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"Have long enjoyed your kind thoughts, you are lovely, please keep it up!!  James, London

“Any astrologer would have advised them not to start a war then because this position means they’ll become extremely bogged down, and the Iraq War will never end for them” the UP!, April 21, 03.

contents
p.2    FOR A FEW EUROS LESS  fraser's inner/outer travels since UP!174
p.4    HELP DEFEND ALASKA’S WOLVES!!!
p.5    BUSH’s LONDON VISIT! and don’t come back!
p.10 “BREAK IT, YOU BUY IT”  Vietnam All Over Again?
p.11  fraser  Liberty Cap - Cosmic Symbol of Peace?
p.13  DODGY BIBLE SEXED UP! //FEEDBACK ON FEEDBACK
p.15  Melanie Klein   America's Enemy Within = US!
p.20  Thanksgiving - the real bloody story
        "Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession."   Psalms 2:8.


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the UP! //:-) 175  dec 1,   2003
la- la- la- lap-toppling da system!                     
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     Enlightenment is a level that's always there but which you remember occasionally :)


        )))))(((
__,,,,_{ô¿ô}_,,,,___
=============== fraser
FOR A FEW EUROS LESS

Hey, the only way I or anyone can work flat out for the planet is by allowing ourselves to be re-programmed regularly by Mother Nature.  Since a pack of triple-bypassed dinosaurs have declared war on all Towelheads, making even gentle Morocco off-limits to tall gringo-looking blond men like moi, I’ve been escaping to South East Spain this year.  It’s warm and it’s cheap to get and be there.

El Desierto de Tabernas, where I’ve spent the last fortnight, is in the heart of Europe’s only desert, 20ks inland from Almeria and south east of Granada.  And it’s clearly the northern beginning of Africa’s desert.  Which is why it’s Europe’s Cowboy Hollywood where the spaghetti westerns were made, though it’s hit hard times since Czechoslovakia’s bargain basement studios came online, or so I heard.  You simply CANNOT wander around these areas without imagining Clint Eastwood and a line of hard cowboys snaking over a distant mesa and down along a funnel of sand cathedrals as the sun sets like a blood stain behind some giant cacti.

Or Mescalito hisself comes stalking towards you.



LITTLE SALTY WATER VALLEY
(AGUILLA ENSALADE)
A mile out of Bodegas town, you turn off on what looks like a wide dirt road - spectacular flash floods reminded us later of its true origin.  Up a half mile long ambush-style entrada of surreal sandrocky cliffs (the exact spot the Injuns would choose to bushwhack the cavalry!) till the road opens into Little Water Valley, with our destination, a long white-painted stone house, perched atop a hill.

Our hosts (and old friends) are Lawrence (“Lorenzo”), world-travelling New Age Bohemian and ex- Savoy Hotel chef, and Bri, his super-intelligent mate who’s ex-Rhodesian, packed with determination and no nonsense, and possessed of a great sense of humour  which has clearly had to be drawn on during the four years they’ve been trying to “reclaim the valley”. 

Now they have 4 little white solar powered cottages, way out beyond the running water and telephone zones, looking out over Little Water Valley, completely surrounded by the Sierra Alhamilla mountains.  (Sierra means saw, because of the teeth shaped hills, like America’s Bad Lands)  They rent the cottages out (details at end cos this is a rave review:) 

Something deep inside me recognised Little Salty Water Valley immediately as some kinda sister of the Kathmandu Valley in old Nepal.  The longer you stay the less you want to leave.  So total is the isolation created by the all-surrounding hills, so completely are you cut off from any disruptive surprises from the “Outside World,” that ‘Outside’ looms increasingly threatening as your defences drop in such ‘natural’ un-stressed safety.  Of course I stayed in Kathmandu for months, and here we only planned 2 weeks, but we unquestionably garnered some of the Effect!

Laurence is half Blackfoot Indian (in Cowboy Land!), which might explain his huge, grizzled, sooper soft and furry Husky called Lobo (wolf) whom we decided should be the Valley’s mascot.  There are rabbits and foxes too (and lots of flies), but, truly, when Lobo would lie down at the hearth in the evening, you got the deeply definite sensation that All’s Well With The World.

Out back of the tiny, one-sided stretch of high street cottages are 4 ‘graves’, mounds of stones with a larger rock placed on top.  5 foot long, just the right size for Mexicans.  And that’s what they are!  Left-over props from For A Few Dollars More, or one of those movies.  And 2 miles from Little Salty Water Valley  are the Texas Hollywood and Mini Hollywood film studios, complete with cowboy towns, cowboy saloons with real swing doors, and fake gold mines too - tourist traps when not actually working. 

Laurence tells me the little town of Tabernas is extremely unique because of this.  Everyone, you see, has been in the movies, and has a secret fantasy of becoming a star.  You can’t help writing scripts there, and one of mine is for a Twin Peaks type series where everyone has this secret inner life, and even the shy little assistant barman was once a Mexican general who personally executed 100 gringo soldiers!

Since there was no internet at the ranch, and we’d brought no wireless and couldn’t get an English newspaper, I had 2 weeks of withdrawals.  Lovely after the first 2 days.  Long walks in arid, brown-green, million year old wilderness, and cosmic contemplations of blue-pink ridge after purple ridge rolling away towards Africa reminded me of this body down there below my neck - like my dog who lives this parallel life down on floor level!  Body!  Humanity!  Solidity! 

Laurence and Bri show very little interest in or knowledge of world events.  So different to myself and the people I know (many of my friends in London can’t bear to follow the news, of course, but they’re much more plugged in than the Valley residents.  And yet their Harmonic Healing centre requires them to get more and more involved with the mayor of Tabernas, and the council, and the whole question of EEC grants.  So the work/play I’m doing affects their lives.  On the other hand, if everything collapses as it very well could do, it could turn out they’ve been prudently preparing for survival all these years, and I’ll certainly be retreating down there!

I did already!  And it’s armed me to wedge my shoulder once more to the effort to Rebuild Civilisation! 

