BLUEPRINT//UPGRADEmag//
dec 19, 2001
H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H
The UPGRADEmag (the Upgrade Emag, or just the "UP") is a global edutainment news round-up, ‘broadcast’ weekly to =[10,622]= Trance// New Age// Alternative// Activist// Zippy 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 27,000+ recipients. Further, because of its less 'specialist' content, it's increasingly being posted on a variety of sites worldwide, making a total weekly ‘readership’ of 275,000+
H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H
BLUEPRINT FOR WORLD DICTATORSHIP by Zbigniew Brzezinski
predicted the Afghan War and a lot lot more! (p.10)
* * * * * * * * * * astro energy snapshot for dec 19-25 * * * * * * * * * *
A LIVELY SOLSTICE WEEKEND PROMISES AN EXCITING YEAR
The Solstice question: How can relationships provide a new kind of security?
Visualize, push forward, and begin to build your new world!
The Sun rises at Winter Solstice to begin a new year. So do we.
For more detail, read Maya’s Daily Success Guide at www.daykeeperjournal.com
* * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * *
#
revenge for hiroshima??!
one evening as we’re sharing a joint in the desert (that’s the norm in morocco now, they’ve dropped the kif pipe except for special occasions) we’re discussing where we were when we heard about the twin terrors. turns out ibrahim was sitting in the back of a car with two japanese ‘tourists.’ he says the first time it was announced on the radio they mentioned that the prime suspects were japanese and the japanese girl was very upset about that. amazing! it was very believable to them, seemed to think it might have been “for hiroshima”!
again i ponder, quietly to myself, how many people on this planet have reason to HATE ‘america’!
indeed, my overall conclusion from my cyber safari is that just about everyone on the planet knows that america is a big bully who just grabs whatever it wants and cuts any daisies who stand against it.
#
USA
DEC 10
AMERICA IN FRONT AGAIN!
AMERICA 3300 / AFGHANISTAN 3500
INNOCENTS SLAUGHTERED
UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE ECONOMICS PROFESSOR
RELEASES STUDY OF CIVILIAN DEATHS IN AFGHANISTAN
DURHAM, NEW HAMPSHIRE, USA - December 10 - U.S. bombs have killed more than 3,500 civilians Afghanistan, according to a study released by Marc W. Herold, Professor of Economics, International Relations, and Women's Studies at the University of New Hampshire. Since October 7, he has been gathering data on civilian casualties from news agencies, major newspapers, and first-hand accounts.
"I decided to do the study because I suspected that the modern weaponry was not what it was advertised to be. I was concerned that there would be significant civilian casualties caused by the bombing, and I was able to find some mention of casualties in the foreign press but almost nothing in the U.S. press," said Herold.
For each day since the U.S. bombing began, he lists the number of casualties, location, type of weapon used, and source(s) of information, and has sought whenever possible to cross-corroborate accounts of civilian casualties. He relied upon British, Canadian, and Australian newspapers; Indian newspapers, especially The Times of India; three Pakistani daily newspapers; the Singapore News; Afghan Islamic Press; Agence France Press; Pakistan News Service; Reuters; BBC News Online; Al Jazeera; and a variety of other reputable sources, including the United Nations and other relief agencies.
His data is available at http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/ but here are several examples from his daily calculations:
OCT 11 - 2 U.S. jets bombed the mountain village of Karam, comprised of 60 mud houses, during dinner and evening prayer time, killing 100-160 people. Sources: DAWN, (English language Pakistani daily newspaper), the Guardian of London, the Independent, International Herald Tribune, the Scotsman, the Observer, and the BBC News.
OCT 13 - an F-18 dropped 2,000 lb. JDAM bombs on the Qila Meer Abas neighborhood, 2 kms.south of Kabul airport, killing four people. Sources: Afghan Islamic Press, Los Angeles Times, Frontier Post, Pakistan Observer, the London Guardian, and the BBC News.
OCT 31 - an F-18 dropped a 2,000 lb. JDAM bomb on a Red Crescent clinic, killing 15 - 25 people. Sources: DAWN, the Times of London, the Independent, the Guardian, Reuters, Associated Press, and Agence France Presse.
“QUIETLY SATISFIED” AMERICA
TERRORIST OF THE MILLENNIUM
Added to innocent civilians killed, of course, are the hundreds if not thousands of ‘military deaths’ (not just the daisy cuts!) and, of course, the hundreds of thousands if not millions made homeless, several hundreds of whom are now dying unreported each week and rising.
The Pentagon has repeatedly denied reports of civilian casualties, and most U.S. media outlets have qualified their reports of casualties with the statement “could not be independently confirmed." But Professor Herold has been able to confirm the number of casualties and has found that the number is climbing toward 4,000.
"People have to know that there is a human cost to war, and that this is a war with thousands of casualties," said Herold. "These were poor people to begin with, and, on top
of that, they had absolutely nothing to do with the events of September 11."
CONTACT: Marc Herold (603) 862-3375
#
Dear Fraser:
I would like to thank you for your wonderful magazine, its always a plate full to get news and information that is not media-biased. Love reading it.
Thank-you and congratulations!
Carolina.*** / USA
#
TOP 10 ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
Daft Punk Discovery
Zero 7 Simple Things
Slam Alien Radio
Felix Da Housecat Kittenz And Thee Glitz
Chris Cowie: Best Behaviour
Daft Punk Alive 1997
Arthur Baker Perfecto Presents Breakin’
Miss Kittin & The Hacker- First Album
System 7 Seventh Wave
Soft Cell: The Twelve Inch Singles
(Skrufff-E)
any arguments?
#
the only thing i ever did wrong
am listening to the new dylan tape which good geoff prepared for my africa trip. western music is so different from the music they participate in here. the berbers regard music pretty much as a communal activity that even the kids can join in by banging 2 spoons together. the west seems to have taken this away from the community, again, and now dylan sounds like the very epitome of this a tired, sad, self-pitying, self-indulgent old outsider droning on about how HE feels about everything, and feeling separate.
