carre  p.8  /  John Berger  p.13

‘No-Nonsense Guide’ to International Development   p.14

$£$£$£$££$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$££$£$£$£$££$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£

+=£$ GO FROM BROKE! %£$-  A BUSINESS FORUM hosted by Phil Inje Chang  p.16

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The UP! (or UP!grademag) is a global edutainment round-up, ‘broadcast’ weekly to =[10,903]= Alternative// Activist// Zippy// Trance// New Age 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 30,000+ direct recipients.  Further, because of its less 'specialist' content, it's increasingly being posted on a variety of sites worldwide, making a conservatively estimated total weekly ‘readership’ of  275,000+

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* * * * * * * * * ASTRO ENERGY ANALYSIS FOR JAN 22-29 * * * * * *

A STRANGE WEEK AHEAD

Mercury turns direct tonight in the practical sign of Capricorn.

We are now free to move ahead with our business.

As Mercury turns, we are thrown into a whole new dimension -  or two or three.

This is a strange and unpredictable week.

Plan to exercise this weekend; warrior Mars needs action.

Get the daily scoop in Maya’s Daily Success Guide at

www.daykeeper.com

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

UP! CEO -- Chief Embezzlement Officer.

HOW TO STOP ALL WARS

"All we have to do to stop all wars is to make it compulsory for those who declare war to fight in the frontline from day one." - David Icke

 UP!

Goddess

Mine is a name

Written on water,

Mine is a face

Carved in sand.

I am the wind

And the waves' daughter,

I have no place,

I have no land;

Give me a boat

to sail forever

Back to the pools

Where I should be;

You are all fools

Who love my laughter,

I am the sea,

I am the sea.

Charlotte Appleton 1/2002.

UP! "Nothing in the world is more dangerous  than sincere ignorance  and conscientious stupidity."  Dr. Martin Luther King.

why are the dinosaur faction looking so smug?  why do they seem so sure of some ‘material breach’ coming to light in iraq that they’re practically licking their chops? 

a)    what do they know that we don’t know?

b) what does bush know that blair doesn’t know?

i’m ashamed to admit that the blunt truth is we must steel ourselves against all possible lies, subterfuges or plain bloody incidents.

we have two possible fake scenarios we want to warn you about.  remember i predicted the capture of an ‘iraqi agent’ in new york with a bottle of botulism who’ll be whisked straight off to some ‘foreign’ de-legalised camp for interrogation while the war completes its course?  i still think that’s the safest from the american point of view.

however i had a vision last night when discussing all this with a friend.  i was describing the hundreds of pages removed from iraq’s declaration by the americans before giving copies to the other UN nations involved.  first i noticed how little actual information had been revealed about where this happened, who was involved, who got direct copies and glimpsed the disinformation campaign that’s obviously been going on during the early stages of this ‘war’.

then i recalled that some of those pages were revealed to have been lists of western companies who’d helped to arm saddam in the fist place and the UP! even published the list.

BUT SUPPOSING OTHER PAGES WERE REMOVED AS WELL!  SUPPOSING THE CIA REMOVED A PAGE OF SADDAM’S MOST HIDEOUS WAR REMAINDERS LIKE LEFT-OVER BIOILOGICAL SETS OR NUCLEAR FISSILE MATERIAL ETC. 

now get this!  the iraqis would have no idea what had been removed.  only the very top rungs in each country’s governments would have access to the full reports, how would saddam find out?

NOW SUPPOSE THE DOGS OF WAR suddenly disclose these “hidden” assets to the UN inspectors?!  who go straight there and ‘discover’ them!!!????   the iraqi protests that they were included in the original report would be drowned by exploding bomms and babies.  right?

SO IF ANYONE READING THIS KNOWS HOW TO GET WORD TO SADDAM WHILE THERE’S STILL TIME FOR HIM TO RELEASE MORE COPIES OF THE ORIGINAL REPORT PLEASE GET MOVING!!

