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“Digesting the UP! is like having a conversation with all the people who want to talk to you. 
It feeds you back with likeminded approval and gritty opposition, and it has become a powerful reality.”
Paul Hithersay.

 “Yes, it’s true that he had these convictions, but it was all a very long time ago.”   British Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith, confirming that Kenneth Macdonald QC, the next Director of Public Prosecutions, was convicted of supplying drugs while at University :)
>> official apology expected imminently.
UP!
contents
p.4     such an up UP!
p.7     A GREEN PLAN FOR AFGHANISTAN!
p.10    YEAR OF THWARTED AMBITION YO!! - LIKELY LIMITS TO US IMPERIAL POWER REVEALED   p.11     'BLEEDING STRATEGY' COMES HOME ON U.S.
p.13    bethlehem  FEEDBACK// The Problem is Chutzpah
p.22    GORE VIDAL on BUSH, WAR, & THE NEXT U.S. ELECTION
p.23    COURAGEOUS STATESMAN GADAHAFI?  PLEASE!  by Robert Fisk
and lots lots more :)

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the UP! //:-) 179  jan 4,   2004
la- la- la- lap-toppling da system!                     
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it's the fractals within the interconnections, that's where it's happening!


HAVE U VISITED OUR DEBATING BOARD'S REINCARNATION YET?  IT'S STARTING TO TAKE OFF!


"Stop thinking this is all there is...Realise that for every ongoing war and religious outrage and environmental devastation and bogus Iraq-attack plan, there are a thousand counter-balancing acts of staggering generosity and humanity and art and beauty happening all over the world, right now, on a breathtaking scale, from flower box to cathedral...
Resist the temptation to drown in fatalism, to shake your head and sigh and just throw in the karmic towel...Realize that this is the perfect moment to change the energy of the world, to step right up and crank your personal volume; right when it all seems dark and bitter and offensive and acrimonious and conflicted and bilious... there's your opening.
Remember magic.
And finally, believe you are part of a groundswell, a resistance, a seemingly small but actually very, very large impending karmic overhaul, a great shift, the beginning of something important and potent and unstoppable."     Mark Morford. 
UP! $$  ALBERTO-CULVER (Alberto VO5, Pro-line, Sally Beauty Supply, TCB Naturals, Tresemme)  $$  ARM & HAMMER  $$  BIC CORPORATION  $$  BLOCK DRUG CO (Carpet Fresh, Lava, Polident, Sensodyne, Tegrin)  $$  BOYLE-MIDWAY  $$  BRAUN (GILLETTE COMPANY)  $$   CALVIN KLEIN  (companies still conducting needless animal experiments for personal care and household products BOYCOTT ‘EM!)


ALWAYS THOUGHT DARWIN GOT IT WRONG?
Research Suggests New Theory Of Evolution
Researchers have found new evidence for an alternate theory of evolution in which instead of an infinite number of small genetic changes over a long period of time, the process begins with several large mutations before settling down into a series of smaller ones.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=2647&m=5435
UP!


VAST VIEWS BEYOND THE COMPREHENSION OF THE WEAK
I care not if you’re American, Iraqi, Israeli, Palestinian or whose flag you live under.  I care not that you worship a God, or what his name may be.  I care not that you like or dislike me.  I care not whose head adorns the money that buys your comfort.

I care that you should be treated with the same dignity and respect I demand for myself and for my family.  In fact I demand it!

I demand that the rights of each person regardless of place of birth is respected, not because of their wealth or achievements but for the dignity that is the birthright of all who are born to this earth.

Life demands not that we prosper at the expense of another but that we share our humanity and call a crime a crime, regardless of who the victim is, or who the villain.

Let us not walk in arrogance across the globe speaking of freedom while our hands are stained in centuries of blood.

Let us not preach to the world as victims and use the crushed bodies of the 2759 of our country men who perished on 9/11 as a weapon to plunder a world that has long experienced worse devastation at our hands.

Our tears and screams for justice are bitter taunts to a world that's been bombed and bullied by a nation too sure of it's own goodness.

A man who has lived his life without looking at his past and identifying those sections of his character that have brought pain to others is a tyrant.  A nation and its people who refuse to acknowledge its crimes and the suffering of its victims is an evil to the world and should expect only evil as its reward.
>> sweet goddess forgive us!

How poor we are when we consider our own pain more worthy than the suffering of others. 

"Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws."  John Adams
Peace and Joy.
Tom / Boston, US.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/122403.htm
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PLAN FOR UN TO RUN THE INTERNET 'WILL BE SHELVED,' BUT LOOKS LIKE THE FUTURE
An attempt by developing countries to put management of the internet under United Nations auspices is likely to be shelved at next month's world information summit in Geneva - but the issue is now firmly on the international agenda, summit sources say.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=2627&m=5435
UP!

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The UP! (UP!mag or UP!grademag) is a global edutainment round-up, ‘broadcast’ weekly to =[11,965]= 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 or parts of it to their own lists, we conservatively estimate 30,000+ direct recipients.  Further, because of its 'mix' of 'specialist' & 'general' content, it's increasingly being posted on a variety of sites worldwide, making an estimated total weekly ‘readership’ of =[275,000+]=
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-__,,,,_{ô¿ô}_,,,,__ fraser
new year’s day not!
it’s 1 am on New Year’s morning, am sitting writing this at home alone.  i’d planned on braving the night away at a huge squat party in south london but the police closed it down around 10pm.  why the hell they should be wasting their time digging up squat parties is quite beyond me.  i thot they were out there protecting us from terrorism so we could go on partying did i get it wrong?
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Christmas Eve in Baghdad, Explosions Abound
Our taxi driver says, "I never liked Saddam, but he gave us protection and what we needed to live. Saddam was honey compared to the American's. The Americans are like hell. I'm happy for this gas crisis. I just want to see the Americans fail here." http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5419.htm
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was i / am i sad to be alone on new year’s night?  not in the slightest.  why?  because new year was back on december 21st solstice when the longest night ended and we started moving towards summer again.  and that’s just a physical FACT, no arguing.  and this year i drove down to stonehenge where, under a totally cloudless sky, and in the coldest weather i’ve felt all year, i watched big mama sun’s full rise till she cleared the horizon and launched into the new year.  THAT was the scientific, correct beginning, and i’ve walked around since with this (not totally unusual) sense of being one of very few humans who KNOWS THE ACTUAL TRUTH, while the whole world continues blindly in a virtual world where, let’s face it, the banks and businessmen have decreed that it’s not due till 10 days later.   matrix?!  or wot?!

i did it, my first winter celebration inside those ancient stones, after deciding that i really couldn’t face another half-assed xmasNOT of banal, temperature-controlled overconsumption, watching the best of the year’s shit on tv while feeling vaguely i should be doing something more... significant?  more appropriate to such a once-a-year Event; that i'd been squandering something important somewhere. 

and it turned out i was right!  it was a Level i’d been missing, and although i did go on to spend yawnful days of over-everything in overheated rooms (including this ‘new’ year tonight) I DIDN’T CARE ANY MORE, or i reclaimed this Higher Level whenever i re-membered that i’d witnessed the turning of the Season by conscious participation rather than passively existing there when it happened).  through knowing i’d done something extreme, something REAL, the lower levels became easy to handle and didn’t catch me in negative emotions.
UP! $$  DIAL CORPORATION (Purex, Renuzit)  $$  DRACKETT PRODUCTS (S.C. Johnson & Son)  $$  ERNO LASZLO  GILLETTE (Braun, Duracell)  $$  HELENA RUBENSTEIN  $$  HELENE CURTIS INDUSTRIES (Finesse, Salon Selectives, Thermasilk, Unilever)  (companies still conducting needless animal experiments for personal care and household products BOYCOTT ‘EM!)



such an up UP!
The sanest thing around this "festive season" (festered season more like)... anyway, not to moan about megabuckculture, the following is in response to such an up UP!...
 
but I cant help thinking there is some re-focussing needed b4 things get into slanging matches... even when leavened by your gentle self, expressed in kindly ways and a mastery of style and word which convey your mood with consummate skill.
 
