INFINITE ONION ELEVEN Infinite Onion c/ o ZAP Tkalciceva 38 41000 Zagreb Croatia Revolution Infinite Onion style and the Holy Unspeakable Name of God Revolution is like this: It's a cycle of situations met with a conflicting forces. Like Hegel put it, a thesis met with an antithesis produces a synthesis which then as a new thesis is again met with a new antithesis. Growing and learning and never stopping. Conflict bringing about the new, the beautiful, the alive and the completely repulsive. Eter nal change bringing life to new plateaus and ne w highs. Discovering these highs are so low compared to the new levels in sight and then climbing to meet them. Peeling the peels and discovering there are always more. Growing and becoming jaded and then being knocked off the pedestal all the time when one discovers that all this knowledge or wisdom or experience is only the first step. "This time I got it all figured out: All I know is that I don't know nothing ..... And that's fine" - Operation Ivy Relating to the Cabala and magick th is takes the for m of Yahweh or the tetragramaton where the hebrew letters YHVH make up the same formula : Yod (Y) being the idea, the sperm, the concept , the theory. The first He (H) as a nurturing medium, the womb , the mind putting concept or theory into practical thought. Vau (V) , the new child being born , the action taking place, the revolutionary theory becoming alive in the form of new collectives and movements of resistance, conceptual liberation becoming manifest into reality. As the manifestation grows, solidif ies and matures the final He becomes the new medium for change or transformation like the synthesis of two ideas becomes the new thesis. YHVH-> Yahweh is the Hebrew name of god. In contrast with so many tired and oppressive concepts of externalized and judgemental supreme being, this brings god down to inside one's self , the continual reaching for higher ground through constant transformation. God is the high potential in you. This is me constantly changing, growing and learning as well as the wor ld. We a ren't stuck, we're always in motion and as we propel ourselves and take on this change as a fact of life and as a hope for the future. We aren't stuck in the spectacle. We aren't trapped in social control. Sure it's knocked us back, distracted us and confused us , but these are just the basis' we are working out of and adding influence to, constantly crumbling , destroying , fighting and creating and loving and building. We destroy the influence in ourselves constantly and bring about change on the whole of it all as a result of our change internally. As we tear down the materialism and imposed social values inside of ourselves, there's a world of locks to glue, fur stores to burn down , kings to be dethroned and institutions of control and hate to be toppled. Then there's spiritual growth, the learning , building strength inside and then projecting it outwards and building a new world by building communities, sharing knowledge and love, creating a world where people have a say in their lives and con trol over their situation. And by the time we arrive there, we'll be looking at entirely new revolutions, new beginnings and new reasons to surge on. Fuck the way things are, we have worlds to discover! Every revolution is just one peel in a plant that never quits , every change takes us to another level to start from , coming full circle does not mean the cycle stops. I've been round this circle so many times and as far as I'm concerned , the beat don't stop. Infinite O nion is available either from ZAP for about $2 Europe or $3 other places. It+s also available from DS4A (SAE + 40p for UK , rest of Europe send 90p to DS4A c/o Box 8, Greenleaf Bookshop / 82 Colston Street / Bristol , Avon , UK) or ACTIVE (about the same to BM ACTIVE / WC1N 3XX / LONDON UK) . In the US this should be available conveniently through Profane Existence or Blacklist Mailorder. . All these have excellent mailorder catalogs. Oh yeah, the disclaimer! Neither Infinite Onion nor anyone even marginally involved let alone r esponsible for it+s publication does by any means whatsoever suggest that any part of this magazine should be taken as encouragement to act in any illegal manner. On the contrary Infinite Onion supports and applauds those who act within the parameters of the legality. So there. CAUTION !!!! PROTECTED PRIVATE PROPERTY!!!!! This magazine remains the property of the sender unless an/or it has been personally and materially accepted by the prisoner to whom it is addressed. In the event that the prisoner is denied direct access to this publication , it must be returned to the sender with notice of the reasons for failing to deliver to the addressee. Welcome to the wonderful first ever footnote intensive issue of the Infinite Onion! The bulk of this issue consists of footnotes as you may or may not have noticed. The idea here is to get away from the normal linear format that my zine had suffered from. Although I haven+t put it all together yet, and I+m not quite sure how it will turn out, I+m hoping to sort of tie e verything here t ogether in some way or other. Humans don+t ordinarily think linearly , but through attempts at organizing life completely logically and in a way that can be computerized, categorized, organized on a straight line1 and dealt with systematically we+ve ended up formatting all of our thoughts linearly, even when logical thinking defies what+s happening around us. If cause and effect clashes with an observed, perhaps completely illogical or unscienti fic synchronicity in seemingly -unrelated+2 events, many people will attempt to reconstruct the happening to a shape that conviently fits into their appropriate slots of thinking (usually cause and effect). People do this out of necessity. Our understanding of the Universe is made up of the model (map) we+ve built in our heads of what is outside of our body3 and we will inevitably relate all of what we experience to this map and fit it with the method of organizing/processing that we worked out over the years or were taught no matter wh ether it really fits or not. But the map is not the territory! When we process information not designed specifically for our thinking process (ie: not relating to our map), we end up filtering a good deal of information simply because it doesn+t fit on the map4. So, by organizing this issue as more of an interelated net of information instead of seemingly unrelated and linear chunks of information, I+m attempting to introduce the possibility of map reconstruction, the r ealization of a different thinking process that may fill in some gaps o r open some windows to a new perspe5ctive. Confused? Think I+m intellectualizing simple things to absurdity? Wrogn! I+m absurdizing intellectuality! WERDS ND BLERBS A lot of things have landed elsewhere in this issue though trying to even coming close to saying it all would be absurd and probably life consuming. Basically since leaving the US , I moved to Zagreb and have stayed here on and off. Trying to do stuff here on the on and traveling around Europe o n the off. Getting away from the US was good. I had been itching to break out of this stagnance I felt while I was in the US for a long time and breaking out of that inertia in my life felt good. Fuck, it still feels good. The last few months have had me half way around the world, moving constantly or living hectically ; it+s been too much to want to rattle through here except that I+ve been traveling with bands, mobs of punks,by myself, crashing with friends , squatting, playing, being wet, being angry , being happy, selling patches and stol en stuff, going to gatherings and demos, getting arrested , getting weird, getting high and of course getting lost in weird (and some high) places among other things and staying at my parents house in between. There+s a real contrast between these two aspects of my life right now. First off, travelling provides me with all the chaos , tumult and freshness I need in life. Where it rubs me the wrong way as it occasionally does, it+s usually something i can draw from later in li fe, an obstacle in me that needs to be sma shed (was it Nietzsche that said -What doesn+t kill me only makes me stronger+) to be able to move on to the people and experiences which I value more. Developing new friendships , seeing the cool shit people are organizing or involved in elsewhere , sharing their lives and struggles is empowering and fucking inspiring. Traveling really keeps a flame alive when -home+ seems so void. And so many things are brought home , things that where always there , just harder to see at times. On the other ha ng in Zagreb has been to a large extent frustrating and lonely. After living in big punk houses for so long usually overfilled with crazy people I could relate to and share my experiences with, I found myself at my parents6 (footnotes to 6 found in footnotes 7,8, 9 . last 6 in footnote 6 is footnote 9 , first 6 is 7, second 6 is 8 .. of course) comfortable, pet. bourgeois flat , bored out of my skull and rediscovering the brain deadening contentment of TV p acification : the simplest default to doing more th ings on my own. It changed since I first moved to Zagreb. I met some very good people and spend time with them when I can , but not living in the same space really seems to fuck up the possibility of living my ideas and sharing my life with friends. Hesse wrote about Steppenwolf+s hate for bourgeois stability and at no other time have I felt it more strongly than while I was there . I+ve heard so many boring lines about the importance of stability and material security. What , for this? I haven+t felt more separated from people and stuck and stuck than I have living in that warm comfortable, warm flat, well fed , bored and gorged on empty materialist escapism than I have for years. Give me a dangerous, damp, dirty, slug infested squat anyday. Anyhow , I came to Zagreb hoping to get active with anarchists here against the war or help out with refugee stuff. After latching on to a few people from ZAPO who I+d been in touch with through the mail I realized not much of anything was happening here with the most active people had headed elswhere to be of more use. I spent alot of time doing alot of not much. I did manage to find some people interested in doing some stuff , but it+s difficult getting people who grew up in a culture which outruled the possibility of creating an alternative or building grasroots resistance to step forward. So much hasn+t been tried here and there are so few examples of what could happen. Unfortunately when things really seemed to be picking up momentum, I was pressured to leave th e country more or less permanently. More on this in the Zaginflatch section. NEWSBLERBS Become an ordained Minister in the Universal Life Church for free! According to them Life is Freedom , Food and Sexuality. Heaven is when you have it and Hell is when you don+t. They also have a number of other titles available including among many others, Dervish, Flying Nun and Martyr. Help the ministry grow! Request information on becoming ordained at ULC, 601 Third Street, Modesto, CA 95351, usa. The ULC only beli eves in that which is right and everybody has the right to decide what is right for themselves. METELKOVA squat in Ljublana is starting up a reading library which should include among other things books , comics , zines , and whatever else they feel like putting in. They are planning to have some speakers in the space and have long range ideas to do a distro. They are welcoming any halp with donating books and zines so send them whatever you do! For mail sen d things to Toma+ Trplan, -tudentski Dom, Topni|ka 33, 61000 Ljubliana , Slovenia. Otherwise stop by at Metelkova , just go left after coming out of the central train station and you+ll find it on your right hand side a couple minutes walk down the road. Greenpeace London is still fighting McDonalds in court over McDonald+s libel suit which has been going on for about four years now, during the course of which Helen and Dave the two unwaged defendants have made fools out of McDonalds claims and uncovered additional bullshit about t he company+s policies and evil deeds . The small independent collective which is not a part of the larger Greenpeace organization was sued by McDonalds in response to their six page factsheet outlining criticisms made of McDonalds by several concerned people and organizations around the world. The trial produced statements by McDonalds workers and contractors themselves admitting McDonalds+ purchases of beef grown on ex-rainforest land in Brazil (deforested as recently as 10 years ago) , lying about the incredibly destructive packa ging used (according to the UK President of McDonalds , not more than 100 to 150 cups from McDonalds end up as litter from the soft drink purchases of one million customers. The man also claims styrofoam packaging is less environmentally damaging than using plates, knives and forks), evidence on the stomping out of trade unions, the completely unhealthy cancer and death inducing qualities of their food ( -We are not a health store+) ; the trial has also revealed further informat ion concerning the murder and torture of animals which McDonalds makes their food out of. Chickens to be used in Chicken Mcnuggets and McChicken sandwiches were crammed into cages less than the size of an A4 sheet of paper and no access to daylight causing severe health problems in over a third of the chickens. Chicks rejected by the company were dumped into dust bin sized containers and gassed. Over 1300 birds (that+s only 1% ) were decapitated without being stunned daily. Chicke ns kept in battery cages to supply eggs are stuffed in 5 to a cage with even less space than broiler chickens and no freedom of movement , no access to fresh air and no sunshine. The pigs who spend over half their lives on less than half a meter of floor space per pig have their teeth clipped at infancy. Pigs were stunned using electric tongs, then shackled and knifed, some falling off the -bleeding rail+ before they were killed. McDonald+s beef consists mainly of dairy cows ,who after years of stress, pain, exhaustion and disease are sent off t o be slaughtered for McDonalds+ burgers. Though it has been admitted that the methods for murdering the cows were -not particularily good+, Helen and Dave have been unable to verify the conditions independently as their expert witnesses have been denied access to all relevant establishments. Although the trial has produced a lot of incriminating evidence bound to convince any human with an ounce of consciousness for their own health and the rest of the planet to avo id or help destroy the corporation entirely, it+s been high costs for the defendents. Helen and Dave were denied a right to jury trial (McDonalds argued that the issues were too complex for a jury), and are representing themselves since no legal aid is available in libel cases. The defendents are up against McDonald+s team of top libel lawyers and have to deal with the corresponding mountain of approximately 30 000 pages of documentation themselves. Though the legal system is confusing as hell they+ve had to learn as they went a long. In retaliation to McDonald s+ lawsuit, Helen and Dave have filed a countersuit (to run alongside McDonalds+ suit) against leaflets and press releases claiming critics of McDonalds were deliberately circulating lies about the company. It looks as if the court proceedings will still take some time. In the meantime, Greenpeace London is stepping up it+s campaign against McDonalds and encourage others to join in the fight against the fast food multis (it+s not just McDonalds) and express solidarity for them. For more information on thei r suit and different campaigns going on write to McLibel Support Campaign c/o Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX , UK. tel/fax 071 713 1269 For McDonalds haters in Croatia: ads in Croatian daily newspapers are announcing the opening of new McDonalds retaurants in Croatia and are in search of qualified candidates for restaurant management. This cannot go unopposed. McDonalds has spread it+s American consumerist bullshit to over half the world , don+t let them get their foot in here t oo! Let McDonalds know of you r hate and of your absolute unwillingness to allow them to set up further murder facilities in Croatia. The address listed on the ad is McDonald+s Central Europe GmbH c/o Mrs. Sonja Spindler, World Trade Center, A-1300 Flughafen-Wien, Austria. Please fill us at Infinite Onion and/or Zaginflatch in on further information or actions against the bastards. The Earth Liberation Prisoners (ELP) is a network that has been set up to circulate up to date in formation on people who have been imprisoned for radical bio centric activities, including those involved in ALF, Green Anarchist, Earth First and ELF activities. The network is also set up to support the activists imprisoned through solidarity actions and letter writing. Prison can be a lonely place so any letters of support can really help break that isolation that the state tries to impose. For further info or a prisoner list send a self addressed envelope and about 50p for postage to E.L.P. c/o MSEF!, Box 23, 5 High Street, Gastonb ury, Somerset England Claremont Road Evicted. Claremont Road which was a community of squatters resisting the building of an outdated , badly planned, pollution increasing, incredibly expensive motorway link road which was estimated to displace over 1000 people from their homes and all together incredibly eco-hostile was evicted in early December after a four day struggle with police and security dolts. Protestors and squatters held the police off non-violently dutring the entire conflict, but in the end it was the pigs and roadbuilders w ho took the buildings that once housed a vital community to turn it into asphalt. Grrrrrr! 