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the UP! //:-) 153 april 9, 2003
la - la - la - lap-toppling da system!
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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 *
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The UP! (or UP!grademag) is a global edutainment round-up, ‘broadcast’ weekly to =[11,111]= 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 less 'specialist' 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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ANNOUNCEMENT: ALL ISSUES OF THE UP!
ARE AVAILABLE ON THE PARALLEL-YOUNIVERSITY’S SITE, OFTEN NOW WITH PICTURES, JUST LIKE A REAL MAG!!
* * * * * * * * * ASTRO ENERGY ANALYSIS FOR APRIL10-16 * * * * *
SECURITY, SECURITY, SECURITY.
What do you need to feel secure?
How can you have it?
This is a major historical turning point,
and past parallel history shows bad judgment
in terms of Future consequences.
In the past, a bullying attitude has had tragic historical repercussions.
We will see specific results of this time in early January 2004.
For details, see Maya’s Daily Success Guide at
www.daykeeperjournal.com* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
THE PR WAR ACCELERATES
AS A BLASTED STATE FALLS APART
watch out for the BIG LIES believe nothing you hear for the next month (or ever?)
THE TOPPLING OF SADDAM’S STATUE WAS A TOTAL MEDIA PR SET-UP!!
TALE OF 2 PHOTOS PART 1
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2838.htm
THE PHOTOGRAPHS TELL THE STORY. PART II
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2842.htm
i tuned into my favourite tv program this week, BBC 1's Question Time, (the only live public prog with an accurate cross section of the Great British Public) with considerable trepidation. with the "war" officially "won" and a welter of total PR invasions of palaces and rigged pulling down of statues, i was ready for the Great Brit Pub to be in totally gung-ho pro-war VICTORY jingo mode. IT WAS TOTALLY UNLIKE THAT. many people had clearly swung behind our boys when war started. but now that they were being told it was all over THEY WERE REVERTING TO THEIR ORIGINAL ANTI-WAR ATTITUDES, AND POSSIBLY EVEN MORE PRO PEACE AFTER THE WEEKS OF BEAUTIFULLY PACKAGED SAVAGERY...
dinosaurs with the gloves off...
RED CROSS HORRIFIED BY NUMBERS OF DEAD CIVILIANS
”We saw a truck delivering dozens of totally dismembered dead bodies of women and children. It was an awful sight.”
Red Cross doctors who visited southern Iraq this week saw "incredible" levels of civilian casualties, including a truckload of dismembered women and children, a spokesman said Thursday from Baghdad.
Roland Huguenin, one of six International Red Cross workers in the Iraqi capital, said doctors were “horrified” by the casualties they found. "There has been an incredible number of casualties with very, very serious wounds in this region" he said by satellite telephone from Hilla, 160 kilometres south of Baghdad. The dead and injured there came from the village of Nasiriyah where there’s been heavy fighting, and appeared to be the result of "bombs, projectiles."
"We saw a truck delivering dozens of totally dismembered dead bodies of women and children. It was an awful sight. It was really very difficult to believe this was happening...
"It was definitely a different pattern from what we had seen in Basra or Baghdad.”
>>> that’s the Dinosaurs keeping out of sight, like we said last week’s GLOVES OFF e-edition. if this doesn’t work, they’ll take off their moral clothes as well as the gloves and just “kill em all” anyway.
dylan said of a peacenik “His clothes are dirty but his hands are clean”. with this lot pf smarties, their hands are bloody but their clothes are clean.
UP!
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men." Martin Luther King, Jr.
UP!
IF IT’S 2003 IT’S NOT KABUL IT’S BAGDHAD
On the streets of Baghdad, it was Kabul, November 2001, all over again. Then, enthusiasts for the war on terror were in triumphalist mood, as the Taliban regime was overthrown. The critics had been confounded, they insisted, kites were flying, music was playing again and women were throwing off their burkas. In parliament, Jack Straw mocked Labour MPs who predicted US and British forces would still be fighting in the country in six months' time.
Seventeen months later, such confidence looks grimly ironic. For most Afghans, "liberation" has meant the return of rival warlords, harsh repression, rampant lawlessness, widespread torture and... Taliban-style policing of women. Meanwhile, guerrilla attacks are mounting on US troops several special forces soldiers have been killed in recent weeks, while 11 civilians died yesterday in an American air raid - and the likelihood of credible elections next year appears to be close to zero.
>>> this means closer to zero than 6 months ago.
UP!
THERE MAY BE NO WMD'S IN IRAQ,
BRITAIN ADMITS
SAT, APRIL 5 Chest deep in carnage from their unprovoked invasion of Iraq to destroy its alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, a senior British official has admitted that none may, after all, be found.
Despite this shocking revelation in a radio interview, British Home Secretary, David Blunkett said he would anyway celebrate the “fall” of Saddam Hussein and his regime - regardless of whether any weapons of mass destruction were found there or not!!
UP!
UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU
TO JOIN AL-QUEDA WHY ELSE
WOULD HE BOMM IRAQ?
UP!
COALITION CASUALTY REPORTS INACCURATE
- RUSSIAN GENERAL
09.04.2003
A former Soviet senior military official believes that the command of the U.S.-British coalition has provided significantly lowered figures on allied casualties sustained during the war in Iraq.
Col. Gen. Vladislav Achalov told Interfax on Tuesday that "the Pentagon's estimates that as of the 19th day of the war U.S. and British forces had lost more than 100 soldiers are three time lower than in actual fact . At the same time, according to Russian security services who are keeping a close eye on the military operation in Iraq, the U.S.-British coalition has actually lost more than 340 and about 500 have been wounded," he said.
Achalov paid a number of visits to Iraq before the war to meet with the country's military officials.