Talking of ‘Civilisation’, or the Matrix Metaphor we got now, I gotta tell you about the long entrada  of cliffs that leads into the Valley.  I swear I remember a cliff there from a Cowboy & Indian movie scene I saw years ago that still affects me deeply.  The cavalry had hunted this final renegade party into a dead-end canyon where they’d finally had to surrender or die.  Except for the proud chief, who jumped off his horse and, hopelessly, began climbing the cliff, with everyone watching.  The captain pulled out his telescoped rifle and patiently and coldly drew a bead on the hopeless refugee wannabe, fired, and the body crashed back to brown earth.  But a huge white dove flew up from the exact spot where the chief’s body hit the ground, making the Indians exclaim and marvel aloud.  Here’s where global corporatism and ‘Christian’ ‘Civilisation’ come in.  The captain drew aim again, this time on the bird, and shot the creature dead.  The Indians were not even to be allowed that mystic hope.  That’s how evil those damn Roman +tians are/were!  The same ones who brought ‘civilisation’ to Britain by the entire legion gangbanging my pagan Briton Queen, Bodicca.  Damn efficient way of establishing ‘markets’!  Still doping it in iraq.
[SEE Thanksgiving - the real bloody story  ON PAGE 14]

It’s good to be back!  Did you miss my black-and-blue technicoloured optimism?
 
fraser :D

[FOR DETAILS ON RENTING A COTTAGE, OR FOR A GROUP TO RENT 3 COTTAGES, 2 YURTS AND 3 TENTS, CONTACT:
bri@harmonic-healing.org
www.harmonic-healing.org
UP!


* * * * * * ** * * * ASTRAL ENERGY ANALYSIS FOR WEEK OF DEC 2-9 * * * * * * * * * * *
SHARED VALUES HAVE TOP PRIORITY
This week we begin a new cycle of relationship
in which shared beliefs and philosophies are important.
Saturday we may be confused about commitment,
but Sunday we can lighten up.
Monday’s full moon is major.
Watch Iraq and John Ashcroft.
For details, see Maya’s Daily Success Guide at
www.daykeeperjournal.com
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * *

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TEXT JOCKEY //  TJ PHRASER (Fraser Clark) & THE MEDIA EVOLUTION 
MIXING THE TRACTS LIVE ON THE KEYBOARD @ A MEDIA-MEME RATE OF 160 IPP * 
* Ideas Per Paragraph
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alaska
HELP DEFEND ALASKA’S WOLVES!!!
The Alaskan government is reviving the barbaric and unethical practice of using aircraft to shoot and kill wolves from the sky, or by chasing them for hours, and then landing and shooting the exhausted animals from the ground.

Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski who’s responsible for allowing the return of this archaic practice, not seen since the height of government-sponsored wolf control programs in the first part of the last century, has worked diligently to overturn the will of his own constituents who voted TWICE ­ in 1996 and in 2000 ­ to ban land and shoot killing. 

Just this month the Alaska Board of Game, whose members are appointed by the governor, approved an aerial wolf control program for a 1,700 square-mile area of interior Alaska.  Every single wolf in this area will be shot by aerial gunners using airplanes and helicopters.  A second, larger control program is planned for an area just east of Anchorage where 80% of the wolves will be killed.

Please sign the petition to Governor Murkowski to Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski, expressing your outrage over this land and shoot wolf hunting program, and insisting that such barbarity has no place in modern society.

Sources tell us the Governor's office is being inundated with calls and faxes, and that nearly 30,000 people have signed the petition already!  The goal is 50,000. WE CAN WIN THIS ONE!!!
FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE...  SWARM IT TO SUCCESS...
www.savealaskawolves.org
UP!


london
FRI DEC 12              PEACE REVOLUTIONS - 'The MATRIX Party'
presented by Seaside Tribe & Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT). All profits to CAAT
4 Zones: SENTINAL, TRINITY, ZION, and MATRIX ZONES.
7 DJ's, 2 Percussion Bands, Matrix Peace & War Visuals, Baraka Visuals, Flower-Power Zone, Facepainting, Live Art, Live Sax, Bellydancers, Costume dancers, Masseurs, Peace Altar, Pressure Groups, Harmonious Living stall, Psycedelicious Chai Caff.
@ The Brixton Telegraph, 228 Brixton Hill / 8pm-4am. £5 advance & before 11pm; £10 after.
Tickets at www.accessallareas.org or 020 7267 8320.
www.seasidetribe.org
UP!


$£ BUSH’s LONDON VISIT! £$

We miss you, phraze - and it's spooky that we've only heard the commercial version of Beat the Bush in Merrie Olde.... seriously, the most radical version was on NPR, which made it sound really BIG, tho' nothing that George and Tony couldn't ignore - unanimous silence on the net
Plus equal silence on last weekend's large protests in Miami and at the Georgia School of the Americas - weird -
Did you have significant eclipses?  Was yr Concordance Harmonic?
Each day we eagerly hope for one of your colorful commentaries  have they silenced you, brother? -  Peace, light and razzles, man, get it UP!
Expectantly,
Richard / webtv.net
>> unsilenced! see above!
but thanks for your info that most peeps didn't get much news on the anti-bush stuff. plenty here onnit including fotos. looks like it was 250,000 people.
STAND PROUD, BRITAIN!
UP!

GOOD SHOTS OF THE DEMOS ARE ON:
http://www.guilfin.net/database/showevent.php3?ev_id=evTSE6814#pix
UP!

I ASKED YOU NOT TO COME TO MY CITY
During George Bush’s visit to London, Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, threw a massive Peace Party at City Hall, the entire point of which was that George Bush was not invited! 
"I asked you not to come to my city, but you came anyways. So while you're here, I'm going to have an official reception in the seat of local government to which you're not invited. What's more... I'm inviting a bunch of people whose only real uniting factor is their incredible dislike of all you stand for. And we're going to spend the day informally discussing whatever tiny part we might personally play in opposing you".

He denounced George Bush as the "greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen.... I don't formally recognise George Bush because he was not officially elected.  So our alternative reception is for everybody who is not George Bush."

Speaking of his earlier visit to California where he’d attacked what he called "the most corrupt and racist American administration in over 80 years," he said: "I think that was quite mild. I actually think Bush is the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen. The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction."


KEN LIVINGSTONE COMES THROUGH AGAIN!
He could so easily have kept his mouth shut.  After all, it was a State visit and it's the Mayor's job to represent all of London on such occasions; not his own agenda.  Who could have blamed him if he'd just reminded people that he’d spoken at the anti-war demos and his record was clear on this issue, but that it would be inappropriate, while the US President was a guest in his city, to make further comment.  Tony would have welcomed him back into the Labour Party with open arms. 
All he had to do was keep his mouth shut!
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=464783
UP!

