TURN ON COMPUTER // TUNE IN TO FUNLEASHED SPIRIT OF INTERNET // TAKE OVER!

[DESIGNED, AND BEST READ, AS A FULL PAGE SPREAD]

Wow, your energy is brilliant. Thanks for all!
You really are shining meister Fraser!
Jamie Kelsey, Edingburgh, Scotland.
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the caravanserai club is in morocco for the next month so no UP!s meanwhile.

So-called economists talk about 'economic cycles' as if they were a law of nature.  In fact, economic cycles are simply the story of how financial elites maintain their wealth and power in a capitalist system.  It's a two-part game that I refer to as Bubble & Burst.  It's a game that's been played for centuries, and the last big session most of us know about was the Great Depression of the '30s.

The first part of the game starts when credit is loosened up by the big banks, and loans are easy to get at low interest rates.  Businesses borrow and expand, hiring more people, and the economy rises - a hot air balloon heated up by the flames of debt.  Consumers start borrowing and spending, businesses prosper and hire more people, and the upward bubble feeds on itself.  Meanwhile the big banks are accumulating huge portfolios of loans that they'll be collecting on for decades to come.  The upward spiral is of course accompanied by inflation and over-production, and eventually the growth cannot be maintained.  The economy runs out of steam, and the big banks shift into the second part of the game.

In part two, credit is tightened, interest rates are raised, and the bubble bursts.  Depending on the scale of the game, this period is called a slowdown, a recession, a depression, or a collapse.  For the big banks and investors, this is a period of ownership consolidation and monopolization.  Debt-ridden businesses and properties are picked up for a fraction of their real value.  Many loans must of course be written off, which the banks love to whine and cry about, but those losses are peanuts compared to the loans that do get paid off.  And the value of that loan portfolio is much larger than it would have been without the bubble - part one of the game.  Small banks fail, and those are picked up by the bigger banks, further concentrating financial control into a few elite hands.

While the people and governments are left to deal with the collapse scenario, the big banks and investors are busy counting their money, picking up bargains, and planning the next round of the game. 

We are now in what may be the last round of that game because economic growth has finally surpassed the ability of the Earth to support it.  But, rather than fix the system that causes all these problems, financial elites want to hold on to their power and the capitalist system that supports it.   Global starvation, genocide, and misery are the inevitable result, and that's why Western nations are gradually, or not so gradually, being turned into fascist dictatorships (dressed in sheep's clothing), with militarised police trained to suppress populations.

http://cyberjournal.org/
>> need i point out that this is not NECESSARILY the beliefs of the..
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screen 04  obituary: father of Chaos Theory makes final fractal jump.
screen 06  another obituary?  this time for london's Synergy Project.
rumours have been spreading all over london and the south east  -  big troubles at Synergy - the UP! investigates.
screen 07  What Is The Truth About Steve Peake's Takeover? - by brian viziondanz.
screen 11  SYNERGY - LESS Than the Sum of its Parts? - by fraser clark.
screen 19  STEVE'S SYNERGY COUP by Rob the Rub.
screen 23  ANNOUNCING The S.Y.N.E.R.G.Y Boycott/IN THE MEANTIME
                         DO NOT FAIL TO READ THIS!
screen 25  Rock Is Dead - "It's the music for cat food commercials"
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VOTE HERE: http://www.mtvawards.com.au/quick_vote.aspx
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obituary
The father of Chaos Theory, who showed how small actions lead to major changes in what became known as the "Butterfly Effect," died on Wednesday 16th, of cancer, at the age of 90.

Lorenz, a meteorologist, figured out in the 1960s that small differences in any dynamic system (the Stock Exchange, a woman's heart, a planet's atmosphere) could set off enormous changes.  In 1972 he presented a study entitled "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?"

Born in 1917 in West Hartford, Connecticut, Lorenz earned degrees in mathematics from Dartmouth College in 1938, from Harvard University in 1940, and degrees in meteorology from MIT in 1943 and 1948.  While serving as a weather forecaster for the US Army Air Corps in World War Two, he decided to study meteorology.