As well as being a vehicle for dissent in the face of the ever more
unbelievably transparently blatant deceptions dished out daily by dumbed-down, bought-UP! media, the UP! as I have been receiving and perceiving it over the years is also a showcase for your own persona... which makes it an even more fascinating phenomenon... because it's like having a conversation with all the people who want to talk to you. it feeds you back with likeminded approval and gritty opposition... it has become a powerful reality...
 
for the initiated and the adherents of the questioning way of vision which the UP! represents so healthily (the path of true intellectual humility) the ability to discern by careful observation and research, diligently and without jumping to conclusions, allowing a situation’s truth to emerge from the evidence you... and considering "what does your heart feel?"
 
This is the true defence against the strident simplifications, sound-bite misinformation, and censorship by exclusion which characterises the mainstream media...
 
So care must be taken that the debate does not narrow...

I was very pleased to see the spotlight shone on Blair for a change, he's gobsmackingly fooked UP! deluded, misguided and off the wall! It's great to see you bringing the criticism back to UK base... there’s fook all we can do about the American people's political failure or it's corporatised culture's bloated self-esteem, we can't unseat the 5 greedy demons on top of their pyramid, but we can do something about the poo that's been dumped on our plates in the name of democracy.
>> raise your game, paul :)
 
Raising awareness is the No1 job of the UP! and it does that in aces.


The BOMMS R US GO FOR GUN! story is a very important case in point.
 
I put KATHARINE GUN’s name into search engines, UK/ international... what I found is that there’s more information and articles about her case in American news publications than in UK media.  The Guardian and BBC ran something at the end of November but that's basically it.
 
I found this by NORMAN SOLOMON:-  Few Americans have heard of Katharine Gun, a former British intelligence employee facing charges of violating the Official Secrets Act.  So far, the American press has ignored her.  But the case raises profound questions about democracy and the public's right to know on both sides of the Atlantic.
http://www.counterpunch.org/solomon12152003.html

Hmm, I thought, strikes me few people here have heard of her or know of this situation either.
Of course, the British media doesn't lie, it just omits to tell the truth.
News is managed and censored by collusion and consent here just as much as in the US.  Only even more subtle is the con trick.
>> they lie too, but u r right.

The socio-political and psychological as well as economic attitudes and self-image of the British are far more subtly managed than in the US.  Our problem is we collude with some smugly comforting notion that we’re immune to the kind of blatant brainwashing-stereotyping the yanks fall for, and we kid ourselves that, because all politicians are the same, there’s no point trying to do anything to change it, why bother to vote, while sinking back to watch wife swap or some other drivel on TV, or deny our confusion-collusion by smothering our unease-insecurity with obsessive shopping, drinking, football, celebrity home and garden style, amongst other vacuous vicarious pre-packaged consumer orientated reasons for living.  stop :)
 
lately It's all gone neurotic tho, there's doubt and insecurity and fear all over the place since George and Tony vowed to make a safer, more peaceful world by stamping out evil (something god never managed)  putting out fire with gasoline more like it, as any fool can see... but hey, these are declared leaders, they don’t need to listen to the millions whose hearts move them to disagree...

but anyway, HAPPY NEW YEAR!

and thanks for this bang-on quote which sums up what I felt about it, and exactly why I knew that BushBliar were making a stupid mistake they’re too deluded and ignorant of basic karmic law to notice...
 
A DEMOCRACY HAS NO DEFENCE AGAINST TERRORISM!
A WAR ON TERRORISM IS A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS!
YOU CAN ONLY HAVE A PEACE CONFERENCE ON TERRORISM!
 
I know you're always slagging off the X-tians but it might be better to just remind them, humbly and with love, of the essence of their master's word, of turning the other cheek, meeting hatred and scorn with detachment, wisdom and compassion, love thine enemy, forgiveness..
it’s a law which applies with equal force to the hate-blinded terrorists and the arrogant super-rich corporate BOMMS R US brigade.
 
Very hard to find within and apply without, I know, but still the only glue that can seriously mend humanity, fix up freedom, and make the peace really stick.
paul hithersay
UP!

TONY BLAIR, GRACIOUSLY LEAVE THE STAGE!
The New Statesman, left wing UK journal owned by Geoffrey Robinson, ex-Paymaster-General, and ally of Gordon Brown.
"Every day it becomes clearer that Tony Blair’s error over Iraq was so catastrophic, so patent an example of bad judgement, so contrary to the spirit of his party as to pollute the entire New Labour project...
“Not a scrap of evidence has been found to justify his claim that British or US security were threatened by Saddam.  And his retreat from his earlier ‘categorical’ assertions look both comic and pathetic...
“The result is that everything else his government says and does become suspect.  Mr Blair’s authority is now so eroded that he does not get a hearing even when he deserves it...
“We must hope that, before the end of 2004, after one final rousing speech about how he overthrew the Iraqi tyrant, he will accept the applause of a grateful nation and party and graciously leave the stage.”
UP!

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-__,,,,_{ô¿ô}_,,,,__ fraser
(IS THIS STORY BEING REPORTED IN THE U.S.?)
British government papers released this week under the new Information Act show the americans were ready to invade saudi arabia and kuwait during the Oil Crisis to ensure their supply.  (should i assume it’s been reported over there in america too?  probably not!) 
one commentator, reporting this, said:  “The British cabinet was informed that America was ready to seize control.  Which was perfectly understandable.”  and in those 4 words you had today’s whole scenario.  this is the kind of unwritten (hell, written too!) ‘civilised’ ‘christian’ attitude which has run our bloody history for as far back as we can remember, and which CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE on this small planet. 
hitherto, when a larger state invaded territory, the abused people could flee to the next valley.  but now there isn’t a valley anywhere they can run to!  so they retreat INSIDE, they resist from within, which leads and will increasingly lead to chronic freedom-fighting terrorism.  it’s a simple physical law  nothing disappears, it changes form.

ONLY ONE HOPE: it’s WE who must change.  nobody else can do anything except RESIST, counter-strike and then hide.  the onus of Necessary Change lies upon us since it’s WE who are assuming superiority (ask the blacks! ask the south americans!  ask the africans!  ask the arabs!) 

if not, we shall watch our thin pale corrupted slavery-based, brute-maintained, info-stunted glimmer of democracy wither on the vine.  it’s not much more than 50 years old, even less.  and it’s happening right now. 

indeed we’ve already run out of time!  get this...