34 ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS FACE JAIL Q OVER 50 HORSES DEAD As a result of the police riots which broke out at the 1992 Velka Pardubicka Steeplechase in the Czech Republic, 34 animal rights protestors are being charged with organized riot. All are faced with possibible sentences of 2-3 years prison. The Steeplechase which is a highly dangerous horse race track has so far directly clai med the lives of over 50 horses who died on the field as well an unknown number who were killed as a result of exhaustion or after untreatable injuries. A demo and civil disobedience action 700 strong was held to block the race , specifically one obstacle which has alone claimed the lives of 20 horses. The action was attacked by police who beat many protestors severely. One group of 40 protestors were pushed into a van and beaten, with some being tear gassed and bleeding. Th ey were then driven to a forest, held at gun point, beaten further and released. Others were trampled under the hooves of police mounts and yet others were chased down individually and beaten. Though several top police officials were fired, most police involved were found innocent. The 34 activists singled out to face trial still have to be given court dates. The Animal SOS Foundation is one of the groups affected by the charges and is asking for support. Animal SOS Foundation , Kafkova 9 , Dejvice , Prague 6 , Czech Republic , tel/fax: 0042 2 531 141 TOUR THE USSR If your band is interested in touring the former USSR and are not too into making money at it , try contacting Serget Chernov c/o Hanna Kolb, Eidelstedter Weg 75 , D-20255 Hamburgf , Germany for further information. 900 ARRESTS AT ANTI EU DEMO - A demo against the EU summit in Essen was banned by German courts who feared violent actions from -autonomous+ groups. Despite the ban over 1000 people showed up in Essen to take part in the countersummit organized by a coalition of anti-EU groups including everyone from the green party to autonome groups. Early on through the summit/countersummit cops harrassed and IDd people on public transport , the streets, even going as far as pulling over cars on the motorway. Friday night, one car from Berlin was pulled over terrorist squad style. The Berliners were escorted to prison at gunpoint with bags pulled over their heads and were accused of conspiring to build molotov coctails. The evidence included bottles of mineral wat er, an oil canister and a toilet roll found in the b oot of the car. Saturday about 3000 ignored the ban and took to the streets to protest and were immediately cornered by cops who officially arrested a total of 918 demonstrators - a new record for Germany. Eyewitnesses reported a non-German being beaten and kicked badly by three to five pigs who then dragged him to a wall were he was further beaten by up to 10pigs. He put up no type of resistance warranting the beating. He wasn+t taken to a hospital until half an hour of lying unconscious on the pavement. O ther non-Germans were processed separately and banned from the city for two months. The Essener Alliance who organized the anti-summit are demanding the resignation of Minister of interior affaisrs who took political responsibility for the ban and the police actions -Will the prohibition of the demonstration and the preceeding judicial history be a model case for the treatment of a critical opposition by the police and politics, every future left opposition movem ent can be criminalized.+ With the CJB in Eng land , bans , evictions and tightening of immigration laws in Germany and elsewhere these fascisms seem to be spreading steadily. new on the ZAPATISTAS The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) notified the International Red Cross Committee that, after the installation of Eduardo Robledo Rincon as governor of Chiapas, the ceasefire in force since January 12th was considered broken. And that hostilities could break out at any moment. The election was considered ri gged by many. Dec 11 -14 Zapatist a troops broke through a military encirclement of between 40 to 60 thousand Mexican army troops .With the aid of locals and their knowledge of the terrain and climate they burst through with no casualties or open fire. Between December 15 and 18th , EZLN troops took control of 38 municipios in Chiapas , declaring them autonomous territories. In a comunique dated 17th of December the EZLN set out demands that the National Comission of Inte rmediation (CONAI) act as the mediator between the EZLN and the Mex ican government rejecting president Zedillo+s proposal to set up a mediating entity consisting of representatives of different political parties. -The solution to the conflict that is apparently confined to the southeast, but in fact is manifest throughout the country, will not come from "governmental commissions" but from a profound transformation in the political, social and economic relations between governors and the governed .+ - Subcommandante Marcos On Dec. 20 th e New York Times reported civilian takeovers of town halls and blocking of highways in various areas of Chiapas. December 21 , 75 Bay Area Zapatistas stormed the Mexican Consulate in San Francisco and demanded the recognition of Bishop Ruiz as mediator in the Chiapas conflict, the boot for the PRI governor of Chiapas, and the installation of the PRD losing candidate. Several of the participants in the take-over announced a fast in solidarity with Chiapas'fasting Bishop Ruiz. The protestors for ced the Con sul, Sr. Figueroa, to make phone calls to the Diocese of San Cristobal de las Casas and to the Office of the Presidency in Mexico City, which he did. Although a large number of police responded to a call from the Consulate, there were no arrests as the protestors vacated the premises peacefully after achieving their demands. 22nd of December in Burlington, VT (USA) demonstrators rallied in support of the indigenous popular struggle in Chiapas. @+@+#@9**+\-++ @##!!#@--@*##!!-!@@!!*!#!#!@!#@!@+@++ THE FALL OF CEAUSESCU or ELENA LIVES The door opened silently and the old woman crept in. She wanted to surprise the old man, awake in the big bed , by sneaking up on him but something distracted her. -Nicu, my dear . . . I can smell something burning+, said Elena -Ah, don+t worry my dear, I+m burning today+s suit. it+s in the grate+. The President of Romania wasn+t at all surprised by his wife+s creeping about. She had learnt the silent stealthy tip-toe w alking whilst on shopping trips in Bucharest ple would double take the old lady wrapped up and half hidden behind the Gucci scarf. She couldn+t resist a peek at the people now and then. She spoke again. -Don+t you think it+s a bit wasteful dear. I mean you+ve hardly even stained the sleeves with soup or had a chance to give it your own particular smell. It could become like a member of the family , an old friend. Do you have to destroy your clothes ?+ -We are the mother and father of the working classes. If we want to burn our clothes a s an examp to the people , then we must do as our mind desires. Are you getting in or what?+ With a graceless motion, Elena removed her nightdress and stood momentarily in the light of the fire, he naked body orange and purposely displayed. She looked over at Nicolae. -What are you reading, Nicu?+, she said in such a way, the pronunciation soft and warm. He turned and flicked an eyebrow, regarding his naked love with no other facial display. -Oh, this . .+ , h e laid down the very thick book on the elderdown, it+ ssy picture of himself face up, -it+s my latest work on politics and the masses+, he laughed and she laughed too. -I do wish they would write my books with more jokes , or at least some asides . . . These tend to be very dull. I+m thinking of getting the team to start a series of Ceausescu thrillers. What do you think ?+ -I don+t think so dear. - She was starting to chill a little. The fire glowed and changed shadows across her breasts. She patted her stomach and went to star t a sentence about her thin , old body but she halted the thoughts before they became words. This was not the time. She stepped to the other side of the master bedroom and lifted the covers. Sliding down beside her husband, she turned to face his now vertical body. Cheerily she looked at his aging face and with one hand touched him lightly on the eyebrow and slid the other one between the elastic tops of his pajamas and his stomach skin. She whispered tales of the ir drives down the victory Boulevards in Bucharest and of how th stopped to admire the many streets, avenues, squares and places named after them. Of bookstores, their windows displaying the latest Ceausescu book, behind the rows of books, huge poster portraits of him. His Institute in the town center , his hospital in the Eastern Quarter ... all these things put him in the mood for good sex with his wife and First Lady. As stirrings within them became more dominant and to the fore, the book the old man was reading , shifted closer to the edge of the bed and finally tum bled over the edge to land front up on the old carpet, Nicu+s face hidden and buried in the deep shag. The last time he had been in Elena+s arms in Trgoviste was a year ago when his wife was touring the country visiting the former sites of relocated peasant communities. Nicolae was alone in his favorite pub, a glass of President Ale before him on the table. He always sat alone here and thought long and hard about policy. The beer slid down smoothly and policy was settled in his head until he was back home in Bucharest with his aides and flunkeys and headed Presidential memo pad. Any locals in the place would usually not disturb Mr Ceausescu unless they were young , brave Securitate after an autograph on their Party card. He didn+t mind at all . The people loved him. They loved his beer too. This year they were together in the bar. they had not had time down any of Ceausescu+s finest as the moment they arrived , they had gone straight down into the cellar and sat behind so me beer crates. The people outsi had not thought to check inside the pub because of its obvious loyalty to the revolution. Dotted between displays of flowers hanging over the pub balconies were the corpses, still warm, of Securitate people unconvinced about the nature of the masses in times of change. The landlord, a shrewder character, had understood the times and decided that to continue to sell beer throughout the festival of the oppressed was a better business decision than upholding the security of the nation for a man who had n ever p aid for his beers anyway. Elena whispered into Nicu+s ear, -Don+t worry ... it will never last. They are just angry about something. They don+t understand. We have run this country well. We have managed its wealth with consideration for everyone. Can you open my purse dear, the clasp+s stiff. There+s a handgun in there. I want to take it out, just in case. Nicu pointed the gun at his wife+s face , who jumped back startled. -What are you doing , Nicu ?+ Nicolae dropped his hand and the gun poi o the floor. He had been miles away , back in Bucharest where his own home was on fire. The people+s love for him was over. He had been found out. No more shit. He had pointed the gun at her to say this. How could he tell he outright. He needed her now. Her strength. Her sour faith. Her belief in the common people. -Nicu, you are the most beloved son of the people and I love you.+ Two pieces of rope lay on the table behind the soldiers. The q uestion master continued the questioning. Both Ele sitting close together, looked up at the shabby room they had ended up in. -This is outrageous, a provocation+, Elena had shouted when the soldiers had led them in the place. Dumped heavily in two chairs, Elena sat in a huff occasionally making asides to a tense soldier who looked fairly heroic to her with his uniform tatty and his designer stubble and beautiful eyes twinkling in the makeshift courtroom. Nicolae was tired, -I recognize only the Grand National Assembly and the representative s of the g class . . . I will sign nothing. I refuse to answer those who have fomented this coup d+etat. I am not the accused. I am the President of the Republic, I am your Commander In Chief. We have been working for the people since the age of fourteen.+ The large inquisitor, sighed and began again. -You have staved Romania+. Elena looked across Nicu+s face. He was exhausted. This was tiresome business. Nicolae spoke, - Nonsense, speaking as an ordinary citiz en , I can tell you that for the first ti ives the workers had 200 kilos of flour a year and many additional benefits. All your allegations are lies.+ -What about your z400 million foreign bank accounts+. -Show me proof ..., I want proof ! Confront me with the organizers of this coup. There are no such accounts . It+s all lies. There+s not a single dollar.+ -The prosecutor leaned forward , - Are you mentally defective ?+ Elena erupted, startling the youngster guarding over her. -This is outrageous. How can you even ask such a qu est court rose to recess , but the President refused to stand. -Let+s get this over with , he muttered. Elena refused as well. She was angry. Looking around, she weighed up the situation. These jumped up army clerks were taking over. An appeal against any sentence these pricks passed would give them time. Anything could happen in Bucharest. the Securitate still controlled the Capitol+s sewers. Nicu leant over and touched his wife+s knee. Was he giving up, wa s it love ? Did he mean everything was okay ? W d he mean. Nicu , you fool you never let it come through. Why hold it all in ? Elena considered what was happening around her. When all this was over , she would officially order a glass of President+s Ale for every Romanian. This ones on the old man , this time. Let him buy the drinks for once. The sound of General Stanculescu re-entering the room with four soldiers brought her back to the present. The young men came right over to them, stood them up and began to tie their ha nds behind their backs. esident spoke to everyone present in the room : -I don+t recognize the legitimacy of this court. Whoever staged this coup can shoot anyone they want. The traitors will answer for their treason. Romania will live and learn of your treachery. It is better to fight with glory than to live as a slave+. Tears began to move down his face. Elena struggled and shrieked, -Everyone has the right to die as they wish. Don+t tie us up. It+s a disgrace.+ She turn ed to a young soldier, - I brought you up like a mother. W hy are you doing this ? If you want to kill us, kill us together+. She would not cry. This was it. No helicopter ride back to Bucharest to face the people there like they thought. The soldiers led them out, down the corridor. Outside , more soldiers gathered in the courtyard. Elena moved slowly forward and the blue eyed Hero of the Revolution who had guarded her earlier bumped into her. Quietly he said to her, -Lady , you+re in real trouble+ , Elena stared into his face and raged: -You keep away from me , you motherfucker !+ By the time they saw the wall ahead of them , Nicolae was starting to hum The Internationale. Elena interrupted his reverie, -Stop it Nicu. Look they+re going to shoot us like dogs.+ They turned away instinctively. The President caught the fire in his chest. The firing squad obeyed orders to shoot low to keep the President+s face in tact so that he was recognizable after his death. For Elena no such order was issued and the squad stuck her face to the wall and her body slid to the f r. The soldier with beautiful blue eyes, rushed up and fired another burst at her as she lay down dead. The Defense Ministry ordered a search of the Stadium+s ground. Leave no stone unturned. The bodies of the Ceausescu+s had been helicoptered into the place and left on the turf. Now they had disappeared. A little later, a shout indicated that the corpses had been found, moved to a shed inside the ground by unknown hands. The blue eyed soldier shifted the bodies back. Taking a final look at Ele feeling struck. The corpse with no face could be just any old old woman+s corpse from the revolutionary streets of Bucharest. The hideous thought flashed large before the memory of his firing an angry burst at the body of the President+s wife. Elena lives ? , he thought but he kept the thought to himself. This was taken from FAST ... HARD , the International Magazine for the Hard Of Living. If you have a copy of the video recording of Ceausescu+s executi on, go ahead and contact Chris , c/o 56 a Info Books hop, 56 Crampton Street. London SE17 , UK . All sightings of Elena should be reported to the Ceausescu Detective Agency at the above address. @+@+#@9**+\-++@##!!#@--@*##!!-!@@!!*!#!#!@!#@!@+@++ ORDINARY SMOKING IS NOT ENOUGH! In an age bent on self destruction and romanticising the addiction of toxic (non)pleasures , along with their toxic cures, it+s interesting how half assed some of the adherents of this school of suicide dabblery can be. Is a life sucking culture and societ y really enough ? Apparently , the thrill of life introduced by the exciting cycle of work and consumption doesn+t cut through the dulleness of the safe life we enjoy. Though cigarette smoking had proven its merits successfully as the thano-adventure it is, it still takes years to even get close to any semblance of that first flirt with death that our culture mystifies, romanticizes, fills with fear and enforces vigorously. The wide road to suicide can be even more exciting. Marlboro Man spent years coughing and sputtering before even catching a glimpse of the Styx. Why wait around for the real kicks when the taxi cab to adventure is right within reach of your doom hungry fingertips right now. A few tips: Try adding some tasty and quickening plastic shavings into your rolling tobacco or smoking the filter first Or how about a delicious smoker tea? A handful of cigarette butts, steeped in hot water will no doubt greatly increase the effectivene ss of your cigarettes and their exciting effect on your body. Best prep possible. Ever tried playing Russian Cigarette Roulette? Nyet, no Russian tobacco needed for this one.Simply saturate one cigarette filter out of a fresh pack with pure unfiltered nicotine (way more exciting and effective than regular nicotine found in cigarettes). Every time you light up , feel the rush before putting the cigarette to your lips. Will this be the last one? Sigh in dissapointed relief at the sight of the broke punk you just bumbed a smoke to as t hey clutch their stomach and wretch in p vomiting and pleading for help. Try soaking your body in flammable liquids. Why should it always just be the lungs to get all charred up? Or for even more outer body solidarity with the gasping martyrs inside, it may prove handy to burn a section of your skin before every time you take a puff. Don+t stop , the possibilities are endless. @+@+#@9**+\-++@##!!#@--@*##!!-!@@!!*!#!#!@!#@!