UP! CFO -- Corporate fraud officer.

and another horribly possible scenario..

Several weeks ago special US forces were admitted to be operating inside Iraq.

There’s a strong likelihood (being suggested from various quarters) that their function has been to plant and hide biological  and chemical weapons material, their whereabouts to be disclosed to the to the UN weapons inspectors shortly after their report on the JAN 27.   Their 'discovery' would trigger the US/British invasion early in February. 

Many of the announcements made by the US administration are commensurate with this scenario:

'They haven't found the weapons because they are too well hidden'

'We have intelligence as to the whereabouts of these weapons'

'We are losing patience with Saddam'

'This is not the smoking gun we are looking for'

The Weapons inspectors would be directed to a site, find the evidence, Saddam will cry ‘foul’ and the US military will say 'We told you so' and go straight in without negotiation or debate.  "There’s no time for that, we told you all along he was deceiving us''.   Many would consider it too far fetched that the Bush admin would perpetrate such a piece of chicanery, but nobody could really claim this admin has a good record for honesty:

-          Defective voting machines moved to Democratic areas, a refusal by Republicans to allow votes to be counted.

-          Deep involvement in the Enron and World.com scandals

-          the suspicious death of Paul Wellstone, the only anti-Iraq war senator

-          the treatment of prisoners at camp X-ray

With the possibility of British lives at risk, the chance of a large number of troops being dragged into a war triggered by a deception is too awful to contemplate.  The possibility should be discussed now, before it happens.  When the 'smoking gun' is revealed,  the time will be too late. 

Discussion itself might be enough to deter members of the Bush Administration from taking this course of action.  Tony Blair and others might then be obliged to seek a more peaceful alternative.  

World Peace Movement

UP! BEAR MARKET -- A 6-to-18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewellery, and the husband gets no sex.

"What we ought to have been creating in this time is some administration with Arab institutions which we can safely leave while pulling the strings ourselves; something that won't cost very much, but under which our economic and political interests will be secure.  If the French go, or if we appear to be reactionary in Mesopotamia, there is always the risk that [King] Faisal will encourage the Americans to take over both, and it should be borne in mind that the Standard Oil company is very anxious to take over Iraq."   Sir Arthur Hirtzel, Head of the British government's 'India Office Political Department.' 1919

UP! BROKER -- What my broker has made me.

Dear America,

You’re on the brink of war.  An aggressive and unpredictable leader is spreading fear and insecurity.  George W. Bush possesses massive arsenals of weapons of mass destruction.

He also claims he has the right to use them.

   32% of adult Americans voted for him, and he got 539,989 less votes than his opponent Al Gore.

   He leads a regime, where he and a rich elite enjoy enormous wealth and growing privileges, while millions live in poverty.  People of ethnic minorities are oppressed and humiliated.

His country ranks highest in the world with regard to not signing human rights treaties.

   We know that most Americans want peace and justice for all. 

You are good people, like most people are, in Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Korea, Ukraine, Australia, Norway, Mexico, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Brazil, India, Bolivia, Iran, Uganda, Portugal and elsewhere.

   We thank you for giving us Abraham Lincoln, Bessie Smith, Elvis Presley, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Hank Williams, Martin Luther King Jr., Toni Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Jesse Owens, Woody Allen, Miles Davis, Ernest Hemingway, Helen Keller, Madonna, John Steinbeck, Jimmy Carter, Julia Roberts, Muhammad Ali and many more.

   If we can do anything to help you get rid of George Bush before he wrecks your reputation and messes up the whole planet, please let us know!

   Best regards,

Your worried Friends in the Rest of the World.

UP! MARKET CORRECTION -- The day after you buy stocks.

Dear Fraser,

I'm very grateful for all the funnies in your newsletter this week - I need all the laughs I can get.  Keep it UP!