"As a boy I was always interested in doing things with numbers, and was also fascinated by changes in the weather," Lorenz wrote in an autobiography.

"By showing that certain deterministic systems have formal predictability limits, Lorenz put the last nail in the coffin of the Cartesian universe, and fomented what some have called the 3rd Scientific Revolution of the 20th century, following on the heels of relativity and quantum physics... and he was a perfect gentleman who, through his intelligence, integrity and humility, set a very high standard for his and succeeding generations." Kerry Emanuel, professor of atmospheric science at MIT, in a statement.

"Lorenz made his boldest scientific achievement in discovering 'deterministic chaos,' a principle which has profoundly influenced a wide range of basic sciences and brought about one of the most dramatic changes in mankind's view of Nature since Sir Isaac Newton."  The prize committee, in 1991, when they awarded Lorenz the Kyoto Prize for basic sciences in the field of earth and planetary sciences.

His family say Edward enjoyed hiking and cross-country skiing, and stayed active until two weeks before his death, at home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He is survived by three children and four grandchildren.
[REUTERS remix]
UP!

another obituary? 
this time for london's Synergy Project, the massive rave culture collective that developed some of the alternative cooperative spirit which the legendary 24 hour Warp Experience had kicked off in 1999...

for the past few weeks rumours have been spreading all over london and the south east  -  big troubles at Synergy.  a gigantic communication breakdown and fatal bust-up?  another capitalist takeover of an idealistic, cooperative enterprise?  disputes about trademarking the name?  lawyers being drawn in?  what's really going on? 

well, as the original midwife, i've been privy to the on-line discussions, debates, accusations, legal threats, despair, fury and complex lying, subterfuges, and rank hypocrisy. 


Please take the time to read this, and take on board that this concerns YOU and your scene - PLEASE DISCUSS AMONG YOURSELVES.

As you may have heard, Steve Peake from the (anti) Synergy Centre, has been using threats and intimidation to take over the Synergy Project and use it for his own ends - he has also issued threats to sue the Project posse if they dare to speak publicly about his behaviour.

well, I speak as an individual, but with extremely personal experience of this whole sorry affair, and I say this:  "In my opinion, Steve Peake, you are a thief and a con man, and please sue me cos I will be delighted to see you in court where all your dirty deeds can be made public for your peers to see what a low life you really are"
this is all of our business, it is about one individual who moved into our scene 5 years ago and corralled our movement to finance his personal dream where he rules as the emperor.  such behaviour is the root cause of all the ills of our world - human behaviour that is predatory, callous, destructive and abusive etc.

it may be just one pathetic man bereft of spirit causing much damage and betrayal of trust through his INTENTIONAL antisocial behaviour, but multiply this behaviour many times and we have the very world situation that we demonstrate against!  at the level of governments, it has become a monster that's very difficult to deal with, and the level of damage involves the death and destruction that we can see all around the world
so on one level it's just a speck of dust and let's move on,
>> as some are already saying!

but on another level, if we can't deal with this behaviour in our own community and bring it to account, then all of our talk about the injustices and wrongdoing in the world is hot air and hypocritical.

In the initial days of the Project being founded, Steve set up the company so, that instead of it being owned by the people who were responsible for it,  (Dom, Ross and Steve) it was "technically" owned by Steve and two of his mates.
>> when i heard this i immediately assumed one was a lawyer.  it looks now that at least one of them is an accountant.

Fast forward 3 years: Steve resigns from the Synergy Project after being confronted by almost the entire organisation regarding his increasingly arrogant, self absorbed and negative behaviour, both in his involvement in the Project and in running the Synergy Centre. 
And NOW, two years after this, he has used the aforementioned legal technicality to claim that he "owns" the Synergy brand.  Basically a hostile and energetically filthy takeover.  Not only this but he has threatened to SUE the Synergy Project for going ahead with their latest party on the basis that the association with "drug culture" will damage HIS brand, the Synergy Centre!