@+@++ D.I. fuckin+ Y. Tips for Natural Healing by -enna When surrounded by growing plants in fields & f prefer to scavenge medicinal herbs from Nature myself. However, if this isn+t possible, if you+re surrounded by cities of concrete, if there+s a foot of snow on the ground, or you are unable to identify different plants, many health food stores are generally quite well stocked with a variety of dried herbs, tinctures, tablets, extracts, powders, etc. There are a few herbs I use a lot that are beneficial for just about everything, one of which is raw garlic. I k new Hare Krishnas couldn+t be ed when I learned that it is against their religion to include garlic in their food. Garlic is God and should be a main staple of everyone+s diet to be consumed daily. Garlic was eaten by ancient pyramid builders to increase their strength, it warms your body when it+s cold & it acts as a repellent against nasty people obsessed with sterility who fear body odor. I+ve even gotten high from eating really potent organic garlic. Garlic acts as an antibiotic & helps protect the body against all diseases, i nfections, fungus & bacteria. In addition, it detoxifies the body, strengthens blood vessels, lowers blood pressure & fights asthma, arthritis, cancer, circulatory problems, colds, flu, digestive problems, heart disorders, insomnia, liver disease, ulcers & yeast infections. Although I+ve never read any warnings concerning the ingestion of too much garlic or experienced any harsh effects myself, I have heard of excess amounts of garlic causing kidney problems. Echinacea is another mul ti-purpose natur ntibiotic (without the side-effects of synthetic antibiotics) good for colds, flu, infections of all kinds & strengthening the immune system. Sharing many of the same properties & often used in conjunction with echinacea is goldenseal. Goldenseal acts as an antibiotic as well & is considered a cure - all herb. It is anti-bacterial, cleanses the body & mucus membranes, strengthens immunity, fights colds , flu, diabetes, ulcers, stomach, pro state, bladder & vaginal disorders, regulates menses, lo lood pressure & stimulates the central nervous system. The powder form of goldenseal root is excellent to put on open bleeding cuts, scrapes & scratches. However it should not be used for puncture wounds because it will clot the blood pre-maturely before cleaning itself out. This herb is extremely strong & should be used for no longer than 10 consecutive days. Here+s some ideas of what to do for a few ailments; things that have worked well in my own experiences or that have been passed on to me ers: HEADACHES - ginger root compresses, tons of peppermint tea, rosemary (rosemary is good for brain energy & its scent, while sleeping, makes dreams more vivid), burdock root (fresh burdock root can also be cooked and eaten), damiana, yerbamate FEVER - A fever is an indication of an infection or disease that works as a defense mechanism, destroying foreign microbes & sometimes eliminating toxins. So unless a fever exceeds 102 F, allow it to run its course. To lower a very high temperature, try 1/2 t spn lobelia extract or tincture, hyssop, licorice root, thyme & yarrow tea combination, or an echinacea root poultice. SORE THROAT - gotu kola, vit.C, coltsfoot, tea tree oil gargle, suck on fresh licorice root COLDS - feverfew, fenugreek (decreases mucus), ginger root, pau d+arco, slippery elm & yarrow tea, potato peeling broth (Peel potato so peels are 1/2 inch thick, boil 20 - 30 min., strain, cool & drink twice a day.) STAPH - In ostracizing staph from my body I d id a lot of things & I+m not sure which methods were effective, but somehow it worked. I munched a bunch of garlic, took echinacea, goldenseal and yellow dock tablets, soaked my open pus-oozing sores in warm salt water to extract the pus, covered the sores with tea tree oil & drank lots of ginger root tea & popped vit. C capsules to strengthen my immune system. It+s also a good idea to wash anything the infection may have come in contact with where the staph will continue to liv e (ie clothing, blankets) &to (ughh!) bathe. P.M.S. - dong quai & raspberry leaf (both known for their female - oriented properties), blessed thistle, cayenne, kelp, sarsaparilla, squaw vine & dandelion ( I have read that dandelion is good in prevention of breast cancer. Also, the leaves are tasty sautDed with vegetables or in a salad.) NATURAL ABORTION10 - penny royal, feverfew (stimulates uterine contractions & promotes menses), parsley tea (3 times a day for 3 days), chamomile; blood circulation everywhere in body, message breasts, sol ar plexus area & lower central back (should feel it in uterus); vinegar & water or lemons & water douche immediately to kill or stop sperm after dodgy intercourse; mental work - create mental storms & hell in your uterus so that it+s not a good place to be, tell the fetus to piss off & that you don+t want it ; Take cuntrol! Take time off for yourself - time you don+t have to look at a clock. Take some time off from being drunk as fuck (alcohol , pot & other drug s weaken your immune system). Eat wholefoods, fresh fruits & ve getables & avoid animal products (In addition to welcoming a whole array of diseases, factory farmed animals are pumped full of antibiotics, which , when consumed, pump you full of antibiotics, building up your resistance to them, so that when you are ill, healing methods are less effective.) Just say NO to the medical establishment (the biggest druglords of +em all) & its greed-induced diseases. Skip a doctor+s appointment. Blow up a hospital . Shout a loud -Pork you!+ to the pharmaceutical parasite s. Overthrow the medical profession. Align with Earth. Empower & heal thyself! eiditors herbal tips : I used to drink a tea of Ginko Biloba and Gotu Kola to start off the day perky and clear headed. Both these herbs help oxygenate the brain. Damiana is supposed to help increase the sex drive and makes for a weird social smoking herb with a funky fruity taste to it. Soak it in Vodka for a few days and strain for an aphrodisiacal liquor. Tea tree oil incidentally kills strep throat on contact. Th e strep t hat is, your throat stays alive. Also watch cuts heal before your eyes after being cleaned and bathed with tea tree oil. I+ve heard rumours that it chases bugs out of heads. A cloth bag og mugwort in your pillowcase has made some people+s dreams very vivid. Fun smoking herb. Europeans who like to mix tobacco with their pot or hash should consider replacing their tobacco with Mugwort or Coltsfoot. Coltsfoot actually helps heal your lungs when you smoke it by dislod ging phlegm and opening up more glogged bron chioles @+@+#@9**+\-++@##!!#@--@*##!!-!@@!!*!#!#!@!#@!@+@++ SOME USEFUL CONTACTS ARKANGEL MAGAZINE , BCM 9240 , London WC1N 3XX , UK - an incredible resource for animal rights activists. Lists pages of animal rights groups, contains up to date news from the ALF press office, tons of newspaper clippings on direct action reports, debates , articles and lots of pictures of animals. ANARCHIST BLACK CROSS , 121 Railton Road , London SE24 OLR, UK - Support anarchist prisoners around the world and publish the n ewsletter Taking Liberties available for about 35p plus postage. FREE RADIO BERKELEY , Free Communications Coalition, 1442 A Walnut St. #406, Berkeley, CA 94709 ; phone (510) 464-3041 - A pirate radio group help give access to everything you need to know about building a pirate station, their newsletter Reclaming the Airwaves contains cheap mailorder DIY pirate radio kits along with the necessary knowledge to get on the air anywhere. They also provide circuit diagrams for those of you with circuit agility. CONTRA FLOW 56 Crampton St, London SE 17 , UK; fax: 071 326 0353 - A good anarchjist newsheet, at this address also find a health food co-op and the 56A Infoshop. Green Anarchist Mail Order, PO Box 407 , Camberly GU15 3FL , UK - Besides putting out an excellent paper from an eco-anarcho point of view these elves also distribute some good literature and T-shirts. THE FIFTH ESTATE , 4632 Second Ave., Detroit , MI 48201, usa- An excellent , long running anarchist paper containing a healthy va riety of news, rev iews, listings, interviews, history , analysis and the On Gogol Boulevard international news section. They also have a decent mailorder selection of books. THE BLACK HAND , Kafkova 9, Dejvice, Prague 6, Czech Republic, tel/fax: 0042 2 531 141 - If you ever go to Prague , drop in here . The Black Hand is sort of an amalgation of different group using an amazing building for their various projects. Here you+ll find a vegan kitchen, refugee relief groups, a cou ple different distros, theatre groups, the Animal SOS foundation, practice spaces for bands, a couple halls for performances, art shows, Roma activists and a mishmash of other groups and individuals. They should be officially open by the time you read this and may still need some help with shitwork. TOLERANZGRENZE , Postafach 69 , A- 1163 , Wien , Austria - Try sending six marx for Austria+s fattest anarchist punk zine. Anarchist history more in depth than Prof. Felix , vegan recipes, boring band interviews, c op violence collages. Imagine Profane Existenc e playing chess with Interim. auf Deutsch. SMILE , Box 4 , 136 Kingsland High St. , Hackney, London E8 - Everything you always wanted to know about astronomy , obscure and weird composers, the occult, history, folkore and hate by confused and angry Scottish nationalists who happen also to be members of the communist Party. AK Press , 22 Lutton Place, Edinburgh, ScotlandEH8 9PE - huge catalog of books SLUG AND LETTUCE - PO Box 2067, Peter Stuy Stn., NY NY 10009 - For a SASE you get listings of pen pals , co lumns , ads , punk rock pictures and tons of classifieds (cuz they+re free) the SHADOW , PO Box 20298, NY NY 10009 - Excellent squatter paper from NYs Lower East Side. They+ll also sell you things like books, kits to fuck up piss tests, anarcho-software and squatter comics. HEAD, BM UPLIFT , London, WC1N 3XX - Far too much stuff at once. Mountains of dischordian lunacy. Seek it out . a bit hippylike HOAX, AUX 64 , Beechgrove, Aberhonddu, POWYS , CYMRU, UK , LD3 9 ET, UK - pranks , conspiracies , the number 2 3, Eris , big like Head, just not so hippylike. Most recommended. @+@+#@9**+\-++@##!!#@--@*##!!-!@@!!*!#!#!@!#@!@+@++ This message is a carbon copy of message "EZLN Letter; We know what Awaits Ust" written by moonlight (igc.apc.org) on 15.12.94. FROM LA JORNADA, DECEMBER 13, 1994, PGS. 8-11 Translated by: Cecilia Rodriguez , National Commission for Democracy in Mexico USA Zapatista Army of National Liberation Mexico December 1994 EZLN: We know What We're Doing; It is Worth It To Whom It May Concern: I am the escaped one, after I was born They locked me up inside me but I left. My soul seeks me, through hills and valley, I hope my soul never finds me. FERNANDO PESSOA I write this, while reports from our companeros arrive about preparations for the advance of our units, and as I burn a last stack of unanswered letters. That is why I write to you now. I always told myself I would respond to each and every letter we received. It seemed to m e that it was the least we could do, answer so many people who had bothered to write a few lines and risk putting their name and direction on it hoping for a response. The war is imminent. I definitely cannot save these letters. I should destroy them because, if they fall into the hands of the government, they could cause many problems for many good people and a few bad people. Now the flames are high and their colors change. Sometimes they are an iridescent blue which never fails to surprise this night of crickets and far-away light ning which ann ounces the cold December of prophecies and pending accounts. There were quite a few letters. I managed to answer a good part of them, but I would barely shrink a pile when another would arrive. "Sysiphus (who was doomed to roll a stone uphill forever)" I said to myself "or the vulture eating the entrails of Prometheus" my other adds, always opportune in its venomous sarcasm. I should be sincere and confess that, lately, the little pile which arrives habitu ally was growing smaller. At first I attribut ed it to the nosy Government agents. Then I realized that good people get tired..and they stop writing..and sometimes, they stop fighting.. Yeah I know that writing a letter isn't exactly an assault on the Winter Palace. But the letters made us travel so far. One day we would be in Tijuana, the next in Merida, sometimes in Michoacan, or in Guerrerro, Veracruz, or Guanajuato, Chihuahua, Nayarit, Queretaro or the Federal District (Mexico City). Sometimes we would travel farther to Chil e, Paraguay, Spai n, Italy, Japan. Well, so those trips that gave us more than one smile and warmed cold sleepless night or refreshed the heat of the days, are over. Anyway, I have told you I have decided to respond to all the letters, and we the walking gentlemen, know how to keep our promises (as long as they're not a romance). So I have thought your generosity would alleviate my heavy guilt if all of you accepted one solitary and overwhelming missive in which you each f ind yourselves as the solitary recipient. V ale, since you cannot protest or express disagreement (you could do it but I won't learn about given the mail and etcetera will be useless), I will proceed then to give free reign to the insane dictatorship which takes over my agile hand when it comes to writing a letter. What better way to begin than a few verses from Pessoa, curse and prophesy, which say, I think... "The gaze, which is looking where it cannot see, turns: Both of us are talking What was not conserved. Does this begin or end?" Such and such a month of the ineffable year of 1994, To Whom It May Concern, I want to say a few things about what has happened since January. Many of you wrote to say thank you. Imagine our surprise when we read in your letter that you are grateful that we exist. I, for example, whose most affectionate gesture from my troops has been one of resignation when I arrive at one of our positions, was surprisingly surprised. And when I am surprised by a surprise unusual thin gs happen. For example, I will bite my pipe too much and the stem breaks. Then, for example, as I look for another pipe I find some candy and commit the grave error of crackling it, a sound which only cellophane-wrapped candy makes and which that plague called "children" can hear from dozens of meters away, kilometers, if the wind is in their favor. It so happens for example, that when I raise the volume on the little tape player to drown out the noise from the cellophane with a song which says.. " The one who has a song will have a storm, company, solitude. The one who follows a good road will have dangerous points which will invite them to stop. But the song has worth, good storm and the company is worth the solitude. The agony of haste is always worth it though the points are filled with truth." In the little room (all these things invariably happen in a li ttle room with a roof of tin or cardboard or grass or nylon) appears Heriberto. He has a face of "I found you". I pretend not to see him and whistle a tune from a movie whose name I can't remember. Anyway, the hero had good results with his whistle, because a girl, who was [as good-looking] as Cejas said, smiled and came closer. Then I realize that it is not a girl but Heriberto who comes near. Next to him comes Tonita with her corncob-doll. Tonita, she who gr ipes about a kiss because "it itches", the one with the cavities, wh o is between five and six, the favorite of the Sup. Heriberto, the fastest crier in the Lacandon jungle, the one who draws the Anti-SUP-marine ducks, the terror of the large red ants and the Christmas chocolate, the favorite of Ana Maria. Heriberto the punishment which some vengeful god sent to the Sup for being a transgressor of violence and professional of the law. What, wasn't that it? Well, don't worry about it... Attention! Listen! Heriberto arrives and tells me that Eva is crying because she want s to see the singing horse and the Major does not let her because he is watching the BEDROOM OF PASSOLINI. Of course Heriberto does not say the title of the movie but I can guess by his description which is "..the Major is watching naked viejas.." For Heriberto all women who wear a skirt above their knees or higher is "naked," and any woman above the age of four like Eva, are "viejas". I know that this is one of Heriberto's sneaky schemes t o take the cellophane-wrapped candy which rang like the siren on th e Titanic in the middle of the fog. Heriberto and his ducks are coming to the rescue, because there is nothing sadder in this world than a candy without a child to rescue it from its cellophane prison. Tonita, on the other hand, discovers, a "mud-proof" rabbit, in other words it's black. She decides to submerge it in a puddle which, in her estimation, has all the necessary characteristics to distinguish it as a quality test. Before the invasion of the "general comman d of the ezetaelene" I play dumb and pretend like I'm very absorbed in my writing. Heriberto finds out and draws a duck. He titles it irreverently, the "Sup". I pretend to be offended because Heriberto argues that my nose is just like the duck's bill. Tonita meanwhile, puts the muddy bunny on a rock next to her corncob and looks and analyzes them with a critical eye. It occurs to me that the results don't satisfy her because she shakes her head with the same obstinacy she does when she refuses to give me a kiss. Heriberto, confro nted by my indifference, seems to give up and I am satisfied with my complete victory. Then I learn that the candy is gone, and I remember that Heriberto made a strange movement as I gazed at the drawing. He took it from under my nose. And with this nose, that says a lot! I am depressed and more so when I learn that Salinas is beginning to pack to leave to the "World Trade Organization". It occurs to me that it was unjust when he called us "transgressors." If he knew Heriberto he would know that, compared to Heriberto, we are much more law- abiding than even the PRI leadership. Anyway I was talking about my surprise when I read those "thank yous" in your letters. Sometimes they were written to Ana Maria, Ramona, Tacho, Moy, Mario, Laura, or any of the men and women who cover their faces to show it to others and show it to others to hide from everyone. I rehearse my most reverent thoughts to appreciate so many thank yous when Ana Mar ia appears in the doorway. Heriberto is crying and holding her hand . She asks me why I won't give Heriberto any candy. "Not give him