RAVE was/is the natural reaction to that loneliness and an attempt to return to music as communal experience. we all dance together, everyone dances, and everyone dances in their own way but everybody’s following the same beat.
great stuff of its kind though, dylan:
“the only thing i ever did wrong / was to stay in mississippi a day too long”.
“i can’t stay here and i can’t go home, i can’t even
remember what it was i came here to get away from”
#
kandahar, afghanistan
PRAYING FOR THE RETURN OF ROBIN HOOD BABA
The faithful were gathered yesterday at the Taliban cemetery in, chanting verses from the Koran at the graves of commanders and warriors who have fallen in the name of Islam over the years.
As the muslim festival of Eid entered its second day, Taliban diehards went to the 2000 grave burial ground to pay homage to the dead and offer prayers for their fundamentalist rulers’ return.
“We pray that God gives Mullah Omar 200 more years of life” said Janan, a 31 year old goat-seller whose home was damaged in a bombing raid last month. “We miss him and are very sad he is gone” he said of the regime’s supreme leader. The men brimmed with confidence that their fighters would one day regroup and reclaim Kandahar, the regime’s spiritual cradle and last sanctuary before its surrender.
It was in this city and its surrounding districts that Mullah Omar emerged as a Robin Hood figure in the early 1990s, protecting the poor and the abused from the region’s rapacious warlords. He asked for no reward, save for his supporters to follow him in setting up a just Islamic system.
The Taliban’s political power base has now dissolved and Kandahar is in the tenuous care of the same rival tribal factions from whom Mullah Omar seized the city seven years ago. But support for the regime remains strong in the dilapidated city.
“The Taliban brought Islamic laws to our country and they solved everyone’s problems. There was peace in the city. Now we have no law, no justice, only guns on the street” said Raz Mohammed, a 21 year old shopkeeper.
Daily Telegraph, Dec 18
#
//YOU FEEDBACK
I have to *really* disagree with you about the Taliban. I'm sure they're not the monsters Bush paints them as, but the fact that they're "the enemy of our enemy" doesn't make them "simple, conservative, 'religious' country folks trying to do what they thought was the best meagre option for their poor shattered country after the war lords were done with it."
For a start the Taliban were "war lords" themselves!
c article above. war lords are actually the old land owners - just like our own 'barons' who can raise armies. most taliban were mullahs, and the VAST MAJORITY who just got slaughtered were "simple, conservative, 'religious' country folks trying to do what they thought was the best meagre option for their poor shattered country OR JUST DOING A JOB THEY GOT PAID FOR and are now doing for the other side.
They were one among many, who perhaps tried to stop the excesses of others, but aren't in some non-"war lord" separate camp that makes them nice well-meaning guys.
they did NOT come from the old 'aristocracy' (tho with their necessary wink & nod) just as the communists who gave women the vote and tried to move afghanistan into the 1960s did not, and both 'networks' got slaughtered on the return of the old war lords.
Yeah, I read the full speech by the Taliban foreign minister on your website. From everything else I've read and heard about them (including sections of Ahmed Rashid's 'Taliban', which a friend is reading), they're not evil or holy. I just don't go with the cartoon good guys/bad guys rap that you & Bush love so much. Why should I believe the Taliban's statements about themselves, any more
than what Bush tells me about the US?
i don't quite see why you interpret my words as making one side GOOD. i certainly DON'T want to live under the taliban or any of the other victims of GB.
simultaneously, on one level, there is a battle going on between spirit and matter. my sense is that those on the side of the spirit (no matter how demented) will somewhere end up being judged by history to have had 'something positive' while the other side did not. i could be wrong but that's my 'feel'. also, in a time of rampant materialism like now, it's inevitable that even those on the side of the spirit will get distorted - like going too far the other way for example?.
My friend reading Rashid's book says she would find a certain power in covering herself all the time, not having dumb males letching at her all the time. But in the end the choice would be nice. I know Afghanistan is a different world, and couldn't become a liberal modern country overnight - or even over a period of years or decades maybe
generations actually, at least two.
but if you stand for something, stand for it! Why should we romanticise "simple country folks" to try and justify/excuse/gloss over things they do that, had anyone else done them, we'd fully and rightfully oppose them.
i just came back from a moroccan desert of "simple country folks" who do all the things you're talking about. by 'standing for it' do you mean i should have been loudly arguing with every single person i met there? really i think young western taliban like you (there i knew i'd say it one day and it will return to haunt you, this i predict :) should be 'standing against' far eastern sex market culture, say, before criticising a 'classic culture' like islam which must be judged as a TOTAL MODEL, not just bits. or would you include the sex market as part of xtianity?
I'm amazed. What's the banning of music got to do with anything but being repressive? If America had no involvement with Afghanistan at all, you surely would be #1 critic of the Taliban. NO MUSIC!!
Forget the US crackdown on raves ;)
c above. wot's the commercial sexual exploitation and enslavement of women got to do with anything but exploitation? criticising the taliban about their music ban is like criticising the human body for not having wings.
In the end: since when was ultra-conservative theocracy something to stand up for?! Bush says we're either with him or the Taliban. You seem to be buying into this and not seeing the Third Way very clearly.
and wot u might be missing is that the middle path offen takes the best elements from each of the others and blends them. it doesn't just REJECT them totally that's to miss many many subtleties, young taliban! :)
The war needs to be opposed. Even if it has some good side-effects (despite media propaganda, I did see some genuinely happy people on TV in Kabul last night), none of it justifies the killing. And the fact that they're the US's #1 enemy at the moment doesn't excuse any of the Taliban's atrocious history.
gyrus / uk
much more importantly, and a mental balance that's much harder to achieve because of the daily propaganda, is 2 c that the fact they're the US enemy Numba ONE doesn't mean we should be even talking about them when we could much much more seriously be talking about, FOR EXAMPLE, the Thai Sex Tourism Bizness.