Bioweapons
The United States may have rejected the bioweapons protocol because it is committed to continuing and expanding its secret programs.
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2003/jf03/jf03wheelis.html
UP!
CIA Says Experts See 'Darker Bioweapons Future'
Genomic research could produce the worst known diseases and the "most frightening" biological weapons, according to a CIA report, "The Darker Bioweapons Future."
"Traditional intelligence means for monitoring WMD development could prove inadequate to deal with the threat from these advanced...
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=2648&m=5435
UP!
Bioweapon labs brings threat of lethal viruses to urban America
A network of high-security laboratories for storing and investigating some of the most lethal viruses known to mankind is being built across the US, leaving communities in uproar. They not only fear the risk of the viruses escaping, but also contend that the programme, part of the $6bn (£3.5bn) Project BioShield, is a stunning case of overkill. For none of the germs to be studied is related to bioweaponry.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=419946
UP!
Bush prepares to launch biowarfare on the American populace
http://www.vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2002/10/18706.php
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"If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels." Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh, leader of the World Wildlife Fund, December '95.
UP!

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TEXT JOCKEY //  TJ PHRASER (Fraser Clark) & THE MEDIA EVOLUTION 
MIXING THE TRACTS LIVE ON THE KEYBOARD @ A MEDIA-MEME RATE OF 160 IPP * 
* Ideas Per Paragraph
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NEW YEAR NEW RESOLUTION!!!!
A GREEN PLAN FOR AFGHANISTAN :)
by Marc Deeley
No government, anywhere in the World, has ever tried to seriously tackle the supply side of the global narcotics industry i.e. to encourage and provide support for drug producing regions to diversify and find alternative means of agricultural income. 
The central irony of this situation is the “War On Drugs” itself; the goals and objectives as compared with its “achievements”, for instance.  Although this “war” has consistently displayed symptoms much like those of  “conventional” conflict - death, destruction and reduced human freedom - it was embarked upon (date: 1930’s, location: USA) in a failed, but nevertheless ongoing attempt to rid the world of a plentiful and renewable industrial resource. [http://www.hempconspiracy.com/pdf/Unravelliing%20an%20American%20Dilemma.pdf]

While some varieties of Cannabis (marijuana) have the ability to treat individual or clinical addictions to heroin and cocaine, the variety cultivated for several thousand years for its fibre and seed  hemp  could actually cure our industrial addictions to oil, timber, drugs and war.
[http://www.hempconspiracy.com/pdf/Cannabis.pdf]

The "War On Drugs" has been just that: global conflict funded by drug money which has also served to protect both the oil and timber industries from any serious competition.  The global economy is mainlining uppers and downers when it should be relaxing with a joint of organically grown, user-friendly weed, preserving natural forest and creating oxygen for us to breathe.

COWBOY JUNKIES
The 4 greediest (US) States for the importation of drugs are New York, Florida, Texas and California.
The top 4 States for money laundering are New York, Florida, Texas and California.

These States launder between 200 billion dollars per year. 
80% of all presidential campaign funds come from New York, Florida, Texas and California
Brainteaser: who are the Governors of these States?).

Michael C. Ruppert, 'From The Wilderness Publications' (1999) points out that,
”Catherine Austin Fitts estimates that $250 to $300 billion in drug funds are laundered in the U.S. each year... Using her Wall Street experience as an investment banker she is then quick to point out that the multiplier effect (x6) of $250 billion laundered would result in $1.5 trillion dollars per year in U.S. cash transactions resulting from the drug trade.  How many jobs does $1.5 trillion represent?  Why do Presidents get re-elected?  As Bill Clinton's staff recognized in 1992, "It's the economy -Stupid!"

JUJU ECONOMICS
It would be an interesting experiment [don’t u think?] to see what happens when we deprive the global financial system/US Treasury of $500 billion (UNDCP, 2003) trade dollars, especially considering the multiplier effect putting the figure closer to 3 trillion dollars. 
Think about it: vampires would be spitting blood - no free lunch, dinosaurs would no longer roam the earth in search of cheap foreign utility “sell-offs” with their ‘spare cash’ (am I dreaming?).
Post 9/11, liberated, “free market” Afghanistan is now producing 50,000 hectares of opium, equivalent to around 4/5000 metric tons of heroin per year.  Afghan opium alone accounts for two thirds ($2-300 billion) of global drug trade profit, yet the farmers are 'lucky' to make 350 dollars per hectare for an opium crop?   Not exactly danger money, or fair.  

To put this in perspective, the average annual income for Afghans is $177.  Opium farmers can make $7000 per year, so who can blame them?   Farmers could, however, earn between around$1000 per hectare (depending on desired end use/market etc) from a hemp or pharmaceutical grade cannabis industry as is taking place under a Home Office licence in the UK by GW Pharmaceuticals.   the ideal being to patentedly market and sell clinically safe analgesic and appetite stimulants.  The entire population could benefit from a new, billion-dollar taxable industry, not just the “war lords” our politicians and corporate media often claim to be “the problem” in Afghanistan.

MASTERS OF WAR
Sure these people ["war lords"] exist to a moderate degree, but ask yourself this: do they have the means to really profit from the global opium trade, to launder vast sums of money through the international banking system?   I doubt it, certainly today  when the international financial system is under the microscope and the only people with the ability to circumvent these rules are the vampire elite who force their self-serving rules on the rest of us.  

VOODOO ECONOMICS
The present economic system is on the verge of collapse.   Wars are fought over oil and drug resources that wreck the environment.  National and individual debts are unserviceable.  CIA proprietary prison companies (i.e. Wackenhut) trade on Wall Street, people are incarcerated by the thousand (in the US, for every $1 spent on education, $5 is spent locking people up), while drug addiction destroys families and communities the world over. 

In my home country (Scotland) 56,000 registered heroin users, or 1 in 50 of the population, are either injecting Afghan heroin or are on a treatment program.  BTW: Did you know that George Bush senior had a financial interest in the company that patented Methadone in the USA during the 1980’s?  Check out Lusane’s “Pipe Dream Blues: racism and the war on drugs”.

Unless this system of insanity is turned on its head, the end result will be Police States, increased poverty, exploitation, conflict and environmental destruction.  The "War On Terror" has already seen the complete undermining of the US constitution, the destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and the restoration of Afghanistan as number one global drug producer.  There are no coincidences.

It’s often suggested that besides Bin Laden, 9/11 and the appalling treatment of women, our primary motivation for bombing Afghanistan into the “Free World” was because the Taliban regime banned opium production and demanded more than Halliburton et al were willing to pay for an oil pipeline.  From a record breaking low of 7000 hectares controlled by our allied ‘Northern Alliance’ in 1999, opium production increased in some regions by as much as 650% after the “liberation”.   Several regions planted their first ever opium crops in 2001-3.   Drug deaths in Scotland have increased by 60% in the last 3 years while the instability brought to Afghanistan has manifested itself in renewed tribal/territorial conflict, including the killing/executions of 15 foreign aid workers since May 2003.   