To make all this legal nastiness go away, the deal Steve proposed was that the Synergy Project hand over the entire organisation:-
    the rights to the name
    the Domain name
    the promotional infrastructure that has been developed since he left
    the mailing list
    and 10 GRAND IN CASH!!!

What a blagger!!!
Because he has pro-bono legal assistance he calculated that, if they tried to fight him in court, he'd bankrupt them, and if they chose instead to negotiate it had to be on his terms. 

The Synergy Project is about the collective, shared vision of many talented and creative people.  Any project taken over in this way and run by a person of this character, according to his solitary vision, can only fail horribly to recreate the magic that was once there.  I definitely won't be attending, and I guess that not many will.
I will also be boycotting the Synergy Centre until such a time as its existence is not sullied by the presence of such hostile, manipulative energies in its leadership, and I encourage everyone, punters and promoters alike, to spread the word and not support this kind of bullying behaviour.  Note the veiled threat in Steve Peake's last line:

"We need to be careful guys - this issue is still subject to legal review.  Worst case scenario is that people say stuff before thinking and it complicates and worsens already tricky situations."
REPHRASED: "Tell people what's happened and I'll get you in court!"

View Post
http://www.psy-forum.co.uk/forum/showpost.php?p=923316&postcount=83

This dirty business created by the the Synergy Centre needs to be addressed.  It concerns our whole community.  The revolution cannot and will not be owned by anyone :)
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well and truly spoken, brian!

i hereby declare, before this community, that i stand shoulder to shoulder with brian in his statement.

and i, too, STATE PUBLICLY that steve peake has acted with malice aforethought and sociopathic cunning in this whole sorry business.  while i don't claim he's worse than most corporate heads, i DO say that he is no better. NO better.

i have been privy to almost the whole e-discussion on this 'coup,' and i smell a Big Rat which (mark my words) could soon find itself in the media glare.  they, after all, LOVE stories where idealists have gone wrong and are squabbling with each other.

HOWEVER, I THINK THERE IS A WAY TO TURN THIS WHOLE ISSUE ON ITS HEAD AND SHOW THE OPPOSITE.  IF BRIAN AND I ARE FOLLOWED BY MANY MANY OTHERS IN THE COMMUNITY STANDING UP AND STATING THAT THE EMPEROR IS NUDE, PERHAPS THE STORY CAN BE TURNED INTO A MEDIA SUCCESS :)

the very first time i came across mr steve peake was during one of the original Warp Experiences, the original womb of everything that's followed since.  i was chatting with shayne collins who was running an EcoTrip stall there for the Green Party (he and steve later had a neck-wringing blazing argument and split from each other).  suddenly this ratty pumped up little guy was sort of yelling in my face about all the things that were wrong with my club.  to say that this stressed-up stranger was upsetting would be overstating the case, but he did make an impression - i made a mental note to stay clear of such (ungrounded?) energy/fury, and have done so ever since.

anyone who was at the alternative clubbing debate in the Synergy Project last year might remember me asking steve if he'd attended the london school of economics because the partners who ripped off a previous club of mine, Megatripolis, and tarnished my reputation FOREVER with terrible lies, had done Business Studies there.  i described to steve and the audience that i have since learned that 'business' students are actually TAUGHT how to undermine, split, and take over a company board - to say nothing of setting up contracts that leave all the reins in their hands.  IT'S JUST BUSINESS! - gouging and hoarding every cent.  steve admitted he'd done ethnic studies and business administration, or something, while frowning irritatedly in that special way he has when his hemispheres are fighting each other. like what you're saying is totally irrelevant when it's precisely the point!  anyone else noticed that about him?