candy?" and I look at his face. The tracks of the candy has been covered with snot and tears which have won Ana Maria to his side. "That's right" says Ana Maria "Heriberto says he gave you a drawing in exchange for candy, and you didn't keep your word." I feel like a victim of an unjust accusation, and I put on the look of an ex-president of the PRI who is preparing to take over a powerful governm ent department and climbing to the podium to give his best speech. Ana Maria, without comment, takes the bag of candy where the original came from and gives it! all! to Heriberto. "Here" she says "The Zapatistas always keep their word." They both leave. I am reeeeaaally sad because that candy was for Eva's birthday. And I don't know how old she is because when I asked her mother she said six. "But the other day she told me she was going to be four" I complained. "Yes but she becomes four and begins to be five, in other words she's around six", she responded firmly. She leaves me counting with my fingers and doubting the entire educational system which taught you that 1+1=2, 6x8=48 and other transcendent things, which, in the Southeast mountains of Mexico, obviously do not hold true. Another mathematical logic functions here. l "We Zapatistas are very other " declared Monarch once when he told me that when he ran out of brake fluid, he would urinate into the container and get the same effect. The othe r day for example there was a birt hday party. The "youth group" got together and organized "Zapatista olympics". The master of ceremonies declared that the long jump competition was about to start, which really means who jumps highest. The high jump was next; which really means who jumps the farthest. I was counting on my fingers again when Lieutenant Ricardo arrived and told me that they had gone to sing happy birthday at dawn. "Where was the serenade?" I asked. I was happy that everything was returning to normal since it was logica l tha t happy birthday be sung at dawn. "..in the cemetery" answered Ricardo. "The cemetery?" I began to count my fingers again. "Yes, well, it was the birthday of a compa who died in combat in January," Ricardo says on his way out (the drag races were next). "Good" I said to myself "a birthday party for a dead person. Perfectly logical..in the mountains of Southeast Mexico.." I sighed. I have been sighing with nostalgia, remembering the good old times when the bad guys were the bad guys and the good gu ys were the good guys. When Newton's apple followed its irresistible trajectory from the tree towards some childish hand. When the world smelled like a schoolroom on the first day of class: of fear, of mystery, of newness. I'm sighing with true emphasis when, without previous arrangement, Beto comes in to ask if there are any balloons. Without waiting for my answer, he starts to look among maps, operative orders, pieces of guns, ashes of pipe tobacco, dried tears, red flowers colored with pen , cartridge belts and a smelly ski-mask. Somewhere Beto finds a bag of balloons and picture of a playmate, pretty old (the picture, not the playmate). Beto stops for a minute to decide between the bag of balloons and the picture and he decides what all children do; he takes both of them. I've always said that this is not a general headquarters but a kindergarten. Yesterday I told Moy he should install some anti- personnel mines. "You think the soldiers will come all the w ay here?" he asks me, worried. I answer trembling "I don't know about them, but what about the children." Moy nods agreeably and begins to tell me about his complicated design for a booby trap, a fake hole, with stakes and poison. I like the idea, but none of the children are boobies so I recommend that we electrify everything and place machine guns at the entrance. Moy thinks a while and says he has a better idea and leaves me.. What was I saying? Oh yeah! About the can dy for Eva which Heriberto took. There I am talking over the radio so they can look in every camp for a bag of candy for Eva. Eva appears with a little pot of tamales which "my mother sent me because today is my birthday" Eva says to me with that look that in ten years or so will provoke more than one war. l I thank her profusely and ask what else I can do for her, then say I have a present for her. "Whereizit?" she says-asks-demands and I begin to sweat because there is nothing more terrible than a look of "moreno" anger. Eva's face begins to t ransform itself like in th at movie of "El Santo against the Wolfman", and all I can do is stutter. To make things worst, Heriberto arrives to see "if the Sup is still mad" at him. I begin to smile to give me time to calculate where I could place a good kick on Heriberto when Eva notices that Heriberto has an almost-empty bag of candy. She asks him where he got it, and he says in a sugary and slurry voice the "Chup". I don't realize that he means the "Sup" until Eva turns and reminds me, "and my present?" Heriberto's eyes pop out when he hears the world "present". He drops the bag of candy, which by now was empty and gets near Eva to say with a sticky cynicism "Yeah, what about our present?" "Our?" I repeat as I figure where to kick him when I notice that Ana Maria is hovering nearby, and I quash my intent. So then I say "I'm hiding it" "Where?", asks Eva already tired of the mystery. Heriberto, meanwhile views this as a challenge and starts to open my backpack. He tosses out my blanket, altimeter, compa ss, tobacco, a box of bullets, a sock. Finally I stop him by screaming "It's not there!" Heriberto then starts on Moy's backpack and he is about to open it when I say "You have to answer a riddle to know where the present is". By that time Heriberto was getting fed up with Moy's backpack and he comes to sit at my side. Eva does too. Beto and Tonita come near, and I light my pipe to give me time to measure the size of the problem of the riddle. Old Man Antonio comes near. He makes a gesture to point out a tiny statue of Zapata made of silver sent by sandal, and repeats ... THE STORY OF THE QUESTIONS The cold is harsh in these mountains. Ana Maria and Mario are with me on this exploration, 10 years before the dawn of January. The two have barely joined the guerrilla. I am an infantry lieutenant and it is my turn to teach them what others taught me: to live in the mountain. Yesterday I ran into Old Man Antonio for the first time. We both lied. He said he was on his way to see his field , I said I was hunting. We both knew we were lying and we knew we knew it. I left Ana Maria to follow the path and I went towards the river to try to find a very high mountain and Old Man Antonio. He must have thought the same thing because he appeared at the same place where I found him before. Like yesterday, Old Man Antonio sat on the ground, and leans against a patch of dark-brown green and begins to roll a cigarette. I sit in front of him and light the pipe. Ol d Man Antonio begins. "You're not hunting" "Yo u're not on the way to the field" I answer. Something made me speak to him in the proper tense, with respect, that man of undetermined age and cedar skin who I was seeing for the second time in my life. Old Man Antonio smiles and adds, "I've heard of you. In the canyons they say you are bandits. In my village, they're upset because you are here." "And you, do you think we're bandits?" I asked. Old Man Antonio releases a huge puff of smoke, coughs, and shakes his head. I'm encourage d and ask him another question. "So who do you think we are?" "I would prefer if you told me" he says and looks into my eyes. "It's a long story" I say. So I begin to talk about the times of Zapata and Villa and the revolution and the land and the injustice and hunger and ignorance and sickness and repression and everything. And I finish by saying so "we are the Zapatista Army of National Liberation". I wait for some sign fr om Old Man Antonio who never took his eyes from my face. "Tell me more about that Zapata" he says after smoke and a cough. I start with Anenecuilco, then with the Plan de Ayala, the military campaign, the organization of the villages, the betrayal at Chinameca. Old Man Antonio continued to stare at me until I finished. "It wasn't like that" he says. I'm surprised and all I can do is babble. "I'm going to tell you the real story of Zapata". Taking out tobacco and rolling paper, Old Man Antonio begi ns his story which unites and confuses modern times with old times, just like the smoke from my pipe and his cigarette which mingle and converge on one another. "Many stories ago, in the time of the first gods, the ones who made the world there were two gods who were Ik'al and Votan. Two were one single one. When one turns the other could be seen, when the other turns the one could be seen. They were opposites. One was like the light, like a May morning in the river. The other was dark, like a night of cold in a cave. They were the same. One was two, because one made the other. But they didn't walk they were always stationary these two gods who were one. 'So what do we do?'. 'Life is sad like this', they lamented the two who were one. 'The night won't go' said Ik'al. 'The day won't go' said Votan. 'Let's walk' said the one who were two. 'How?' said the other. 'Where?' said the one. When they did this they saw they moved a little bit. First by asking why, and then by asking where. Happy was th e one who was two. Then both of them decided to move and they couldn't. 'How do we do it then?' One would move from the other and then the other would move. So they agreed that in order to move they had to do so separately. And no one could remember who moved first, they were just happy that they moved and said 'What does it matter who is first as long as we move?'. The two gods who were the same one said and they laughed and agreed to have a dance, and they danced, one little step beh ind the other. Then they tired of all the dancing and ask ed what else they could do and saw that the first question was "how to move" and brought the response of "together but separately and in agreement." They didn't care much that it was so. They were so happy they were moving until they came to two roads: one was very short and one could see the end of it. They were so happy they could move that they decided to choose the long road which then brought them to another question. 'Where did the road go?". It took them a long time, but the two who were one finall y decided that they would never know where that long road took them unless they moved. So they said to one another 'Let's walk it then" And they began to walk first one and then the other. They found it was taking them a long time and asked "how will we walk for such a long time?' Ik'al declared he did not know how to walk by day and Votan declared that by night he was afraid. So they cried for a long time, then finally agreed that Ik'al would walk by nigh t and Votan by day. Since then the gods walk with questions and they never stop, they never arrive and they never leave. So that is how the true men and women learned that questions serve to learn how to walk, and not to stand still. Since then true men and women walk by asking, to arrive they say good-bye and to leave they say hello. They are never still." I chew on the now-short stem of the pipe waiting for Old Man Antonio to continue, but he never does. In fear that I will disrupt something very serious I ask "And Zapata?" Old Man Antoni o smi les "You've learned now that in order to know and walk you have to ask questions." He coughs and lights another cigarette and out of his mouth come these words that fall like seeds on the ground. "That Zapata appeared here in the mountains. He wasn't born, they say. He just appeared just like that. They say he is Ik'al and Votan who came all the way over here in their long journey, and so as not to frighten good people, they became one. Because after being together for so long Ik'al and Votan learn ed they were the same and could become Zapata. And Zapata said he had finally learned where the long road went and that at times it would be light and and times darkness but that it was the same, Votan Zapata, and Ik'al Zapata, the black Zapata and the white Zapata. They were both the same road for the true men and women." Old Man Antonio took from his backpack a little bag of nylon. Inside there was a very old picture from 1910 of Emiliano Zapata. In his left hand Zapata had his sword raised to his w aist. In his right hand he had a pistol, two cartridge belts of bullets crossed his chest, one from left to right, the other from right to left. His feet are positioned as though he's standing still or walking and in his gaze there is something like "here I am" or "there I go". There are two staircases. One comes out of the darkness, and there are dark-skinned Zapatistas as though they were coming out of something. The other staircase is lighted but there is no one and one can't see where it goes or where it comes from. I would be lying if I told you that I noticed all those details. It was Old Man Antonio who told me. Behind the picture, it said; "Gral. Emiliano Zapata, Jefe del Ejercito Suriano. Gen. Emiliano Zapata, Commander in Chief of the Souther Army. Le General Emiliano Zapata, Chef de l'Armee du Sud. C.1910. Photo by: Agustin V. Casasola." Old Man Antonio says to me "I have asked a lot of questions of this picture. Th at is how I came to be here." He coughs and tosses the cigarette butt . He gives me the picture. "Here" he says "So that you learn how to ask questions...and to walk." "It's better to say good-bye when you arrive. That way it's not so painful when you leave" he says giving me his hand as he leaves, while he tells me he is arriving. Since then, Old Man Antonio says hello by saying "goodbye" and leaves by saying "hello". Old Man Antonio leaves. So does Beto, Tonita, Eva and Heriberto.I take out the photo of Zapata from my backpac k and show it to them. "Is he climbing up or down?" says Beto. "Is he going or staying?" asks Eva. "Is he taking out or putting away his sword?" asks Tonita. "Has he finished firing his pistol or just started?" asks Heriberto. I'm always surprised by how many questions that 84 year old photograph provokes and that Old Man Antonio gave me in 1984. I look at it one last time and decide to give it to Ana Maria and the picture provokes one more question; Is it our yesterday or our tomorrow? In this c limate of curiosity and with a surprising coherence for her 4-years-almost-five-or-six, Eva asks "What about my present?" The word "present" provokes identical reactions in Beto, Tonita and Heriberto. They all start yelling "Where's my present?" I'm trapped and at the point of sacrifice. Ana Maria who saved my life in San Cristobal almost one year ago (in other circumstances) saves me again. Ana Maria has an enormous bag of candy with her. "Here's the present the Sup had for you" says Ana Maria while she gives me that I-don't-know-what-you-men- would-do-without-women look. While the children decide, or fight over how they will divide the candy, Ana Maria salutes me and says: "I report. The troops are ready to leave." "Good" I say as I strap the pistol on. We will leave as always--at dawn. "Wait" I tell her and give her the picture. "What's this for?" "We need it" "For what?" "So we'll know where we're going" Above flies a military airplane.. In c onclusion I will answer some questions you are surely asking; Do we know where we're going? Yes. Do we know what awaits us? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes. Whomever has answered the previous questions with a yes can surely not sit and do nothing without feeling that something deep inside is tearing. Vale. Health and a flower for this tender fury, I think it deserves one. From the mountains of the Mexican southeast. Sub-Comandante Insurgente Marcos. Zapatis ta Army of National Liberation. Mexico, December 1994 P.S. For writers, analysts and the general public. Brilliant pens have found some valuable parts in the Zapatista movement. Nevertheless they have denied us our fundamental essence: the national struggle. For them we continue to be provincial citizens, capable of a consciousness of our own origins and everything relative to it, but incapable without "external" help of understanding and making ours concepts like "nation" "homeland" and "Mexico". They will chime in during this grey hour with small letters. For them it is all right that we struggle for material needs, but to struggle for spiritual needs is an excess. It is understandable that these pens now turn against us. It's too bad, someone has to be responsible, someone has to say "no", someone has to say "Ya Basta (Enough)!" Someone has to leave prudence to one side, and give higher value to dignity and shame, than to life, someone has to...Well, to these magnificent pens; we understand the c ondemnation which will flow from your hands. All I can argue in our defense is that nothing we ever did was for your pleasure, what we did and said was for our please, the joy of struggle, of life, of speech, of walking...Good people of all social classes, of all races and generations helped us. Some helped to relieve their conscience, others to be fashionable, the majority helped because of their convictions because of their certainty that they had found something good and new. We are good people, that is why we are letting everyone know what we are about to do . You should prepare yourselves you should not be taken by surprise. This warning is a disadvantage for us, but not as great a disadvantage as would be a surprise. To those good people I want to say I hope you continue to be good. That you continue to believe, that you not allow skepticism to bind you to the sweet prison of conformity. That you continue to search, to seek out something in which to believe, something for which to fight. We have had some brilliant enemies. Pens which have not been satisfied with the easy condemnation, pens which have sought out strong, firm coherent arguments with which to attack us. I've read some brilliant texts which attack the Zapatistas and defend a regime which must pay and dearly, for the sake of appearances for someone to defend it. It's a shame that in the long run, you wound up defending a vain and childish cause which will be demolished along with that building which is crumbling... P.P.S. On horseback and with mariachi, Pedro Infante sings that song called "They say I am a womanizer" and ends with... "Among my sweet loves One is worth more than others which has loved me without rancor of my tarariraran... A sweet old woman Who I don't deserve Who with all her heart Has given me the most divine love. In front of a grandmother one is always a child, and it hurts to leave..Goodbye, grandmother I am coming. I've finished, I'm beginni ng... ## CrossPoint v3.02 ## @+@+#@9**+\-++@##!!