AN INTERNATIONAL ‘GREEN STANDARD’
FOR THE THIRD MILLENNIUM?
The Afghan population (especially the farmers) would like an alternative to the instability brought by narcotic cultivation.   After all, the Afghan people (40% of whom are children under 14 - hardly “terrorists”) don’t even remotely benefit from this multi-billion dollar drug trade.

Industrial hemp could bring an income and level of security never before experienced in the region.   Hemp could cure our global addictions to oil, drugs and the weapons used to control these resources.

Hemp can be used to produce 30,000+ industrial products that could ultimately replace petrochemicals, provide industrial quantities of paper pulp and building material while the seeds provide a high protein food, superior in both taste and nutritional content to Soya.  
Hemp can provide a sustainable, alternative income for drug producing regions from Thailand to Bolivia.   It would benefit the environment, locally and globally, while severely undermining the axis of evil currently riding shot gun at the helm of the US administration by removing billions in laundered money from the US economy and presidential “election” campaign funds.

BREAKING THE LAW (as usual)
The 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs explicitly states that it shall not apply to Cannabis grown for industrial purposes such as fibre and seed: this type of crop is called hemp. and it’s useless to smoke, hence Article 28 of the 1961 Treaty. [http://www.incb.org/e/conv/1961/articles_II.htm#28]

The US government ratified the Treaty but refuses to implement it.   Why?  They’re fighting a “War On Drugs”.  Bush is on Halcyon and Gad-knows-what-else, while soldiers are getting wasted in Afghanistan and Iraq trying to secure a fix for the profit addicts on Wall Street because they were lied to by a lawless “president”  utter madness!  

Industrial hemp cultivation has the potential to end the current insanity and provide a level (playing field) of prosperity never before seen in countries like Afghanistan, Bolivia, Colombia and Nicaragua. 
A global hemp industry could end the self-perpetuating "War On Drugs".  It could even help bring about an end to the "War On Terror" by distributing global wealth [fuel and fibre] and curing the “free market” addictions to oil, drugs, weapons and war.

Please sign the petitions: the more signatures collected, the more chance we have of creating a Green Standard for the 21st Century!

For citizens of the USA:
http://www.petitiononline.com/NIRP/petition.html

For citizens of all UN Member States:
http://www.petitiononline.com/hconspir/petition.html
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A YEAR OF THWARTED AMBITION
IRAQ WAR REVEALED LIKELY LIMITS TO US IMPERIAL POWER
Martin Jacques, visiting fellow at the London School of Economics Asian Research Centre.
The invasion of Iraq and the subsequent course of the occupation have tempered the ambitions and expectations of the Bush administration.  We may now live in the era of American hyperpower and a new kind of American imperial ambition, but Iraq has served to demonstrate some of the likely limits to that power.

First, American unilateralism has come at a price.  Far from commanding more or less universal acquiescence in its power and message - as happened with the first Gulf war - the invasion has provoked a reaction which has resulted in the appearance of new global fault lines. 

Te most dramatic of these has been the schism between France /Germany and the US on the other, a divide which calls into question the purpose and durability of the western alliance.  Few expected France and Germany would have had the courage or independence of mind and spirit to oppose the US, but that is exactly what they did.

Opposition, moreover, was not confined to the European powers.  Russia was of similar mind, notwithstanding that since the days of Boris Yeltsin, a man of ignominious and tainted memory, it had chosen to side with the US on issues of major import.   China trod the same course, wearing Hush Puppies, desperate not to be noticed, because while there could be no doubt where China's true sentiments lay, the world's next superpower is playing a very long game, one of the longest history has ever known, subordinating temptation and instinct to its strategic desire not to alienate the US in the course of its breathless economic transformation.

Nor should we forget how the invasion has polarised public opinion in the vast majority of countries - including Italy, Spain, Japan and South Korea, whose governments supported the coalition partners - against the US, making it now more unpopular than it has ever been in the theatre of global opinion.


Second, the military opposition in Iraq has confounded all American expectations.  The full repertoire of imperial responses to rebellion by a local population has been rehearsed: “remnants” of Saddam's regime, criminals, al-Qaeda sympathisers slipping over the border.  As with Eoka, the Mau Mau, the Vietcong, the IRA, and countless others, there has been  no admission that the guerrilla forces, motley, primitive and disorganised as they may be, enjoy popular support, bear the imprimatur of legitimacy invested in those nationalist forces who resist invading powers.

As time has passed, and the intensity of the opposition has grown, it has become clear that the opposition is far more diffuse and homegrown than has been admitted, enjoying widespread support, especially in central and northern Iraq.  Saddam's capture is unlikely to make much difference to this.

We should not be surprised & many predicted it.  The second half of the 20th century was the era of successful anti-colonial struggles, culminating in the Vietnamese liberation movement.  People do not like being occupied by countries of different cultures and races, though the new American imperial hubris - like many before - convinced the Bush administration and our own prime minister that coalition troops would be greeted like a liberating army, that the people of Iraq yearned for our values and our way of life.

Iraq has already demonstrated that American public opinion has little stomach for a prolonged occupation, and that their Iraqi appointees will have to assume, sooner rather than later, many of the frontline responsibilities.  Iraq has taught the US, and the world, that overweening military power is as vulnerable as ever when it tries to occupy another people's country.


Third, it seems possible, even probable, that further American imperial ambitions - "axis of evil" - have been laid to rest, at least for the time being.  Despite early speculation about which country would be next - Iran or North Korea - but with the Afghanistan occupation looking increasingly fragile and vulnerable  it’s difficult to imagine the Americans taking on either of these regimes in the near future.  Indeed, there’s already been a marked shift in the mood music from the days of Rumsfeld's high noon.


Fourth, as with all imperial endeavours, there’s been much moralising about democracy, human rights and justice.  It was ever so, but no more so than now.  Yet these values have, as always, been the first casualties of imperial ambition.  There are countless stories of American troops shooting first and asking questions later.  The Americans don't even bother to count the Iraqi dead.  When Bush and Blair insist Iraqis should determine Saddam's fate, they mean their own quisling Iraqi regime. 
The Guantanamo camp is an affront to human rights worldwide. 
Civil rights have been rolled back in the US in the name of the fight against terror.
And, of course, there are no weapons of mass destruction: truth is the first casualty of war - and imperial ambition.  It’s difficult to imagine the US and Britain ever enjoying the same kind of respect again in their claim to be the mantle of democracy.

None of this is to suggest that we do not live in the age of the American imperium.  Following 9/11, we have witnessed the birth of a new American unilateralism and self-interest to which every country in the world has been, and is being, obliged to respond and relate.  Iraq is the first true test of that American imperial ambition and it has already served to suggest some of the limits to that power.
martinjacques1@aol.com
UP!

OR HERE’S ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING AT THE SAME THING....
'BLEEDING STRATEGY' COMES HOME
The Moscow Times
Back in the days of the "Evil Empire," the United States pursued what was called the "bleeding strategy" towards the Soviet Union.
Reacting to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Reagan administration, like the Carter administration before it, decided to bankrupt Moscow as the best way to win the Cold War.
The Soviet Union would be financially bled.