one other fact is worth mentioning.  a young lady i used to be quite close to told me she'd once shared a flat with steve, shayne (mentioned above) and the guy she was living with whose name i can't remember.  they were all public school types and knew each other from there.  her take on them had been that they were all out to involve themselves in various aspects of the alternative scene where their unquestioned assumption was they could cut out nice little money earning careers for themselves.  "educated to rule empires".  if you don't recognise this type, YOU are going to get ripped off one of these days :(

and so, like brian, i hereby state publicly that a grave injustice is being committed over the Synergy 'movement,' and that i too shall totally boycott the Synergy Centre and any offshoots like the plague.  (indeed i've made a point of never once going there)  i also hereby encourage everyone to SPEAK UP about this outrage.  as i shall describe below, there is a real chance that the community (all those hundreds and even thousands who have ever attended the Synergy Projects or previous consciousness- raising clubs) CAN FINALLY TURN THE CAPITALIST WOLF BACK AT THE DOOR!

now, i know some of you will be surprised that i am supporting brian in ANYTHING :)  it's very well known that i have not always seen eye to eye with him.  but i praise him highly for saying what needs to be said, PUBLICLY, and if, by standing side by side with him and making this clarion call, we can enthuse and awaken our widest community to SPEAK UP, i judge it is more than worth it.

but brian?  i think the time has now arrived for YOU to publicly apologise for your behaviour during the previous and very similar 'coup' at the end of the Warp Experiences.  you write in your Statement:

"this is all of our business, it is about one individual who moved into our scene 5 years ago and corralled our movement to finance his personal dream where he rules as the emperor."

that one individual then was adam who owned what's now called the SE1.  he was a coked up ego-driven lunatic refugee from the music biz who had tried in many ways to take over the amazing event i had envisioned.  when i pulled the event out of there i did it honourably, undefeated (unlike Synergy today). but YOUR attempts after that to keep it going at any price, and your attempt to reconcile ME with, quite simply, a ten times more experienced and corrupted bastard than steve peake will ever aspire to, ended up putting me on some kind of LEVEL with this guy who, in your words, "moved into our scene briefly, attempted to take it over, and has since totally disappeared without trace."  admit now that you managed to equate me with steve.

as you say in your statement: "Any project taken over in this way and run by a man of this character according to his solitary vision, can only fail horribly to recreate the magic that was once there."

YOU CAUSED SERIOUS DAMAGE TO MY REPUTATION AT THE TIME BY PUTTING A COKED-UP PERVERT IN THE OPPOSING PAN TO ME, and then accused ME of running away from Reconciliation.  NOW, with this Synergy plot, are you ready to publicly apologise yet?
"Please take the time to read this below and take on board that this concerns YOU and your scene - please discuss."  Brian.

i hope i've made clear how this process works, how 'business/class trained entrepreneurs" move in and take over anything successful and popular in the alternative culture.  does every new, young project need to go on learning this lesson the hard way?  or can something change?  I THINK WE ARE AT A MOMENT WHEN WE ARE EXPERIENCED ENOUGH TO EFFECT A CHANGE!!

all of us who have any connection with the organising of Synergy will agree that a PROCESS of learning and adapting (EXPERIENCE) is clearly necessary if idealistic projects (organised by people striving to be more trusting and cooperative) are ever to grow and CHANGE the present Dinosaur world before they're taken over by the Dinosaurs who surround and finally penetrate them.  but the moment may have come (as it eventually MUST if society is to be changed) for A PROCESS OF CONSCIOUSNESS RAISING among the people themselves!!  the folks who attend the events.  the 'community' out there!

it's been a learning process for them too!  hear me out, in 3 steps:

1. 1995 - when bugsy and JJ stole Megatripolis from me the biggest shock (to me personally) was that the entire community (the 'scene' as it was then, not yet a community of any kind really) JUST WENT ON PARTYING!  the night they pulled the legal stuff and locked me out of my own club i sat in MacDonald's opposite Heaven and only 3 people came out to talk to me all that evening.  all the crew wanted to keep the sooperhip jobs i'd basically created for them, and didn't dare to 'take sides'.  but most of the people inside never even knew it had happened!  probably don't to this day.

never mind the cold arctic i felt in my heart and personal life for years afterwards, the point i'm making here is that all the people i was
trying to HELP basically believed that 'the party must go on,' 'don't stop the music' and all that.  the general rave scene outside our own conscious clubbing circles is still at this level NOW.  but we are in the conscious clubbing thread of rave culture, and it has a history of experience.