#
if camels were kings
i reckon camels were kings on the planet they came from. somehow they landed here, totally broke, and some human realised they’d make great beasts of burden. the camels had no choice. BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN THEY HAVE TO ACT LIKE THEY ENJOY IT OR HAVE MUCH TIME FOR YOU!
they’re so full of disdain, camels, it’s like they’re doing you a great favour and it’d really piss them off if it wasn’t for the fact that they’re royalty and nobody in their right minds could ever really mistake them for common desert mules. but it’s irritating. don’t bother patting their heads like westerners do, these aren’t ‘pets’, they’ll curl their lips superciliously as they swing their heads out of reach.
i asked ahmed, my camel-guide, if it was true that camels never forget. now ahmed is more wilderness- than town-directed and, indeed, in the camp with the other berbers, he’s silent and even quite awkward. out in the desert he’s at home. so his eyes light up with recognition at my question. yes, it’s most certainly true! when he first started working with brock, my lead camel, he was a bit impatient one time and hit brock a little too hard. that night he was awoken by brock kicking him through the blankets. never did that again.
“and even after years?” i asked.
“yes, it’s true, they not forget even in paradise.”
riding a camel is not like riding a horse. more like riding a ship at sea in a swell. your hips roll forward and backward and get a real work out. girls are supposed to have these sexual ‘experiences’ when riding horses, i’d love to hear how they get on camels! or maybe it’s more a man’s thing. anyway, each time i felt like my hips were being given a full sexual workout, using muscles i never knew i had!
#
A FOOTNOTE FOR THE FUTURE
Meron Benvenisti/ Ha`aretz, (Israel's Leading Newspaper)
There is a feeling that is familiar to anyone who reads accounts of history's catastrophes - profound sorrow and impotent rage at the myopia, arrogance, stupidity, cowardice, irrelevant considerations, and sloppy thinking that sets leaders on the path to disaster. A reader painfully pinches himself - the writing was on the wall, the signs were so clear and the results were so predictable that it is simply impossible to believe that the catastrophe was allowed to indeed happen. And so, with the wisdom of hindsight, the reader looks for explanations. Was there a flawed concept, a failure to lead, or a long-term social and cultural process?
There is a similar feeling of impending tragedy and impotent outrage over the events of the last two weeks that show how steep our slippery slope has become. The decline is not necessarily measured by the numbers of dead and wounded, the brutality of the closures and sieges, or assassinations planned and "accidental." No - it is measured by the uninhibited and shameless harnessing of the security forces to ideological chauvinist goals that have nothing to do with "security" and indeed sabotage it.
The rate of the slide is measured by how quickly people proud of their free thinking and moderation, are ready to join the chorus of propaganda, or even lead it. The efficiency of the military measures can be argued, the legal and normative restrictions of "the war on terror" can be suspended. But how can one explain the series of military actions whose only purpose was to humiliate the Palestinian collective, deny its legitimacy, and destroy its infrastructure?
Humiliating Palestinians at checkpoints is a serious matter, but might be excusable because of the need to crack down on the movement of terrorists. But humiliating, denouncing, and calling for the blood of the national leader, father of their nation and symbol of their nationhood, is another thing entirely. What pressing security need was there in the destruction of the chairman's helicopters - piles of junk already out of commission - if not the urgent urge to humiliate Yasser Arafat?
What was the purpose of bombing an empty building in Ramallah, other than knowing Arafat was nearby and someone could have the sadistic pleasure of making him hide under his desk? Why doesn't the choir of security experts abusing the Palestinian leader and calling for his "removal" also include those voices who know very well that his disappearance would create chaos that would make the current situation look almost like paradise?
Where are the intellectuals to warn against the primitive anthromorphology of distilling the conflict into nothing more than one man who has been turned into a hybrid of fearsome demon and a mock able scarecrow? What vital operational need was there in the barbaric break-in to the Palestinian Authority's Central Bureau of Statistics, stealing its data, if not the desire to deny the Palestinians the tools for independent social research? And where were their Israeli colleagues and academics who neither protested nor demanded an explanation that went beyond the ridiculous claim of "support for terrorist activity"?
The same claims were made about the Orient House takeover a few months ago and the PLO archive in Beirut 20 years ago. The excuses expose the ideological goal, not the security needs, of the Israeli government in recent weeks - defining the Palestinian national movement and its institutions as a terrorist movement and therefore an illegitimate collective.
That's the real meaning of Ariel Sharon's war on "the Oslo disaster" - it's not a war on the articles of the agreements. It is the very recognition of the PLO as the national movement of the Palestinian people that Sharon is still fighting.
He persuaded people who loathe violence to criticize Arafat's leadership, and to believe there is no partner, thus harnessing them to the "ideology" that in the Land of Israel there's only one legitimate collective, the Jewish people. The rest are a ragtag mass led by murdering gangsters.
Sharon hopes that getting rid of Arafat and destroying the PA will lead to general disintegration, that the regime will be captured by gangsters so he can say, I told you so. The Labor Party's cowardly ministers, the confused silence of the ideological opposition on the left, Arafat's own weak leadership, and the accumulation of anger, hatred, and desire for revenge, could lead to Sharon's ideology coming true, bringing down disaster on the heads of everyone here.
The involved observer can only pinch himself until it hurts, but the sorrow and impotent anger aren't being felt in retrospect, so they are unbearable. There's nothing left to do but express those feelings in real time. At least, when the historian one day writes the chronicles of the disaster, he'll be able to add a footnote in which are quoted the lamentations of the prophets of doom about the path to disaster.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=105775
#
Dear Fraser
Dunno how I came to be on your list but really enjoy the content of the newsletter. I was in Marrakech recently staying at the Amanjena - haunt of super-rich & supermodels. Check it out if you find some oil out there... (I was a guest)
didn't strike oil, chris, so no big hotels. but am working on sand to run automobiles so hope springs eternal even in the desert! and the one on the corner of the square with the roof for 40 DH per night was my greatest find in years i reckon :)
I live in Kew, West London and run a children's charity. We help terminally ill kids with things to make their lives more comfortable at home.