"PUSH OFF BUSH!!" SAY QUARTER MILLION BRITS
250,000 protesters converged in central London to demonstrate against US president George Bush, the UK's biggest weekday demonstration in history!  It was by far the biggest turnout since the million-plus march in February; along with the crowds, the anger and conviction were back with a vengeance.

5,123 officers policed the route as part of one of the largest ever security operations in Britain.  Parliament Square, Whitehall and St James's Park saw a huge police presence as Mr Bush visited Westminster Abbey and 10 Downing Street for talks with Mr Blair.
>> eh, that’s Mr Blair at Downing Street, but God. presumably, at the Abbey :)

Noisy but well-disciplined, the protesters carried banners with the single word Bush printed above a splatter of blood.  Some had customised the placards or brought their own.  One read: "GET THE HINT, GO HOME"  Others waved Palestinian flags.  Young and old, doctors, and teachers, students and the unemployed, representing every religion and every colour, they had come on foot and on bikes, by train and in cars.  One chap, dressed very smartly, carried a banner which said: “POSH, UPWARDLY MOBILE PEOPLE AGAINST BUSH MADNESS”

At first George Bush gently rocked, then he began to sway, before finally the figure started toppling, slowly but inexorably on to the pavement below.  At 5.30pm, in Trafalgar Square, demonstrators pulled down a papier-mache effigy of Mr Bush - with Tony Blair in his pocket - in a re-enactment of the faked fall of Saddam’s statue on April 9.  The symbolic end of the five-metre (17ft) tall effigy brought the biggest cheer of the day: louder than the boos when the seemingly endless procession passed Downing Street; bigger even than the shouts and whistles that rang out when Britain's sixth anti-war demonstration in a year began its snaking path through London to Trafalgar Square.

Blur frontman Damon Albarn, at the front of the march, told the Press Association that it was a "Smart March For Smart People".

Bill Hoyes, 72, from Stevenage, said he’d come along to call for greater involvement by the UN in Iraq.  "I'm opposed to Bush and Blair fighting an aggressive war and invading a country that could not defend itself."
 
The president had spoken the day before of his enthusiasm for free speech, but a joint press conference with the prime minister was dominated by the twin bombings in Istanbul.  "The nature of the terrorists is evidenced once again - we see their utter contempt for innocent life. They hate freedom, they hate free nations,"  he told reporters.

"I don't think it can be any coincidence that these attacks have come against British targets on the day that George Bush is visiting London" said Lindsay German, convener of the Stop the War Coalition, the fastest growing political movement in Britain.  Caroline Lucas of the Green Party told the rally it showed that "our world is anything but more secure".

Anas Altikriti, spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, told the crowd that tonight would be a celebration of belief around the world:  "It is a night where once again we speak loudly, we stand proud and we stand shoulder to shoulder with our brothers around the world who are victims of the policies of Tony Blair and George W Bush."
UP!

"Now we know that no other president of the United States has ever lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably . . . The presumption now has to be that he's lying any time he's saying anything."  Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst, friend of Bush senior.
UP!


london
SAT/SUN DEC 13 & 14     FAIR TRADE FAIR
The biggest fair of its kind, with stalls selling goods from all over the world, and giving the producers a fair deal.  Alpaca jumpers, dresses from Rajastan, flowers from Africa, Indian furniture and Ndandari Sculptures are just some of the goods available. Plus cafe & restaurant and live world music.
@ Chelsea Old Town Hall, Sloane Square tube.  11-5pm
http://www.fairtradefair.org
UP!


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SERIOUS QUESTION:
If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who  were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis, would you recommend that she have an abortion?

CONGRATULATIONS YOU JUST SNUFFED OUT BEETHOVEN :)
UP!


“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those  who maintain their mediocrity in times of crisis."   Dante, "The Divine Comedy."
UP!


Reality as you know it is a hoax!  The task of liberation has always been to overturn the world.  This is easier to do in challenging times when "normal" life has been disrupted.  People are forced to choose between the dangerous path to transcendence or blind reaction in defence of the crumbling status quo.  The basic meaning of the "911" attack on the U.S. is that the somnolent, decadent, post-modern world got popped by the Reality Police.  You have the right to remain silent, and anything you say may be held against you...
 
Apocalypse Chic!  The Western world is made up of apathetic, indolent people, run by apathetic, indolent rulers and their apathetic, indolent policies.  Afghanistan (for example) has never had the luxury of becoming apathetic or indolent.

What is coming to a head now has been building, not just for hundreds but for thousands of years: a race war.  It is a war between civilisation and primalism, reason and atavism, conscious and unconscious.  And, if we’re honest, the primalists (whom we call terrorists) are bound to win.  When you get right down to it, their war is the war of the oppressed whose patience has passed its limits.  “Our” war (so long as we consider it such at all) is that of tyrants who feel their hold slipping.

By declaring war on an enemy that’s not merely invisible, unidentifiable, but also in a sense abstract (a zeitgeist as much as a people), the Empire is attacking its own unconscious.  It’s a war that cannot possibly be won.  This is not a war of peoples, but a war of metazoans: of consciousness.
The Global Mind Has Gone Mad.
UP!
 

REALITY IS NO DEMOCRACY!
At this moment in its history, the collective reality of the human species on planet Earth is being created by a small clique of individuals who are totally insane by all reasonable standards.  Those of us who wish to regenerate the human species and create a positive reality are faced with the onerous but necessary task of OVERTHROWING this ruling metaphysical power structure by any means necessary.
Spin On Three Axes.
UP!


Printing Nanoparticles
Researchers have coaxed tiny particles of gold, silver, and carbon to assemble into patterns on silicon wafers -- a process that might eventually be used to form wires, circuits, and even nanoscale devices like transistors.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=2617&m=5435
UP!


Life Theories
Research suggests asteroid storms 3 billion years ago may have provided the fertile earth with the first proteins, which would ultimately lead to more organised life.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=2612&m=5435
UP!


Promise and Peril of the 21st Century
"Future dangers from new technologies may appear alarming when considered in the context of today's unprepared world.  The reality is that the sophistication and power of our defensive technologies and knowledge will grow along with the dangers." 
Ray Kurzweil
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=2595&m=5435
UP!


I have long enjoyed your kind thoughts, and attended Megatripolis too.
Fraser, you are lovely, please stay strong and keep it up!!
By the way, can I suggest we hear more about Genesis P. Orridge - he is shaping my/our reality a lot and should be listened to.
lotsa love
James (the Theosophist) / London
> am quite fond of ol’ gen.  he once suggested i was really weird, which i took as a compliment, especially coming from HIM!  me, i’ve never ever thought of myself as weird, the majority seem really weird to me but i’ve always felt very very healthily normal and sane.   send me summat, ok?
UP!