2. 1999 - 4 years later, when the identical rip-off started to rumble inside the Warp Experience, i spotted it coming! (from EXPERIENCE).  and this time, when i attempted to move it out of the SE1, most of my own personal crew and colleagues saw the truth (or at least trusted my experience and intentions).  unfortunately the warp event was very large, 24 hours long and fortnightly, and the majority of people with things going on there did NOT see the truth, or did NOT care and were only too happy to go on participating in the cloned version of my event.  in brian's words: "one individual who moved into our scene and corralled our movement to finance his personal dream where he rules as the emperor."  YOU WERE THERE, BRIAN!

3. 2008 - and now the 'community' out there is MUCH more aware.  the internet has connected everyone, like at least a cyber community.  WE are in a position to TELL them the truth!  this time [oh thankyou goddess!] maybe the community has enough EXPERIENCE to call the shots.  this time (or next time at the very latest) the community itself will have the ultimate control.  the Synergy Centre will wither on the vine.  steve will, hopefully, after a breakdown, see himself and begin to grow again and maybe even rejoin the culture at some point.

but, MOST IMPORTANTLY, other would-he rip off merchant bankers and lawyer's sons will think twice before bigtalking their way into our
Alternative Community.....

isn't this the only power we have?  the only power we the people have??!!  but it can be a great one!
fraser clark. london.  april, 2008.
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brian:
hey fraser, its an interesting relationship that you and i have had over the years, one that has held the potential for great possibility, yet has been held back through fear on your part, naivety on mine and misunderstanding on both of our parts.

when I returned to the uk in 1999 after being away for over 23 years, it was my intention to spend the summer here and to re experience my hippy youth

it was kind of a rip van winkle experience.  everything had changed, my friends from that time had all moved on, and even if i ran into them, i couldn't remember or recognise them  yet there was a familiarity in the scene in the festivals.

anyway, i hung out in brighton and then, from there, i went to glastonbury and later ended up at the moonshadow festival in Cornwall for the eclipse - it was a cold wet bleak experience. There I met pok, the space goats and a whole bunch of amazing people.

James from the yellow submarine (sadly now deceased) gave me a very interesting flier for something called "the warp experience" - I asked him what it was, but he couldn't explain to me in a way that I could understand at the time - i knew nothing about the party scene here, there was nothing like it where I had been living.

So anyway I went to london from there and stayed with my sister in finchley and i found the flier for the warp experience and decided that it might be interesting, but i was scared to go in the night - i was new to london this time around and "in the tunnels under london bridge" was a scary image to me so i waited till the next day and went down, and the moment I walked in there, my life changed, it was the vibe, the wildness of it all, the music, the people, the creativity.

I loved it, i wanted to get completely involved, i wanted to know who was sourcing it, I didn't understand about the collaborations and i didn't understand who was who and how it was all structured, so i got to know everyone in my quest.  I saw it as a community circle like the rainbow which i had been very involved with in the states

adam, fraser, tanya from green angels and others all seemed to be part of that circle, i didn't understand that fraser was was like the main man, i never saw it as a hierarchy, so i operated out of the concept that i had from the rainbow movement.

when i set up the warp experience website, it was purely intended as a community voice/conduit - remember very few people here used the internet in those days.

fraser, you misunderstood my motives, i guess based on your megatripolis experience, and you processed my sincere desire to be involved and contribute everything of myself that i could to make the warp experience successful through a fear filter and decided that i was trying to take over and that maybe even that i worked for the fbi - (you don't know how many problems that caused me even to this day) - i didn't understand how you could be so ridiculous, cos i had no idea about what had been going on here, i was just a bliss baby, in the party playground having great fun and wild experiences.