This American stuff worries me deeply.
I like your sense of humour
Christopher Pulford / london
#
the body’s prayer to god
perhaps it was those camel rides that put me in the head space to invent (or more likely rediscover) what i call The Body’s Prayer to God.
it’s based on how the muslims pray, and may even be the true esoteric origin, but i’m only going to describe the physical aspects, which, i believe, stretch and massage every muscle and organ in the body.
sit back on your feet till your bum settles on your ankles. if you can’t get that far that’s ok, but allow your body a little time to ‘settle’ into each stage.
now bend forward slowly, keeping your bum as much in place as u can, till your brow settles on the ground in front of you.
when you’re happy and settled there, stretch the arms forwards like the muslims do in prayer. take your time and stretch further forward till you reach the furthest you can place your palms face-down on the ground WHILE STILL KEEPING YOUR ELBOWS ON THE GROUND AS WELL.
you are now ready to begin. now slowly raise your head, chest and hips and slowly lunge forward & UP until you are carried forward into the full yoga plough asana (position) end with your head thrown back and your crotch on the floor.
(i think i remember the indian yogis calling this the prayer to the sun which you do first thing in the morning to awaken and greet the new day.)
when you feel comfortable in the new position, pull your bum back and return to the original praying position. you can repeat this as many times as you like, indeed i found that when i ‘bumped’ back at each end it felt almost like i might have discovered perpetual motion.
as far as i know there’s nothing to stop you doing it for hours if you want.
try it, honestly! :)
#
CATT AS TROPHY!
welcome back to the basin of babylondon, while you while away in the sunshine I strip away the veneer of my bathroom and loo combo to reveal the truth about
shoddy craftsmanship in social housing!!! It beckons the question - how on
earth can we expect to look after each other if we can't even look after ourselves?
I was tickled by your cat allegory, the cats and I have communed often. We had this to inspire the debacle.....
QUESTION: the cat is on the bus, how do we know the cat is on the bus?
(1) because there’s a smell coming from the bus?
(2) because wailing can be heard coming from the bus?
(3) because we gotta message from it saying it’s alive & well, on the bus?
(4) because if I've stated that there’s a cat on the bus, this undermines any speculation about the smell, noise or indeed any model for interpreting the cat on the bus as anything other than a random order of events, important only to us humans to stroke and cuddle and feed as if our very own possession? Cats, like quantum theories, are here today and gone multiplied by tomorrow!!!
Allah like God has been sold in boxes for far too long and needs to be liberated, and who better for the task then nature itself? Chaotic and unbiased!!! nostradamus once signaled the new age transition being heralded with birds in the sky cooing 'NOW NOW' !!!!!!
matt’n d'family
see http://www.the-spun.org/
#
another planet?
ahmed and i, seated beneath a lone tree, surrounded in all directions and on all unbroken horizons by endless warm golden dunes. i always feel the urge to ‘communicate’ across the language, cultural and religious barriers after the joint:
“ahmed,” i hear my mouth saying, “you are a man of the south. and i am a man of the north. if we were on another planet” (he likes this kind of talk, probably because it leaps neatly over all the historical dichotomies he might have to face, or possibly because the space of space appeals to him, like the desert) “and someone asked me where i came from and i said... planete terre” (he laughs) “and then he asked you and you said planete terre also, he would say: “but izzit possible you both come from the same planet?!” (we laugh, snuggling smugly into our differences :)
#
”A BLUEPRINT FOR WORLD DICTATORSHIP”
YES, IT’S ABOUT OIL - BUT THAT’S NOT OIL IT’S ABOUT!
A book written in 1997 by President Carter’s National Security Adviser which predicts and recommends what’s happening now in Afghanistan was described last week as “a blueprint for world dictatorship” by a former German Defense and NATO official.
"Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some 500 years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power." - opening line - p. xiii of "THE GRAND CHESSBOARD. American Primacy And It's Geostrategic Imperatives" by Zbigniew Brzezinski (Basic Books).
(Eurasia is everything east of Germany and Poland all the way through Russia and China to the Pacific Ocean, including the Middle East and most of the Indian subcontinent.)
The key to controlling Eurasia, said Brzezinski in the book, is controlling the Central Asian Republics. And the key to controlling the Central Asian Republics is Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan was pinpointed by President Bush in his address to the joint session of Congress just days after the Twin Terrors as the very first place that U.S. military would be deployed.
Major deployments of U.S. and British forces had taken place before the attacks. And the U.S. Army and the CIA had been active in Uzbekistan for several years. Indeed, the current Central Asian war is not a response to terrorism, nor a reaction to Islamic fundamentalism. It is in fact, in the words of one of the most powerful men on the planet, the beginning of a final conflict before total world domination by the United States leads to the dissolution of all national governments.
This, says Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member Zbigniew Brzezinski, will lead to nation states being incorporated into a new world order, controlled solely by economic interests as dictated by banks, corporations and ruling elites concerned with the maintenance (by manipulation and war) of their power.
A world in chaos threatens, says Brzezinski, unless the U.S. controls the planet by whatever means are necessary and likely to succeed.
"The interests behind the Bush Administration, such as the CFR, the Trilateral Commission - founded by Brzezinski for David Rockefeller - and the Bilderberger Group, have prepared for and are now moving to implement open world dictatorship within the next five years. They are not fighting against terrorists. They are fighting against citizens." Dr. Johannes B. Koeppl, Ph.D, former German defense ministry official and former NATO Secretary General Manfred Werner advisor.
The War on Terrorism (WOT!), according to Vice President Dick Cheney, "may not end in our lifetimes." What that means is that it will not end until all armed groups, anywhere in the world, which possess the political, economic or military ability to resist the imposition of this dictatorship, have been destroyed. These are the "terrorists" the U.S. now fights in Afghanistan and plans to soon fight all over the globe.
Let’s just be sure who the author is who is predicting and recommending these things.