All the best,

Bryan Lawrence and family.

http://www.page22.co.uk

UP! STOCK SPLIT -- When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

‘AVERT THE DESTRUCTION OF AN IMPORTANT MUSLIM COUNTRY’ OR FACE CONFLICT FOR GENERATIONS WARN BRITISH MUSLIMS
7 in 10 British Muslims believe the war on terror is a war on Islam

An ICM poll published last month found that 7 in 10 British Muslims believe the war on terror is a war on Islam.

And Britain's biggest Muslim organisation yesterday warned Tony Blair that war with Iraq would cause community relations to deteriorate and breed "bitterness and conflict for generations to come".

Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, urged the prime minister to use his influence to "avert the destruction of an important Muslim country" and warned of deep cynicism among British Muslims about the motives for the war on terror.

In a letter to No 10, Mr Sacranie described the plans for war as a "colonial policy".

"It is generally believed the real American objective behind such an invasion is to change the political map of the Middle East, appropriate its oil wealth and appoint Israel as a regional superpower exercising total hegemony over the entire Middle East and beyond,.

A war would worsen relations between communities and faiths in Britain as well as causing "lasting damage" to relations between the Muslim world and the west, Mr Sacranie added.

http://www.bilderberg.org/boneswar.htm#generations

UP!

new york

FRI JAN 24

Rha Goddess & The Cipher
In An Encore Performance
AT
The Bronx Museum's
BOUNCE
Performance Series
Also Featured :
Imani Uzuri- Jazz Electronica
Marie Claire-Hip Hopera
DJ Reborn-Spinning the Classics

Doors Open 7pm.  Showtime 8pm SHARP!!  Bronx Museum Of The Arts, 1040 Grand Concourse & 165th St., Bronx.  (718) 681-6000   Admission FREE with Complimentary Open Bar

UP! FINANCIAL PLANNER -- A guy whose phone has been disconnected.

THE SEVEN SACRED MOONS

Dear Fraser,

In today's multicultural society it makes sense to honour the key lunar-calendar dates of different cultures. Here are, I suggest, the seven 'sacred moons' of 2003:

Chinese new year       1st Feb (New moon)

Muslim new year       5 March   (N.M)

Easter Sunday            20 April - fixed by the Full Moon on 16th

Buddhist Wesak         May 16th (Full moon)

Jewish new year         27 Sept. (N.M.)

Hindu new year          25 Oct    (N.M.)

Ramadan starts          27 Oct    (N.M.)

I reckon it would be quite socially cohesive if these were celebrated in some way.  Thereby we get in touch with the cycles of time, as could (call me a dreamer) promote a more feminine and less violent society.

Nick K. / Berlin

UP! YAHOO -- What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

london

FRI JAN 31    DAR ATTACK 2:  RAISE THE PEACE FINGER / PEACE BY ANY PEACEFUL MEANS NECESSARY

Presented by Limpopo Club and Dar Productions:

LAHCEN THE MOOR ( OF MoMo FAME) alongside MC BRIES - phat beats Moroccan sylee

KOMANJI - feat HARIR _ Moroccan violinist extraordinaire in a new vibe

CLAIRE ROFF (of Jinx who graced mellout recently) and friends - the first Dar Attack diva) and .... YOU!

Open music making slots + GUEST DJS from LIMPOPO CREW and DJ Debbie (www.gaialive.co.uk)

Africa Centre, King St, Covent Garden.  £7/£8   020 7836 1973

FIRST TO EMAIL outerglobe@yahoo.co.uk mentioning the UP! gets free pair tickets!

UP! WINDOWS 2000 -- What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Yahoo

@ $240 per share.

israel

"PERSONA NON GRATA"

OLIVER STONE’s next movie - a lionisation of Yasser Arafat titled "Persona Non Grata" - has Israel worried. 

Stone, who screened the pro-Castro documentary "Comandante" at Sundance, shot more than 80 hours of film in the West Bank for his Arafat project, which was commissioned by French and Spanish TV.

"If Stone’s upcoming documentary on Yasser Arafat is as close to

reality as were his movies on John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon,

Israel has real reason for concern," columnist Herb Keinon wrote in

the Jerusalem Post. 