Commenting on recent sporadic fights on Baghdad's outskirts, the general stressed that "from a military standpoint, these battles are clear reconnaissance efforts, not an attack as the Pentagon has described it."
"That is why commanders in charge of Baghdad's defence have allowed an advance group from the U.S. Third Motorized Division to enter the city and leave with almost no casualties. This was done in order not to expose their main firing positions in Baghdad's southeast," he noted.
The general said that during this sortie, U.S. troops lost four pieces of military hardware, including Abrams tanks. "It seems that losses could not be avoided. But the coalition's command has chosen not to make them public," he stressed.
http://www.iraqwar.ru/iraq-read_article.php?articleId=2285&lang=en
UP!
AMERICA IS NOT A ROLE MODEL
Those who trample human rights in Israel are having a field day: Look at the behaviour of the Americans, they say. Every time troops open fire at a checkpoint, every killing of a civilian, every picture of siege and plight, leads to merriment here. The United States, cradle of democracy, leader of the free world, is behaving like us.
According to one report, "IDF officers find it difficult to stop smiling" when they hear the reports from Iraq. From now on, no one will be able to criticise their conduct in the territories. The New York Times reported that Israel even hastened to suggest that the US earn from its experience in the use of tanks, helicopters and bulldozers in the centre of cities and refugee camps.
Similar delight has also gripped those wishing to curb the media in Israel: Look how America is censoring the images of the war in its media - no coffins and no prisoners, how the media has volunteered enthusiastically to enlist in the war effort. And how they fired the courageous and experienced reporter Peter Arnett, without so much as batting an eyelash, for expressing his opinions on enemy television.
This keeping in line with the behaviour of the US is another case of the collateral damage of this base war. America is not an example for anything. Even before going to war, there was no way it could serve as a role model, and going into this unjustified war in Iraq has deprived it completely of the right to serve as a light unto the nations and the Jews in upholding freedom, morality and human rights.
Gideon Levy
UP!
two cultures
2 Cultures are yelling at each other in different languages in this present Crisis and the long-term Campaign/Vision behind it. nothing unusual there, as old Peace & Love Warriors well know, but the difference is now that that old “fruit and nut brigade” has reached politically significant proportions and the Dyng, Out-Of-Date, but still Dominant Dinosaur Culture is suddenly feeling the first sting of POSSIBLY BEING A MINORITY (watch the quislings squirm and mouth their weasel words!)
Our side (the Future) didn’t quite realise how far away we are from the Other Side, how vast and actually unbridgeable the chasm between us, while the Dinosaurs NEVER for a moment thought they’d EVER have to deal seriously with our Side.
So one Culture looks back to How Things Have Always Been Done while the other looks forward to How Things Must Be From Here On In. This is the Gigantic Difference between them. The Dinosaurs look back to the 2000 year Smash & Grab & Loot & Scramble UP to where we are now, and they have refined their ‘winning’ methods and beefed them up with the most colossally powerful weaponry the world has ever seen. They are massively PROUD of all this.
They expect us New People to respect those rules while we, in fact, are massively ashamed of how we got to here! We see the monumental Karma the other Culture’s methods have built up, indeed our deepest fear is that IT MIGHT ALREADY BE TOO LATE TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM THESE STUPID WHITE MEN!
They’re PROUD. We’re ASHAMED.
These World Views could not be more different, their Models of Reality & Purpose actually opposite. Partly it rests in a mis-definition of Darwin’s Survival of the Fittest which the Dinos have converted (spun?) into Advance of the Strongest, most Determined, most Individual.
Actually, of course, its got nothing to do with all that. “Fittest” means, quite simply, best fitted to the changing situation/environment. Which our Side see clearly to be this very small planet that’s fat too interconnected to leave the Dinosaurs loose for much longer. In a very real sense, EVERYTHING has to be “fitted in”. Which means the other culture is a DANGER.
So, when the Dinos look at us lot they see a bunch of soft, pansy, over-educated, decadent liberals with half-assed socialist-style ideas that would smother Individuality, bring the Economy crashing down, and let the Hun in at the gate. Yet it’s really only the largely controlled media which make us even pause to admit PROUDLY to most of the above, indeed our worry is often that we’re not liberal enough!
How different could 2 Cultures be?! There IS an answer to that. When a development goes too far in One Direction, it Swings back to its Opposite. We’ve followed the Dinosaur Road Map (we even wiped them out with our own bare hands!) until we have filled the space available and must now CHANGE OR DIE.
So the Most Dangerous Men Alive Today, from our point of view as the “Fittest”, will be the Most Powerful Movers, from theirs!
fraser
UP!
Regime change
A poem by Andrew Motion, Britain’s Poet Laureate
Advancing down the road from Niniveh
Death paused a while and said 'Now listen here.
You see the names of places roundabout?
They're mine now, and I've turned them inside out.
Take Eden, further south: at dawn today
I ordered up my troops to tear away
its walls and gates so everyone can see
that gorgeous fruit which dangles from its tree.
You want it, don't you? Go and eat it then,
and lick your lips, and pick the same again.
Take Tigris and Euphrates; once they ran
through childhood-coloured slats of sand and sun.
Not any more they don't; I've filled them up
with countless different kinds of human crap.
Take Babylon, the palace sprouting flowers
which sweetened empires in their peaceful hours -
I've found a different way to scent the air:
already it's a by-word for despair.
Which leaves Baghdad - the star-tipped minarets,
the marble courts and halls, the mirage-heat.
These places, and the ancient things you know,
you won't know soon. I'm working on it now.'
UP!
The ‘Gathering’ Aspect of Life
Hi Fraser,
Been meaning to say something for ages but not sure what.
