p.2    THE CASE AGAINST GM CROPS
THE GM DEBATE HAS RECEIVED LITTLE PUBLICITY FOR SUCH A CRUCIAL ISSUE....  WE CHANGE ALL THAT!!!
p.6      //YOU FEEDBACK:  NEO TANTRICISM
p.10   political sex more fraser ruminating
p.12   WHITE HOUSE STOLE LYING TECHNIQUES FROM MY PATENTED ‘FIBBING TIPS FOR PICKING UP WOMEN’!
p.15   'RAPED' MASSAI WOMEN WIN LEGAL AID
p.20    Pete Passports’ Comments on the latest UP!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * ASTRAL ENERGY ANALYSIS FOR WEEK OF JULY 9-15 * * * * * * * * * * * *
TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR OWN SECURITY
Business and family are coming together.
How do we encourage our communities, and our nation,
to work for our real best interests?
Who do we trust for support?
Full Moon brightens our Sunday.
We will want to have some laughs and fun.
Fighting spirit increases for the nation,
and will continue to increase.
For details, see Maya’s Daily Success Guide at
www.daykeeperjournal.com
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * * * *

UP! EVERstop2WONDER why you have to click on "Start" to stop Windows 98?



FRI JULY 4        Our scans now show that life as we know it
may exist in a hundred
billion galaxies
Tim Radford, science editor, Guardian,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/spacedocumentary/story/0,2763,991195,00.html
UP! EVERstop2WONDER why "abbreviated" is such a long word?

UNDER PRESSURE FROM BUSH AND HIS US CORPORATE MENTORS, THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN TRYING TO SNEAK THROUGH APPROVAL OF GM CROPS. 
THE GM DEBATE IN THE UK HAS NOT RECEIVED VERY MUCH PUBLICITY FOR SUCH A FAR-REACHING AND CRUCIAL ISSUE.
WE CHANGE ALL THAT.  IF U DO NOTHING ELSE TODAY SEND THIS ON!


THE CASE AGAINST
GM CROPS     EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
 
Professor of Genetics Mae Wan Ho at the Open University
(She is not funded by industry, has been free to say what she really thinks, and has been campaigning about it for about ten years.)


Why GM-Free?

1.  GM crops failed to deliver promised benefits
The consistent finding from independent research and on-farm surveys since 1999 is that GM crops have failed to deliver the promised benefits of significantly increasing yields or reducing herbicide and pesticide use. 

GM crops have cost the United States an estimated $12 billion in farm subsidies, lost sales and product recalls due to transgenic contamination.  Massive failures in Bt cotton of up to 100% were reported in India.  Biotech corporations have suffered rapid decline since 2000, and investment advisors forecast no future for the agricultural sector.  Meanwhile worldwide resistance to GM reached a climax in 2002 when Zambia refused GM maize in food aid despite the threat of famine.


   

2.  GM crops pose escalating problems on farms
The instability of transgenic lines has plagued the industry from the beginning, and this may be responsible for a string of major crop failures.  A review in 1994 stated, "While there are some examples of plants which show stable expression of a transgene, these may prove to be the exceptions to the rule.” 

In an informal survey of over 30 companies involved in the commercialisation of transgenic crop plants, almost all of the respondents indicated that they had observed some level of transgene inaction.  Many respondents indicated that most cases of transgene inactivation never reach the literature. 
Triple herbicide-tolerant oilseed rape volunteers that have combined transgenic and non-transgenic traits are now widespread in Canada.  Similar multiple herbicide-tolerant volunteers and weeds have emerged in the United States.  In the United States, glyphosate-tolerant weeds are plaguing GM cotton and soya fields, and atrazine, one of the most toxic herbicides, has had to be used with glufosinate-tolerant GM maize.
Bt biopesticide traits are simultaneously threatening to create superweeds and Bt- resistant pests.