so anyway through action/reaction misunderstandings you and i fell out - very sad really and when all the shit went down with you and adam, i couldn't see the full picture - it appeared at the time that it was you who was causing the problem, meanwhile everyone in the warp experience community wanted it to continue cos it was an amazing event and more than that it had become a family and none of us wanted it to end - me included, so i did what i could do to keep it running - if its
any consolation, adam stiffed me in the end too.
>> they always do, they always do.  it's what these types do.

we all played a part in the misunderstanding and now i understand your fears, but i didn't at the time.

so yes i am sorry that it happened the way it did between us, but you have to own your part in the way that it played out - i tried to straighten it out on your bulletin boards, but you and your friends attacked me there viciously and i reacted - hopefully we are all  learning and growing.
>> i accept your public admission/explanation/apology, brian.
gladly.
(to say i was working from 'fear', however, is quite wrong.  there ARE people out there trying to rip-off, or in some cases just diss from envy, or deliberately to spread sabotage, or whatever) and, as all should be able to see now, they have not disappeared.  these people have to be spotted and dealt with or not dealt with, and this present situation is more than enough proof of that.  SOMETHING has to change if this is to be prevented in the future.)

and it's my hope that our 'scene' is now close to becoming a true 'community' BY ACTING AS ONE when the beasts of the jungle try to pick off some of our kind.

brian, let the world know that i hereby put behind me all blame as regards you, and i hereby gladly and proudly accept you as an ally.  let us gird our loins and, together, shoulder to shoulder, begin to set the world to rights :)

ALL FOR ONE AND FREE FOR ALL!
[from my rave opera Megatripolis@Forever!]
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"I played at a fundraiser at the Synergy Centre last night.
The thing that struck me, when talking to the crew there is how little they know about what steve¹s been up to.
They really have only been told the convenient facts, you know like mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed BS?

They certainly do not have an approved history to refer to, such as Dom set out for the Project people... There is no support for the stripping of our assets, they don¹t even want our name!   It would be heartening if rumours that Steve Peake has no support at all for going in for the kill are true.

But we should perhaps publish the approved history, with an update so the Synergy Centre crew can be informed.  I¹m sure they will not want to be part of hurting us  any more.  I don¹t know how we do this because there is no functioning Synergy Centre.  But I think it would be good if we could work out a way to do it.

They are just good people trying to run a community centre."  an older, deeply involved Centre member.
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>> most people know little about Heathendom Kaye either. i predict he's a lawyer, somebody says he's an accountant.

Most voluntary orgs have trustees that include service users, people who provide the services, and others who are connected with delivering the stated aims. So that should include people running projects at the Centre, and people who participate.
Most importantly the trustees should demonstrate transparency, accountability, democracy and managerial systems that deliver the aims effectively.
There should be elections to the board (the trustees) and the governing document should state how this will happen e.g. they all stand for election at an AGM!

If anyone at the centre can get a copy of the governing document (which should legally be available) and see what it contains in the way of democratic elections and many other things, they may be able to press for these things to happen.

This (r)evolution may best come from inside and by using the documents that must be adhered to for the centre to retain its registered charity status - but we can help where we can. e.g. if there should be public meetings so many times a year, we can attend.
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Dedicated to the child inside each one of us,
All the children and
All the children to come

so that was the last Synergy project on friday?!?

i feel properly conned... steve is a teef man, that weren't his to take, however he's fixed the papers to say it is... makes a mockery of the whole name and concept.