Zbigniew Brzezinski holds a 1953 Ph.D. from Harvard, and lists the following achievements:
Counselor, Center for Strategic and International Studies,
Professor of American Foreign Policy, Johns Hopkins University,
National Security Advisor to President Carter (1977-81),
Trustee and founder of the Trilateral Commission International,
Advisor of several major US/Global corporations,
Member of NSC-Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy,
Member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (under Reagan),
past member, Board of Directors, The Council on Foreign Relations 1988,
Co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force.
He’s also a past attendee and presenter at several conferences of the Bliderberger group, a non-partisan affiliation of the wealthiest and most powerful families and corporations on the planet.
All right, so this is a member of the establishment who’s talking. In The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski sets the tone for the strategy by describing Russia and China as the two most important countries, almost but not quite superpowers, whose interests might threaten the U.S. in Central Asia. Of the two, Brzezinski considers Russia to be the more serious threat. Both nations border Central Asia. In a lesser context he describes the Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Iran and Kazakhstan as essential "lesser" nations that must be ‘managed’ by the U.S. as buffers or counterweights to Russian and Chinese moves to control the oil, gas and minerals of the Central Asian Republics (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan).
He also quite clearly notes (p. 53) that any nation that might become predominant in Central Asia would directly threaten the current U.S. control of oil resources in the Persian Gulf.
Reading selected quotes from "The Grand Chessboard" in the context of current events reveals the darker agenda behind military operations that were planned long before September 11th, 2001.
“The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the first time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world's paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power.” (p. xiii)
“In the meantime, it is imperative that no Eurasian challenger emerges, capable of dominating Eurasia and thus of also challenging America. The formulation of a comprehensive and integrated Eurasian geostrategy is therefore the purpose of this book”. (p. xiv)
" The public supported America's engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor”. (pp 24-5)
"For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia, and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained”. (p.30)
"America's withdrawal from the world or because of the sudden emergence of a successful rival would produce massive international instability. It would prompt global anarchy." (p. 30)
"How America `manages' Eurasia is critical. Eurasia is the globe's largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa's subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world's central continent. About 75% of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world's GNP and about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources." (p.31)
“Two basic steps are thus required: first, to identify the geostrategically dynamic Eurasian states that have the power to cause a potentially important shift in the international distribution of power and to decipher the central external goals of their respective political elites and the likely consequences of their seeking to attain them; second, to formulate specific U.S. policies to offset, co-opt, and/or control the above” (p. 40).
“To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together." (p.40)
"Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America's status as a global power." (p.55)
"Uzbekistan, with its much more ethnically homogeneous population of approximately 25 million and its leaders emphasizing the country's historic glories, has become increasingly assertive in affirming the region's new postcolonial status." (p.95)
“Support for the new post-Soviet states for geopolitical pluralism in the space of the former Soviet empire has to be an integral part of a policy designed to induce Russia to exercise unambiguously its European option." (p. 121)
"Uzbekistan, nationally the most vital and the most populous of the central Asian states, represents the major obstacle to any renewed Russian control over the region. Its independence is critical to the survival of the other Central Asian states, and it is the least vulnerable to Russian pressures." (p. 121)
Referring to an area he calls the "Eurasian Balkans" and a 1997 map in which he has circled the exact location of the current conflict describing it as the central region of pending conflict for world dominance - Brzezinski writes: "Moreover, the Central Asian Republics are of importance, from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions, to at least three of their most immediate and more powerful neighbors, namely Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China also signaling an increasing political interest in the region. But the Eurasian Balkans are infinitely more important as a potential economic prize: an enormous concentration of natural gas and oil reserves is located in the region, in addition to important minerals, including gold." (p.124)
“Estimates by the U.S. Department of energy anticipate that world demand will rise by more than 50 percent between 1993 and 2015, with the most significant increase in consumption occurring in the Far East. The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea." (p.125)
"Once pipelines to the area have been developed, Turkmenistan's truly vast natural gas reserves augur a prosperous future for the country's people.” (p.132)
"In fact, an Islamic revival, already abetted from the outside not only by Iran but also by Saudi Arabia, is likely to become the mobilizing impulse for the increasingly pervasive new nationalisms, determined to oppose any reintegration under Russian and hence infidel control." (p. 133).
"For Pakistan, the primary interest is to gain Geostrategic depth through political influence in Afghanistan and to deny to Iran the exercise of such influence in Afghanistan and Tajikistan. and to benefit eventually from any pipeline construction linking Central Asia with the Arabian Sea." (p.139)
"Moreover, sensible Russian leaders realize that the demographic explosion underway in the new states means that their failure to sustain economic growth will eventually create an explosive situation along Russia's entire southern frontier." (p.141) [This would explain why Putin would welcome U.S. military presence to stabilize the region.]
"Turkmenistan has been actively exploring the construction of a new pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea” (p.145)
"It follows that America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it." (p148)
"Without sustained and directed American involvement, before long the forces of global disorder could come to dominate the world scene. And the possibility of such a fragmentation is inherent in the geopolitical tensions not only of today's Eurasia but of the world more generally." (p.194)
"The most immediate task is to make certain that no state or combination of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly its decisive arbitration role." (p. 198) [sounds exactly like what bin Laden has been saying]
"As America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat." (p. 211)
”SUBLIMELY ARROGANT”
“Brzezinski's book is sublimely arrogant. While singing the praises of the IMF and the World Bank, which have economically terrorized nations on every continent, and while totally ignoring the worldwide terrorist actions of the U.S. government that have led to genocide; cluster bombings of civilian populations from Kosovo, to Laos, to Iraq, to Afghanistan; the development and battlefield use of both biological and chemical agents such as sarin gas; and the financial rape of entire cultures it would leave the reader believing that such actions are for the good of mankind.” Dr. Johannes Koeppl
While seconded from the German defense ministry to NATO in the late 1970s, Dr. Johannes Koeppl met with Brzezinski in the White House on more than one occasion. His other Washington contacts included Steve Larabee from the CFR, John J. McCloy, former CIA Director, economist Milton Friedman, and officials from Carter's Office of Management and Budget.