Economically isolating Cuba and Vietnam would force the Soviets to pump in massive sums to prop up their regimes.  Supplying weapons to the mujahedin fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan would put heavy costs on the occupation.  And Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) would force the Soviet Union to devote ever-increasing shares of its national wealth to its military forces.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many American conservatives hailed the bleeding strategy as the main reason.  Reagan won it!   Although simple minded, this belief lingers among Reagan's champions in America.  The existence of the strategy is also widely known abroad, especially among Russian officials and intellectuals.

But now, the shoe is on the other foot
Conversations with Russian, EU and Chinese officials strongly suggest that the bleeding strategy is now being used against Bush's America.

It’s no secret that the leaders of these major players view Bush's pre-emptive use of force, his pre-occupation with the war on terrorism, his disdain for the UN and international law, and his highly threatening military build-up (including the missile defence system) as contrary to their interests.  Presidents Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao, Jacques Chirac, and others favour multi-polarity, not American unipolarity.

Finding it difficult to re-direct Bush to a wider, more internationalist orientation, these leaders are taking advantage of what they see as an opportunity to blunt and eventually change the direction of U.S. foreign policy.  They appear to have adopted 3 ways to do it.

1.      Bush's narrow focus allows them to appease the US by joining the war on terrorism and to step back by tacitly approving the Iraq war.
Bush then is free to pursue his narrow agenda.  And that leaves the rest of the world free to pursue their agendas without much U.S. interference. 
Russia moves to re-establish its sphere of influence and rejoin Europe. 
China advances its economy and regional influence in its pursuit of great power status. 
The EU concentrates on expansion, unity, and even military cooperation.


2.      Major powers in Europe and Asia see Bush's grand strategy as weakening American power almost daily -- power they see as misguided and harmful.  This weakening is good.
Noting that the US employed a bleeding strategy to debilitate and fracture the Soviet Union, major powers are now content to let the US bleed itself.  Little help is given to the expensive occupation of Iraq.
Objections to Bush's costly missile defence system are muted and it proceeds.  China, EU countries, Russia and Japan are lending money to the US to the tune of $2 billion daily, thus aiding and abetting huge budget deficits that will eventually squeeze Washington's financial ability to maintain its imperium.  Interest payments overseas mount.  The dollar weakens.

This bleeding makes the US less able to engage in militarism elsewhere, such as toward North Korea or Iran.  It burdens the US, lessening its international economic clout.  It reduces Bush's opportunities to interfere in their domestic affairs, whether on human rights, elections, or economic restructuring, thereby giving them wide policy latitude.


3       Since Bush's strategy is unsustainable thanks to its enormous costs, its failure to deal with many other important issues, and its dramatic denigration of diplomatic influence, major powers know Bush's grand unipolar design can’t last long.
Eventually, either he changes or he and his policies will be repudiated at the polls.  Bushism, like Bonapartism, is not forever. 

The US will eventually return to normal diplomacy, military moderation, multilateral operations, and support for international law and organisations.

There’s no need to advertise the bleeding.  Bush is doing the bleeding pretty well all by himself!
Nicholas Berry
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2003/12/23/006-print.html
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bethlehem
Is the Problem Chutzpah? // FEEDBACK

dear fraser,
i'm usually a fan of your newsletters and their on-point analysis of current events. but your reprint of jennifer winkler's "The Problem Is Chutzpah" plays into every anti-semitic stereotype out there - and in my eyes, dangerously skirts the line of bona fide hate literature.
        while some of her points may be true for a segment of the jewish population, there’s absolutely no provision made in the article for the fact she’s making sweeping generalizations concerning the entire jewish race.  keep in mind that through all of the historical periods where jews may have excelled on some levels, or as she writes "worked at an advantage to others," still many more jews lived in the ghettoes of those same societies. don't forget the etymology of the word "ghetto" - it originated as the name of the impoverished jewish quarter.
        keep also in mind that just as in america and britain, where vast segments of society are grievously opposed to their own governments, so too in israel will you find a great amount of the jewish population vigorously opposed to it's own government's barbarically oppressive policies.
>> we’re right here behind you!! 

while the "chutzpah" of a certain jewish upper class may have been a factor in the segregation and persecution of the jews throughout the ages, it was far from the only factor.  so to characterize "chutzpah" as an over-simplified, stereotypified catalyst for the plight of the jews is no better than to blame laziness for the continued economic disadvantage of african-americans today.
>> the irish actually :)

"the problem", my friend, is perspective - something winkler's article sorely lacks.
peace
//n / jerusalem.
UP!

Fraser, "The Problem is Chutzpah," is borderline anti-semitic and may do much damage to your cause.  Especially in the US where such sentiments are closely watched, for obvious reasons.  There are many problems with political capture of political and media power in the US by pro-Israeli and pro-Jewish groups.  However, to attack all Jews as guilty of chutzpah and being disliked because they're all "too pushy" is going too far and is counter-productive to getting a more rational and balanced debate regarding the Israeli-Palestinian problem and other problems of geopolitics.
Tamlyn / California
>> well, that was certainly not my intention.  as paul hithersay’s letter at the top of this UP! so beautifully points out, the UP! is about open free exploratory speech and that’s exactly what the piece was.  i’m neither backing it nor denying it.  i frankly don’t know. 
but one thing i do know is that NOBODY is going to get me to NOT discuss ANY aspect of a question that i and others wish to discuss.  period, sing fat lady.  (and if that’s not the definition of freedom then we better stop killing iraqis & palestinians to defend it.)

thankyou for the warning, tamlyn, which i appreciate and understand comes from love and care.  however, since my ‘cause’ is to NOT to let my intelligence be cowed by ANY cultural authority, but to look with open, OBJECTIVE eyes (as much as i’m able, obviously) i CAN’T ignore such a huge unresolved bleeding wound in the planetary body, and it clearly needs new thinking and new ways of trying to understand it.  and maybe this is one of them

now, on with the discussion: could chutzpah be something deep in jewish tradition/culture which MOST of them successfully overcome?  like us scots being stingy?  (PLEASE, no emails that i never got over that one myself!)
i'm very interested in //n's reference to "the "chutzpah" of a certain jewish upper class" which sounds like it might be getting closer to the nub. who knows about that?
UP!

I love the Jennifer Winkler piece... even down to the choice of text colour evoking the brown & black of third reich graphic style which will surely be seen as incendiary, and provoke accusations of anti-semitism from some irony-deficient
>> tee hee :D

and humourless sad sack... hope so :D... a bit of Fraserology might put them right. or left as the case may be ;D
paul hithersay
UP!

RISE UP! READERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!!... YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR ANTI-JEWISH ARTICLES (ENCOURAGED BY FRASER)
or
CHUTZPAH AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE!
....Whether it's a complete wind-up (joke), written just to shock or titillate, or an actual serious piece, “THE PROBLEM IS CHUTZPAH” in Dec.30's UP! is not only  anti-Jewish (under the guise of being not so)
>> or, to complete this logically, one projects a hiddren maliciousness that isn't there.

but badly thought out and at times just plain stupid.....