I live in London and always go on peace marches, but somehow I feel funny towards it, I know all the people are there essentially for the same reasonand most don't know why they are and that's fine. BUT I think it’s WHY dance parties and festivals have evolved out of our culture - the 'gathering' aspect of life...).
All I hope for, is next Saturday April 12th when we march, it's not a peace 'protest' or anything of the sort - non aggressive and non-angry I guess is what I mean. It's about something we all know inside inherently and feel, and that's why we're there, but am not sure we understand it because we 'think' to understand it right now.
We're all there because we know this here right now (past/ future hurdles) is not the way to 'function' in life, it's not the way to 'be'.... our strength will not be in giving speeches and saying what all of us already 'think' and are 'frustrated' about because we know all this.
It's about us feeling the peace together and using this to overcome the negative. We all know this to be true, let's be honest, just being positive and peaceful towards our workmates (in this strange 9-5 working world we're so accustomed to) who’ve become immune to the war makes them more peaceful and positive and spreads awareness... it's shown me for sure.
That's all I wanted to say, let's simplify it and do it that way. Let's shift a little more to the right side of the brain and stop debating the other - perhaps that's why more females aren't in power??????
Peace, love and light....
SImone / London
UP!
An airplane was about to crash with 5 passengers
but only 4 parachutes on board....
1ST PASSENGER: "I’m Kobe Bryant, the best NBA basketball player, the Lakers need me, I can't afford to die." So saying, he took the 1st pack and jumped out of the plane.
2nd PASSENGER: “I’m Hillary Clinton, wife of the former US President, a NY State Senator and a potential future president." So saying, she took the 2nd pack and jumped.
3rd PASSENGER: “I’m George W. Bush, president of the United States of America. I have great responsibility being the leader of a super-power nation and I am the cleverest president in American history, so America's people won't let me die." He grabbed the pack next to him and jumped.
4th PASSENGER: “I’m the Pope” he said to the 5th passenger, a 10 year old schoolgirl. "But I’m very old and frail and don't have many years left. So, as a Catholic, I will sacrifice my life and let you have the last parachute."
5th PASSENGER: "it's okay, Father, there’s a parachute left for you. America's cleverest president took my schoolbag."
UP!
Dear Fraser, thanks for the last UP!, totally 'right on' as usual. I can't begin to thank you for your weekly doses of sanity that co-incidentallyI started receiving after 9-11.
nick macdonald uk
UP!
think deeply on this
The first cases of the new deadly SARS are believed to have been in the Guangdong Province in southern Mainland China in late 2002. From there, the disease spread to Hong Kong and on to Hanoi, Vietnam in February. Infected travellers then carried it worldwide; by late March, more than 1,600 cases and 58 deaths in 13 countries were attributed to the disease.
All right? Now think deeply on this: if you believe for a moment that we can treat the outrage and consequent violent reactions to the injustices which our governments have perpetrated with EVEN HEAVIER VIOLENCE, then the question you must answer is:
WHO’S GUARDING GUANGDONG PROVINCE??!!
WHO’S PROTECTING COIMBRA, PORTUGAL??
WHO’S PROTECTING TUKTUK, SUMATRA?!
or remember my idea (worked out in 5 minnits) that all a terrorist needs do is lace a hundred dollar bills with botulism and then, wearing gloves, spend them all in new york...
now face it this:
A 20 YEAR WAR ON TERROR CANNOT PROTECT US!
UP!
THE NEW NERO
A new pathology is ravaging the city. It‘s taken control of the neurons of the Empire. First it infected the emperor himself and then it was transmitted to his oligarchs. First it took control of the center and now it is shaking the peripheries, from north to south and from east to west. Now, at the height of its fury, the incredulity has given way to stupor.
This is the feeling that is giving rise to an unbearable and diffuse malaise among "experts" as well as among "ordinary citizens." This is an indisputable intuition, which has been persistently rejected because it is unacceptable.
How can we admit that we have returned to the worst hours of the Roman Empire, those that bear the tragic seal of Caligula and Nero? How is it possible now, in our day, when supposedly there is the most comprehensive application of "democracy" in the history of humanity, to accept the idea that the most "developed," wealthy and powerful nation in the world has a leadership that has come down with a devastating psychosis?
Indeed, everything is impelling us to minimize the gravity of this matter, insofar as possible. But the time has come for us to open our eyes. The time has come to forget the old idea - forged during the course of two centuries - of the United States as the bridgehead of the "free world" and "democracy."
The reality that we are trying to keep at a distance is that the United States has become a theocracy and a pathocracy.
A THEOCRACY
It has become a theocracy because nearly all the important decisions of President George W. Bush's administration are taken "in the name of God" - an angry and vengeful God, not a God of love and compassion - and because this system is not encountering any serious opposition on the part of the legislative and legal institutions, not to mention the media.
For two years now, there has been a great deal of focus in the discourse on the subject of "good and evil" and the strategy derived from it with respect to the "axis of evil." This has generally been based on the return, in full force, of the primitive moralizing that runs through a large part of the political and intellectual history of the United States. But in fact, it is something of an entirely different nature. It is the brutal transformation of an oligarchic republic tinged with democracy into a republic that is essentially theocratic.
If we realize this, then it is possible to understand that everything becomes possible from the point of view of Bush's administration, from the rejection of the Kyoto treaty to the perpetuation of the death penalty, from the attempt to marginalize the UN to the approaching exit from the World Trade Organization, from the war in Afghanistan to the war in Iraq.
A PATHOCRACY
But the US has also become a pathocracy, a regime that is neurotic in essence, the leaders of which are, quite simply, psychopaths. I offer the hypothesis that the American president is personally suffering from a paranoid psychosis and that the quartet he has formed with Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld constitutes a government that is both theocratic and pathocratic.