He soon realized that Brzezinski was part of a group intending to impose a world dictatorship. "In 1983/4 I warned of a take-over of world governments being orchestrated by these people. There was an obvious plan to subvert true democracies, and selected leaders were not being chosen based upon character but upon their loyalty to an economic system run by the elites and dedicated to preserving their power. All we have now are pseudo-democracies."
Koeppl recalls meeting U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald, then contemplating a run for the Presidency, who was a severe critic of these elites. He was killed in the Russian shoot down of Korean Air flight 007 in 1985 which Koeppl believes might have been an assassination.
Koeppl warnings, through Op-Ed pieces published in NEWSWEEK and elsewhere, that Brzezinski and the CFR were part of an effort to impose a global dictatorship brought a swift fall from grace. "It was a criminal society that I was dealing with. It was not possible to publish anymore in the so-called respected publications. My 30 year career in politics ended.”
Today, this is his warning: "This is more than a war against terrorism. This is a war against the citizens of all countries. The current elites are creating so much fear that people don't know how to respond. But they must remember. This is a move to implement a world dictatorship within the next five years. There may not be another chance."
Michael Ruppert http://www.COPvCIA.com
#
bad taste? but not as bad as bomming!
remember that thoroughly bad taste foto attachment that was going around for a while showing gb taking it up the back from old bin? i gottit near 20 times myself. well, i have some very bad, even unfair news for president bush. it seems it’s become a bit of a cause celebre in arabia - every single online arab has received it and many many have printed it out in black and white and passed it around.
so, at the very minute he was conquering afghanistan, every arab has this picture of him indelibly printed on his psyche.
it certainly is a funny old world, eh?
#
A BEREAVED ISRAELI MOTHER'S UNIVERSAL PLEA
Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a Jewish woman whose daughter was killed in a suicide bombing.
Thank you for inviting me to share with you the struggle for peace in my country. I say “my” country, but I don't even know if this term is correct anymore. What is mine in this country depends very much on what I identify with, and today it is very hard to identify with anything in a place that has let Death have dominion over it. And in the place that I come from, Death has dominion.
And Death has created a new identity for me, and has given me a new voice, a new voice that is as ancient as the world itself, the voice of our biblical mother Rachel, weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for they are not. This new identity and voice transcend nationalities, religions and even time, and overshadow all other identities and is deafening all the other voices I have been given by life.
My little girl was killed just because she was born Israeli, by a young man who felt hopeless to the point of murder and suicide just because he was born a Palestinian.
A reporter asked me how I can accept condolences from the other side. I said to her very spontaneously that I do not accept condolences from the other side. And when the mayor of Jerusalem came to offer his condolences, I went to my room because I didn't want to speak to him or shake his hand. Because for me, the other side is not the Palestinians, and dividing the population into two enemy sides is a wrong and murderous division.
For me the whole population of the area, and of the world, has always been divided into two other distinct groups: peace lovers and war lovers. But today I know that there is yet another division in Israel: On the face of the earth there rules the kingdom of evil, where for the last 34 years, people who call themselves leaders have earned, through democratic means, the right to kill and destroy and be as vile and corrupt as they please, to have young boys become expert killers, whether in the name of “God”, of the “good of the nation”, or in the name of “honour” and “courage”.
But these evil people have created yet another kingdom, a glorious kingdom that flourishes and grows larger and larger every day - a kingdom that lives and breathes under our feet, beneath the earth we walk on. That is where my little daughter dwells, side by side with Palestinian children, and where I dwell side by side with Palestinian parents who, for the most part, have never held a gun and have never obeyed orders to kill anyone. There she dwells, alongside her murderer, whose blood is mingled with hers on Jerusalem’s stones which have long grown indifferent to human blood.
There they both lie, deceived. He, because his act of murder and suicide did not change anything, did not end Israel’s cruel occupation, did not bring him to heaven, while the people who promised him his act would be meaningful carry on as if he had never existed. She, because she believed her life was safe, that her parents and her country were protecting her from evil, and that no harm can come to little girls who are good and gentle and go through the streets of their own cities, to a dance class.
And they are both deceived because the world goes on living as if their blood has never been shed. Both are victims of so-called leaders who keep on enjoying playing their murderous games, using our children as their puppets and our grief as fuel to continue with their vindictive tricks. Children are abstract entities for them, numbers, and grief is a political tool. They know all they have to do to draw more young, enthusiastic little soldiers into their units is to find a God to ordain this killing. And each finds Him in his bible, in his mythologies. In the name of the Jewish God and the Muslim God, they commit their crimes, while in Ireland and Eastern Europe they kill each other for different versions of their Christian God. And now the enlightened leaders of the west kill in the name of the God of “Freedom”. But in fact they all recruit man-made gods to their sides - the God of racism and the God of greed and of megalomania.
This is not new in the history of man. People have always used God as an excuse for their crimes. Our children, from a very tender age, learn about Joshua, the glorified leader who murdered the whole population of Jericho in the name of God. Then they learn about the prophet Eliyahu who killed the 450 priests of the Baal because they practised a different religion, and then they learn about Elisha who brought death, with the help of God, upon 42 children who mocked him by calling him bald. Not to mention the adored king David and his terrible deeds.
In our culture that allows killing as a means of solving social and religious problems, and where people identify with biblical heroes and see themselves as descendants, these stories overshadow the story about the God who said "Lay not thy hand upon the child". But children can also learn about the God who said "I will have mercy upon them who have not obtained mercy, and I will say to them who were not my people 'Thou art my people'". I believe very strongly that only by educating our children that killing, starving or humiliating the innocent are unforgivable crimes can we save them from joining the evil forces - the evil forces of Israel and of the Palestinians.
The only difference is that Israel, through long and cruel occupation, is making it very easy for young Palestinians to turn to the path of terrorism. But terrorism dominates both forces. An organised army, which terrorises a whole population, is no less and is even more criminal than any guerrilla group. An enlightened first world government which ordains the killing of the innocent is just as evil as any third world guerrilla leader who is hardly known and never seen.