Purporting to explore the real causes of anti-Jewishness in history, the article reveals one of the true causes of that particular hatred.... pure stupidity by its proponents... And the fact that Fraser encourages these sort of articles in what is supposed to be a leading alternative culture magazine brings down not only the level of the magazine itself but the whole alternative culture...
>> i DON'T 'encourage' these 'sorts' of articles, which are usually about sharon and the politics.  all i can say (and am sure 95% of my readers will agree) i would feel truly cosmic infinite shame if i did NOT at least TRY to stand UP! against the Atrocity being carried out in palestine right now, surely u can see this even as a jew?!  i simply couldn’t face myself.  plus, despite you making it into this huge article, it was actually one of a dozen totally unrelated articles.
                                                                           
Jennifer Winkler (the author) opens the article by questioning whether the persecution of the Jews in history is really due to a flaw in (goy) humanity (her term)... After stating that it's time to study the Israel/Palestine issue (now I wonder why no one has ever thought of that!)
>> totally unfair comment :D  but nothing hass worked yet, indeed the opposite.  and no person of conscience can just ignore it, not when israel is pushing things FURTHER all the time.

and to find the real history of it (again, very original)
>> u gotta better idea?

she claims that this history (I assume the general persecution of the Jews) can be found ....  and she begins to find it with the observation: 'It seems bizarre of course that some people would be attacked all the time just because they were what -different?  They were attacked by people who didn't have much... Why would these attackers waste their limited resources so much on attacking Jews?  Why would nature (survival of the fittest) gear them up to waste themselves so on senseless attacks?'
... Now if the Jews were the only rich people in history there might be some logic to it, but there have been countless groups and people in human history who were haves while other countless groups and people were have nots... probably starting in 'cave' situations and continuing right up to the present day... yet Winkler singles out the Jews...
>> am i missing something?  are you?  she’s not saying they were rich, she’s querying if there might be a reason why they’ve so often been attacked by POOR people.  not having studied the history i wouldn’t know if it’s correct history, but if it is then it’s a very good question to ask, no?  i mean becoming more conscious of yourself is part of, well, Raising Consciousness, no?

in addition to this shoddy line of logic is the fact that in many historical situations Jews were often poor
>> so u did misunderstand her point!  she’s asking: since a particular culture has been consistently attacked, nearly always by poor people (AND WHETHER ITS ADHERENTS WERE RICH OR POOR!), then could there be something in the culture which is provoking this pattern?  if this was a purely physical investigation (of cell cultures for example) it would be a 100% scientific question to ask.  and that’s a simple culture-free FACT.  and it’s also a fact that, from where any fair-minded person who isn’t jewish or palestinian is sitting, it IS a 100% scientific question. 
but ask a paranoid the time and he'll wonder where you're driving at :)

(witness the European ghettos before World War 2 for example) or were not even physically present at all (witness the anti-Jewishness in modern Japan which by all standards is a country of haves and has very few Jews) ..
>> they’re very sensitive to Peace/War for obvious reasons.  could that be involved?  am only asking!

Winkler then asks 'Has something like what has happened to Jews happened to anybody else?' and goes on to mention how a Christian commune-like community in Canada was hated by its neighbours because 'they worked at an advantage relative to other people.'.... so now it's not about having more,
>> it wasn’t to start with.

it's about working 'at an advantage' whatever that means.....
>> it obviously means sticking together purely because you’re jewish.  compare it to Reverse Discrimination which most of us alternative types feel uneasy about.

this could describe countless communities throughout history and is as vague a term as has ever been written.....
>> LISSEN!!! there’s a scottish bar in san francisco where they play the bagipes and etc.  i’ve visited it TWICE.  THAT’s how much i’m looking to ‘work at an advantage’ u gettit?

but better is to come ... she concludes, from all she has read, that the Jews are not only guilty of this mysterious operating advantage, but that this  advantage is (wait for it!) 'inherent chutzpah' which she further defines as 'gall, brazenness'  and that this chutzpah explains 'the entire advent of the Israel/Palestine conflict' (we're back to a single conflict by the way)
>> which is the only reason she’s bothering to think so seriously about this subject and the only reason why i HAVE to explore it.  since i’m scottish and visited the scottish bar once do u think i have any desire whatever to discuss bloody jews?!! or hungarians? or north koreans?

..... so there we have it and it's all down to one Yiddish word... because the Jews have 'chutzpah'
>> call it gall brazenness.  personally, that seems to fit most of Israel’s leaders, no?  and definitely doesn’t fit arafat.  (which, yawn, doesn’t mean i think he’s a saint :)

not only have the jews been simply disliked but (as Winkler puts the question)'why did this dislike occur time and again only after a period of warmth and cooperation with the Gentiles?'....
>> A VERY GOOD AND SCIENTIFICALLY CORRECT QUESTION IF THE FACTS ARE TRUE and you should know, i spose, me am scottish u should hear what we say about the english.

she then goes on to cite 14th century Spain, Weimar Germany, and the USSR and its Soviet satellites as examples of this wonderful cooperation... the question at this point is when Ms. Winkler left the North Korean education system because, as any beginner student of those 3 countries knows, there was severe oppression of Jewish communities, not only during those periods in those countries but in much of the history preceding those periods... 
yes, some Jews rose to prominence in those periods
>> oh, so they weren’t kept at the bottom of the heap like, say, catholics in northern ireland or american indians, australian aborigines...?

but to say there were no problems for the Jews would be an understatement of huge proportions... Stalin was a known hater of Jews, and Trotsky and other Jewish higher ups were only tolerated as long as they did not practice their Judaism...
>> u mean lighting candles and shit?  or working at an advantage which, u must agree, would have been 100% contrary to the dream of communism?  and when, EXACTLY, did stalin become a Jew-Hater?  in the interests of true enquiry, that would be a pretty crucial question, right?  he couldn’t have been VERY anti=jewish to start with or “Trotsky and other Jewish higher ups” wouldn’t have been there.  right?  can u imagine jews being so high up in the Nazi party?

Weimar Germany, like Wagner's (was there ever a greater Jew hater?) Paris commune era Germany, was full of anti-Jewish sentiment and nourished the political growth of the young Adolph Hitler... yes, there was some intermixing, but it was hardly a Glastonbury vibe situation between Jews and Germans... it wasn't like this mad Adolph Hitler broke up the love affair between Germans and Jews....
>> such brazen argument!  it galls me when u distort the other side in order to knock it down :)

Bismarck had encouraged anti-Jewish feeling as he helped create the relatively new modern German state, and those feelings continued through Weimar, especially during economic collapse... and to think that early 14th century Spain was in love with its Jews just because certain sections of Jewry rose to prominence is a lovely bedtime story... just for one, the Catholic Church was incredibly influential and respected in Spain and the Jew hatred of the Catholic Church has rarely been surpassed....
>> yes, personally i think that, as usual, +tianity caused most of the problems we have today:  the jews killed our non-existent saviour bullshit.