After his trip to the Middle East, Stone told Variety he "understands why [the] suicide bombers feel the way they do... The Israelis have no business in the West Bank." 

"People who might not sit and watch a documentary on Arafat for a

minute will sit and watch if Oliver Stone’s name is on it," Israeli 

diplomat Zvi Vapni explained.  "That is our concern. It will have a strong impact for many people."

UP!

CASH FLOW -- The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

Writers Against War

A PREDATORY & DISHONEST WAR

©John le Carré 2003 - English novelist

This is High Noon for American democracy.  The rights and freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded.  A new McCarthyism is abroad.  Bush tells us that those who are not with him are against him.  Well, I am not with him.

            The American over-reaction is beyond everything Osama could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams.  But this war was planned long before Osama struck, and it’s Osama who made it possible.  Without him, the Bush junta would have been mired in Enron, electoral scandal and taxation sleaze.  Thanks to Osama, Americans are instead being daily misled by their leaders and by their compliant corporate media.

            There’s a stink of religious self-righteousness in the air that reminds me of the British Empire at its worst.  I cringe when I hear my Prime Minister lend his head prefect’s sophistries to this patently self-interested adventure to secure our oil supplies.

“But will we win, Daddy?”
“Of course we will, child, and quickly, while you are still in bed.”
“But will people be killed, Daddy?”
“There will be a few Western casualties. Very few. Go to sleep.”
“And after that, will everything be normal? Nobody will strike back? The terrorists will all be dead?”
“Wait till you’re older, dear. Goodnight.”
“And is it really true that last time round Iraq lost twice as many dead as America lost in the entire Vietnam war?”
“Hush child. That’s called history.”

Where’s the hurry?  There’s ample time to consider how to unseat him before we plunge into this predatory and dishonest war.  Leave the UN inspectors there.  Convene Iraq’s neighbours.  And consider for a moment where the will came from to make this war in the first place.

Americans can still awake to the shame of what is being done in their name.  Britain is half way there.  Only the good Germans have so far succeeded in sticking to their silent guns.  I wish profoundly that the rest of us Europeans, in the spirit of a nobler President, would declare ourselves to be citizens of Berlin.
UP! "I have decided to stick with love.  Hate is too great a burden to bear."  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

//YOU FEEDBACK:  THE VERICHIP

Hi Fraser,

A bit late, but i've just emailed ADSX about their disgustingly dodgy VeriChip.  Transcript below.  Keep up the good work, love,

Matt / W ales

Dear ADSX,
Your VeriChip product is as sick as hell. How dare you promote its use in human beings, and with your stupid tour bus.  You are helping to erode the freedom and privacy of the many while your few shareholders get fat on the sales. I wonder how well you all sleep at night?  Would you have one of these things jabbed into you?  Maybe if the price was right...

A small dog, an oriental child and an afro-caribbean child are featured on your website's front page. Hello?  All equal candidates for your electronic tag, so the powers that be can keep an eye on them wherever they may roam?  Whose money are you trying to attract?

I hope this particular product is completely unsuccessful and that you will think much more deeply before ever interfering with human liberties.  I will be warning everyone I know about your attempt to launch this product.

Come on, use your technological capacities to create and sustain values, not destroy them.
Matt Rhys-Roberts / Electronics engineer, UK

>>>Here is the page with the list of their contact information.  Call them Fax them e mail them telling them what they’re doing is wrong and against freedom and liberty.  That we will fight them to the end to stay a free human race, not chipped and trackable by ANY government or ANY agency.
http://www.adsx.com/aboutadsx/corporate.html
UP!

DENNIS KUCINICH for PRESIDENT?

SUPPORT FROM RALPH NADER

His name doesn't show up on the growing "short list" of Democratic hopefuls, but political allies of Cleveland Democrat Rep. Dennis Kucinich think he’s seriously considering a bid for his party's 2004 presidential nomination.