3.  Extensive transgenic contamination unavoidable
Extensive transgenic contamination has occurred in maize landraces growing in remote regions in Mexico despite an official moratorium that has been in place since 1998.
High levels of contamination have since been found in Canada.  In a test of 33 certified seed stocks, 32 were found contaminated.  New research shows that transgenic pollen, wind-blown and deposited elsewhere, or falling directly to the ground, is a major source of transgenic contamination. 
Contamination is generally acknowledged to be unavoidable, hence there can be no co-existence of transgenic and non-transgenic crops.


4.  GM crops not safe
Contrary to the claims of proponents, GM crops have not been proven safe.  The regulatory framework was fatally flawed from the start.  It was based on an anti-precautionary approach designed to expedite product approval at the expense of safety considerations.  The principle of "substantial equivalence", on which risk assessment is based, is intended to be vague and ill-defined, thereby giving companies complete licence in claiming transgenic products "substantially equivalent" to non-transgenic products, and hence "safe".


5.  GM food raises serious safety concerns
There have been very few credible studies on GM food safety.  Nevertheless, the available findings already give cause for concern.  In the still only systematic investigation on GM food ever carried out in the world, "growth factor-like" effects were found in the stomach and small intestine of young rats that were not fully accounted for by the transgene product, and were hence attributable to the transgenic process or the transgenic construct, and may hence be general to all GM food. 
There have been at least two other, more limited, studies that also raised serious safety concerns.


6.  Dangerous gene products are incorporated into crops
Bt proteins, incorporated into 25% of all transgenic crops worldwide, have been found harmful to a range of non-target insects.  Some of them are also potent immunogens and allergens. 
A team of scientists have cautioned against releasing Bt crops for human use.  Food crops are increasingly used to produce pharmaceuticals and drugs, including cytokines, known to suppress the immune system, induce sickness and central nervous system toxicity; interferon alpha, reported to cause dementia, neurotoxicity and mood and cognitive side effects; vaccines; and viral sequences such as the "spike"’ protein gene of the pig coronavirus, in the same family as the SARS virus linked to the current epidemic. 
The glycoprotein gene gp120 of the AIDS virus HIV-1, incorporated into GM maize as a "cheap, edible oral vaccine", serves as yet another biological time-bomb, as it can interfere with the immune system and recombine with viruses and bacteria to generate new and unpredictable pathogens.

7.  Terminator crops spread male sterility
Crops engineered with "suicide" genes for male sterility have been promoted as a means of "containing", i.e., preventing, the spread of transgenes.  In reality, the hybrid crops sold to farmers spread both male sterile suicide genes as well as herbicide tolerance genes via pollen.


8. Broad-spectrum herbicides are highly toxic to humans and other species
Glufosinate ammonium and glyphosate are used with the herbicide-tolerant transgenic crops that currently account for 75% of all transgenic crops worldwide.  Both are systemic metabolic poisons expected to have a wide range of harmful effects, and these have been confirmed.  Glufosinate ammonium is linked to neurological, respiratory, gastrointestinal and haematological toxicities, and birth defects in humans and mammals. 
It is toxic to butterflies and a number of beneficial insects, also to the larvae of clams and oysters, Daphnia and some freshwater fish, especially the rainbow trout.  It inhibits beneficial soil bacteria and fungi, especially those that fix nitrogen. 

Glyphosate is the most frequent cause of complaints and poisoning in the UK.  Disturbances of many body functions have been reported after exposures at normal use levels.  Glyphosate exposure nearly doubled the risk of late spontaneous abortion, and children born to users of glyphosate had elevated neurobehavioral defects.  Glyphosate caused retarded development of the foetal skeleton in laboratory rats.  Roundup caused cell division dysfunction that may be linked to human cancers.
Glyphosate inhibits the synthesis of steroids, and is genotoxic in mammals, fish and frogs.  Field dose exposure of earthworms caused at least 50% mortality and significant intestinal damage among surviving worms.  The known effects of both glufosinate and glyphosate are sufficiently serious for all further uses of the herbicides to be halted.