Therefore we must not slip into the ordinary plaint that claims: "He's crazy, they're all crazy." It is necessary to understand the extent to which the new Emperor, his principal advisers and those who carry out his directives have brought the most disturbing pathology into the heart of the world empire.
In order to judge whether this is indeed the case, it is enough to read the full texts of the speeches that are published on the White House Internet site (whitehouse.gov) and the statements by the quartet on the State Department site. A study of the videotapes of the president's appearances is also recommended. These sources set forth a worldview that is intrinsically paranoid, imbued with visions of the most regressive Crusades, drenched in a frightening symbolism that sees any external opposition as evidence of crime and in which every decision and every action bear the seal of a vengeful divinity.
I recommend all citizens of the world judge for themselves. The time has come to move from vague intuitions to diagnosis. Sigmund Freud, who so appositely revealed president Woodrow Wilson's pathology - come back!
Francois de Bernard.
UP!
SADDAM, THE MEDIA AND US: TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE
Since 1991, the mainstream European and American media has funnelled an accumulation of lies intended to convince public opinion to support a war against Iraq. Today, many European governments have distanced themselves from Bush's tactics. Can we assume that the European media will tell us the whole truth right now? Have they subjected all the information that has been trotted out over the last 12 years to a critical evaluation?
TEST YOURSELF AND SEE!
1. Saddam was punished starting from the moment he invaded Kuwait in 1990. TRUE or FALSE?
FALSE: The US Congress imposed an embargo against Iraq the year before, 1989, after he made an appeal to the countries of the Middle East to unite in order to become more independent of the USA.
(ALSO: Why have the mainstream Western media carefully hidden the history of Kuwait? It had always been part of Iraq. But British colonialists granted it independence in 1920 "in order to weaken Iraq and to deprive it of access to the sea" (quoted from a letter written by the British governor at the time). No country in the region recognized this separation. And all the successive Iraqi regimes have sought ways to regain this lost province.
2. Saddam is solely responsible for the murderous Iran-Iraq War (1980-1998). TRUE or FALSE?
FALSE: Saddam did unleash this war, but only after Iranian provocations, including the attempted assassination of Tariq Aziz. It was Iran¹s leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, who refused to sign a peace treaty and made the war last eight years.
But most important here is the diabolical strategy of the United States: divide and conquer. Henry Kissinger is on record as saying he hoped this war "would last as long as possible and that the greatest possible number of people die on both sides." In fact, the USA never tolerated a Middle Eastern state that had the means to resist Israel, and it has attacked Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinians. And Iraq has faithfully supported the Palestinians.
3. Saddam wilfully gassed 5,000 Kurdish civilians in Halabja. TRUE or FALSE?
DOUBTFUL Let us recall the numerous media lies that were launched in 1991
when the USA and Europe attacked Iraq: incubators supposedly stolen by the Iraqi army from Kuwait City, the oil lake attributed to Saddam (but which was in reality the work of the US army) the alleged torture of Western pilots who were taken prisoner, the nonsense about the "fourth largest army in the world" presented as if it were a threat to all of us. All of these charges collapsed (see
http://www.freeflights.net/carl1/attmedia.htm).
As far as Halabja is concerned, in the January 31, 2003 edition of The New York Times, Stephen C. Pelletiere, a CIA officer in charge of following this war, and professor of the U.S. Army War College, refuted Bush, pointing out that 1) the gassing occurred by mistake during a battle between the Iraqi and Iranian armies; and 2) it was almost certainly the work of the Iranian army, the only one that possessed this type of gas
(cyanide-based) used in the battle. His conclusion: "There may be justifications for
invading Iraq, but Halabja is not one of them."
Whatever one may think of it, what would people say if Cuba bombed Washington because the United States had committed serial war crimes, attempted to assassinate Castro and to invade the island, and had accumulated weapons of mass destruction in Guantanomo Bay?
4. Saddam possesses the most dangerous weapons in the world (Bush, January 2003). TRUE or FALSE?
FALSE: Israel clandestinely acquired and illegally possesses 200 nuclear warheads, and denies it and refuses any inspection. Israel has imprisoned Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli engineer who was courageous enough to reveal the existence of this nuclear arsenal. This is the great taboo for the Western media. Why must Iraq, a sovereign state, disarm itself when Israel threatens the entire region?
But the greatest danger comes from the USA itself, which has used nuclear weapons (Hiroshima), chemical weapons (Vietnam, Agent Orange) and bacteriological weapons (Cuba). Today, the USA refuses to commit itself to not using nuclear weapons, even against a non-nuclear country. Under the pretext of a "threat." Hitler was also claiming to be "threatened" by Poland.
It's worth noting that even in 1991, when he was attacked by the West, Saddam did not use chemical weapons.
5. The West ought to eliminate Saddam because he is a tyrant. TRUE or FALSE?
HYPOCRITICAL: The United States has supported and still supports the worst dictators on the planet: Mobutu, Pinochet, all the dictators in Latin America, and Turkish generals. because they serve its economic interests.
The true objective of the USA was defined in July 2002 by one of Bush's close aides, Senator Lugar: "We are going to run the oil business. We are going to run it well, we are going to make money; and it's going to help pay for the rehabilitation of Iraq because there is money there."
Esso, Shell and BP rank among the TOP 15 multi-national corporations. They colonised and pillaged Iraq until 1958, and, driven out by a revolution of national liberation, have never stopped wanting to recapture the second largest oil reserves in the world. And they want to oust their French and Russian competitors (Total and Lukoil, respectively). Washington wants to use total blackmail to control the energy supplies of its rivals: Europe and Japan.