"The issues I’ve been debating in Congress, which are the major issues that I talk about in Cleveland, are resonating with people across the country.  As a result, I’m hearing from thousands of people from East Coast to West Coast, talking to me about running. I am listening... It is a great honor to even be considered."  Rep. Dennis Kucinich last week.

The challenge of merely lifting off is daunting for anyone, much less a U.S. House member who is not widely known nationally outside the "progressive" – read "liberal" - wing of politics.

Kucinich has yet to demonstrate he can expand his base beyond the peace activists, environmentalists and free-trade critics he addresses in national speaking appearances.

He has travelled to dozens of American cities, preaching - one speech was titled a "Prayer for America" - against war in Iraq and criticising Republican economic policies.

SUPPORT FROM RALPH NADER

Ralph Nader, who appeals to economic populists in much the same way as Kucinich, thinks the former Cleveland mayor should jump into the race.  "There needs to be a clearly progressive candidate in the primaries" he said recently, "I hope Kucinich does run."

He stopped short of endorsing Kucinich, since he’s uncertain about his

own plans.  He ran for president as the candidate of the Green Party in

2000.

But Nader is a Kucinich fan - part of Kucinich's circle of famous friends, which includes columnist Arianna Huffington and Warren Beatty, the actor who thought about running for president himself in 2000.

SUPPORT FROM LABOUR

"He’s a guy who is not afraid to speak up and fight for what he believes in.  He wins just by putting his issues - our issues - front and center.  In terms of winnability, it is a steep, steep uphill fight"  Steve Rosenthal, political director of the AFL-CIO, who also thinks Kucinich could force other Democrats to respond to issues important to the labour movement - workers' rights and jobs lost to free trade, for instance.

www.draftkucinich.com

An Internet site is promoting him, calling attention in a Wednesday posting to a mention of his possible candidacy on ABC's political Web site, The Note, and in a Washington Post online column.

UP! PROFIT -- an archaic word no longer in use

Dear Fraser,

A little correction.  Dennis Kucinich has NOT been endorsed by the Mendocino County Green Party. 

Also I've read that he has a record of voting anti-choice on abortion.  And besides he's a Democrat and I'm not ready to move out of the Green camp.   Why doesn't he become a Green?  I'd be much more comfortable with that. 

Thanks, 

Janie Rezner,  a Mendocino County Green Party member

UP! "Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows."  Dr. Martin Luther King,

//YOU FEEDBACK:  PRAYER WORKS OFFICIAL!

What's interesting is that the prayer article in the British Medical Journal, although originally intended as a piss-take of unscientific wishful thinking by the authors, actually worked!  They didn't do it seriously expecting anything to happen, but they had the computer randomly choose the two groups of patients and had people pray (actually just wished that they get well) for one group.  They put the effect down to "chance". 

I'd see it as synchronicity taking the piss of them more like!  After all, there are several other studies showing a positive effect of prayer on recovery from illness, even when the people don't know they’re being prayed for, and even if the patients and the pray-ers were hundreds of miles apart. 

Never seen one with a backwards-in-time effect though, looks like they've unintentionally broken another boundary here, bless 'em!

marios / madrid

UP! "Man must evolve for all human conflict, a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.  The foundation of such a method is love."  Dr. Martin Luther King

u.k.

SIGN UK LICENSING LAW PETITION TO DEFEND LIVE MUSIC & PARTIES

Civil liberties campaigners in Britain have launched an online petition against proposed changes to licensing laws for entertainment which could see private parties being outlawed.

            The proposed Public Entertainment Licensing Bill could make anyone hosting a house party liable to 6 months in jail or a £20,000 fine unless they obtain a formal licence in advance from local authorities.

            Activists are also planning a demonstration in Parliament Square on MON JAN 27 at 13.00, with email messages aiming to mobilise

popular support.

            “This is nothing less than fascism from people who are supposed to be our elected representatives, we MUST stop this law getting on to our statute books. If you thought the CJB  (Criminal Justice Bill) was bad, it's nothing compared to this.”