9. Genetic engineering creates super-viruses
By far the most insidious dangers of genetic engineering are inherent to the process itself, which greatly enhances the scope and probability of horizontal gene transfer and recombination, the main route to creating viruses and bacteria that cause disease epidemics.  This was highlighted, in 2001, by the "accidental" creation of a killer mouse virus in the course of an apparently innocent genetic engineering experiment. 
Newer techniques, such as DNA shuffling are allowing geneticists to create in a matter of minutes in the laboratory millions of recombinant viruses that have never existed in billions of years of evolution.  Disease-causing viruses and bacteria and their genetic material are the predominant materials and tools for genetic engineering, as much as for the intentional creation of bio-weapons.


10. Transgenic DNA in food is taken up by bacteria in human gut
There is already experimental evidence that transgenic DNA from plants has been taken up by bacteria in the soil and in the gut of human volunteers.  Antibiotic resistance marker genes can spread from transgenic food to pathogenic bacteria, making infections very difficult to treat.


11. Transgenic DNA and cancer
Transgenic DNA is known to survive digestion in the gut and to jump into the genome of mammalian cells, raising the possibility for triggering cancer.
The possibility cannot be excluded that feeding GM products such as maize to animals also carries risks, not just for the animals but also for human beings consuming the animal products.


12. CaMV 35S promoter increases horizontal gene transfer
Evidence suggests that transgenic constructs with the CaMV 35S promoter might be especially unstable and prone to horizontal gene transfer and recombination, with all the attendant hazards: gene mutations due to random insertion, cancer, reactivation of dormant viruses and generation of new viruses.  This promoter is present in most GM crops being grown commercially today.


13. There’s been a history of misrepresentation and suppression of scientific evidence
There has been a history of misrepresentation and suppression of scientific evidence, especially on horizontal gene transfer.  Key experiments failed to be performed, or were performed badly and then misrepresented.  Many experiments were not followed up, including investigations on whether the CaMV 35S promoter is responsible for the "growth-factor-like" effects observed in young rats fed GM potatoes.


14. IN CONCLUSION, CO-EXISTENCE OF GM & NON-GM AGRICULTURE IS NOT AN OPTION

1.  GM crops have failed to deliver the promised benefits and are posing escalating problems on the farm. 

2.  Transgenic contamination is now widely acknowledged to be unavoidable, and hence there can be no co-existence of GM and non-GM agriculture.  

3.  Most important of all, GM crops have not been proven safe.  On the contrary, sufficient evidence has emerged to raise serious safety concerns which, if ignored, could result in irreversible damage to health and the environment. .

JULY 30-AUG 3   THE BIG GREEN GATHERING!
What Glastonbury Festival was meant to be but never was and never will be now :(  These guys won’t sell out to the Rock’nRoll Bizness when the Big Green becomes mega.
It promotes sustainability and spirituality, focuses on peace this year, and there will be opportunities to become involved in forums, debates and campaigns for a future that makes sense. No way is it purely a political event either, there’ll be numerous dance and music tents (powered by renewable energy) art installations and mask performances situated in a multimedia wonderland.
Performance art, theatre and acoustic music will go down around the tipis, where you can take part in a sweat lodge. Workshops range from DJing to dancing, singing to drumming and there¹s something for drama queens too.
Adults £80/£50concs.  Tel: 01458 834629
http://www.big-green-gathering.com/
UP! EVERstop2WONDER why the sun lightens our hair, but darkens our skin?


LOVE your insane site. Reminds me of days of yore -- 60's, when being offbeat meant worthy!
Mike / Orlando  Florida
UP! EVERstop2WONDER why doctors call what they do "practice"?


another thousand years of weirdness?
as far as i’m concerned, were all a lot of primitive bastards! if we have any chance of survival, it will be a fookin miracle! we are still living in the dark ages. who do we think we are? if we are to survive... it will surely take another thousand years of weirdness before we get even close.
me, cynical? never!
brian x / sheepherds bush  london
>> they sentenced me to 20 years of boredom, trying to change the system from within, i’m coming now, i’m coming to reward them, first we take manhattan, then we take berlin.  leonard cohen :
UP! EVERstop2WONDER why they sterilise the needle for lethal injections?