#@--@*##! !-!@@!!*!#!#!@!#@!@+@++ Dear Tanya, This is just a short note to inform you about a strange spectacle I witnessed yesterday. You surely remember Ian , the guy from the suburbs ? Well, three days ago, he gave me a poster announcing this spectacle ... -Burn dead ideas ! This Saturday 3PM , 6 south Street. Be there ! - Well, I was, i went over to his place , we had lunch together and he said we would go soon. -Where to ?+ , i asked, but got no definite reply, rather a mysteri ous laughter. -The spectacle , member ?+ He took his rucksack, rather full, and off we went . We alked through the last streets in the suburbs and then proceeded to a filed till we reached a point were suddenly he stopped- we were standing on a field path, hidden behind the last unreaped stalks of maize. There seemed to be no joggers around, or people with dogs, which to him seemed an appropriate place to be at. I still was in ignorance about the spectacle - he refused to tell me. But you could notice his face glow , his eyes half wet, h is thrilled voice. And his smile - just like a smoke screen. He then announced the beginning of the spectacle. -Let+s burn dead ideas !+ , he took his rucksack off and emptied its contents on the path. The contents, I then found out to be all the letters he got from his friends which up to then he treasured in card boxes in locker. With a trembling hand he then took a lighter and set the pile on fire ! Weird. Kim @+@+#@9 **+\-++@##!!#@--@*##!!-!@@!!*!#!#!@!#@!@+@++ ter will bury you.+-Rome graffiti 1978 ANNOYING THE ESTABLISHMENT - SCAMS AND SABOTIPS ALTERING BILLBOARDS Q This sport has been around since about when billboards started. It+s accessible to anyone with access to billboards. Billboards are everywhere , they+re ugly and they pound corporate propaganda into people+s heads constantly. But fortunately they+re often easy to fuck with. Captions can be altered to display a different meaning, they can be removed, negated, models mustached or letters jumbled. Her e are some tips. Q A message on a billboard can be fucked with simply by removing or adding a letter or two. Letters can be painted over or pasted over with thick white paper. All over Britain during election time the -You can+t trust Labour+ became -You can trust Labour+ Q A speech bubble out of the mouths of models can make for great sit style statements Q Plan out your message. Measure the size of letters on the billboard to be altered, how much space you need for the message etc. Pr int out the message t o be pasted over as large as possible and enlarge with a photocopier to the appropriate size on the billboard. You can enlarge the graphic or text several times on the highest possible scale and then make several overlapping segments to get the size you need. Some laser copiers will do the sectioning for you - it+s called tiling- though sometimes they aren+t worth the expense. You can paste up your results with wallpaper paste, PVA, Copydex or water soluble glue Q Computers will often have the identical fon t as on the billboard itself. Using the right font can make it look more like the official poster. Very impressive was some bright spark+s addition to Volkswagen+s -We put people in front of cars+ by reproducing in exact type underneath: -And children under the front wheels+. Q A ready assembled graphic can be pasted up in less than three minutes Q Use wallpaper paste for a hit, a bucket and a paintbrush. Coat the area with lots of paste, place on your graphics and go over it again with plenty of paste (a l ittle PVA in the paste makes it quicker and waterproofs it as well). A broom will get you higher . Cut down the head to fit inside the bucket. Q Watch the billboards for when they change them - if you catch them right , you can get lots of studio space and time for your visual banditry. Q Rather than skulking around in the dead of night looking suspicious and getting nicked, put on some overalls, get a gang together and go for it during daylight hours - you+ll be able to see what you+re doing for starters. Most passer byes think it+s a good laugh and if the Beast catches up with you while putting it up, -Why officer look, it peels straight off again!+. Q Try making up a work outfit with the billboard company+s logo on it for a more official look when pasting. Q most information taken from the pamphlet Smashing The Image Factory - A Complete Manual Of Billboard Subversion And Destruction available from Green Anarchist mailorder CANCEL AN EVENT ! Simply write or have printed CANCELLED twice on A4 paper, photoco py it and paste onto (Circus) posters everywhere. At shops displaying the poster , go in and ask them to return the poster to you since there+s been a mix up of dates. GOD IS DEAD Q Just before high mass , a small group of Lettrists , including one who had previously intended to be ordained, slipped unobserved into the back of a cathedral. In a side room they caught , gagged and stripped one of the priests. The ex-catholic lettrist put on the priest+s vestments a nd just before the service was about to begin , ascended the steps to the main pulpit. A moment+s respectful silence. -Brothers, God is dead+, he said and began benignly to discuss the implications of this conclusion. Several minutes passed before the congregation actually registered what was happening. He managed to escape out the back of the cathedral but the congregation caught up with him on the quays where they proceeded to try to lynch him. The Lettrist, alas, was forced to surrender to the cops in order to save his ass. -Chri stopher Gray, Leavi ng the 20th Century , quoted from the Buffo edition of Spectacular times RETURNABLE TRASH Q Postage paid lookalike labels can be made by altering the address on postage paid Business reply cards to contain the address of a filth churning multi and photocopying them on sheets of adhesive paper, or having stickers printed. Labels stuck to side of a Coke can or McDonalds container can be thrown in the mailbox to be returned to the corporation where they came from at the expense of them. When Friends of the Ear th pulled a similar stunt by producing address labels placed on an estimated 50, 000 drink cans mailed to the prime minister, it was discovered that some cans were being intercepted. The Post Office was unable to say where the cans were being held on -security grounds+. Q London Greenpeace have launched a Send It Back program against McDonalds trash where affiliate groups gather together to pick up the vast amounts of McDonalds trash and send it back to Paul Preston, McDonald+s head UK flunky. To be most ef fective , how about delivering the -goods+ in person to their office, the slimier the better. If possible in large quantities at a bored (sic) meeting. Have the corporate bigwigs handle their own trash! FREE TRAVEL Q On Merseyside, one Spring night in 1976, a group of people entered bus depots and stuck official looking notices inside the buses. The notice read: +EXPERIMENTAL FREE TRAVEL: Due to the sharp rise in administration and colle ction costs the Executive are introducing free bus travel for an experi mental period of 14 days. No fares will be collected on any MPTE services from Monday , 3rd May to Sunday, 16th May , 1976.+ - taken from the Buffo edition of Spectacular times JENNA+S PUNK ROCK BEER SCAM Q In some places in the US the entire case of beer needs to be thrown out even if only one can is bad/defective etc. Successful attempts have been made at puncturing one can in a case of beer and then fishing the case out of the dumpster when they throw it out. DO BANANAS REALLY FUCK UP COP CAR exhausts if crammed up the exhaust pipes ? @+@+#@9**+\-++@##!!#@--@*##!!-!@@!!*!#!#!@!#@!@+@++ First off, what is a painting of Adam Weishaupt doing in the Prague Castle ? DEFENESTRATE THE CHURCH AND STATE After Jan Hus , a peasant preacher who spoke out against the wealth , corruption and hierarchical tendencies in the church , was burnt at the stake by the Council of Constance in 1415, widespread riots broke out in the streets of Prague and sent shivers of fear through the German nobility at the tim e. Five year s later King Vaclav , notorious for among other things roasting an incompetent cook alive on his own spit, shooting a monk while hunting and trying his own hand at lobbing off peasant heads with an axe, provoked further large scale rioting after aiding several anti Hussite priests back into positions of power. The Czechs were furious and took up what was to become somewhat of a Prague tradition. The crowd stormed town hall which was used a s a criminal court and prison , rounded up several of the most desp ised Catholic councilors and threw them to their deaths out of the windows onto the pikes of the mob below: Prague+s first defenestration. Vaclav , consumed in terror and fear , had a stroke and died shortly after the uprising. By now the Taborites had picked up where Hus+ followers left off and widened their hate , not just on the Church hierarchy, but on all figures of authority and privilege. Inspired by the defenestration, they set out acro ss the countryside eagerly destroying church property and butche ring clergy. Years later , on May 23 , 1618 the two governors Vilem Slavata of Chlum and Jaroslav Borita of Martinice were defenstrated along with their personal secretary out of the windows of the Prague Castle into the moat below, this time by a mob of over 100 nobles enraged by the appointment of the notoriously intolerant catholic archduke Ferdinand to the throne. According to a contemporary historian: -No mercy was granted them and they were both thrown dressed in their cloaks with their rapiers and decoration headfirst out of the western window into a moat beneath the palace. They loudly screamed ach, ach, oweh! - Defenestration then is nothing what it could be now. With cities capable of producing buildings well over twenty times the height of Prague+s castle and mobs well exceeding the sizes of the Hussite mobs who first introduced this sport, defenestration could well become the main event the people+s Olympics of the future. Wit h office buildings packed to the heavens with business sleaze , eco r apists , governors , bureaucrats, lawyers, pigs, vermin of all shapes and sizes., this could well turn into a fun ritual. Demos breaking off from the planned route storming office buildings to defenestrate the culprits instead of just whining about them from the streets below. Out the window and onto the streets , if the impact doesn+t do them in, will the people who catch him ? Remember Mussolini ? @+@+#@9**+\-++@##!!#@--@*##!!-!@@!!*!#!#!@!#@!@+@++ ANARCHISTS TALK NON MONOGAMY This is a transcription of the workshop titled non monogamy which took place at the Anarchy in the UK gathering during October in London. It only occurred to me to record half way through m, but there still are some decent points made. Polyamourous , non-monogamous, sexual anarchy, propertyhostile love , who cares . . . There were a lot of different nationalities present and so the Actually I want to check in about something. I+m reallly bad about remembering people+s names. Dave , I think i s recording. There+s a tape running no w. Is everybody OK with that ? Could you smoke out by the door, because there are some people who are not smokers or astmatics or I+m really intersted in how we can make relationships work. Cuz we can sit and discuss for hours and hours. We can discuss jealousy for hours, but what I want to know is what people do about it, how people resolve it in their relationships. We talk about it. We talk about everything. Not just to do with us, but everything about our lives, politically. If you t alk about it, yo u come back and could have a discussion, about the opast for hours and say : -yio9udsbn got n feelings+ it+s like self analysis. In my relationship or whatever we talk it out. That+s the better way. And it+s not just thinking that it+s just the relationship. It must be close to everything else in your life. It+s not just in a vaccum. That+s the only way . . . It+s not just you and the person , you exist as politics, your own thoughts, your own sexual feeling s, that+s the only way , just talk it out. . . You +ve gotta be havn fun by it. Don+t have an ernest discussion :*serious voice)+Let+s think ere+ . Just be fuinny and laugh about it you know ,... joke about it. That+s really good. Yeah but that won+t necessarily stop it. l l It+s no good keeping it to yourself. If you have very little secrets, everything becomes bare, upfront to each other. This is the way I feel. Probably want to go with that right from the start. The only thing I didn+t discuss is attitu?de apti?tude , int ernal, emotional relationship with a person. And you could then , not just about your sexual relationship, but everything. About your politics, the way you feel , about communal living, about other people around, about going out at night. And that+s only being upfront about things and to other people. I agree on that and I think .. .. . and people keep a lot back. It+s hard to admit that your jealous, how do you go into about being jealous? ... It+s best to say, it+s best to say ... maybe not about jealousy , but if you can discuss it and fi nd out where its come from, it+s much better to ge?t that f?orm . If you keep it inside it+s gonna go bad and come out one night when you+ve had a couple of drinks , you+re gonna snap at him, you+re gonna rgraohhr over one little thing. He+s stirring his tea too loud and you go -you+re doing that on purpose!+ It comes out another way. If you don+t come out with it up front , it comes out another way. You+ll snap at +im. Yeah, but if i admit that I+m jealous ,. that changes our relationship, that changes our behaviour. So if I+m being jealous , I try not to say because I don+t want him to think all the time about what I feel . Yeah yeah, but you have to say all the other things. If you feel jealous in yourself, just go:+Oh no I+m not going to feel jealous!+ You know, try to see your jealousy as something there that you+ve gotta fight. I do, though. Just push it away and look at it and that+s the only way. Yeah, but I think there+s one problem: if you+re in a closed relationship and you want to open it. You hav e started the process to think about an open relationship. You are in the stronger position when your jealous partner and maybe he don+t want to joke about this because he+s really suffering. Well probably I can handle my jealousy, but i think I+m responsible for the feelings in the relationship as well so I try to find a way to handle the jealousy of my partner in a serious way and not only in a well... Something mnb,m and I used to do is discuss weird i deas with ourselves through an external agency. So we used to discuss like the Tarot, an example. Thje imagery in the Tarot would bring up things in ourselves. The High Priestess or the Empress or the Fool or the Magician. We+d talk about it in that. We+d talk about a card and all of a sudden all sorts of things start coming out. about the world, about yourself. It+s quite strange, or the Qaballa or anything . If you find an interest in something, you can discuss it through this external agency. Instead of having to talk direct between us two, it means to tal k very in general, or relationships in general. The card the Lovers, you can talk all about it. You can see Cupid+s arrow, you can see that+s gonna hurt. You talk about the imagery. You and the imagery. That+s one strategy. There are some words that i don+t understand . I don+t know what the meaning of closed relationship is. A closed relationship people are using to mean a monogamous relationship. Just them two, people who permanently , everywhere they go they ... Not necessarily .. . I+ve got three perma nently closed relationships. No , no , no that+s not ... All through these last three years I+ve got exactly three at the same time and I+ve got some more in the last ten years , but not permanently because they+re living in other countries far away from where I live. And I+ve had others in the last five years. I think the way the group is using this word is ..I and other people don+t like the term -non-monogamy+ because the word -non-monogamy+ which is actually the title of this workshop, because it+s try ing to describe something by what it isn+t. So instead of saying non-monogamy we use the term open relationship . An open relationship is when you+re involved with somebody and you+re open to the possibility of being involved with more people. I need a division for this closed relationship , because I don+t know what it means, closed relationship. The technical definition of a closed relationship is if your in a closed relationship, you agree to have on e sexual partner and no more. Sex is a difference. Mon ogamy actually refers to sex. You talked about relationships before, but if you+re non-monogamous it means you have more than one lover. More than one sexual lover. More than one sexual lover ? More than one people to have sex with ? Not even necessarily lovers, more than one sexual partner. At the same time. Ok , now I understand. Chris was asking for specific tools you can use to deal with jealousy and I think this is a very important question and I+m a little bit les s enthusiastic than Greg about lots an d lots of talking because I+ve killed relationships by processing them to death. -Where gonna talk about your jealousy for five thousand hours and in the end I+m not gonna love you anymore.