There is no enlightened killing or barbaric killing, there’s only criminal killing. For me Saddam Hussein, Ariel Sharon and George Bush, father and son, are the same, for all have inflicted pain and death upon innocent populations. If we don't tell our children these are unscrupulous murderers, we shall never have people who rule out killing from the outset as a solution to social and political problems.
Today, when there is no opposition in Israel, left or right has no meaning, for all consent to the atrocities. That’s why I believe European condemnation of those deeds and their doers is critically important. It’s time to tell the world that words like heroism, courage, and manhood can kill, and that the death of one child, any child, be it Serbian, Albanian, Iraqi or Jewish is the death of the whole world, its past and its future; that there is no vengeance for the death of a child because after the death there is no other death - for there is no more life.
This is the cry that has never, never been heard by politicians and generals, especially not in Jerusalem which everybody thinks is made of gold but which is rally made of stones and iron and lead. It is time for this cry to be heard above all others, for this is the only voice that remains after the violence which really understands the meaning of the end of all things, including wars.
This is the voice that understands what today is understood only in the underground kingdom of our murdered children, namely that all bloods are equal, and that it takes so little to kill a child and so much to keep her alive. It understands that ending the war means to adopt a dialogic approach to negotiation and not a smart dealer approach, to understand that people should talk not in order to bring the others to their knees but to come to terms. Ending the war means that I don't care what flag is put on which mountain, that I don't care who looks where when they pray, that nothing is more important than securing a little girl's way to her dance class.
I call on all parents who have not yet lost their children, and all who are about to: if we don't stand up to the politicians by teaching our children not to follow their murderous ways, if we don't listen to the voice of peace coming from underneath, very soon there will be nothing left to say, nothing left to write or read or listen to except the perpetual cry of mourning. Please. Save the children.
#
ramadan! what’s eating u?
what a great concept is ramadan! i am totally in favour of its being adopted globally. but it only works if EVERYONE does it. let me explain, because i’ve only come to this conclusion gradually over the last 3 weeks in maroc.
no food, drink, nor any kind of sustenance (like smoking, which for moroccans is by far the hardest!) may pass your lips from sun up to sun down.
so what, you ask? well, you see, everyone does it, the rich and the poor, the servant and the emperor. so, every day for a whole month each year, everyone is feeling the same, the identical oh so human pain, seeing his own addictions and obsessions and weakness AND KNOWING THAT EVERYONE ELSE, NO MATTER HOW HIGH OR HOW LOW, IS SUFFERING THE SAME UNCONSCIOUSNESS-AWARENESS. on some very real, non-theoretical, existentialist level WE ARE ALL THE SAME, WE’RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER!
shouldn’t this be one of the very minimum keys to any healthy useful religion?!
when, hopefully in the not too distant future, we come finally to sit down and work out a new and final world religion to take with us to the stars (with a creator-deity as optional extra obviously & i’ll take It) i reckon ramadan should be one of the very first tenets to be adopted. i’d go as far as saying that, if bush and the bully boys had had to do ramadan and been thus reconnected with all us other mere humants for a whole month in each year, they could never do or believe the kinda things they do and believe.
of course if u want to shoot a hole in my argument by bringing up bin laden..... :)
#
we need a new word for...
I want to propose an idea, which I hope will bear interesting fruit... pass it on if you care to, hopefully it'll find its own way...
I want a new word, or words, that can go international, penetrate into tribes. It will take a roundabout sort of definition, so bear with me.
First, examples: the terrorist who thought he was going to martyr's heaven and ended up in hell. The jerk who killed an abortion doctor to prevent murder. The neo-nazi in the service of racial purity. The nodding yelling sports-fan swarming with logos. The uniformed yuppie marching to brunch. Gangstas needing to be all hard, bimbos being perky and guidos being macho... most consumers, looking for those cues, happy with any menu, as long as it's composed of the familiar.
Essentialism is that flaw in logic, whereby an argument fails, at the point that it breaks down into good/bad, right/wrong. Received meaning is that which is felt implicitly, beliefs ingrained at a much deeper level than reason, for example, religion, racism, and cultural attitudes. Most people believe what they believe because they think it’s just "right", and don't know or think much more about it. Their priorities and languages are not their own. Tho it was fed to them, they recognize it as their own, and it rides them like a pony, farms them like sheep.
I just want a dismissive term to catch on that encapsulates the idea of someone who gets sucked into some stupid scam/illusion, blind to their own fear and cravings, and gets spit out in ashes, Or does tons of damage for stupid gain, driven by blind confidence in their own looped instruction set. No existing word fully covers it, we need a new one.
It’s because it’s hard to define that we need a WORD, to enable the definition to become a common option in perceptions. Teach it to children, show them to scorn or pity or help anyone who is slipping toward the gravity of nastiness or control/domination or Righteousness, and be alert for it in themselves, and learn how to release its grip, especially without resorting to the same sort of violence it embodies. A bullshit vaccine, and for free!
none of these, all of these:
goldfish, cog, trod, trogg, sucker, CHUD (love that word), mark, dolt (another fave of mine), host (as in parasite), tantrum-mer, twit, hump, SCHMUCK! (timeless classic), prick, lunatic, deranged, cocky, clown, hick, mule, somebody's bitch, pissant, grubber, full of shit, lizard, led by nose, minion, fanatic, skeezy, craven, junkie, Upstanding/Respectable, hustler, whore, tool.
see where I'm going? all these words are loaded with what they "mean"... I want a new word that means all the above. Maybe with a comical edge, not so nasty, but still pointed.