so many people came together around this concept of a "synergy"... so many people were LOOKING for a synergy... after the collapse of the 2001-3 peace movement it took a lot of energy from the natural peace movement constituency who are always looking for a way to unify, something to unify around, something to work together for.  and so a massive event and brand was built around this concept, largely by good will and free labour from rainbow tribes, old skool squat scenes, and festie people who've always done that job for free... because they've been trying to create a "synergy" long long before anyone thought of the word, and the rainbows were using the "synergy" word and concept as an events management concept loooong before this particular batch of events... before "The Warp Experience" that created the energy from which "Synergy" was to be drawn.
i'd say the W.E. collected and synergised the energy of the alternative scene at the time.

what's Steve gonna tell us he owns next?  "synchronicity"?  he ain't even a hippy man, he hates hippies, he told me so.  in his opinion it was always a deliberate attempt to target upper middle class wannabe hippies with money... and take their money... and hopefully get government funding along the way.

he ain't hippy, he definitely ain't rainbow, he doesn't get even the basics... he don't even like us!

so we were all working for Synergy by this time, post Blair's 2005 re-election when it looked like we were all gonna be i.d. chipped and the radical squats and free festis closed down... why?  because when we were working for Synergy we were surrounded by us, by rainbows, by phoenix and kenny, by the original collectives, by the smallworlders and oldskool ravers, by the elders, the Raga's and the VisionDanz's... we looked around us, that's what we saw, us, we thought we were working for us, we thought we were the synergy.  Certainly we WERE a synergy many times!

then it now turns out, after the event, after many events, after steve had specifically alienated, driven out, or plain banned - via  incitement, rudeness and threats - all the original founding members and all the elders... THEN we find out that all our free work for "the synergy collective," which we'd been led to believe consisted of some top rainbow promoters like Small World and id spiral... already massive collectives who'd allowed themselves to be co opted into helping this project........................
yes, ALL that work done, it now turns out, with a shuffle of a pen, a rustle of papers, and some spiteful legal stabbings, by the methods of aggravation of conflict between teams and team members and blunt, deliberately intolerable rudeness to the founders and builders...
all covered in the best modern bizness studies.

 ... it now turns out that it was all done for a chap called Steve Peake, who ain't rainbow, who don't get it, who ain't no don promoter, who don't run no festival areas, and who never had no team i was aware of (apart from his uni mate jon who's, far as i can make out, a pro-war capitalist anti-environmentalist hippy hater).  he never attracted much support, was largely disliked by the people who were doing all the work, and he's been disliked by most of the general movement since he tried the same thing on the Eco-tour in the 90's - (disliked but respected i should add).  i never saw him backstage, i never saw him working the venue, he was never part of the crew - you understand?  the real leaders were always crew... Dom and Pony were always crew, they never gave the kind of "we're the ruling class and you're supposed to work for us" impression. i don't agree with this.  people have different skills and can serve in different areas.  u can argue they should all be paid the same but i don't believe it's sensible to insist they all do the same work.

now this steve whoeverdafuk turns up and says, no actually, all that work was done for me, officially legally, READ THE PAPER! and there ain't fkall any of you can do about it, AND if anyone says anything about it they can fkoff outa my circuit cos i run things now!?!?!?  Gangsta man!!!  serious dread ya get me?  man more gangsta than Ariel Sharon...


Gangsta man knows that, cos he's fighting hippies and he's prepared to be nastier than them, they wont fight it - they haven't got a unified legal front for a start, they actually technically can't fight as a recognised 'unit', and he knows he can "legally" take the whole entity.

first move - remove Dom from the Synergy Centre;
next move - force Dom into a legal face off over the name, which Dom the gentleman was too big to fight, knowing it would be wrong for HIM to fight for a collective adjective - HE knows he's not THE  COLLECTIVE, he knows it's LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for ANY man to BE a COLLECTIVE...
next move - (having x'd Dom first ...clever!) the remaining collective was broken, and Steve always knew it would then be impossible for the group to mount any sort of challenge against him.  despite the fact that the verdict of the wider synergy movement is almost unanimously united against this action on obvious matters of principle.