+ So I think you have to balance things. I think the key part for me in defeating jealousy has been connecting to the reasons that our relationship makes sense. It depends on the other relationship. So if our relationship is gonna survive this jealousy from the outside then we have to remain connected to why it is that we +re attracted to each other and , if you+re the one who+s experiencing the jealousy, we have to do the things necessary to take that myth apart, or that idea apart. One thing that we can do is you can meet my other lover. and you meet my other lover and you can handle that and they can handle that , then this will ,in your mind, take him or her away from this incredible person that you made them out to be. Oh my god, they+re so threatening dadadada and you+ll br ing them to being a real person. They+ll see t hat : Oh well , he+s not really much more beautiful than I always thought, he+s not very political, I don+t like the way he dresses, he drops his food on his lap and Pax may be attracted to him , but it doesn+t seem like a very good idea. Or whatever it is. This is one thing you can do. Part of jealousy is the fantasy you create in your mind about who the other person is , so if you can take that fantasy apart you have a better chance of fighting jealousy. But the other thing that is very impo rtant is not s o much a tool , but something to be aware of when working around issues around jealousy is this honesty\privacy balance. So let+s say I+m having a relationship with the two of you and you+re really jealous. I want to tell you some things about our relationship so that you understand why I+m attracted to him and why this relationship exists and why this relationship is not a threat to our relationship. But at the same time I want to respect some privacy that we ha ve in our relationship that makes it somethin g that+s been going on just between us. This is one of the most difficult balances , this honesty\privacy thing that you have to work on when you+re in open relationships. We had an agreement that we didn+t speak mainly about any other person that we went with, what we done with em, except in general terms, and most of the people involved we were extremely good friends with anyway which helped. And if we weren+t at first , if they were in the same country , or the same city or the same place we w ere livin + in we could all go out, even live in the same area or the same building for days or weeks with each other without it being too much of a problem , but it wasn+t often. It was maybe one of us was going with only one or the other person, but not both because created a ... although there+s total other things that can happen sexually which is another workshop really. Is the fact that you don+t talk about the third person and what happens make that third person more m ystic , more unhuman ? Well generally I don +t speak about the ins and outs of my relationships with people in general but I wouldn+t say I+d done such and such with somebody out of respect of the other person+s privacy. I would say : -yes I was with this certain person+ or maybe -We went to the pub+ or to see a show. We done that, this but apart from that . . You don+t say what position you was in bed . You don+t start talking like that because that+s your partner+s privacy. It has nothing to do with Murmurmrururumru I really have t o say that compl ications is ... It seems to me like I am a closed relationship, and there+s a new person in this relationship, and I have to show my old, closed relationship that this thief can+t get me. So maybe there+s one person more, a third person. So I have to show this other person that the new thief can+t get me. There+s a fourth person. I have to show this fourth person that there+s a thief, but he can+t get me. It+s like I+m building a house. I+ve got a crown ?? and there+s a thief coming and I have to say -You ca n+t get me in this room.+ and there+s another thief coming and I have to show the thief you can+t get me ??. something like this. But this is not against jealousy. It+s like going to a doctor for a headache and he gives you medicaments for the headache. But it+s not radical , it+s only against the symptom. So what you described is against the symptom, not against the problem. I think you have to go to the problem itself, and the problem itself is jealousy. We have to ask why I+m jealous, and what means the feeling of jealousy? I think the meaning of jealousy is that I have something and i think that other people can+t get this something from me away. It+s like having a car, or having a house, the same with people : having a human being. I think this is the problem . We have to stop thinking: I have the people, it+s my human being, only my woman. We have to think that all human beings are free. I agree with you that you have to ask : Why are you jeal ous ? You cannot solve the problem unless you start asking th ese kinds of questions and be able to talk honestly about them , but I don+t agree that it+s just as simple as this possesive model that you keep making. There are lots of different kinds of jealousy and different sources for it and you have to be open to whatever kinds of answers your partner gives you for why it is that they are experiencing jealousy. You say I+m only treating the symptoms by talking about our attraction . I think the reason for talking about our attraction is t o remind us about why we+re together which is what get+s often forgotten when jealous feelings come and if you can+t remember your connection then jealousy is a much stronger force. ..murmumurmur.. . For me the big part of beating jealousy has to do with timing, it has to do with getting through the initial , most dificult period when you just told me that you have another lover. Now I+m going : Oh no , I+m gonna loose you. And you+re looking at their lover and going that person looks r eally , really interesting and boy, I look reall y scared. If you can get through that period , in fact one of the agreements to deal with jealousy is to say :We+re not gonna break up in the first month after another relationship starts. We+ve been together for a long time and we have some kind of agreement from the past and let+s recognize that this is a changing situation and that we+ll stick together for at least a fixed period of time so that we can try it. We can try to work over jealousy, we can try to make it work with three peopl e or however many people are in your relationship. and then go about ... This sounds like the fear of loosing someone , and I thought @+@+#@9**+\-++@##!!#@--@*##!!-!@@!!*!#!#!@!#@!@+@++ ZAGINFLATCH zagREB inFORMATION POTlatch Zaginflatch is a newsletter attempting to inspire action and spread information among Ex-Yugo anarchists as well as get the news out beyond the borders. Hopefully serving as a news resource for other groups or publications. If you+dr attempting to inspi re action and spread information among Ex-Yugo a narchists as well as get the news out beyond the borders. Hopefully serving as a news resource for other groups or publications. If you+d like to get on the mailing list, write to Zaginflatch c/o ZAP (be sure to send a fax number or email address if you have one and by no means use any old email addresses they are all fucked). A contribution towards mailing would be appreciated. The information in Zaginflatch is not copyrighted, so let it loose! Also any news f rom elsewhere would be much appreciated. Types of things we're looking for news on: demos, foreign solidarity , all actions from flyer pasting to road blockades to strikes to sabotage , police violence, squatting, gay and lesbian activism, women's stuff, eco actions etc. The contents of this section was compiled from different past issues of Zaginflatch plus a little new stuff. archism in Peru), Dali Zna| |to je to Animal Liberation Front (What the hell is the ALF ?). Also available are the statement of purpose of the new Kuglan a squat in Zagreb b oth in English and Croatian language and hopefully others in the future. There is a need for foreign language information to be translated into Croatian. If you can or already have translated pamphlets , fliers or other information, get in touch !!!! We have a world of translating to do and nothing to loose but our frantic gesticulating. THE ANARCHIST PEACE FRONT (APF) is an attempt at networking all anarchist groups from this part of the world. Pre sently there's work being done on a compilation tape of pun k bands from Ex-Yugoslavia and elsewhere on the planet and a booklet which will feature various anti-war and anarchist activities in former Yugoslavia. APF-Kukatz c/o Boris Milakovi5 , SV. Duha 30, 55300 Po+ega , Croatia TORPEDO is a revolutionary group from Serbia who are planning a zine and are mostly interested in Class War activities. c/o Milan DjuriO, M.Velikog 12/10, 11300 Smederevo, Serbia, Yugoslavia NEWS POSTER ACTIONS AGAINST THE POPE AND POLITICIANS IN ZAGREB It seemed tha t Zagreb was actually p reparing for the arrival of God himself during the weeks before the popes arrival on the 10th of September. Every wall , shop window, billboard, newspaper and TV broadcast announced , triumphed over and endlessly discussed every detail of the popular patriarchs visit. In the years since Croatia voted themselves independent, the country has suffered from mass conversions to Catholicism. Unlike during World War II when the territory was und er fascist control and the Ustashi deported, killed or converted almos t the entire non-catholic population, this time people are converting voluntarily and quite gleefully. A good deal of Croatia's national identity has to do with being catholic (whereas Serbs identify with the Othodox church and the Bosnians as Muslims). Appropriately there was disgust and disbelief in the air among anti-authoritarians , many of who had major beef with the event. Millions of Kunas (as of this May Croatia reintroduced the Kuna as the countries national curr ency. Last time Croatians bought bre ad with Kunas was during the last fascist nationalist rule in World War II) were spent on preparations and overhauling the city for his visit. Resources that are still desperately needed among refugees and cities destroyed in the conflict. The state+s priorities became overwhelmingly clear during this time. The country+s catholic identity literally took bread and housing from the war ravaged villages. Several activists from Zagreb and around Croatia took to the streets to paste up posters protesting th e wa ste of resources and hype surrounding the Pope. Posters went up in Po+ega , Zagreb, Split , Sisak and elsewhere around the nation. Though a small voice , it was just about the only one. Shortly thereafter three people from Zagreb involved in producing and pasting the fliers where hauled in to the cop shop for interrogation, one of which had his home searched by cops who grabbed a number of zines and alternative papers from his room. During the interrogations , it becam e abundantly clear that the police have a fairly detailed knowledge of just about everyone active in Zagreb in the punk scene. Elsewhere , one flier paster from Po+ega was charged with illegal postering and 2 people from Sisak were forbidden to leave the city during the pope+s stay in Zagreb preventing them from attending the Metelkova anniversary. Marginally related was the appearance of several mock obituaries announcing the death+s of several Croatian , Serb and Bosnian war mongers , government censors and ruling class pigs with the dates se t in the near future. Although the identity of the obituaries+ creator remains unknown , Zagreb political police are in hot pursuit and presumably quite angry. The fliers created enough of a stir to be covered by some daily papers which requested information on trails leading to the culprit. This serves as a cold reminder of the reality of the new democracy. Though Croatians should expect the state control to aquire several new masks borrowed fro m their capitalist mentors in the west, they shouldn+t be s naive to think that the repression endured during Yugoslavian communism will let up. Aquire different masks maybe , but not disappear. KUGLANA SQUAT IN ZAGREB After a couple months of planning and chaotic but successful (and a couple redundant) weekly meetings, nearly a hundred people entered an abandoned and deteriorating bowling alley on October 7 to clean up and celebrate the creation of Zagreb+s first squatted social center. Throughout the first day groups of people streamed in to clean up the immense amount of rubble and trash throughout the building , up to waist height in some areas. The building had been abandoned for some time, possibly a couple years and is scheduled for demolition in two years from now. Upon arriving , the building was in terrible shape: burnt in some areas , missing windows and drearily awaiting demolition by the city. The first group arrived shortly before 1PM and had already cleaned up the bulk of garbage by the se cond crew+s arrival a couple hours later. We now had a somewhat rough structure suitable for if nothing else at the moment a party. After working hard all day, we drank hard all night and amazingly had no problems whatsoever from cops. The night was cold as hell and left only a handful of people in the building willing to endure. The next day people slowly filtered in again and resumed work, this time boarding up the windows , reinforcing the door ,building a stage , insulating the sleeping room a little better and cleaning up some more. A concert was organized spont aneously (although advertised prematurely) which included a variety of creative and amusing instrumental jams and folk singing to punk rock chaos as well as a new band from Ljubliana which has as of yet no name. We thought we were smart at the organizing meeting preceding moving in when we decided to resist imminent eviction by barricading ourselves in the building and refusing to leave if the cops showed up, but Zagreb punks had momentarily forgotten fear and paranoia in favor of pogoing and partyin g when the first cops showed up catching most of us pretty off guard. The response of squatters however was the shit. When the pigs asked for the organizer , the reply came in unison: +Svi!+(all of us). Every attempt at getting their scapegoat was met with total solidarity between squatters and supporters. Unable to get their man , cops singled out the all the non-Croatians they could find including the Slovenian band , parents who had come to see them play and mys elf after I had accidentally re-activated the fl ash in my camera. Cops demanded I destroy the film in my camera which I politely but firmly refused to do. I later hid my camera from them while getting my passport for them. 5 Croatian skins were also arrested (one of them who , when asked his nationality replied Skinhead). After being harassed for some time and mildly threatened with various things including being charged with disturbing the peace and locking us up for two days, we were all let go without being charged. I feel its impo rtant to note that a lthough the cops were threatening and engaged in alot of yelling and red faced growling and barking, they had no real basis to fuck with us. None of us could be held responsible for the event, we had only -responded to the anonymous flier to show up and take part+. A hierarchical system cannot conveniently respond to grassroots and leaderless organizing without engaging in mass arrests and repression of any one involved. They need a scapegoat and we refus ed to give them one. The Slovenes headed back home a nd the rest of us headed straight back to Kuglana. While at the cop shop , the police had come again and cleared the building of everyone else. But by Sunday Kuglana was bustling with people again. Kuglana is a huge step forward for Zagreb. Organizing it began with a nightmare of overcoming mass skepticism and fear. Some activists had just been interrogated by special Police for publishing and pasting some fairly harmless fliers concerning the pope+s visit (see above article) and it was clear that the poli ce were keeping track of activists and punks quite well. Top this cake with a taste for sending (or at least attempting to send ) troublemakers to the front, a lot of people were hesitant to take part at all. Many didn+t believe it would last 5 hours. I believe the organizing relied on a few people+s determination to do it despite anything. That it had to be done. If not entirely successful it would at least be a sign of activity , resistance and an inspira tion for others. By the last major organizing meeti ng, the normally adequate room was bursting with people who were spilling into all the neighboring rooms, putting together statements, faxing press releases, arguing over what needed to be done etc. Everyone seemed infected with the squat. There are some definite problems though. The only people who have consistently lived in the building since the occupation with one or two exceptions are drunk punks and a young and very harmless nazi skin (who had lived in the building for months be fore we decided to take it). As of this writing, still less than a week since moving in, it is undecided as to what will come of this. They all put a lot of work into renovating and cleaning (while they also were responsible for most of the damage and filth we cleaned up) and are living in it , but have no real connections to what we wanted to do with it in the first place which is to create an anti-authoritarian (which is anti-fascist) alternative community center. We came a long way and have done something a lot of people said never could be done. Though we+ve yet to face a good deal of the odds and still have a lot of big and small details to iron out and projects to establish, we have the building and will continue to occupy it for as long as possible and fill it with as much life and creation as we can. The Kuglana has a lot of space for concerts, art shows , meetings, forums , whatever the hell we choose to do with it. An info shop is being set up as I write so any reading material that could be contributed would be appreciat ed . Also hip posters , fliers or art to cover the walls would be neat. Any bands coming through , get in touch. We should have legal details for shows worked out sometime soon (preventing inevitable cop problems). The following is the text of the statement by the Kuglana squat put together a week before the occupation. KUGLANA In this strictly regulated cop culture there is no room for any real cultural expression; no room for turning a collective desire for a different world based on direct personal control and responsibility for one's living environment into reality, for creating a living space on our own terms. There is virtually nowhere for a for completely independent culture to manifest itself, nowhere for independent music and creation to be shared, nowhere that is completely free from commercial or political influence or control. We have no space for putting our desires into political reality. No living space free from hierarchy, power and money. Under the circumstances , there is now here a cu lture of resistance to authority can manifest itself. With the resources left to us, we have no choice