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?2inabar

[skrufff.com]

UP! "A time comes when silence is betrayal."  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

UNFORGIVABLE, THAT’S WHAT //YOU ARE

man, i CANNOT EVER forgive you for the swedish defection disinfo...   the only good news this year is a fookin lie...

i'm all for monkeywrenching hoaxes, and ludic fun; but when they rob my life of the one piece of optimism and hope from the world...it makes me give up inside

please, no lies...

stewart / ireland

>>> me 2, stew.  damn near broke my heart.  it was even worse than u say, i called it the best news of the millennium!  we just don’t have the staff to check everything out.  maybe you’d be UP! for checking the veracity of problem stories, eh?

sadness, plus mega embarrassment and lost credibility for moi then :(((

yeah, after your reply i thought about how mad i was just from having told a few people, with awestruck/naive good cheer and hope for the future, then about how many people the UP! goes to...

monkeywrenching hoaxes are so good, though... but they're meant to catch OTHER people, right?  we pranksters are meant to be confusing the demon armies of the Serious... not doing ourselves over.

well, have to experience to know, i guess.  and if it helps, the UP! virus is spreading over here, and my friends are wondering if you still run parties, and are they as colourful...

hey, if you don't give up, i won't either...(give up on UP!, hah, I laugh)

ok, be well, and make tasty omelettes with the egg on your face...

UP! "Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.  We have guided missiles and misguided men."  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tom Hayden on Channel 7 ABC-affiiliate news (referring to today’s Peace Movement vs. the Vietnam anti-war movement):

It’s much bigger and more significant NOW than THEN... If you’re comparing the brink of war now with THEN, this is a bigger movement already... Today it’s across every line, all levels, every socio-economic group, people are realising 'no one wants this war, and it is not just me'...

And it’s not just against this war, it’s against was as an instrument of policy... I think that’s what Americans are responding to... what is building is a huge wave of protest... that Vietnam was a mistake, that war is expensive, that you can just see the image of them coming back in body bags is a matter of urgency right now, and that is why you see a quickening of the anti-war movement...

There are multiple objectives... first to stop the bombing and escalation... The people are saying we don't want war anymore, we want a solution without going to war...

Ted Koppel (trying to downplay and interject insignificance to these comments) But how widespread is it?  Isn't just a few hundred thousand people?
Tom Hayden: I think this is as deep as the yearning for human survival and the need for our families to survive... there’s a deeper human connection with the recognition of a global connection and a need for humans to move beyond war, to find new solutions.

UP!

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defence  than on programs of social uplift  is approaching spiritual death."  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing.  The process is perhaps the most astonishing piece of slight of hand ever invented.  Banking was conceived in iniquity, and born in sin.  Bankers own the earth.  Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again.  Take this great power away from them, and all great fortunes like mine will disappear.  And, they ought to disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in.  But if you want to continue to be the slaves of the bankers, and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money, and control credit.”

Sir John Stamp, ex-governor of the Bank of England

UP! "One who condones evils is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

san francisco
THE SAN FRANCISCO PEACE DEMO
- GOOD GUYS DON'T START FIGHTS

On Saturday I put my 3-year-old daughter on my shoulders and marched with 500,000 other peace activists up Market Street in San Francisco.

- GO SOLAR, NOT BALLISTIC

What struck me was the very broad range of folks who turned out - white guys with crew cuts as well as many people of color, military veterans, teachers, and a ton of children. 

- BUSH IS A POOPIEHEAD

And of course a small smattering of grungier hippies  (these being the only ones many major media outlets take pictures of, of course).

>>>and probably the only ones who never gave up protesting.  but then that’s because they don’t keep their shit together working for the Man, the Man who uses the fruits to make the Wars.

- IGNORE WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION

Anyway, amidst the chants and cheers and drumming, there was some great street theater.  