//YOU FEEDBACK:  NEO TANTRICISM

Yo Fraser.
It's very easy to see marriage as a fairly thoughtless automatic social response. 

>> possibly in the last few years it has but, for nearly all my adult life, it’s been very difficult to stand against marriage, so please forgive me if i still feel the need to assert loudly that, just because i’m not aiming at marriage, i must be aiming at shallow meaninglessness :)  i’ll cop to it being left-over church paranoia and try not to knock marriage but you watch, much of the criticism i attract will be based, in one form or the other, on the marriage dictum.

For most of my life I viewed it as a ridiculous xtian/ family values/ capitalist contract which, in reality, meant nothing if a couple were truly in love.  But as I've got older, and watched some of my greatest, most lucid and questioning friends "tie the knot", I've come to view it differently.

Everyone I know would like to find "The One". 
>> we don’t know each other then?

But "The One" doesn't simply exist.  The raw materials for the best possible relationship may be present in any number of potential partners, but it isn't until the relationship actually starts that it becomes possible to forge a beautiful, harmonic Gem.  And that, of course, means work. 
There is no such thing as perfection.
All gems are flawed.
>> but which one to “choose” and why, and can we really only polish one gem atta time?

Upon recognition that one has discovered the best possible gem.
That one has finally found the basis for peace, love and understanding.
(Home, as I like to call it.)
Then, marriage is, simply, a public declaration of a couple’s dedication to each other.
>> dedication?  we’ll need to define that, i got no problem with any 2 people deciding to share their practical lives together but i) all sorts of combos might decide to do that and ii) if it IS ‘Love’, then how exackly do we define ‘dedication’, erotically i mean?

It's a celebration of love in which lovers say to everyone they know "come and have a party with us, for us, to bring us even closer together."
>> am not consciously being cynical, but it’s my judgement that, even during those very celebrations, each of the partners fancies some Other being there and, by repressing that urge (for a Higher Cause as they assure themselves) the seeds are already present in that relationship which, no matter how many years this ‘Falling Away’ (from Conscious Truth) takes, will grow & smother it.

I can't think of a society, off the top of my head, where "marriage" doesn't occur.  It's not just a xtian construct.  All of the great weddings I've attended have been fantastically creative ceremonies without even a hint of xtian or legal bullshit.

I know that, when I meet the one, we will marry!
peter / tokyo.
>> heh heh.  invite me to the marriage, i’ve been to some great ones myself, but have no reason to change my opinion.
UP!

I think the Love topic is not just strong, it’s where we really need to put our focus.  Casual loving nurtures us battered and damaged souls.  This can serve to enable deep pair bonding further along, which begins to show us the true deep colours of love. 
The best high on the planet.
And a core element of the glorious ‘60s.
Peace and love,
Peter Lee / San Francisco

UP!

Envelope-to: fraser@parallel-youniversity.com
From: "stewart bremner" <nine@etc>
To: "Fraser Clark - The Parallel YOUniversity" <fraser@parallel-youniversity.com>
Subject: we want MORE than mere marriage!
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 13:11:52 +0100
 
Fraser,
This morning i read the latest UP!  Please forgive me if i have come to any incorrect conclusions about your words, as i have not yet caught up on the last two.

By coincidence, i proposed to my girlfriend last night, so your piece 'we want MORE than mere marriage!' really got me thinking! 

It was a beautiful summer evening and we were atop Arthur’s Seat watching the sunset [that’s the extinct volcano in the middle of Edinburgh, a place of great beauty where i feel a spiritual connection to the world, both man-made and natural.  It's almost a physical example of spirit in some ways.  Being there is to be in the heart of nature, and yet one is surrounded on all sides by a city: the self in society.]

Your article, therefore, was, ah, timely, pushing me as it did to examine why i’d proposed and what i wanted from it. 
Let me make a few counter arguments (in no particular order) and see what happens.