the expelling of the Jews in 1492 did not come out of nowhere, ditto for the other two historical situations... yet Winkler makes an idiotic (I do not use this word lightly) comment that 'somehow repeatedly the non-Jews got quite fed up with the Jews'  as if overnight the lovely gentiles were shocked by the previously decent Jews into turning against them...
>> so brazen :)

(oh yeah, how come the 'chutzpah' of the Jews didn't annoy the Gentiles during those love-in periods ...Ms. Winkler never explains that)...
>> i've learned in my many years of traveling that people are basically (with many exceptions duly accepted) open to interesting new people.  so lemme explain her theory.  if, after a while of accepting newcomers into your community (refugees?) and trying to live together, they notice that the newcomers SEEM TO STICK TOGETHER and work at an advantage that allows them to gravitate more quickly to powerful positions in society, they naturally begin to resent it.  clear enough?  and if you're newish in town, yet your networks are even starting to displace the local networks, well, you lay back, you slow down, you count your lucky stars but you DON'T push FURTHER.  that's chutzpah, and she's saying maybe that's been a problem. 
now apply that para from "newish in town" to the middle east situation and AT LEAST give her suggestion some intelligent consideration, that's all :)

and to explain this 'fed upness' in this Bizarro world of Winkler's,
>> tut tut.

we are quoted briefly from the Jewish writer Daniel Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust'  which she says 'contains references by contemporary "anti-Semites"  to "wealth jews amassed through thieving and cheating" (to which Palestinians can relate) and the idea that Jewish absence would "make the German people again the master of its house" (to which Americans can relate)'.......
and then Winkler, at least acknowledging that pogroms and persecutions took place some of the time, quotes Benjamin Ginsburg's The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State        
saying that it 'mentions Czechoslovakians being irritated  by "tremendous influence" of Jews and animosities"  caused by "Jews in the government" being cited as the cause of a pogrom in Poland'...
>> i dunno much about that (why should i?!) but i know that if u give a certain kinda indian gentleman the 'authority' of being a ticket collector, he'll immediately becomes a stickling bureaucratic Dictator!  could she mean something like that?

she goes on to say how the book 'observes  that Jews, through the centuries of their diaspora, frequently have assumed unpopular and coercive roles in government, such as that of tax collector and inspector'... but wait, I thought, there were love-in periods of Woodstock type consciousness between the Jews and their hosts
>> there u go again

so if, during these phases, the Jews were more popular and rose to higher positions and intermarried etc. etc. how did  they get from there to the unpopular stuff...
>> THIS IS THE ESSENCE OF THIS ENTIRE ENQUIRY.

or is the point that every time the Jews were cooperative and popular the hosts thought there has to be a catch here, so maybe, if the Jews had not been so nice and cooperative during those periods, they wouldn't have been as unpopular as they were about to become... confused... join the crowd...
>> your theory being that the reason the jews so often or always ended up being ‘persecuted’ is they were so nice?  so cooperative?  will consider this if you’re genuinely offering it as an answer.  r u?

more likely is these so called periods of warmth and cooperation only served to gloss over the Jew hatred of the gentile communities which was still there in strength...
>> but why 'gloss over' it then?

in addition groups such as the Communist Party were extremely popular for a long period of time with many Jews in them, yet Jew hatred despite Ms Winkler's fantasies was still severe...

and furthermore,  as the Germans grew more prosperous under Hitler, the very integrated Jewish community (there were no Eastern European style ghettoes in Germany)
>> i didn’t realise that!  thankyou for being so honest.

became the target of increased anti-Jewishness, much more so than right after World War 1 when poverty was great...
>> could be a good point.  but her theory also involves the length of living together.  i mean dogs might have grown in size during the period but wouldn’t have affected this.  u with me?

this is not to say that poverty never had an effect on hatred of the Jews but there are too many examples of that same hatred among prosperous peoples for that explanation to hold...
>> what are these other examples?  but anyway, her point is not that ONLY poor people resented jews, but that so often so many poor peoples BOTHERED to waste valuable time and energy in doing it.  hint: scapegoating should be part of your response to this :)

there were many rich Germans who were not Jewish during Hitler's rise to power, and many non-Jews who helped rule Russia in both its pre-Soviet phase and post-Soviet phases, yet it’s the Jews who stand out disproportionately  as targets...
>> so what exactly is YOUR theory for this, run that by me again.

Ms. Winkler then makes the profound statement that 'personal observations indicate that Jews strive at life, at progress and prosperity, with exceptional gusto'... she should meet some of the Jews that I know... anyway she concludes that this puts non-Jews at a considerable disadvantage. Therein lies the problem. They're just too pushy, they're hard to compete with'... sounds like some football fans talking about Manchester United... so now we know... not only are Jews pushy but everyone else is at a serious disadvantage...
>> she said considerable, not serious.  notice that YOU are ‘pushing’ your argument to extremes whereas she’s tiptoeing around her subject.  but then u could say that that’s because of the present atmosphere.  but then she could say well, whazt's causing the present atmosphere?

so people like Fraser are at an extreme disadvantage,
>> it’s extreme now, izzit?  considerable > serious > extreme >>>> fascist?

as is Bill Gates, George Bush, Nelson Mandela man get me on that extreme disadvantaged list!!
>> heh heh.

... and why doesn't the world resent these non-Jewish success stories...
>> they probly do.  let’s agree on one thing:  THANK GOD BUSH ISN’T JEWISH.  i’d be made to feel sooooo guilty for all the terrible things i say about him.

Bizarro world has nothing on Winkler’s theories of Jewish persecution... you couldn't make it up though speaking of UP! i still think Winkler may really be Fraser... and that he is having us on...
>> honestly it’s not me.  i thought she was jewish, isn‘t it a jewish name?  you’ll be calling her a self-hating jew next, right?

and, frankly, geoff, will you admit that, when i’ve been calling christianity the “greatest evil ever unleashed on this planet” for the past coupla months, AND getting lashed for it by many of them, your truly amazing suspicion that i might be ON ANY LEVEL anti-jewish can only be based in paranoia? i mean i could certainly understand that, since we're not arguing that jews HAVE been persecuted over the years. but how do u persuade a paranoid that you're NOT out to do him down in any way?
ANSWER is i spose that u can't, right? not if they really ARE paranoid. i mean it would be totally useless to point out to you that a higher percentage of my friends are jewish than statistics would predict. you'd just say my anti-semitism is unconscious i spose. but u certainly can't say it's in my upbringing. i knew absolutely nuttin about jews thru my boyhood. i can even remember the first jewish boy i became friends with, and quite a few after that. i found each of them so much more sophisticated, worldlywise, aware of the Bigger Picture than the local lads. i've mostly always found that since.