The United States' economy is bankrupt: imports exceed exports by $450 billion per year. It is holding up only because of German and Japanese loans. And by confiscating petro-dollars from the Middle East, thanks to the corrupt emirs and sheiks they impose on puppet states in the Gulf.
6. Saddam is incapable of being a model for any society. TRUE or FALSE?
FALSE: Saddam represents the Iraqi nationalist bourgeoisie, which drove British colonialists out of the country in 1958. Because of this, he presents two different faces.
On the one hand, he certainly does not represent a "model for society" for those who advocate a socialist society and democracy as the only means of assuring the well being of the entire population.
But, compared to the other regimes in the Middle East, his balance sheet is much more positive: instead of pouring petro-dollars back into US multi-national corporations, he used them (and all Western observers have recognized this) to develop education, health care and, in general, the economy of his country.
Iraq is also the only secular state in the Middle East. In his administration, it is not unusual to see women holding important positions, and men working for them. Compare that to the other neighboring countries.
7. Saddam was an instrument used by the USA, and it's out of the question to consider him an anti-imperialist. TRUE or FALSE?
FALSE: We must start with facts, with economic reality. The aggravation of the crisis and the global economic war push the multi-national corporations of wealthy countries to leave the capitalist class in each third-world country nothing more than crumbs from the cake. They know how to take complete control of a strategic country, with its enterprises, and its raw materials.
In order to survive, the local bourgeoisie often has no recourse other than opposing imperialism. Its resistance has the effect of involving the largest part of the population in the struggle. However, in order to resist the planetary threat today represented by the United States and its allies, it is in the interest of the people that the anti-imperialist front be as large as possible.
What is the principal contradiction in Iraq today? That between the country and the threat of imperialist occupation. To bring another conflict into the foreground, the one between the Iraqi bourgeoisie and its population, plays into Bush's hands.
Imagine a man and his wife having a fight. A thief appears who wants to seize their property and set fire to their home. Which task has priority? Continuing the argument or putting out the fire?
8. But it would be good, all the same, if we got rid of Saddam. TRUE or FALSE?
FALSE: Good for whom? At this moment, Saddam represents the independence of his country, that is to say the right to refuse to give oil away for free to multi-national corporations. Any "imported" leader¹ whether he is brought in by bombs or by blackmail will be a puppet. To say "we must replace Saddam", amounts, in the current balance of power, to letting the ruling class of the United States and Europe do whatever it wants.
To replace rebels with puppets is the global strategy of re-colonisation. Condoleezza Rice, Bush's Secretary of State, stated: "Saddam's Iraq as well as Arafat's Palestinians need new leaders capable of leading reforms as in Serbia and in Afghanistan." Let's take a look at the results. In Afghanistan, ten ministers out of sixteen carry a US passport, and President Karzai is a hired hand of the US multi-national oil company, Unocal. In Serbia, the price of a loaf of bread has gone from four to thirty dinars; the cost of electricity has increased fourfold, depriving people of electric power as well as heating (170,000 families in Belgrade alone). The IMF has demanded that 800,000 workers be let go from firms before privatizing everything for the exclusive benefit of
multi-nationals.
Such made-in-the-USA "democratic leaders" are spearheading the re-colonisation of the world. It is a merciless process for the country's workers and farmers.
9. All the same, it is impossible to support Saddam! TRUE or FALSE?
FALSE: The first question for any anti-imperialist is: Must everything possible be done to prevent the United States from completely dominating the world, yes or no? The answer is of course, yes. Because, if we let the balance of power deteriorate further to their advantage, it will result in a new fascism that will threaten all the peoples of the world.
When Hitler and Mussolini were menacing the world, it was necessary to support all those who resisted them. Including, for example, the Ethiopian dictator, Haile Selassie, who opposed the Italian invasion.
Is it then necessary to support the resistance of the Iraqi people and their leaders against invasion? The answer is also yes.
After Iraq, Bush will seize Iran, Syria, or even Saudi Arabia. If Washington completely controls the Middle East (and the other great strategic regions: Central Asia, the Caucasus, Central Africa, Maghreb, the northern part of Latin America), the balance of power will be even more disadvantageous during the next wars planned by Bush.
And when the USA occupies a region, the conditions of the struggle become much worse for all the people living there, whether it's the struggle for the right to eat, the struggle for democracy, for the environment or for the solidarity of peoples. A US military occupation is the worst of catastrophes for these various peoples, and for the balance of power in the world. If Iraqi leaders resist US imperialism, is it a good thing to do for their people? Yes.
A Communist Iraqi fled Saddam and took Algerian citizenship. He returned in April 2002 with our mission as an "Inspector of Peace," and stated clearly: "Today, my duty as a Communist is to defend my country and its raw materials from the USA. With the present regime, if necessary. As soon as the threat has been neutralized, it will be up to the Iraqi people to decide whether to transform the regime or to replace it. To let wealthy countries decide instead is merely paternalistic colonialism."
The imperialist countries advocate the suppression of the sovereignty of third-world states in order to justify their rapacious interference, and they are able to threaten all people who resist globalisation. But the right to sovereignty is something acquired by the anti-colonial struggle, and it is necessary to preserve it.
This is why the global interest of peoples is to support the countries and leaders who resist seizure by the United States. This does not imply approval of all of their actions, past or present, nor the rest of their political program. But its counter-productive to place such criticism in the foreground at the moment when Bush is looking for a way to swing international public opinion in his favor.
10. Finally, shouldn't one say "Neither Bush Nor Saddam"? TRUE or FALSE?
FALSE: This is what the dominant tendency in the Left in Europe has been inclined to say for the last twelve years, and it has borne extremely negative consequences.