I agree that 'no contract, written or verbal, can guarantee anything (other than mere money) in affairs of the heart (and mind and moving centre).' I am not foolish enough to believe that a piece of paper can guaranteea heart's desire.  However, I do see it as a solid foundation on which to continue to build our relationship. To go, as you say, deeper. 
Of course, our love is a foundation itself but we are products of our society.  No matter how hard we battle those pre-learned ideas, we all have some we find hard to shift.  This is mine. 
Okay, this is one of mine.  But i am working on them.


MONEY IS AN ISSUE HERE
No contract’s a guarantee, and marriage is no exception.  However, money is an issue here.  What i’ve written below was in terms of 'half of what is mine is yours' and 'in the event of my untimely death' and not in terms of ‘gettit’ and “keepit” divorce settlements.  (I’ve made this arbitrary spilt for good reasons and, i guess, personal ones, but that’s another argument.  Not private, just for another time.)

I don't really like money and what it represents and ties us to, but i don't think i’m personally in a position to ignore its influence.  Whilst most people may by swimming in the money tide (not necessarily meaning rich, merely steeped in its world and its 'importance'), i like to consider myself in a lifeboat atop the raging waters: not exactly immersed in it.  However, my small craft, constructed of beliefs, is still susceptible to it's swells and dips.

My point is that a contract guaranteeing something for the person i love most in the world is important.  Because no matter how unjust the rules of the society we live in, we can’t afford to ignore it entirely.  I have job(s), (albeit a few free-lance) and my girlfriend has a job. These and many more things bind us to society.  I want to be sure that, from within this society, my girlfriend and I are seen as a 'we' and not a 'you and you'.   Being married can smooth the way somewhat for a couple within society.  Being that it’s society's recognised couple status can mean that we have less societal hassle, so we can be happier and concentrate more on ourselves and our development.
>> but the hassle is close to minimal and dying daily, that was one of my main points  it’s our ‘fears’ that control us even though the jailers are gone.

No matter how unpleasant or just plain wrong society appears to us, we are part of it.  There’s no way to be outwith society.  No experiments to try and leave society have ever fully worked. 
>> actually i think it happens all the time and society comes plodding along later, and then creates a new ‘normal’.   it’s called evolution :)

You stated 'my own memory of my 3 decades of Free Loving Hippydom is one of recurring disappointment/ bad feeling...'  Can i use this as a small proof of my argument?  No matter how good the intention, i believe these experiments are doomed to failure or, perhaps worse still, assimilation in that which they are trying to break from. 
>> thereby evolving that institution, that’s what i meant about evolution, 
however, r u saying that marriage experiments have proven more successful?


DOES HIPPY MEAN ANYTHING NOW?
Isn't being a hippy now just another brand?  I could, for example, go out today dressed as a hippy, eat in mcdonalds, smoke lots, get drunk, start a fight.  This un-hippiness dilutes the very idea of being a hippy, helping render it meaningless.  It may not change what’s in your head if you really are a hippy but it dilutes the concept.  Therefore, it’s only what’s in your head, and therefore your individual actions that count.  And, since there’s no way to leave society, i believe very strongly that we can, no, must change society from within.


I WANT TO GET MARRIED AND YET CONTINUE TO LEAD THE LIFE I LIVE
So, to get back to where we started: marriage.  There isn’t much more of a kow-tow to society than marriage.  I want to get married and yet continue to lead the life i live with the values i have (and that my girlfriend and i share). 
>> then i have to ask: which of your previous values r u prepared to abandon?  if none (which i am advocating) then what’s marriage, other than a public avowal?

I want to prove to those around us that we can make marriage ours.  I want to make this contract work for us.  Did you purchase the computer you work on without a guarantee?
>> actually yes :)

Isn't a partner more important than a computer?  Perhaps everything that’s not inside my head is society and should be treated as such.