A 60 year old man who digs electronic music... I love you!
ambienttransient / chicago.
UP!


BUSH IGNORES SOLDIERS' BURIALS
This proclivity on the part of President Bush to avoid the normal duty of a commander-in-chief to honour dead soldiers is causing rising irritation among some veterans and their families who have noticed what appears to be a historically anomalous slight.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17079


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The UP! (UP!mag or UP!grademag) is a global edutainment round-up, ‘broadcast’ weekly to =[11,854]= Alternative// Activist// Zippy// Trance// New Age folks who have been recommended to the Parallel YOUniversity//Megatripolis Dance Dept as "showing signs of life".  Since many recipients choose to forward it or parts of it to their own lists, we conservatively estimate 30,000+ direct recipients.  Further, because of its 'mix' of 'specialist' & 'general' content, it's increasingly being posted on a variety of sites worldwide, making an estimated total weekly ‘readership’ of =[275,000+]=
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“YOU BREAK IT YOU BUY IT” 
by William Rivers Pitt / truthout.org.
On January 31, 1968, soldiers from North Vietnam launched what’s become known as the Tet Offensive.  The attacks were breathtaking in scope: North Vietnamese soldiers stormed 3 highland towns, invaded 13 of the 16 provincial capitols, attacked the HQs of both America's and South Vietnam's armies, stormed the U.S. embassy in Saigon, and took the city of Hue. 
The attacks came as a complete shock to American forces.  A 1968 CIA report concluded, "The intensity, coordination and timing of the attacks were not fully anticipated."   "Another major unexpected point"  was the ability of the North Vietnamese to strike so many targets at the same time.
Though, technically, the attacks were a failure, with the North Vietnamese eventually beaten back, General Giap, commander of Vietnamese forces, had a different perspective:  "For us, you know, there is no such thing as a single strategy.  Ours is always a synthesis, simultaneously military, political and diplomatic - which is why, quite clearly, the Tet offensive had multiple objectives."
The political aspect worked.  Within 2 months, President Lyndon Johnson's approval rating had fallen to 30%, and approval for his handling of the war had fallen to 26%.  Walter Cronkite, the most trusted voice in American television journalism, stated publicly that the war was unwinnable.  An explosion of dissent rocked the American homeland, culminating in Johnson's decision not to seek re-election, and in the police riot at the doorstep of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.


THE TWO LESSONS FROM TET
1)      Underestimating a guerrilla enemy fighting on its own ground is deadly
2)      The American people will not long stand for a bloodbath in a faraway land that has no clear objective, spends the lives of American soldiers to no good end, and costs billions and billions of dollars better spent elsewhere.
The Tet Offensive began a long, slow slide into ignominy and defeat for the United States that, to this day, still echoes long & loud along the hallways of power & the streets of America.

It is happening again.  Since George W. Bush strutted across an aircraft carrier in the garb of a combat pilot in May, after he said, "Bring 'em on" in June, America has lost more troops in the 9 months of this war than it had lost in Vietnam by 1964.  History tells us quite clearly that the Vietnam casualty rate skyrocketed in the years to come.
One difference between Tet and Baghdad is that America knew, in Vietnam, who was attacking it.  It has no idea who’s been behind these attacks in Iraq.  The inability to even identify the attackers beyond the catch-all "Evildoers who hate freedom" means it has little hope of thwarting future attacks.
But the most pointed similarity is clear: These attacks are meant to cause a political reaction.  The rosy perspective of this war which the Bush administration has been trying to sell to the American people was eviscerated by these attacks.  Worse, the attacks will have a further chilling effect on the administration's attempts to bring the international community into this fight, something even the most hard-core go-it-aloners in Washington have come to see as absolutely necessary. 
With every explosion at a non-American outpost, with every targeting of the United Nations and the Red Cross in Iraq, this war becomes more and more the sole property of the United States and the Bush administration, and it becomes less likely that an international coalition will be formed to bail America out.  The old sign above the cash register at your corner store says it all: "You break it, you buy it."
Bush responded to these attacks by describing the intricately coordinated and highly effective attacks as a sign that the unidentified insurgents were becoming "desperate,"  implying that these "desperate" moves are good news and a sign of looming American victory.
Ask the thousands of dead Iraqis if this is good news, or the Red Cross, or the international community, which is being pressured into leaping aboard this sinking ship.  Ask the families of the dead and wounded American soldiers!
Ask al Qaeda!  They’ll tell you this is nothing but good news.  This war on Iraq, built on a foundation of misinformation and lies, has led to the greatest recruiting drive in that group's bloody history.  The opportunity to kill more Americans is good news for them.  The ability to rock the American government is good news for them.  Osama bin Laden smiles today, and it was George W. Bush who put the grin on his face.
UP!


PENTAGON MANAGES WAR COVERAGE
BY LIMITING COFFIN PICTURES
One of the lessons the U.S. government apparently learned from the Vietnam War is: Don't let the American public see coffins arriving home with U.S. casualties from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5117.htm
UP!


london
SAT DEC 13      Joji Hirota: A Night of Taiko Drumming
A rare one-off performance by the great Taiko drummer Joji Hirota, to celebrate 'Life Force', the October Gallery's new exhibition of Kenji Yoshida's work. 

The history of Taiko (literally 'drum') in the Japanese classical arts spans close to 2000 years, their rumbling power having been long associated with the gods.  Hirota has produced 5 best-selling albums, and has toured the world, as well as making many appearances at WOMAD festivals.  His powerful rhythms and magnetic performance are not to be missed.
October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, WC1. 7.30pm (doors 7pm).  £10/ £8 +44 (0)20 7242 7367 
octobergallery@compuserve.com
UP!


Liberty Cap
the Cosmic Symbol of Peace?
fraser
I met an interesting guy on my Californian tour who’s launched an organisation to promote the Butterfly as a better symbol for the Peace Movement than the Dolphin.  “What can  the average aware person do to help the dolphins?” he asks rhetorically. “The butterfly is much more accessible, I can DO something about helping them.”
It’s a good argument.  But, once he started me thinking, I came up with a better one.  The Magic Mushroom!