Getting back to Winkler's conclusions (and believe me, sifting thru this Protocols of Zion mark 2 nonsense requires a certain sort of  intelligence detachment) she states the far from original theory that Jews have been 'making America do exactly what they want AND essentially no one who matters is cognizant of it' ... now where have I heard that one before (see previous UP!s) ... that Bill Gates, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Rupert Murdoch, Hilary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, the Rockefellers, Ken Kesey, (Fraser's equivalent before his untimely death), Colin Powell, numerous business people and entertainers of all religions and colours have gained influence by rising to the top of their professions does not seem to bother our conspiracy theorist one iota...... 
>> but she’d ask: how do they use their influence once they gottit?  are they as open (shudder the thought) to helping others of ALL persuasions as most other cultural groups would be?  am interested in your answer to this.  me, i could tell you about scotsmen, but (and does this seem strange to you?) nobody spends much time talking about them.  now how come?  u gottanswer before winkler tries her theories?! :)

it's the Jews who are in control of America (and everywhere else I presume)
>> one pretty much follows from the other, certainly.

and their chutzpah’s pushing them to it...
now, just to give Ms. Winkler her fair due, I do believe that Jews as a people are talented and often rise to the top  of whatever 'scene' they are part of...
>> here’s a taste of what it’s like to be an editor.  if i’d written the exact opposite of that, namely “I do believe that Jews as a people are untalented and often sink to the moral bottom of whatever 'scene' they are part of” can u predict what people like you would have written in?  “YOU CAN’T MAKE GENERAL STATEMENTS ABOUT A WHOLE RACE!!!” can u imagine how bored you would get with such nonsense?  imagine how all us goys feel when, if we dare to discuss openly some of our worries, we must WITHOUT FAIL start with “Now I believe Israel has a right to exist.”?!!! 

but is Gates or the Clintons or any one of the aforementioned powerful people associated with their religion in the same way the Jews are,
>> honest opinion?  NO POLITICAL LEADER gives a flying shit for ‘his religion’ though he’d never in a billion lifetimes tell u that.  jews?  well, i’m just not so sure, i don't even know if they believe in an after life.

and if they are, are they resented for it...
>> yes :)  not by everyone, but your case is NOT that everyone is anti-semitic, izzit?

almost all American presidents have been Protestants yet when was the last time you heard a furore about that... or do they not have  enough Chutzpah...
>> this is the whole Question we’re discussing!

ah but I hear the reader saying, true, Ms. Winkler's arguments are often ridiculous, but then how does one explain the historical persecution of the Jews...
>> that’s what she was trying to offer.  now let’s see how you do.

not an easy question and certainly beyond the simplistic platitudes of Jennifer Winkler... how does one explain why blacks have often been hated and treated appallingly?... certainly not with a 'chutzpah' argument...
>> for sure :)

go to China, parts of America, old South Africa, the Arab countries etc... blacks have been hated and often killed for just being black... yet there were few cases of blacks hating those peoples for just being Chinese or white or whatever... nor have blacks been in the haves... yet they have often been persecuted... nor would anyone in their right mind blame them for their own persecution.
>> enslaved, looked down on, yes, but persecuted?  winkler’s question, remember, was why poor people wasted so much energy persecuting jews.

yet Ms. Winkler is happy to do that with Jews...
>> where did this Ms creep in?  neither of us has any idea what age she is.  is this u brazenly stretching the argument again to your own advantage?  :)

she wouldn't dare do it with blacks or women or homosexuals, nor would Fraser print it...
>> i never heard any theory about any of those groups being to blame for their situation.  and, on the other hand, women and gays have often been accused, in a minor fractal similarity, of operating a ‘brotherhood’ to give their own kind an advantage.  so it’s certainly a human quality.  the question is one of: do they go too far?

what I will say is that the persecution of the Jews is due to the weakness of humanity, and should in no way shape or form be blamed on themselves...
>> exackly what i just said!  unless they carry it too far (as in chutzpah?)

if Jews are talented in certain ways it certainly does not explain the phenomenon of their persecution (otherwise many other talented groups would be persecuted too)
>> we’ve established, then, that jews are NOT persecuted for being too talented.

but, more importantly, does not justify their persecution in any way shape or form...
>> she’s trying to EXPLAIN, not JUSTIFY.  explanation can lead to behavioural change, or more understanding perhasps.  justification leads only negative places and i’m 100% certain she’s not interested in going there. 

Jennifer Winkler may not be able to realise this, but Fraser Clark, a prominent member of the alternative culture, surely should, and does himself, the UP! and the whole alternative culture a big disservice in constantly  printing theories such as these, far too often with the smell of Anti-Judaism not far away...
>> oh, give it a break.  nobody in the alternative culture is in the slightest bit interested in going there.  to get paranoid because we NEED, IN OUR SOULS, to find an answer, an EXPLANATION, to the utter BARBARITY in israel right now, AND FOR THE PAST 40 YEARS!, is honestly just SILLY, plain silly.

of course he will deny this as it is not cool to be out and out anti-Jewish in the alternative culture, but too often in the UP! the smell is there...
>> for once you don’t go far enough.  let me confess this to you:  every single UP! i send out which doesn't contain SOME kind of piece on Israel makes me feel deep down guilty in my personal soul.  if the welsh were doing it do you think i’d be less anguished?!  do i EVER pull my punches about the Bomms R Us Bush psychopaths?!  tone down your chutzpah, man, and smell the coff-, ah, dead children :(

this is not unusual in alternative culture... David Icke and the like are far too often given respect for their thoughts
>> i’d say precisely the opposite.  he gets hounded, and i get a flurry of viruses whenever i even MENTION israel.  and, frankly, i can’t be bothered prefacing that with “while i don’t agree with ALL icke says blah blah blah”

and during the gigantic anti-war march of last year, as well as other marches, far too much anti-Jewishness (often hiding under the skirts of anti-Zionism)
>> how about Zionism hiding behind the skirts of anti-jewishness?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

has been propagated, often by Moslems in conjunction with the white left who tolerate it,,,
>> or the neo-con right who CAUSE it?  (oops, mustn’t make iresponsible general statements about those poor persecuted neo cons :)

while, if it was Jews railing at Muslims or Arabs in the same way, it’d be condemned...
>> but they’re not railing at jews they’re railing at what israelis are DOING fer chrissake!

So UP! readers, I urge you to condemn the article by Ms. Winkler both for its stupidity and its vitriol...  the whiff of anti-Jewishness has no place in a magazine like the UP! or in the alternative culture as a whole...
>> well, at least we 100% agree about something!!

when the New Statesman published an issue with equivalent articles a short while back its staff soon realised its mistake and condemned it...
>> which is a big part of the problem.  the vitriol and utterly closed-minded and paranoid stupidity which is thrown at anyone who does feel MORALLY FORCED to enter taboo ground is nauseating, and the lack of desire to at least TRY to DEAL WITH the most disgustingly amoral ATROCITY that’s happened in my lifetime (including the vietnam war actually) utterly amazes me.  since i know you’re fundamentally a moral person, WHAT COULD EXPLAIN THIS moral black hole?  the Germans have turned against war, learned their lesson deeply as a culture.  enough to stand up to the real MONSTER, the american vampire elite.  (hope they don’t get mad at me for freely saying that :) 

it's interesting how, whenever our rebels or fierce young 'leaders' get to the top they're told they are public figures now and must gratefully set a 'good' example, but if u turn your back on all that celebrity cum tainted success nonsense and just go for truth seeking, someone like you comes along and says:  well, you're in an important position so u gotta stop saying what you think.  i'm NOT in an important public position!  i'm just unpaid ME!  amazing.  some of our readers will put it al