Essentially, i don't disagree with anything you’ve written.  However, your observations seem to me to be based on how marriage exists now and that it’s not changeable or, perhaps, worth changing.  Right now marriage is worth little more than a computer guarantee.  This is wrong.
>> we’re not disagreeing, we’re exploring, trying to think thru concepts which are bandied about in love songs, psalms, tv commercials, biblical scholars, xmas cards, movies written by people for mere money, and all the rest of society’s schizoid mishmash is all :)

to cut to the quick: i do see a sort of non church/state marriage of the future in which one or two or up to a dozen or so learn to live and share together in a fairly long-term sense all the experiences they continue to have outside that relationship.  that’s looking at ‘marriage’ as it will evolve in this millennium.

Lastly, you said 'a potential that never manifested'.  Let's see if we find that potential.  I want more than mere marriage.

Oh, and another thing, one that may seem facile, but is important.  Getting married would make our parents very happy.  Whilst not a reason in itself, bringing joy to people is too important to overlook.  Sure, they’re less free-thinking than us and are therefore more of a fitting part of society and this marriage will bring them joy.  And their joy will give us joy.
>> hmm. 

These are rambling thoughts.  I’m not sure they form any cohesive argument or not, but i needed to think this through ‘on paper’ and your opinion is always eye-opening and something i value.

love
stewart / edinburgh
i drink not much, smoke not at all, spend with thought, laugh at any chance i get, cycle, hardly get angry, stay up too late much less, get up less tired, read all the time, barely watch TV, and meditate too seldom. well, i'm almost there. It's always good to know where one needs to work on oneself.
>> always a pleasure conversing with an open enquiring mind :)
UP! EVERstop2WONDER why Noah didn't swat those two mosquitoes?


political sex?
there’s no neotantric diary this week.  have just been too bizzy, including actually updating the diary itself.

i did stumble across Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics, seemingly by accident.  this was a huge feminist seller in the ‘60s and i thought:  wow, this is meant for me!  this is exactly the connection between the two that i was seeking!

it wasn’t.  or, rather, it’s no longer relevant.  or, rather, it showed how quickly things have changed (and are changing).
basically she’s saying that we live in a patriarchy which runs everything and this extends right down to (and up from) the bed.

well, few women would recognise that,  it’s been swept away by the tide of history, the one that’s still sweeping us along.  which did make me realise that the “free” world has totally transformed on the personal level (as i’ve been writing about!) BUT THE OLD HARD CRUST ATOP THE CULTURE CONTINUES IRRESPECTIVE! 

well, we ‘60s folk always said that the change won’t come from the top down (that would be more patriarchy), it had to come from the bottom up.  and it’s there, it’s coming!  but where does it go next?  when and how exactly (or a little more exactly) does it engage with and begin to change the upper crust?

there’s the future!   a twin parallel evolution where the upper crust begins to dissolve (as is already apparent) and, to repeat my refrain of the past 3 weeks, our internalised ‘moral’ blocks, the internalised ghosts of old tabus, simultaneously evolve, and a new world is glimpsed....  i had a thrilling experience this week when i glimpsed that it really is possible to feel no jealousy or possessiveness, i more than glimpsed it, i experienced it, and it was, for the first time, beyond mental concepts, there was no contradiction anywhere within me.  freedom from possessiveness is a realisable potential!  perhaps i’ll include some of it next week, it’s a steamy story where, by losing on the deepest most embarrassing level i WON a new perspective that can serve me for the rest of my life!!

how the zillions personal changes in the atoms filter up and change the overground culture are very old chestnuts from the ‘60s.  the children of the tecno elite affect their parents’ picture of the world, for example, that’s why i embraced rave culture the moment it self-combusted. 

to conclude for now, i remember writing on this subject in the early ‘70s that “maybe that blowjob mrs nixon gave dick because she’d read about it in Home Journal released enuff of his pent-up macho tensions that he didn’t press the button the next day as he might have.”
UP!


SEX & POLITICS AGAIN AS
DENNIS HANS ACCUSES WHITE HOUSE OF STEALING LYING TECHNIQUES FROM HIS PATENTED ‘FIBBING TIPS TO PICK UP WOMEN’!