Liberty Caps Need Us To Be Peaceful & Happy!
If an alien species/intelligence is sharing our planet, largely unrecognised, it must be the mushroom, for only its spore could have survived the extremes of heat and cold which space travelling involves.
I say ‘largely’ unrecognised because, of course, shamans since before History have worshipped the Magic Mushroom (MM, or mmm).  ‘Soma, Food of the Gods’ might well have included it. 

Terence McKenna had a smart whimsy that the MM arrived from a very distant home base which, for some reason, was dying.  Needing to locate another planet with the precise balance of air, water and sunlight, the Mushroom Brain sent forth its explorer-spores along the tidal winds of the YOUniverse, through all the living cultures of our Great Cosmos, until, finally, planet Earth was discovered, and here these intergalactic denizens have been thriving, peacefully, since before us Great Apes appeared on the scene.

Certainly they’ve colonised most of the globe and been treated with reverence by the human species (until the “+tian” Priests came along, of course).  And “communication” with them helps, undeniably, to put life’s daily crises into a much more interplanetary? perspective.

But now they’re very very worried... about what the Apes are doing to the planet! 

“If you want to know what the Vegetable Brain of the Planet is saying,  you must EAT Her!” said Terence.  With most drugs it’s really all YOU, or you have to extract any meanings from a flow of images, but the MM seems to speak to you, it communicates, like an intelligence.  And here’s what it’s currently saying to us: 
“Isn’t this a perfectly lovely planet?  Look how beautifully, delicately interconnected it all is!  You don’t want those primitive Apes to destroy all this, do you?  DO YOU?!”

So, unlike the Butterfly, and possibly unlike the Dolphin (which anyway lives too distant to be able to teach us much) the MM seems to possess an investment in Peace among us Humans!

They Probably Triggered Our Evolution In The First Place!
Any theory of evolution must explain one amazing fact:  The millennial month our ancestors took to swap the ocean for dry land is lackadaisical beside the Cosmic Second some monkeys took to swap swinging in the African jungles for space travel, the world wide web and nanotechnology.

Such abrupt geometric acceleration is totally unlike anything else in history.  Religions have grown up to explain it.  Hi-tec alien visitors (or low-tec in this case) have been seriously suggested.  But Science's proposals of the discovery of fire, the wheel, agriculture or language don't resonate with anything I've witnessed.  A change of diet feels closer, we know a switch to health foods can greatly improve vitality, but it would take more than extra virgin olive oil!

I've witnessed behavioural modifications as fundamental as swapping jungles for rocket building being caused by only two things.  Spiritual conversion.  And drugs.  And the greatest of these is ... spiritual conversion through drugs!

If the first “spiritual conversion” the MM triggered in the Great Apes was the dash for Evolution itself, then it has even more investment in us than simply ensuring its own survival.  Indeed its Gift to us, the Plug-In to the Big Picture (our Journey through the Stars), rather than holocaustic tribal battles for domination of holes in the ground with oil in them, suggests it’s personally committed already to seeing the Human Species going out to join the YOUniversal Community. 

What more vibrant ancient/future symbol could the Peace Movement have than the Liberty Cap?!
[first published in Soft Secrets magazine]
UP!


DODGY BIBLE SEXED UP!
//FEEDBACK ON FEEDBACK


HORNETS’ NEST
There's a feeling of a hornets’ nest having been stirred [or even shaken] about the latest UP!, a babbling of diverse voices all arguing on different levels, all with their own mental baggage, experiences and theories.

As for your 'Adapt, UK' correspondent, your reply:
> slight case of mistaken identity here :) indeed u sound a bit like myself when i get a bit of a rage going.  me in Nike?  me with a rich mummy and a daddy?  me first year university?  am SIXTY!  huh?  maybe u should’ve read one of the UP!s before making such conclusions.  am so nonplussed, i don’t even know where you’re coming from so can’t make many sassy responses :)
is understandable.  I know the feeling when a rant appears as if from nowhere; the words come tumbling out, and the recipient gets the blame for the excesses of global capitalism, as well as all the little things that irritate on a daily basis. 
I could have added to his list, which wasn't very creative [obviously a novice ranter, huh?], but yes, I'm a bit nonplussed as to how he could equate you with all that.  Maybe he's confused, was just looking for someone to sound off at, and hey along came the UP!.  Maybe someone played a trick and subscribed him for just this effect, and is at this moment giggling uncontrollably on the floor of his student digs :)
 
He's obviously been exposed to some of the anti-globalisation case that friends and acquaintances of mine have been arguing for decades [generations of 6th formers have been sent into the world knowing where it's at, and no amount of branding can recover the Nike name which is now associated with low wages] and is clearly anti-consumerist, although I bet he has a few consumer goodies in his cupboard. 

But there's some confusion there - he also wants to rubbish people who respect animals and their right to live their lives un- exploited, and has an overdeveloped proletarian revolutionary stance, which is so last century. 
> last millennium!  viz my fave peace sign:  WAR IS SO 2ND MILLENNIAL!

If he visited any of the giant malls across the UK, cathedrals to mass consumerism, he would see that most of the celebrants are not in the least bit middle class, but are the working masses getting their weekly fix of the sacrament - no sign of the people he appears to despise; “middle class, vegetarian, anti-small fluffy bunnies being hurt”, not to mention road protesters, activists of all kinds of environmental causes from hunting to polluting the land & sea, the huge army of activists who’ve grabbed the argument out of the politicians’ dirty hands, who’ve never understood it anyway.  Just lots of happy if flustered 'workers with spare cash'.

I reckon he must be a Socialist Worker convert [yes, they still exist in universities and colleges across the land] who's got his pre-packaged answer to all the ills of the world from the revolutionary perspective of the 20th[19th?] century, and all he has to do is 'believe' devoutly [ring any bells?],
> YES!  damn good point!  hitler, stalin, sharon and bush all represent the Death Throes of +tianised monotheism :)

ready to take up his place on the streets and be a revolutionary once he's sorted his benefit out.  Bless.
enjoy your holiday in the sun [can see how some people might think you're middle class!
Pete / Herefordshire, UK

PS Thought the economics lesson was a bit simplistic, and took up most of the UP!  just clearing up before your holiday?
> that was DELIBERATE! persevere with it and, by the end, i PROMISE u that spooky sense that YOU FINALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT'S GOING ON! HONEST!!!!!
UP!