but to sit alone and rot entertaining ourselves with our own hopes and ideas. ... that is unless we create a free area of our own. By taking this abandoned building as a space for organizing, living and creating from the ground up, non-hierarchically and autonomous from political and economic pressure, we can create a situation where people can actualize themselve s, communicate and share ideas. A place whe re a new future can take root where we can breath. STATEMENT OF PURPOSE To renovate the building in order to make it suitable for use To create a space where alternative/anti-authoritarian and non-commercial culture can materialize and develop/grow. Qa concert hall / theatre Qa rehearsal space Qan art gallery for unconventional or inaccessible artists to use To organize ourselves and put our political ideals into action non hierarchically: Qa meeting space man rights, anti-fascist, green , animal rights etc.) Qinfoshop - to give people access to and distribute information which is restricted or otherwise inaccessible. Qfree living spaces KUGLANA In this strictly regulated cop culture there is no room for any real cultural expression; no room for turning a collective desire for a different world based on direct personal control and responsibility for one's living environment into reality, for creating a living space on our own te y nowhere for a for completely independent culture to manifest itself, nowhere for independent music and creation to be shared, nowhere that is completely free from commercial or political influence or control. We have no space for putting our desires into political reality. No living space free from hierarchy, power and money. Under the circumstances , there is nowhere a culture of resistance to authority can manifest itself. With the resources left to us, we have no choice but to sit alone and rot enterta ining ourselves with our own hopes and ideas. ... that is unless we create a free area of our own. By taking this abandoned building as a space for organizing, living and creating from the ground up, non-hierarchically and autonomous from political and economic pressure, we can create a situation where people can actualize themselves, communicate and share ideas. A place where a new future can take root where we can breath. STATEMENT OF PURPOSE To renovate the building in order to make it suitable for use To create a space where alternative/anti-authoritarian and non-commercial culture can materialize and develop/grow. Qa concert hall / theatre Qa rehearsal space Qan art gallery for unconventional or inaccessible artists to use To organize ourselves and put our political ideals into action non hierarchically: Qa meeting space for groups organizations(feminist, human rights, anti-fascist, g reen , animal rights etc.) Qinfoshop - to give people acces cted or otherwise inaccessible. Qfree living spacesNEW ON KUGLANA Since the above article was written, Kuglana was evicted, lasting only three days. After the initial eviction there was a decision to make a formal request to the owners for the building. The request which was brought in bore more than 1300 signatures which were collected mostly at a Ramones gig shortly after the eviction. Upon recieving the request, the landlord pledge d to reply within three days. However , while waiting for uilding was bulldozed almost burying a kid in rubble who was sleeping inside. After that we went to the city authorities and railway company whop had owned the building to ask who was to blame. Their answers were contradictory both blaming the other. This reaction of the authorities just tells us that any self inititiative and self organization of people in Zagreb is not welcome, and will be treated accordingly. Though unsuccesful, Zagreb+s first squat was good experience f or us and most people involved wan t to try it again. Not just squatting , but re-experiencing our connection to each other and consolidate ourselves in further struggle. AID AND SOLIDARITY FROM ABROAd INTERNATIONAL WORKERS AID have delivered 150 tons of aid to the miner+s union in Tuzla as well as other projects listed in ZIF #1. They have another 14.5 tons waiting to be cleared by Herzeg-Bosna fascists before they can be delivered to Tuzla. Future projects include a c onvoy to unions in Sarajevo (organizing materials as well as food), c o-ordinating the delivery of a Mammography machine to the hospital in Zenica (who are desperately looking for a tympanogram and a gastroscope) and another convoy to Tuzla to co-incide with the elections on November 4th and 5th and to support the anti-national current in Tuzla. Hurray! A mistake though: they aren+t anarchists as mentioned in ZIF #1 though they are supported by various anarchist and syndicalist unions. It seems the convoys have been having s ome trouble with the local Ustashe trying to get th eir convoys through. They are requesting MPs, trade union leaders, intellectuals and anybody else with headed note paper to send faxes with the message DON+T FUCK WITH IWA PUNK! ( actually something put a bit more subtle and diplomatic) and possibly pointing out the illegality of their actions. Send faxes to GOSP. DAMIR LJUBIC +387 88 700 811 and GOSP. MARTIN RAGUZ +387 88 312 183. Send the IWA a copy too! Their new address is: International Workers Aid - Logistics c/o DINKO , Sla vonska 19, 58300 Makarska , Croatia . Phone : +385 (0) 58 611 303 Fax:+385 (0) 58 325 843 AID FOR THE FORGOTTEN is a group of dedicated wingnuts who dodge bullets and ignore lines of conflict to bring material aid to areas in conflict, at times unloading their trucks during fighting. -During the winter in Bosnia 300.000 to 500.000 people will die of hunger or cold as long as the situation has not changed there.That is unless it proves possible to activate more financial contributions. These people would be forgotten by the inte ional community and according to this , would be left to their own destiny. None of the organizations which are involved in the former Yugoslavia have been working in areas where fighting is still going on. We are especially concerned with this group of people who have been forgotten by all others. In contrast to the other organizations, we are delivering directly to areas in the war zone. Our group consists of people from all parts of the political spectrum and it+s open to all those concerned with pea . We are trying to express this by using the rainbow symbol. HOW CAN I HELP ? Q By support and voluntary work Q By donating money or material Q Developing and carrying out of certain , occasional projects (own projects) We call upon all artists to support our action by making donations of material or artwork or by participation in benefit events. URGENTLY NEEDED: Vehicles (Trucks) Drivers (Driv. License -B+ or -C+) Warm garments , shoes Blankets , sleeping bags , mattresses Plastic foils Candles Elec tric torches, cables, fuel Reserve torches, batteries , lamps Tools (for simple repairs) Food (nourishment) : please ask for the list Vitamins Drinks Medicines & medical supplies : please ask for the list Personal hygene (tampons, soap) Washing powder Tanks for water and fuel Toys and sweets Condoms !!!!+ Contact: Herby, Irene, Joseph or Daniel: 022(Vienna) 214 27 43 or try Ronnie at tel/fax 712 03 57 Donations: Bank Account -Hilfe ffr die Vergessenen+, BAWAG BLZ 14 000 , Account number 03010311135 PUBL ICATIONS This is hella incomplete, so there+s no claim to covering all of what+s out there. I+m just listing what I+ve collected in the last couple months. Like I mentioned earlier, send things in so this is more complete!! An | next to the zine name means it+s in English language , otherwise it+s all in Croatian. ARKZIN (ARK, TkalOi5eva 38, 41000 Zagreb , Croatia) Probably where it+s at as far as a more together consistent effort at providing a strong, informativ e alternative in news and writing. This co mes out weekly (biweekly ??) and is available at most news stands around Zagreb. The only really accessible specifically anti war paper in Croatia I know of. They have an English language summary of their first issue. NE+EMO , I NEDAMO (Marko Vukovi5 , BolnniOka 96, 41000 Zagreb) is a list of bands , organizations and zines with their addresses along with a couple newsblerbs. INFERNAL (Sa|a Dolgov , Zelena ul. 4 69000 Murska Sobota, Slovenia) is in Slovene language and contains interviews with local band s, a couple articles and some comics. IN MEDIA RES (Marco Strpi5, Raku|ina 3, 41000 Zagreb, Croatia) contains news , ideas and rants based around the Zagreb punk scene and it+s quirky characters. CRNI GAVRAN (c/o NarkoviO Dragan, Post Restante , 11420 Smederevska Palenka, Yugoslavia) is a zine , but I+ve never seen it FECAL FORCES | (c/o Boris Milakovic, Kapavac 30, 55300 Po+ega , Croatia) Issue 2 has a number of band interviews (Anarcrust and Flagrants D+eli among others ) , and some articles including one on ZAPO, the anti racist Mayday skins, killing capitalism, Pula and anarchy. A comp tape called -War is the Reality we Live In+ is available from the same address for $7 in Europe. KRUH I RU+E (Women+s Infoteka , Berislaviceva 14, 41000 Zagreb, Croatia tel:+385 41/276 188, fax:+385 41/422 926) a thick , impressive feminist magazine published by the women+s Infoshop here in Zagreb. Also have an English summary available. MAKE A CHANGE ( Sini|a Druzeta, Jakova Volcica 6 , 51400 Pazin, Croatia tel: 0531/ 22 1 67) contains reviews , ads and interviews with punk rock bands. Sheets with the text in English are available. DIALOGUE | ( Dialogue , Groen van Prinstererstraat 90, 1051 EP Amsterdam tel: +31-20-681 48 85 , fax: +31-20-684 76 35 , email: mizamir@antenna.nl) half in english , half in Croatian , this well produces magazine contains articles on Amsterdam+s children refugee theatre, dimensions of fear, Displaced Childhood, About Creativity and Destructivity, Kid+s Made Co nscious ...WARHEAD (Goran Ivanovic, S. Ra dica 32, 55300 Pozega , Croatia tel:385 (0) 55/79-619), also political punk zine from Po+ega GLANS PENISSIS (Vedran Meniga , Vladimira Ruzdjaka 8, 41000 Zagreb, Croatia) has stuff on Ab+z Normalan, Antitude, squatting, Apatridi, Enklava, veganism, ZAPO, W.O.R.M., anarchism ... the issue I have is a split issue with a lyric / info booklet that came with the band Nula+s tape. COMUNITAS (ARK-ZAPO, TkalOi5eva 38, 41000 Zagreb , Croatia tel: 385 41/422-495 fax: 385 41 / 335-230) is ZAPO+s publication. The la tes t issue is olver a year old and work on a new one doesn+t look like it+s going anywhere at the moment. This issue has info on ZAPO+s activities, anarchism in Peru, the group Pangea, an interview with Howard Clark of War Resistors International, cop violence, legalization of light drugs, Eat shit zine, anarcho syndicalism and a couple reviews. SHAVED WOMEN (Andrea Tomassevic, Nova Skojevska 67/VIII, 11090 Beograd, Jugoslavia) Peace punk zine focusing on Crass , Chumbawamba and the sort. ZIPS AND CHAINS | ( Dario Adamic, C.P. 15319, 00142 Roma Laurentino, Italy) isn+t really from here exactly but the editor is Croatian and there+s a pretty good piece here on zines in Yugoslavia that I found interesting. Also MDC, DOA, Bad religion, the Instigators, punk photographers and reviews. PAPERMOUTH | ( Toma+ Trplan, -tudentski Dom, Topni|ka 33, 61000 Ljubliana , Slovenia) is an interesting, good looking zine with articles on pacifism, fruitarianism, dissing spiritual know it alls. Pretty per sonal in parts and sort of treading on different ground than normal. ZAGINFLATCH c/o ZAP , TkalOi5eva 38, 41000 Zagreb , Croatia ..... email address if fucked PS: regular Infinite Onion readers should note that most info in old issues is way outdated and not worth shit. @+@+#@9**+\-++@##!!#@--@*##!!-!@@!!*!#!#!@!#@!@+@++ 11SEMANTICS12 CHANGES EVERYTHING -The man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot+ - Breton A peculiar phenomenon occurrs frequently during discussions and arguments wh en after verbally beating the shit out of a topic through whatever means my opponent or I have at our wits, we realize that we are agree almost entirely and that we+re basically arguing over semantics. Topics like chaos or anarchy come quickly to mind. How people shape their realities and worldview and as a result the way they choose to interact with and feel about their surroundings depends almost entirely on their semantics. It+s too easy to see how other peo ple+s concepts of who they are and of what the world is like , or how it should be keeps them imprisoned in the walls of their semantic borders. A culture that defines life, happiness and fulfilment in terms of work, hedonism and material accumulation is bound to produce people whose lives are constructed around those values and who will inevitably live , feel and breath the semantics of their culture while a culture set up differently may understand their values in a different way, thus affecting the way they relate to each an d what they strive for in life. There is no reason semantic definitions should necessarilly stay in place. As we change, our society and relationships change and the universe around us changes so do the relationships in semantics and if we feel the need to change the world and its relationships we should be maniacly aware of the connections between language and -real+ relationships. Everything we understand about the Universe , has been in some form or other entered into our senses and placed somewhere within our minds where we ca n relate it to the rest of what our senses has brought in at other times. In a sense ,we draw a map of the universe as we understand it, with all points being what has come in through our senses. As we take in more and more information, our maps become more and more elaborate and the lines connecting important points on our map connect to more and more other points in more and more different ways. We juggle ideas and concepts and try to decide how we want arrange our model of the outside world. Everything we know or believe, is not necessarily what is. It is how we believe it to be and how our experience has encouraged us to think it to be. What we+ve built up in our heads consists of ideas, thoughts, beliefs, concepts ; it is not reality13 for all we know. The map is not the territory. A good thing about our entire existence being constructed by at the least a very immaterial worldview is that it can be changed drastically. Realising we have a model of reality that does not necessarily attach itself to fixed thin gs, though i t tries to, helps us to realize that we can radically change reality and that nothing is so fixed as many would have us believe. I+m a little weary of hearing people tell me that this is the way it is and I should deal with it. I subscribe more to the point of view that the way some people think14 has had the affect of altering reality in a very oppressive way as opposed to how I would prefer to live (or people in general for that matter). I+ve constructe d enough ideas and situations in my own life to make me believe that I want no part in dealing with the reality that other people have constructed for their own interests violating mine in the process. Who made capitalism and hierarchical social relations into a reality for others ? Fuck that, I will not deal with a way of life and set of relationships that involves being degraded, exploited and dehumanized, nor will I deal with their reality models that require me to do the same. My map does not fit the way they+ve torn up the world and I will not de al with it period. So how does one deal with oppressive semantics and their impact on the world. A good start would be to start trying to understand them and the ways in which they work. Then learn to reconstruct them and reconstruct life in the process. So how can Semantics change the world ? By the opening of new possibilities. People+s mental landscapes consist entirely of symbols , largely consisting of the language15 we speak. As we grow , we learn to juggle these symbols more proficiently , learning new tr icks and relations between the symbols we+ve aquired. This skill could be called intelligence. Raised in a culture where its semantic system is limited largely to the experience of that unique culture and it+s history, it+s language will reflect those limitations16. Some Innuit language contains hundreds of different words describing different types of snow. As if each type of snow is completely unique. Most people I know including myself would be hard pressed to detect the minute difference s between snow t ypes. Euro-American culture feels little need to distinguish between snow types. Also, in my own experience I find it difficult to really remember a person untill I learn their name or get an idea of what they do which is unique. I need to write them into my map before they become less than an anyonymous face darting around. Ideas don+t really become part of our consciousness untill we have some sort of a symbol for them. Nothing is siginificant unles s we have something to tie it to which relates to the res t of our consciousness. Until we+ve consciously been taught one particular perspective and have given it a name , we won+t be fully aware of it+s -existence+, or maybe better put , it won+t exist for us personally (in the sense that we haven+t marked it down on our model/map). So by expanding our language and developing new labels and points to tie into our maps we can start to discover entirely new universes which had never previously been tapped by us. This implies that everyt hing of which we are conscio us only exists to the extent that we+ve been infused with it by our culture and not by reality or -real+ existence itself. It also suggests that anything potentially exists , jut we don+t know it yet. A new world of possibilities lies in among the semantic juggling of symbols. . Language reproduces it+s culture. In an almost identical way to how working class people perpetuate capitalism which represses them, the language of a culture carries on th e qualities of that culture. Since cultural traits are embedd ed in language, the people growing up learning that language also learns to think as the culture dictates. The English language which is filled with hierarchical and sexist words and expressions , carries it+s sexist baggage out on to the people who speak it. For instance: The constant use of the word -he+ to describe a nameless person instead of a word which is not genderspecific (which I believe are very awkwared to use in converntional English) , along with word s such as human or woman17 and expression s like -when man first walked the earth+ all create a language where men are being spoken to specifically. After being constantly indoctrinated by cultural roles and rules through language and society it really takes a constant decision to break out of them. It takes years of self examination and conscious change to be able to act like a human with any real free will. It takes free will to create free will. And it takes a semantic overhaul to unbderstand that sometimes free will is not free w ill. Especially when you live in a culture which creates so many peoples+ Universe for them whether they want it or not and then teach them that this is the way it is, and that these are their choices, leaving them with next to nothing to choose from but self destruction , slavery or empty hedonism. Clever and evil semantic tricks of the pigs. When you choose to create your model of life and how you want to go about it, be aware of those trying to do it for you. In a soci ety with clearly mapped needs of the producers of commodities to instill certain models of happiness in people, they create images , desires and aspirations which people willingly conform to and in turn model themselves after. The desire of capitalists is to create consumers out of people , to equate the pleasure with consumption. To stay alive capitalism needs to create a society which sees commodities as necessary for fulfillment. Propagating a certain lifestyle and way of thinking is just as important to capitalism as is production. Re defining basic co ncepts to suit their needs is the way they stay on top. Advertising redefines pleasure by telling people over and over again that happiness is achieved through material accessories to your personality. Hapiness is equated to gimmicky , surfacey entertainment. Sexual pleasure is equated to soap, excitement to buying a shiny car, popularity with beer, strength with milk and of course deodorant with security. Buy everything you can and be so preocc upied with things that you never seem to remember why you feel so empty inside. And when for a second you remember, it means you forgot to distract your thoughts. Distraction and commodity fetishism become synonymous with happiness. Redefined by the pigs for their own purposes to create an army of manipulatable fools who will buy their shit (both their thoughts and their things). The happy people , suicidal , empty have been taught fear of their own possibilties and took refuge in the hell of escapism (commodity fetishism). -There is no p eace movement !