Pass it on... let's figure out how to manage this thing, cause it’s a durable spore of a mindset, compact and volatile, and we're all infested - comes with
consciousness.
sheldon
i recently came across the term ’ifonlyism’. i think we’ve all met an ifonlyist or two in our time, no?! :-)
#
berbers NOT barbarian!
the berber people, far as i’ve now gathered (never bothered to check on previous visits, there being no war to stimulate my interest) populated this north western corner of africa. they reckon they came from europe and, when you see how black people get as you go south, it makes a lotta sense.
the arabs invaded at some point, colonised them, taught them arabic and ‘imposed’ their religion of islam. much as the roman christians did to the pagan peoples of europe some hundreds of years before.
come to think about it (and i do now) the meaning of being ‘converted’ to a new religion pretty much, on a mass historical scale, meant being conquered by superior arms. interesting view on religions.
however, unlike, say, england, where the romans were pretty much able to ‘civilize’ everyone and everywhere, the desert nomads could and did withdraw deeper into their ‘wilderness areas’ and remain ‘outside’, undisturbed.
perhaps they carried slaves up from the south to trade to the arabs for a time?
anyway, since there’s no oil here, and so long as some damn fool doesn’t invent a use for sand, the berbers are free. now equipped, some of them, with mobile fones, and with internet caffs in even the smallish towns (zagora has two!) some of them are adapting to the future.
ibrahim is one of them, so is ahmed who, on even a week long trek into the desert, can keep in touch with family affairs back home from atop his camel. nomads with mobiles! they’re neither stampeding nor being forced into the future, nor into someone else’s future, they’re evolving into it, at their own pace. so often when i visit here, i get the strong impression that the west is on some reckless careering ‘experiment,’ with nobody really in charge, and one which could easily fail. could anyone argue with that?
#
//YOU FEEDBACK
The We The People event was aflop (which I unaffectionately renamed "We the Sheeple"), because the "promoters" were a flop, including Francis, who is a two-bit wannabe actor publicity hound, in it for all the wrong reasons. It flopped because you "reap what you sow".
It flopped because they didn't do their "homework", and expected people just to show up.
The flyers and the website were nice, however, but worrying about the icing on the cake is pretty useless when you don't have a cake to ice.
Those are my 2 cents, coming from someone who is personally connected to the scene here in Los Angeles.
Smooches!
zenbaba los angeles
#
christianity v islam
they’re very difficult to compare, being totally different. one is an actual social model, written down by one man, and intended to be followed, at different levels of intensity, by everyone. that’s islam obviously.
xtianity, when you come to look at it in this way, is quite quite different. we don’t even know there was a man jesus and he certainly didn’t leave any kind of program that’s more explicit that the ten commandments. even the scraps we do have were recorded years after he said them (if he said them) by someone else entirely. there’s even a serious possibility that jesus was an amanita muscaria mushroom, did you know that?
any xtian social programme was imposed by a church of (presumably) non-enlightened priests centuries later, with many ‘deals’ being done and embarrassing bits ruled out (the gnostic gospels). the xtian ‘model’ then was much more malleable to local conditions and hence xtian communities were much more loosely connected (how much time have you spent worrying about those pakistani xtians whose church got burned a month ago?)
the muslim world family feels much more of a single identity, all starving their guts out together for a month each year, and praying towards the same geographical location five times a day.
i would joke with my poor suffering muslim fastists that they should give xtianity a try. “You know what christians have to do in december? EAT AS MUCH AS WE CAN!” :)
if by ‘religion’ we mean a body of beliefs and a model of reality and social behaviour designed for a community, a nation, an empire, then islam’s the one (i mean compared to xtianity!). in other words, unlike islam or buddhism or most of the prophet-inspired religions, xtianity is based entirely on what other people said the prophet had said.
and while we’re on the subject, islam differs from christianity in these other ways: it bans usury the charging of interest on loans. this alone may have been the trigger that unleashed the massive, amazing, and perilous (to others!) western capitalist trip we are now careering along on.
and they do not believe in the separation of church and state. again this has given us efficiency and thus cultural acceleration, but acceleration itself is neutral, we can equally accelerate towards disaster. but what has it also given us? a totally irreligious, materialistic ruling elite, freed from all ethical and humanitarian considerations? and a castrated church unable or unwilling and certainly inhibited from “meddling in politics”?
indeed, couldn’t most of the protest movements in the west be seen as exactly rebellions against the separation of politics from spirituality/ morality?!
#
H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H
YOUR PLANET NEEDS //YOU! this HipList grows by recommendation. RECOMMEND SOMEONE 2DAY!!!!!!!!!!
* TO DEBATE ANYTHING in the UPGRADE, visit the GroupMind Debating Board on www.parallel-youniversity.com
* WE NEVER HAVE SPACE to publish everything, so check the EMAG on our site for the longer, deeper stuff
* YES, YES, SEND US EDUTAINING NEWS’N VIEWS no need to ask! :-)
* FOR MORE ON RAVE CULTURE& THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT VISIT http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/fraserclark/
* TO BE REMOVED from our HipList, simply hit REPLY with the word "BUZZ OFF" (or your own variant) in the SUBJECT box
H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H H
Parallel YOUniversity, Box 833, London NW6, UK
www.parallel-youniversity.com
fraser@parallel-youniversity.com
IMPORTANT: This email is intended for the use of the individual addressee(s) named above and may contain information that is confidential privileged or unsuitable for overly sensitive persons with low self-esteem, no sense of humour or absurd religious beliefs. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email is not authorised (either explicitly or implicitly) and constitutes an irritating social faux pas. Unless the word absquatulation has been used in its correct context somewhere other than in this warning, it does not have any legal or grammatical use and may be ignored. No animals were harmed in the transmission of this email, although the spaniel next door is living on borrowed time, let me tell you. Those of you with an overwhelming fear of the unknown will be gratified to learn that there is no hidden message revealed by reading this warning backwards, so just ignore that Alert Notice from Microsoft. However, by pouring a complete circle of salt around yourself and your computer you can ensure that no harm befalls you and your pets. If you have received this email in error, please add some nutmeg and flour, lightly sift and mix with 200g of margarine and 180g of sugar, beat well and place it in a warm oven for 40 minutes.
Let it stand for 2 hours before icing.
|