- MAKE DOUGHNUTS, NOT WAR

My favorite:  a woman fully dressed as the Statue of Liberty was tied to a lamp post, with hands in chains and mouth gagged... she was being beaten with a gasoline-can by a very aggressive Uncle Sam, who kept turning and shouting at the marchers:  "Go home! Watch more TV!  Go back to sleep!". 
- WANT WAR?  DRAFT SUV DRIVERS
Finally, there were some very creative and funny signs.  My personal favorites are in blue caps.
- JUST SAY NO TO OIL ADDICTION
john bagby / usa
UP!

Writers Against War

SHAME, NOT INDIVIDUAL GUILT

©John Berger 2003.

I write in a night of shame.

`By shame I do not mean individual guilt.  Shame, as I’m coming to understand it, is a species feeling which, in the long run, corrodes the capacity for hope and prevents us looking far ahead.  We look down at our feet, thinking only of the next small step.

The shame begins with the contestation (which we all acknowledge somewhere but, out of powerlessness, dismiss) that much of the present suffering could be alleviated or avoided if certain realistic and relatively simple decisions were taken.

To understand and take in what is happening, an inter-disciplinary vision is necessary in order to connect the “fields” which conventional arguments keep separate.  The precondition for thinking on a global scale is to see the unity of the unnecessary suffering taking place.  Any such vision is bound to be, in the original sense of the word, political.

I write in the night, but I see not only the tyranny.  If that were so, I would probably not have the courage to continue.  I see people sleeping, stirring, getting up to drink water, whispering their projects or their fears, making love, praying, cooking something whilst the rest of the family is asleep, in Baghdad and Chicago.  (Yes, I see too the forever invincible Kurds, 4000 of whom were gassed – with US compliance – by Saddam Hussein.) 

I see pastry cooks working in Teheran and the shepherds, thought of as bandits, sleeping beside their sheep in Sardinia, I see a man in the Friedrichshain quarter of Berlin sitting in his pyjamas with a bottle of beer reading Heidegger and he has the hands of a proletarian, I see a small boat of illegal immigrants off the Spanish coast near Alicante, I see a mother in Mali, her name is Aya which means Born on Friday, swaying her baby to sleep.

Democracy is a proposal (rarely realised) about decision making; it has little to do with election campaigns.  Its promise is that political decisions be made after, and in the light of, consultation with the governed.  This is dependent upon the governed being adequately informed about the issues in question, and upon the decision makers having the capacity and will to listen and take account of what they have heard.  Democracy should not be confused with the “freedom” of binary choices, the publication of opinion polls or the crowding of people into statistics. These are its preteens.

Today the fundamental decisions, which effect the unnecessary pain increasingly suffered across the planet, have been and are taken unilaterally without any open consultation or participation.  The new tyranny, like other recent ones, depends, to a large degree, on a systematic abuse of language. 

Together we have to reclaim our hijacked words and reject the tyranny’s nefarious euphemisms; if we do not, we will be left with only the word shame.

This is written in the night.  In war the dark is on nobody’s side, in love the dark confirms that we are together.

UP!

THE NO NONSENSE GUIDES
(from the New Internationalist)
Over the past year New Internationalist has been producing a series of ‘NO-NONSENSE GUIDES’ to international issues such as the arms trade, climate change, international migration, and democracy.  They’ve been lauded by some of the greats of radical journalism, as well as the left-liberal press, and are now 10 in total, each a compact 130 or so pages in pocket-size format. 
The UP! will be reviewing and summarising each of them in turn.  In UP! 142 we kicked off with Wayne Ellwood’s ‘No-Nonsense Guide to Globalisation’.  This time it’s the turn of Maggie Black’s


‘No-Nonsense Guide to International Development’

The idea of “development” was invented in the post-Second World War to describe the process by which ‘backward’ countries would ‘catch up’ with the industrialised world – with the odd loan here and there!.  Five decades later, the numbers of poor people in whose name development is justified are greater than they were when it was invented; and in many cases their poverty stems directly from the havoc it has wreaked on their lives.  How can it be that a process that was meant to be synonymous with poverty reduction has been subverted in such a way as to reinforce the poverty of millions of people?  And given that it has, is the concept any longer useful?  These are two key questions addressed in this Guide.