In 1991, under the slogan of "Neither Bush nor Saddam," it said "no" to war but "yes" to an embargo against Iraq. In reality, it was another form of warfare: and soon there were two million victims.
In 1995 and 1999, with the slogan of "Neither NATO nor Milosevic," it approved (and in some cases even demanded) NATO bombardments. It was a prelude to imposing an IMF government and a NATO occupation in Kosovo, which today lives under a reign of terror led by the Albanian mafia and the ethnic cleansing of the national minorities: Serbs, Roma, Jews, Muslims, Turks, etc.
In 2001, with "Neither Bush nor the Taliban," they shut their eyes to the neocolonial occupation of Afghanistan, whose goal is to construct a US pipeline and the installation of military bases in the heart of Central Asia. We have heard "Neither Sharon nor Arafat" many times.
Tomorrow, we will hear more "Neither Nor" propositions when Washington attacks Iran, Korea, Colombia (where a war has already started), the Philippines or other countries. It will always be done with the same humanitarian pretexts; it will always be done with media lies to demonis those who put up resistance. Now is the time to return to the true fundamental position of the Left, which must of necessity be anti-colonialism: the aggressor and the victim of aggression must never be put on the same footing; the war propaganda and media lies disseminated by the ruling class must be unmasked; and most of all, the hidden economic interests behind each war must be denounced.
Subsequently, the only possible anti-imperialist position is to say "NO!" to the global war and to support the resistance people put up against it.
The "Neither Nor" proposition is condemned to paralysis. The "Neither Nor" proposition prevents the growth and unification of resistance to US imperialism.
[Michel Collon remix]
[Michel Collon remix]
UP!
"My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I’m afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain - especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state."
Albert Einstein
UP!
MY VIEWS ARE THOSE OF MILLIONS
I am not a traitor and I will not be gagged over this war
George Galloway, MP in UK Parliament
Last week the government enlisted the Murdoch press to launch an assault on me with the journalistic equivalent of a cluster bomb. The central thrust of their attacks, that I am a traitor not fit to sit in parliament, was scattered over the Sun, News of the World, Times and Sunday Times. Some bomblets were designed to wound now (like the incitement to pound me with hate mail and threatening phone calls), others to explode later, and with terminal effect (like the order to strip me of parliamentary rank through withdrawal of the Labour whip, followed by expulsion).
In a world where thousands of civilians are being minced by the real thing, this would not ordinarily detain us over-long, but both the medium and the message are significant. That Tony Blair has taken New Labour into the outer limits of social democratic politics, a kind of twilight zone where, in the dimness, an axis of Bush, Blair, Berlusconi, Aznar and Sharon can just be glimpsed, is pretty much a given. But his alliance with the cheap jingo press, which is spreading racist hatred in this conflict, is a key development in the war for Labour's future. This latest attack on me, for example, was fed to a willing press by Labour sources. I know this because the national newspaper editor who was first offered the "story" (a transcript of a translated interview I gave to Abu Dhabi TV) turned it down and alerted me. It was then given to the Sun. The transcribed words were mine; the spin was all New Labour's.
The Sun (whose columnist, Richard Littlejohn, called me a "cocksucker" last week and assaults Muslims every time he takes out his armour-plated lap-top - "You're Shiite and you know you are") and the News of the World (which told us yesterday that model Nell McAndrew was sending her knickers to Our Boys at the front) are Mr Blair's new friends, and the principal cheerleaders for his war of aggression.
Mr Blair, it seems, wants free speech in Baghdad, but not in the British parliament. He wants to use his systems of regime control - the whips, the emasculated national executive committee and the party conference (now dragooned more carefully than a Ceausescu mass wedding) - to ensure that only "licensed" and low-key opposition is heard.
It's true that some of my words have been harsh, but that's because I'm expressing the views of the millions who remain fiercely angry at the government's taking us into a war in defiance of the UN, in the teeth of overwhelming international opposition, on bogus and fabricated grounds, and to such disastrous effect. Not least, I'm speaking for the many in the British Muslim community - Shi'a or otherwise - who feel powerless and virtually voiceless amid the slaughter of Muslims in Palestine, Afghanistan and now Iraq.
Whole regiments of journalists and commentators have thrown objectivity to the desert wind and signed up for the war effort, endlessly parroting propaganda, wheeling this way and that, virtually on command. Parliamentary sketch-writers openly deride hostile questioning in the Commons as "suicide missions" on the part of MPs whose right, indeed duty, it is to stop our own parliament becoming a rubber-stamp assembly like those in Baghdad and elsewhere. The threat to discipline me is also crucially aimed at muzzling the others in what is at risk of becoming a frenzy of intolerance, shredding the very values for which the "coalition" claims to be fighting.
Any sense of how this illegal war is playing around the globe is now virtually absent from public discourse; Bush and Blair have gone from being "the west" to the "international community" to being, quite simply, the known world. The safety of our citizens at home and abroad, the trading and other interests of the state and the security of the world we will be leaving to our children are all gravely imperilled by this colonial crime and blunder. But to say so in Blair's Airstrip One is to become, as the Sun called me, "A traitor ... an enemy of the state".
The real traitors are those who recklessly abandoned our European heartland and Labour's natural friends like Gerhard Schröder, Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter and subordinated our interests to an extreme rightwing faction of a foreign power; George Bush's USA. History will judge New Labour more harshly than their fans at Wapping have done so far.
I don't want to be pushed out of Labour politics. After 35 years, and having served at every level, I suspect I love the Labour party rather more than Mr Blair does. I hope he will eschew a witch-hunt. But, just in case, my friends and I are busy building the new Glasgow central constituency into an impregnable fortress of real Labour values. Mr Blair and his peculiar allies, his army of rightwing hacks and control-freaks, may well besiege it. But they will have their work cut out to overcome it.