Just curious... have you ever read anything by Osho aka Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh... I read his "Bible" (part I) and he really rips +tianity and several other religions apart... Just curious if you were familiar or had an opinion on his opinions.  He was also offed just like Lennon and Diana.
Andrea.Pacione / New York
> yes, am very familiar with him.  even tried to meet him in new delhi long before he was known in the west.  (but u had to go to several EARLY MORNING meditations before getting that right and i didn't want to meet him THAT much! :)
he's good. 
not sure he was offed (tho am certain diana was) (as for lennon, has mark chapman been linked in any way with the unowhos?)
UP!

I just stumbled upon UP! while I was searching for folks who haven't been brainwashed by the scary people leading my country nowadays. 
While, I would like to eventually be able to send in comments about much more substantial parts of the UP!, I did want to throw my voice into the xtian debate that was stirred up.  (I really enjoyed reading the responses!! wow).  I def want to read the book after that review... I don't see how anyone could not want to read the book - whether they agree or disagree.  I mean, I've read tons of Republican Party  propaganda because it’s important to know the enemy - so I suppose that must by why all these ultra christians subscribe to UP!
But I digress. 
I just wanted to talk about the wonderful hippie Jesus image.  If you have not visited Neuschwanstein castle in Schwangau/Fussen Germany, you should.  I think everyone should because it’s tons of fun.  But esp for the final ball room - on the ceiling is the greatest image of a hippie Jesus I have ever seen - Jesus, in all his relaxed, brown haired glory, surrounded by bunnies and other woodland creatures - with a beautiful rainbow behind the half-moon halo.  And to top it all off - he's making the peace/victory  sign with both hands.  Go hippie Jesus.  The best thing about this particular hippie Jesus is that he was painted in 1860.  It’s just nice to know sometimes that most of these "new" and seemingly radical ideas are just old ideas reincarnated. 
Anyway, so much for my silly little email.  Though, I suppose living under the Bushite regime has led me to forget everyone's voice is important and deserves to be
heard :)
Kate in Richmond on the James  USA
>> funnily enuff i just finished an article for a mag i write for called JESUS WAS A POT PUFFIN’, MUSHY MUNCHIN’ PAGAN EXEMPLAR CREATED FOR US TO ASPIRE TO :)
UP!

HI Fraser
RE Christian controversy, suggest you read AN Wilson's "Jesus" which is a very objective, sceptical even, historian's account of all the evidence, including the contemporary Roman historian's references to his crucifixion. The real Jesus shines through all the politically inspired gospel writings in the words "worship in spirit and in truth"
 
I forget the name of the Roman historian now, but he is quite well known amongst credible scholars and was not mentioned in the list you gave.
 
lossa love
marcos / uk
>> gonna need a little more proof than that, marcos:) 
UP!

Christmas Special: Buy The Complete Holy Bible on DVD and Get Free DVD Bible Gift!
QuickTV, Inc. (Other OTC:QKTV.PK - News) is offering a Free DVD of the KJV of the New Testament on DVD (a $ 20 value) with the purchase of the New Complete Holy Bible on DVD.
http://www.quicktvstore.com/cohobi.html
UP!


+TIANITY.  DEMONS.  COMPETITION.  CAPITALISM.  GLOBAL CORPORATISM.  +TIANITY.  GUILT.  THE IRAQ ATTACKS.  THE MARKET.  PURITAN WORK ETHIC.  +TIANITY.  ALIENATION.  EVIL EMPIRE.  THE TYRANNY OF THE INDIVIDUAL.  ANTI-HEDONISM. 
IT’S ALL IN THE MIX, FOLKS!....

Thanksgiving - the real bloody story
by Mitchel Cohen
"Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession."   Psalms 2:8.

1492. The Taino-Arawak people of the Bahamas discover Christopher Columbus on their beach.

Historian Howard Zinn tells us how Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat.  When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts.

"They brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for our glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned.
“They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of sugar cane.
“They would make fine servants. With 50 men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."  Columbus in his log.

And so the conquest began, and the Thanotocracy -- the regime of death -- was inaugurated on the continent the Indians called "Turtle Island."

You probably already know a good piece of the story: How Columbus's Army took Arawak and Taino people prisoners and insisted that they take him to the source of their gold, which they used in tiny ornaments in their ears.  And how, with utter contempt and cruelty, Columbus took many more Indians prisoners and put them aboard the Nina and the Pinta).  When some refused to be taken prisoner, they were run through with swords.  Then the 2 ships set sail for the Azores and Spain, during which long voyage many of the Indian prisoners died. 

"The Indians are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone." Columbus’ report to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain which he concludes by asking them for some help, in return for which he would bring them "as much gold as you need, and as many slaves as you ask."

Columbus returned with 17 ships and more than 1,200 men.  Their aim was clear: Slaves, and Gold.  They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives.  But word spread ahead of them and by the time they reached Navidad on Haiti, the Taino had risen up and killed all the sailors left behind on the last voyage, after they’d roamed the island in gangs raping women and taking children and women as slaves.  Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."  The Indians began fighting back, but were no match for the Spaniard conquerors, even though they greatly outnumbered them.  In eight years, Columbus's men murdered more than 100,000 Indians on Haiti alone.  Overall, dying as slaves in the mines, or directly murdered, or from diseases brought to the Caribbean by the Spaniards, over 3 million Indian people were murdered between 1494 and 1508.

What Columbus did to the Arawaks of the Bahamas and the Taino of the Caribbean, Cortez did to the Aztecs of Mexico, Pizarro to the Incas of Peru, and the English settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts to the Powhatans and the Pequots.  Literally millions of native peoples were slaughtered.  And the gold, slaves and other resources were used, in Europe, to spur the growth of the new money economy rising out of feudalism.  Karl Marx would later call this "the primitive accumulation of
capital." 

These were the violent beginnings of an intricate system of technology, business, politics and culture that would dominate the world for the next five centuries.


A Meeting Of Cultures NOT!
In the North American English colonies, a similar pattern was set early.  In 1585, before there was any permanent English settlement in Virginia, Richard Grenville landed there with seven ships.  The Indians he met were hospitable, but when one of them ‘stole’ a small silver cup, he sacked and burned the whole Indian village.

The Jamestown colony was established in Virginia inside the territory of an Indian confederacy, led by the chief, Powhatan.  Powhatan watched the English settle on his people's land, but did not attack.  And the English began starving.  Some of them ran away and joined the Indians, where they would at least be fed.  Indeed, throughout colonial times, tens of thousands of indentured servants, prisoners and slaves -- from Wales and Scotland as well as from Africa -- ran away to live in Indian communities, intermarry, and raise their children there.