 - and i mean matters of basic LOGICAL principle, never mind if we were to even start thinking about it in terms of MORAL principles or legal principles (god forbid):-

"Synergy" - Wikipedia definition - working together, the phenomenon in which two or more discrete influences or agents acting together create an effect greater than that predicted by knowing only the separate effects of the individual agents. St. Paul used the word in his Epistles (Rom. 8:28; 1 Cor. 3:9) to illustrate a dynamic conception of human, divine and cosmic cooperation: "I did the planting, Apollos the watering, but God made things grow…We are fellow workers (synergoi) with God; you are God's farm, God's building."

Wikipedia definition continues:- "The opposite of synergy is antagonism, the phenomenon where two agents in combination have an overall effect that is less than that predicted from their individual effects."  a perfect description of what steve has done?

he's stolen it man    that's all i can think    i really cant see that any other way    tell me its another way?

i'm two years down cos of this, off-stage, handling a broken organisation as a direct result of the way he (steve) deliberately turned the peace-not-war organisation against me (and itself) in order to avoid discussing a share on a new years eve 2006/7 event where we put 2000 people in the building at 20 quid a ticket and MY crew ran the whole building... new years day i was hungry, cashless and out of electricity, i had to walk to synergy from north london (minus one free bus) to talk to steve about it and he just told me to fuck off... that my organisation was nothing, that peace-not-war was nothing, that he had everything, that i'd been paid 100 quid and he paid himself nothing, he then went to Australia and India on holiday for months while i went home and worked by candlelight till someone could lend me some money ("typical hippy scrounger") and you know the coup, i was in the building for 48 hours before the event, for the umpteenth time, unfed, cos steve had pissed off chris lucid ages ago... obviously... carrying tons of staging upstairs downstairs coordinating people soundsystems and lights when steve wasn't even in the building.  he only came back when i called him on someone else's phone (he wouldn't answer mine) and told him that by this stage i was only interested in running an event and making it good and was really not interested in discussing money any more... he was back in the venue within half an hour (and "boss" immediately of course, lucky we'd done most of the work in advance cos he always slows things down)

... it was six months before i could even contemplate trying to rebuild the peace-not-war organisation... this particular (NYE b4 last) action of Steve's also, by direct consequences of consequences, fucked up Revolutionation, United Vibrations and the first Sunrise Festival and the 07:07:07 party for peace that would have been coincidental with Al Gore's earthday and anti world, we had Jamie Woon in the millennium dome and there happened to be, by coincidence, half a million people from across the world on the streets of London for the tour de france, on a day of clear blue skies and fresh sunshine, after two weeks of thunder and rain... the party for peace was silent... why?  king blues was there at the 24th feb demo and there was no soundsystem for them... why?  cos peace-not-war was not there, why?  ...when the national demonstrations, peace movement, environmentalist movement, labour movement all hit their smallest attendance numbers since the 90's why?

 and two years later we are only JUST getting back to where we were in 2005 - Steve caused HARM, man - but that's cool, i've caused harm, can't make an omelette without breaking eggs innit but...

it was the same thing... after building the toilets, the soundproof wall, the air conditioning, looking after a 100 nights for free, talking to the police for the centre... it turns out all work done is done FOR steve... that's really not the way we were sold it when we started working... you understand... dave magic was doing that work for PEACE-NOT-WAR, not synergy... and that's the way its been, that's the way Steve has been retrospectively stealing labour   highly deceitful business practices   he will go a long way that steve
yes, down.  because the world is changing [HAS TO CHANGE!] much more rapidly than the steves within it can realise.

peacelove and love to steve and i do still hope the new organisations all do well, obviously, and will be there if i can if you need me.

(even if Steve needs me, cos i still remember him turning up with a soundsystem for the first european creative forum at Area 10 peckham, saved the day actually, and quite an important day it was... long before i'd heard of "Synergy")
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=63184166&MyToken=d63cc111-acfe-43c7-945d-c7065d84a275'
up!

TO EVERYONE OUT THERE:
A TOTAL BOYCOTT of the Synergy Centre is my str