Development on the whole sounds a nasty business.  According to one estimate, 10 million people a year worldwide suffer forced displacement from the construction of dams and urban transportation systems alone.  The numbers compare to the 12 million refugees annually displaced by wars and other disasters.  But refugees may one day go home.  The development-displaced can never do that. 

Instead of creating a more equal world, five decades of ‘development’ have produced a socio-economic global apartheid: small archipelagos of wealth, within and between nation states, surrounded by impoverished humanity.  A third of the world’s population –2 billion people – still remain outside the modern economy or survive at its edges.  And too often, the poverty of certain communities or nations is used as a pretext for promoting investments that are primarily designed to improve incomes and lifestyles for the better off.   It’s tempting to speculate how much this is contributing to international terrorism.

>>> if u won’t we will.  ALL terrorism stems originally from injustice, which, if it gets deep enuff, leads the dispossessed and brave into extreme politics and fundamentalisms. 

The “development” crusade began in the 1960s when US President John F Kennedy launched the UN’s ‘Decade of Development’.  Naïve optimism soon gave way to disillusion and distrust.  By the end of the decade it was clear that the new wealth that had been created in developing countries by means of development assistance was having little impact on the majority of their peoples.  A small section had become educated and ‘modern’, their lifestyles integrated with those of the Western economic system, whilst the traditional economy had been downgraded, even as the number dependent upon it swelled.  But by then, the development industry was established – and the pattern was destined to repeat again and again.  Recession in the industrialised world in the 1980s, together with Southern indebtedness to Northern banks, exacerbated a growing global gulf in wealth distribution.  During the decade the transfer of resources from rich to poor countries went into reverse, with debt repayments from developing countries overtaking the inflow of aid, investment and private lending, as remains the case today.

It looks like a gigantic global conspiracy to keep the poor in their place or demote them.  Rich countries don’t give enough - only Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden give more than the UN’s paltry target of 0.7 per cent of GNP in Overseas Development Assistance; the UK gives only 0.27 per cent, and the USA a stingy 0.1 per cent.  The programs they support are frequently heavily bureaucratised, and come with numerous strings: much so-called aid is more about building political alliances and opening up lucrative contracts for home-based companies, completely bypassing countries with the lowest per capita income.   

On the receiving end, corruption and a lack of political will means that funds are all too often expropriated by wealthy Southern elites, at times directly, more often to service projects that will meet their own agendas.  And finally, a lack of appropriate channels for directing much-needed resources to the poorest, a lack of consultation with those in greatest need, and a bewilderingly widespread lack of understanding of people’s lives on-the-ground - the traditional and informal economies in need of development assistance - cement the global felony.  Well-informed observers estimate that, at best, only one-quarter of official development assistance reaches people who are poor.

>>> in ethiopia i once heard an aid worker complain to another: “we woulda done more good if we’d chartered a plane and just chucked the money out over the countryside”.

There are a few dim lights on the horizon since the 1990s. 

First, an increasing focus on social, as opposed to economic progress, as measured by indicators such as life expectancy, child mortality and adult literacy.  There are slight improvements here, though they are patchy and, in most areas, disappointing. 

Second, there’s an increasing recognition that development – in any nation – need to be sustainable for the protection of people and planet.  The North, especially the USA, continues to ignore this at its peril. 

Third, the ascent of human rights in international law and policy making.  People’s movements in the South have welcomed the shift to rights as a framework for development action.  Such movements - together with their counterparts in the North - provide the greatest hope for re-casting development to serve those for whom it was always supposed to be intended. 

‘Where to next?’ is the subject of the final short chapter in this Guide.

penny gray

UP!

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This week I got two versions of the same question:

QUESTION 1:   What is the first move I should make with t