In the summer of 1610 the governor of Jamestown colony asked Powhatan to return these runaways.  Powhatan left the choice to those who ran away, and none chose to return, whereupon Jamestown soldiers descended on an Indian community, killed 15 or 16 Indians, burned the houses, cut down the corn growing around the village, took the female leader of the tribe and her children into boats, then ended up throwing the children overboard and shooting out their brains in the water.  The female leader was later taken off the boat and stabbed to death.

By 1621, the atrocities committed by the English had grown, and word spread throughout the Indian villages.  The Indians fought back, and killed 347 colonists.  From then on it was total war.  Not able to enslave the Indians, the English aristocracy decided to exterminate them.... CUE: THE PILGRIMS!!!.


When the Pilgrims came to New England they too were coming not to vacant land but to territory inhabited by tribes of Indians.  The story goes that the Pilgrims, who were Christians of the Puritan sect, were fleeing religious persecution in Europe.  True or not, they immediately turned to their religion to rationalise their persecution of others.  They appealed to the Bible!!
Psalms 2:8: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession."
To justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2: "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation."

The Puritans lived in uneasy truce with the Pequot Indians, who occupied what is now southern Connecticut and Rhode Island.  But they wanted them out of the way; they wanted their land.  And they seemed to want to establish their rule firmly over Connecticut settlers in that area.

In 1636 an armed expedition left Boston to attack the Narragansett Indians on Block Island.  The English landed and killed some Indians, but the rest hid in the thick forests of the island and the English went from one deserted village to the next, destroying crops.  Then they sailed back to the mainland and raided Pequot villages along the coast, destroying crops again.  They went on burning village after village.  As one of the leading theologians of his day, Dr. Cotton Mather put it: "It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day."   And Cotton Mather, clutching his bible, spurred the English to slaughter more Indians in the name of Christianity.

300.000 Indians were murdered in New England over the next few years.  It is important to note: Ordinary Englishmen did not want this war and very often refused to fight.  Some European intellectuals like Roger Williams spoke out against it.  And some erstwhile colonists joined the Indians and even took up arms against the invaders from England.
It was the Puritan elite who wanted the war, for land, for gold, for power.  And, in the end, the Indian population of 10 million that was in North America when Columbus came was reduced to less than one million.


The way the different Indian peoples lived -- communally, consensually, making decisions through tribal councils, each tribe having different sexual/marriage relationships, with many different sexualities practiced as the norm -- contrasted dramatically with the Puritans’ Christian fundamentalist values.  For the Puritans, men decided everything, whereas in the Iroquois federation of what is now New York state women chose the men who represented the clans at village and tribal councils; and were responsible for deciding whether or not to go to war. 

Nor did the Iroquois use harsh punishment on children.  They didn’t insist on early weaning, or early toilet training, but gradually allowed children to learn to care for themselves.   And they didn’t believe in ownership of land, which they regarded as ridiculous, absurd.  The European Christians, on the other hand, in the spirit of the emerging capitalism, wanted to own and control everything -- even children and other human beings. 
"And surely there is in all children a stubbornness, and stoutness of mind arising from natural pride, which must, in the first place, be broken and beaten down; that so the foundation of their education being laid in humility and tractableness, other virtues may, in their time, be built thereon."   John Robinson, pastor of the Pilgrim colony.

Indeed the truly horrific plagues unleashed upon these natural healthy people by the sickly perverted and unnatural European Christians , which some historians have calculated wiped out 80% of the entire population, was disgustingly described by one colonist as "the Wonderful Preparation of the Lord Jesus Christ by His Providence for His People's Abode in the Western World."


The First Thanksgiving
The Pilgrims robbed Wampanoag graves for the food that had been buried with the dead for religious reasons.  Whenever the Pilgrims realised they were being watched, they shot at the Wampanoags, and scalped them.  Scalping was totally unknown among Native Americans prior to its introduction by the English, who began the practice by offering the heads of their enemies and later accepted scalps.

These are the Puritans that the Indians "saved", and who are celebrated in the Thanksgiving holiday.  The  Patuxet Indians went to Puritan villages and, having learned to speak English, brought deer meat and beaver skins for the hungry, cold Pilgrims.  Tisquantum stayed with them and helped them survive their first years in their New World, taught them how to navigate the waters, fish and cultivate corn and other vegetables, pointed out poisonous plants and showed how other plants could be used as medicines.  He also negotiated a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and Massasoit, head chief of the Wampanoags, a treaty that gave the Pilgrims everything and the Indians nothing.  And even that treaty was soon broken.  All this is celebrated as the First Thanksgiving.

My own feeling?  The Indians should have let the Pilgrims die.  But they couldn't do that.  Their humanity made them assist other human beings in need.  And for that beautiful, human, loving connection they -- and those of us who are not Indian as well -- paid a terrible price: the genocide of the original inhabitants of Turtle Island, what is now America.


The Imperialist Nation-State
Let's look at one example of the Puritan values -- which were not, I repeat, the values of the English working class values that we "give thanks for" on this holiday.  The example of the Maypole, and Mayday.

In 1517, 25 years after Columbus first landed in the Bahamas, the English working class staged a huge revolt.  This was done through the guilds.  King Henry VIII brought Lombard bankers from Italy and merchants from France in order to undercut wages, lengthen hours, and break the guilds.  This alliance between international finance, national capital and military aristocracy was in the process of merging into the imperialist nation-state.

The young workers of London took their revenge.  A secret rumour said the commonality -- the vision of communal society that would counter the rich, the merchants, the industrialists, the nobility and the landowners -- would arise on May Day.  The King and Lords got frightened -- householders were armed, a curfew was declared.  Two guys didn't hear about the curfew and were arrested.  The shout went out to mobilise, and 700 workers stormed the jails, throwing bricks, hot water, stones.  The prisoners were freed.  A French capitalist's house was trashed.

Then came the repression: Cannons were fired into the city.  300 were imprisoned, soldiers patrolled the streets.  The prisoners were brought through the streets tied in ropes.  Some were children.  Eleven sets of gallows were set up throughout the city.  Many were hanged.  The authorities showed no mercy, but exhibited extreme cruelty.

Thus the dreaded Thanatocracy, the regime of death, was inaugurated in answer to proletarian riot at the beginning of capitalism.  The May Day Riots were caused by expropriation (people having been uprooted from their lands they had used for centuries in common), and by exploitation (people had no jobs, as the monarchy imported capital).  Working class women organisers and healers who posed an alternative to patriarchal capitalism -- were burned at the stake as witches.  Enclosure, conquest, famine, war and plague ravaged the people who, in losing their commons, also lost a place to put their Maypole.