George Galloway, Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin, and columnist for the Scottish Mail on Sunday
gallowayg@parliament.uk
please write to george and give him some support in his brave, principled stand!!!!
and, in case all this is depressing you and making you afraid to stand by your principles, here are some hugely encouraging words from michael moore who spoke up so bravely at the recent Oscars...
FEAR AND THE GOOD NEWS
by Michael Moore
What I am most concerned about right now is that the majority of Americans who did not support this war in the first place do not go silent or be intimidated by what will be touted as some great military victory.
Now, more than ever, the voices of peace and truth must be heard. I’ve received a lot of mail from people who are feeling a profound sense of despair and believe that their voices have been drowned out by the drums and bombs of false patriotism. Some are afraid of retaliation at work or neighborhoods because they’ve been vocal proponents of peace. They’ve been told over and over that it is not "appropriate" to protest once the country is at war, and that your only duty now is to "support the troops."
Well, when you’ve read what’s happened to me since I used my time on the Oscar stage two weeks ago to speak out against Bush and this war, you'll feel a bit more emboldened to make your voice heard in whatever way or forum that is open to you.
When "Bowling for Columbine" was announced as the Oscar winner for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards, the audience rose to its feet. It was a great moment, one that I will always cherish.
They were standing and cheering for a film that says we Americans are a uniquely violent people, using our massive stash of guns to kill each other and to use them against many countries around the world.
They were applauding a film that shows George W. Bush using fictitious fears to frighten the public into giving him whatever he wants.
And they were honoring a film that states the following: The first Gulf War was an attempt to reinstall the dictator of Kuwait; Saddam Hussein was armed with weapons from the United States; and the American government is responsible for the deaths of a half-million children in Iraq over the past decade through its sanctions and bombing.
Since that was the movie they were cheering, the movie they voted for, I decided that’s what I should acknowledge in my speech.
... Halfway through my remarks, some in the audience started to cheer. That immediately set off a group of people in the balcony who started to boo. Then those supporting my remarks started to shout down the booers. The L. A. Times reported that the director of the show started screaming at the orchestra "Music! Music!" in order to cut me off, so the band dutifully struck up a tune and my time was up.
The next day - and in the two weeks since - the right-wing pundits and radio shock jocks have been calling for my head.
So, has all this ruckus hurt me? Have they succeeded in "silencing" me?
Well, take a look at:
MY OSCAR "BACKLASH":
On the day after I criticized Bush and the war at the Academy Awards, attendance at "Bowling for Columbine" in theaters around the country went up 110% (DailyVariety).
The following weekend, the box office gross was up a whopping 73% (Variety) and it’s now the longest-running consecutive commercial release in America, 26 weeks in a row and still thriving. The number of theaters showing the film since the Oscars has INCREASED, and it has now bested the previous box office record for a documentary by nearly 300%.
Yesterday (April 6), "Stupid White Men" shot back to No 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. This is my book's 50th week on the list, 8 of them at No 1, and this marks its fourth return to the top position, something that virtually never happens.
In the week after the Oscars, my website was getting 10-20 million hits A DAY (one day we even got more hits than the White House!). The mail has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive (and the hate mail has been hilarious!).
In the two days following the Oscars, more people pre-ordered the video for "Bowling for Columbine" on Amazon.com than the video for the Oscar winner for Best Picture, "Chicago".
In the past week, I have obtained funding for my next documentary, and I have been offered a slot back on television to do an updated version of "TV Nation"/"The Awful Truth."
I tell you all of this because I want to counteract a message that is told to us all the time - that, if you take a chance to speak out politically, you will live to regret it.
DIXIE CHICKS ARE STILL ON TOP!
Take the Dixie Chicks. I'm sure you've all heard by now that, because their lead singer mentioned how she was ashamed that Bush was from her home state of Texas, their record sales have "plummeted" and country stations are boycotting their music. The truth is that, after all the attacks, their album is still at No 1 on the Billboard country charts and, according to Entertainment Weekly, on the pop charts during all the brouhaha, they ROSE from 6 to 4. In the New York Times, Frank Rich reports that he tried to find a ticket to ANY of the Dixie Chicks' upcoming concerts but he couldn't because they were all sold out.
Their song, "Travelin' Soldier" (a beautiful anti-war ballad) was the most requested song on the internet last week. They have not been hurt at all - but that’s not what the media would have you believe. Why is that? BECAUSE THERE IS NOTHING MORE IMPORTANT NOW THAN TO KEEP THE VOICES OF DISSENT -- AND THOSE WHO WOULD DARE TO ASK A QUESTION -- SILENT.
And what better way than to try and take a few well-known entertainers down with a pack of lies so the average Joe or Jane gets the message loud and clear: "Wow, if they would do that to the Dixie Chicks or Michael Moore, what would they do to little ol' me?" In other words, shut the f--- up.
FEAR, AND THE GOOD NEWS
And that, my friends, is the real point of this film that I just got an Oscar for - how those in charge use FEAR to manipulate the public into doing whatever they’re told.
>>> now where did i hear about a regime where fear kept people in line?
Well, the good news - if there can be any good news this week - is that not only have neither I nor others been silenced, we have been joined by millions of Americans who think the same way we do. Don't let the false patriots intimidate you by setting the agenda or the terms of the debate. Don't be defeated by polls that show 70% of the public in favor of the war. Remember that these Americans being polled are the same Americans whose kids (or neighbor's kids) have been sent over to Iraq. They are scared for the troops and they’re being cowed into supporting a war they did not want.
Unfortunately, Bush and Co. are not through yet. This invasion and conquest will encourage them to do it again elsewhere. The real purpose of this war was to say to the rest of the world, "Don't Mess with Texas - If You Got What We Want, We're Coming to Get It!"
This is not the time for the majority of us who believe in a peaceful America to be quiet. Make your voices heard. Despite what they have pulled off, it is still our country.
UP!
R JAMES WOOLSEY REMEMBER THE NAME
If you think Donald said to George one day “You know, pres, I think we should help those poor Iraqi people to the best democracy money can buy, like ours” then don’t bother reading this.
But if you have the slightest doubt that the Bush admin might just be completing the second step in its 20 Year Terror War to remake the world, starting with the Middle East which is putting up the most resistance and also has a helluva lot of the required oil, then watch out for R James Woolsey.
Who he? Oh, an ex CIA director who’s being pushed hard by fellow neocons in the Pentagon to play a key role in the “Brand New Iraq”.
So Squeaky Clean & Brand New, in fact, that Woolsey was pushing for America, the one remaining super power, to deploy its overwhelming military force to transform the Arab world into real democracy, before September 11, 2001. By real democracy, he might even agree, he means the freedom to choose, on the basis of tightly limited and extravagantly spun information, between two major parties funded by zillionaire corporations.
So if Mr Woolsey pops up in Baghdad, you’ll know that "World War IV" is picking up speed, the demonisation and ultimate crippling of all independent power centres. The Cold War, in the neo-con view, was World War III.
[jim lobe remix]
UP!
“A growing body of legal opinion around the world agrees that the new
court has a duty, as Eric Herring of Bristol University wrote, to
investigate "not only the regime, but also the UN sanctions and bombing
which violated the human rights of Iraqis on a vast scale. Add the present piratical war, whose spectre is the uniting of Arab nationalism with militant Islam and it becomes clear that the whirlwind sown by Blair and Bush is just beginning. Such is the magnitude of their crime.”
John Pilger.
UP!
CBS PRODUCER FIRED FOR COMPARING THE MOOD IN AMERICA TO THAT OF GERMANS WHO HELPED HITLER'S RISE TO POWER
'Hitler' Exec Producer Fired Over Certain Comparisons
The executive producer of a CBS miniseries about Adolf Hitler's rise to power has been fired for giving an interview in which he compared the current mood of Americans to that of the Germans who helped Hitler rise to power.
He was fired April 6 from Alliance Atlantis, the production company making "Hitler: The Rise of Evil" for CBS, where he’d worked 11 years and was head of the firm's long-form programming division.
In an interview with TV Guide about the 4-hour film, scheduled for May, Gernon compares many Americans' acceptance of a war in Iraq to the fearful climate in post-World War I Germany, of which Hitler took advantage to become its ruler. "It basically boils down to an entire nation gripped by fear, who ultimately chose to give up their civil rights and plunged the whole nation into war. I can't think of a better time to examine this history than now."
CBS has been trying very hard to frame "Hitler" as a historical piece that in no way sensationalises or offers excuses for Hitler's actions.
[Zap2it.com]
UP!
IT IS ABOUT OIL AND THE ECONOMY AFTER ALL, STUPID!
an economic parallelanalysis
A World Nation remix by Brandon Prince
worldnation@ntlworld.com
Bush flew to Ireland in advance of Chancellor Gordon Brown's budget speech to talk about the reconstruction of the post-war USA, and specifically, how to shore up a failing economy. His main concern is to get the war over cheaply, create work for US reconstruction and security contractors, and start trading Iraqi oil - in dollars. The collapse of the US economy, triggering a worldwide shift of power, is bound up with the fate of Iraq.
And of course its oil. Or more specifically, how that oil is paid for. The Invasion of Iraq is part of an oil currency war. It aims to prevent the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) from switching from the dollar to the euro as an oil transaction currency standard. In order to pre-empt this, it is necessary to gain strategic control of Iraq, which possesses the world's second largest oil reserves.
The Federal Reserve's greatest nightmare is that OPEC will switch its international transactions from a dollar standard to a euro standard. Iraq made this switch in November 2000, and has profited from the dollar's steady depreciation against the euro. (Note: the dollar declined 17% against the euro in 2002.)
The Bush administration and the corporate military industrial network conglomerate want a puppet government in Iraq so that it will revert back to a dollar standard and stay that way (while also hoping to veto any wider OPECmomentum towards the euro, especially from Iran - the 2nd largest OPECproducer who is actively discussing a switch to euros for its oil exports).
Despite Saudi Arabia being a `client state,' the Saudi regime appears increasingly weak, and under threat from civil unrest. Political change might follow an unpopular US occupation of Iraq. The Bush administration is aware of these risks. The new framework requires a large permanent military presence in the Gulf in apost-Saddam era, just in case we need to control Saudi's Ghawar oil fields in the event of a coup. But back to Iraq.
Saddam sealed his fate when he decided to switch to the euro in late 2000, later converting his $10 billion reserve fund at the UN to euros. At that point, war become inevitable under Bush Jr.
Everything else aside from the reserve currency and the Saudi/Iran oil issues (i.e. domestic political issues and international criticism) is peripheral and of marginal consequence. The dollar-euro threat is powerful enough that the Bush administration will rather risk economic backlash in the short-term to stave off the long-term dollar crash of an OPEC transaction standard change from dollars to euros. All of this fits into the broader Great Game that encompasses Russia, India, China.
This could reduce investor and consumer confidence, borrowing/spending, create political pressure to form a new energy policy that weans us off Middle-Eastern oil.
Many analysts were surprised that Saddam was willing to give up millions in oil revenue for a political statement when he switched from dollars to euros for oil sales