Suddenly, the Maypole became a symbol of rebellion.  In 1550 Parliament ordered the destruction of Maypoles (just as, during the Vietnam war, the U.S.-backed junta in Saigon banned the making of all red cloth, as it was being sewn into the blue, yellow and red flags of the National Liberation Front).

In 1664, near the end of the Puritans' war against the Pequot Indians, the Puritans in England abolished May Day altogether.  They’d defeated the Indians, and they were attempting to defeat the growing proletarian insurgency at home as well.

Although translators of the Bible were burned, its last book, Revelation, became an anti-authoritarian manual useful to those who would turn the Puritan world upside down, such as the Family of Love, the Anabaptists, the Diggers, Levellers, Ranters, and Thomas Morton, the man who in 1626 went to Merry Mount in Quincy Mass, and, with his Indian friends, put up the first Maypole in America, in defiance of Puritan rule.

The Puritans destroyed it, exiled him, plagued the Indians, and hanged gay people and Quakers.  Anna Lee, the Manchester proletarian, came over a few years after Morton to found the communal living Shakers, who praised God in ecstatic dance.


The Ghost Dance Maypole!
The story of the Maypole as a symbol of revolt continued.  It crossed cultures and continued through the ages.  In the late 1800s, the Sioux began the Ghost Dance in a circle, "with a large pine tree in the centre, which was covered with strips of cloth of various colours, eagle feathers, stuffed birds, claws, and horns, all offerings to the Great Spirit."  They didn't call it a Maypole and they danced for the unity of all Indians,
the return of the dead, and the expulsion of the invaders on a particular day, the 4th of July, but otherwise it might as well have been a Mayday!

Wovoka, a Nevada Paiute, started it.  Expropriated, he cut his hair.  To buy watermelon he rode boxcars to work in the Oregon hop fields for small wages, exploited.  But the Puget Sound Indians had a new religion -- they stopped drinking alcohol, became entranced, and danced for five days, jerking twitching, calling for their land back, just like the Shakers!  Wovoka took this back to Nevada: "All Indians must dance, everywhere, keep on dancing." Soon they were.  Porcupine took the dance across the Rockies to the Sioux.  Red Cloud and Sitting Bull advanced the left foot following with the right, hardly lifting the feet from the ground.  The Federal Agents banned the Ghost Dance!  They claimed it was a cause of the last Sioux outbreak, just as the Puritans had claimed the Maypole had caused the May Day proletarian riots, just as the Shakers were dancing people into communality and out of Puritanism.


On December 29 1890 the Government (with Hotchkiss guns throwing 50 x 2 pound explosive shells a minute -- always developing new weapons!) massacred more than 300 men, women and children at Wounded Knee.  As in the Waco holocaust, the State disclaimed responsibility.  The Bureau of Ethnology sent out James Mooney to investigate.  Amid Janet Reno-like tears, he wrote: "The Indians were responsible for the engagement."


In 1970, the town of Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts held, as it does each year, a Thanksgiving Ceremony given by the townspeople.  There are many speeches for the crowds who attend.  That year -- the year of Nixon's secret invasion of Cambodia; the year 4 students were massacred at Kent State and 13 wounded for opposing the war; the year they tried to electrocute Black Panthers Bobby Seale and Erica Huggins -- the Massachusetts Department of Commerce asked the Wampanoag Indians to select a speaker to mark the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrims' arrival, and the first Thanksgiving.

Frank James, who is a Wampanoag, was selected.  But before he was allowed to speak he was told to show a copy of his speech to the white people in charge of the ceremony.  When they saw what he’d written, they refused to allow him to read it.

First, genocide.  Then, suppression of all discussion of it.

What do Indian people find to be Thankful for in this America?  What does anyone have to be Thankful for in the genocide of the Indians, that this "holy day” commemorates?    As we sit with our families on Thanksgiving, taking any opportunity we can to get out of work or off the streets and be in a warm place with people we love, we realise that all the things we have to be thankful for have nothing at all to do with the Pilgrims, nothing at all to do with Amerikan history, and everything to do with the alternative, anarcho-communist lives the Indian peoples led, before they were massacred by the colonists, in the name of privatisation of property and the lust for gold and labour.


Yes, I’m an American, an American in revolt! 
I am revolted by the holiday known as Thanksgiving.  I’ve been accused of wanting to go backwards in time, of being against progress.  To those charges, I plead guilty.  I want to go back in time to when people lived communally, before the colonists' Christian god was brought to these shores to sanctify their terrorism, their slavery, their hatred of children, their oppression of women, their holocausts.  But that is impossible.  So all I look forward to the utter destruction of the apparatus of death known as Amerika -- not the people, not the beautiful land, but the machinery, the State, the capitalism, the Christianity.  I look forward to a future where I will have children with Amerika, and they will be the new Indians.

Mitchel Cohen is co-editor of "Green Politix", the national newspaper of the Greens/Green Party USA
www.greenparty.org
http://www.rense.com/general45/thanks2.htm
UP!


America's Enemy Within = US!
by Naomi Klein
Armed checkpoints, embedded reporters in flak jackets, brutal suppression of peaceful demonstrators. Baghdad? No, Miami!

In December 1990, President George Bush Sr travelled through South America to sell the continent on a bold new dream: "A free trade system that links all of the Americas." He said that the plan, later to be named the Free Trade Area of the Americas, would be "our hemisphere's new declaration of interdependence, the brilliant new dawn of a splendid new world."

Last week, Bush's two sons joined forces to try to usher in that new world by holding the FTAA negotiations in Florida - the state Governor Jeb Bush "delivered", even though that meant robbing many African-Americans of their right to vote. Now Jeb was vowing to hand his brother the coveted trade deal, even if that meant keeping thousands from exercising their right to protest.

However, the dream of a hemisphere united into a single free-market economy died last week - killed not by Miami demonstrators but by the populations of Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia.  The Brazilians brokered a compromise that makes the agreement a pick-and-choose affair.  Washington will continue to bully countries into sweeping trade contracts on the model of the North American Free Trade Agreement, but there will be no single, unified deal.


WAR-LITE
Inside the Inter-Continental hotel, it was being called "FTAA lite".  Outside, we experienced something heavier: "War-lite".&