+ - George Bush When ones entire life is defined by those who make it their business to define the lives of others, then anything goes for the semantic technicians in power. During the Gulf War , the media and power elite virtually wiped out the entire anti-war movement simply by maintaining that despite the wide scale resistance and anti-war sentiment , there was no significant part of the population that oppposed the slaughter. It doesn+t exist they s aid . For millions of people who only took in the resistance to the wa r through television or other sources mediated by these semantic contortionists there was no one out there. If they would have left their homes to get out on the streets they could experience directly the rage and unity against the war that existed briefly after the war broke out. Instead our leaders came out and corrected reality for us. They told us we didn+t exist and they told everybody who may have felt some sort of allegiance with us that there was nothing out there. Feeling i solated and alone, being against the war became very hard for a lot of people who only heard one side. A scary thing when a person or entity has the power to simply define a whole movement into obscurity. Relationships and language. (s)he+s my girlfriend, my boyfriend , my lover. My land , my factory , my goats. If capitalism can stop at my doorstep , why won+t it stop at my bed or my friendships ? The leap from being friends, in the sense that we+re all friends and w e don+t need to exclude some friends because of other friends, t o being my girl/boyfriend or lover is loaded with implications of ownership and loyalty. The term as it is spoken -my lover+ implies that any deviation from being -(just) my lover+ would imply that the deviant has actually broken off the relationship . The relationship being defined well ahead of time as a possesive and exclusive relationship. And by engaging in relationships with other lovers would break the at most mystical contract that the label used to describe gener ic relationships has created.The ter ms offered by language to describe an ordinary relationship saturate the relationship itself with the qualities of the words used to describe it : possesion and hierarchy , both of these are cultural traits which have helped create the language and in turn propagated by language. Dogma is the semantic cement of the masses! Leave it up to Jesus or Marx to create ideologies with no room for change. Connecting symbols which normally float free ly with unbreakable and immovable links. A sea of hopes, imaginati on and real possibilities , floating and colliding suddenly frozen and stuck permanently. Dogma artifically crams people into glaciers of categorization and stagnance. Conveniently defining people as unable to construct their own independent reality. Progressing to the point of being able to offer a new different perspective and then sealing it in. Taking a moving body of ideas , inspiration and creativity and slamming into a jail cell when it+s virtues are discovered, with the hope of exploiting the entity for all its worth. While in reality the value is only in its free movement , not in its imprisonment. When in the beginning the words went down on paper, they said -This is where it starts+ , but all people could read was -This is the way is+. The ones who could read what it really said became dadaists and situationists , the ones who misread became party members or turned into -intellectuals+ who answer every question with -well according to Marx+ or -in my little red book it says . . . - (or of c ourse - it says right here in the Bible that ...+). The fun thing is that in contrast with cement, semantics never actually sets, only the self righteous intellectuals of cerebral stagnance think it does . Thay molded silly putty into stone. They think once they+ve defined the world and experienced the illusion of seeing the machinery of the Universe crystal clear that they+ve arrived. Whereas they may have arrived, they forgot that not everybody was going their direction. They arrived at their goal while the whole world is treading on different territory , tromping a different direction and focusing on different horizons. Tying links between symbols. The casual reference to women as bitches, for instance , if not confronted or resisted will inevitably become part of the way a person sees women in general. Using degrading language regularily (nigger, faggot, wop, slut etc.) will create a mindset where the people look down on others in the same they they degrade them through language. The correlation betwe en an insu lting term like faggot, loaded with semantic baggage of filth and repulsion , and a possibly healthy sexual relationship between two men who are probably enjoying a fuller sex life than the insult slinger itself, bears no relation to any sort of objective reality. Why tie semantic links between repulsion and gay love if there is nothing repulsive about it (or is there maybe something gay about repulsion) ?? There seems to me to be something wholey unhe althy about this scrambling up the pyramid of semantic s elf worth. Semantic confusion! When we choose to lie (ie. connect symbols which do not relate on our map) we affect ourselves in a similar way. Pathological liars , I believe have little grip on reality. After repeating the same lies over time , always remaining careful to keep the consistency of the inconsistent mass of lies intact, the liar often reshapes its own memory to conform with its inconsistent semantic knotwork which bears little to no resemblance on what the liar actu ally recieved as input. I n a similar way to how the pathological liar recreates her/his map and what (s)he feels is real , one can recreate ones world by taking it from the society and system which pushed their definitions , roles and relationships on us as a part of us growing up inside of it , surrounded by it and just about to be eaten by it, and returning it to ourselves under a framework of free will where we link up what we understand in a way which pleases us and d oesn+t adhere to power+s imposition of dogma and artificial d esire for artificial things. It really all comes down to the choice we make. If we live going with the flow, and accepting the way others have attempted to prefab life for us, we blow off the our will , our power to make a personal choice about how we feel. Until we become conscious of the choice we have in designing our own thoughts and conceptions we can only exist within the perimeter of what has been defined for us. In other words if we don+t define ourselves , somet hing/one else will. A first step in any real revolution or any major social change inevitably has to be a revolution of semantics. To change our social relationship to each other we need to change the way we define each other and our relationships to each other and the universe. This is the beginning. @+@+#@9**+\-++@##!!#@--@*##!!-!@@!!*!#!#!@!#@!@+@++ WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE ANIMAL LIBERATION FRONT ! The Animal Liberation front (ALF) consists of groups of people , a round Bs of people , around Britain and also abroad, who believe that animals should not be exploited. the way to achieve total liberation for animals is through economic sabotage to the animal abusers. Various actions carried out include: The rescue of animals from laboratories, farms and bad homes; the destruction of equipment designed for the torture of animals , and damage to premises, etc. Several poisoning hoaxes have been carried out to publicize the fact that the companies concerned are animal abusers. It is the policy of th e ALF that during their actions, n rm will be done to any living creature. MARS BARS - The Mars Bars hoax (Nov. 84) was to publicize the fact that Mars gave Guy+s hospital money to force feed monkeys a high sugar diet (including Mars Bars) in research on tooth decay. None of the Mars Bars were actually poisoned. There have been similar hoaxes to expose the use of animals by the Turkey trade , cosmetic manufacturers, and companies such as Beechams who inflict terrible sufferings on rabbits, dogs and other animals by way of the Draize ritancy Test and the L.D.(lethal dose) 50 test. MINK LIBERATION - Reading the papers after the ALF have released some mink, you could be forgiven for believing that they have committed a great crime against the countryside. The papers say that the mink will ravage the countryside, eating all in their way. The truth is somewhat different. Mink are territorial animals. They won+t live together. They can travel up to 10 miles a day and so w hen 500 are released, they disperse very quickly. Unfortunately som animals are also recaptured by the farmer. The mink is a relative of the stoat, the polecat, weasel , pine martin, badger and otter, all Natives of Britain and it feeds in a similar way. The ALF recommend that mink are only mass released in the summer and autumn, not in the spring when the local wildlife is breeding or in the winter when there is a shortage of food. Other species of animal are factory farmed for their fur in Britain including rabbits and silver foxes.(A more detailed account is avail e on request). The ALF have rescued many of them from the factory-farm concentration camps. ANIMAL FARMING- Every year 400 million chickens, 14 million pigs, 24 million turkeys, 3 million cattle, 1 million rabbits and 14 million sheep are slaughtered in Britain. Animal products are unnecessary for human health, and also waste resources such as land. On a vegan diet, 61 people could live on the produce from 10 acres of land, but only 2 people could live on the same amount of produc e if it has first been fed to cattle. So next time you eat meat or drink milk, remember - you have not only caused the death of an innocent animal but also human beings in the starving countries of the world.(Britain actually imports grain from Ethiopia to feed to animals!) VIVISECTION- Every year over 4 million animals are murdered in British laboratories. They are force fed lipstick, weedkillers, oven cleaners, drugs and alcohol. They are shot and irradiated. They a re electrocuted, given tumors, the list is endless. The ALF e liberated thousands of laboratory animals and caused millions of pounds worth of damage to the vivisection laboratories. There can never be any justification for using completely innocent animals in any experiment , no matter what the benefit to humans. It is not only completely selfish, but also totally immoral. THE ANIMAL LIBERATION FRONT WILL CONTINUE THEIR ACTIONS AGAINST THE ABUSERS FOR AS LONG AS NECESSARY. This article was taken from the text of a flyer produced by London Greenpeace who can ontacted at 5 Caledonian Rd., London N1. UK. It has no copyright. @+@+#@9**+\-++@##!!#@--@*##!!-!@@!!*!#!#!@!#@!@+@++ Self -induced uterine contractions - A Birthday Story by -enna I. She was told to breed babies in plastic nappies, fed by another+s milk through a synthetic rubber nipple, to be defined not as SELF, but only by motherhood. Subliminal messages of submission disguised as TRUTH were sent via the airwaves of televangelists. -Be Fruitful & Multiply.+ II. Full & round wit n blood, flat on her back, starched white-washed linen draped over her spread - eagle knees encouraging modesty & shame, a stranger+s dry latex - covered tentacles up her cunt, cold metal poking & prodding, breaking her water without consent so he can go home early. -What was your name again?+, muffled voice, he asks, thankful for the surgeon+s mask, glad not to smell Female because this one doesn+t strawberry douche. The same men in white coats who slit open abdomen s of pregnant mothers under anesthesia because Cesarean -sections produce more profit, anothernewcar10television setsdinnerin ParisbreakfastinRomejacuzzi&summerhouserenovationsjustforthehellofit. The sons of the psychiatric psychotic GODS sporting plastic smiles who took all the womyn who spoke too LOUD, stood too TALL, blamed INDEPENDENCE on atrophy of the uterus, stuck sucking leeches up their snatches where they became lost & bled womyn to death. III. With each contraction, she overheard whispered conspiracy of power i n high-backed lea ther swivel chairs high in sky-scrapers with no windows so as not to bothered by angry songs of wild birds. Conspiracy calling not for babies, but only cloned slaves for the factories, armies, institutions & corporations; to carry out the dictations of greed-inspired dogma; to brainwash the masses with convictions that a new shade of lipstick is revolutionary, a brand of panty-hose LIBERATING, so that secretaries tripping to work for demeaning bosses never think about FREEDOM; to bow down in servitude, to pray , to bear the weight of the cross, breaking backs & spirit, subduing sensuality with preached morality. Born covered in blood mucus spit & piss, all her babies snatched away without a first breath of Freedom, promptly bathed in sterility, made to swear upon the Holy Bible to Holy Parasitic God of Fear, Holy Money, Holy Leather Brutal Boot kicking in teeth so far down throats that shouts of anger, bitter rebellion turn to mangled sobs in esophaguses. Each given first a number, then a name, warned not to choose an identity all their own, or they will be shot sedated institutionalized lobotomized terrorized; the breast of each daughter branded with a triangle of black as reminder (& warning) of degenerate sisters lesbians witches & whores subjected to Nazi genocide in gas chambers of concentration camps. IV. Because she saw how mothers are treated, Earth+s rivers poisoned forests set aflame air toxic children dying, belly full, she crawled away in RAGE, fetus blood flowing from between her thighs , in refusal to give birth to mutated babies with 2 heads & no heart, who would live under a maroon - tinted sky never darkening enough for stars to shine, in a world that teaches girls to feel shame when the moon is full, whose assassins are passed off as standards of perfection; corsets laced so tight until uteruses squeeze out of vaginas. Terms of beauty that remove ribs for a slimmer waist -line around which to fasten tight chains so they can+t fight, stick them in high-heels so they can+t run. Abort ion or annihilation. She would no longer spread her legs to be fucked by power & state. She would straddle only Earth, embrace soil roots rocks & fuck wind & sea & sun & spirits. @+@+#@9**+\-++@##!!#@--@*##!!-!@@!!*!#!#!@!#@!@+@++ 1My friend Kamala who is studying mathematics, says it+s helped her think in a way which helps her formulate thoughts and express them clearly and more solidly. Also she says it+s helped her to write in a much more organized and understanda ble way.. Something I have a lot of trouble with unless I write forcing everything into the introduction-explanatory paragraphs- conclusion formula I was taught in school. But this hardly comes natural for me. But then again written expression is as learned as Aristotlean logic is. If people had learned to think and write in chaotically cross referenced chunks of information , would life be any different? 2Everything is related. The terms unrelated relates to the alienation of people and things to the big whole of everythingtogetherness. Eg oists and people who choose to disconnect their lives and actions from the whole , I believe are the ones who have put this world into the state it is in. 3or better: what we think is outside our body. ie: experience 4For instance :On a cartographical map, just because an underground dwelling or a community of squirrels or a fixed floating hot air balloon may not be represented , it does not mean that it isn+t there. It doesn+t even mean that the map designers di dn+t percieve the things when surveying the land. It just wasn+t something to go on this particular map. In the same way when things we percieve don+t fit on our map , it doesn+t mean they don+t -exist+. 5For example: A couple years ago, when I first started reading up on the idea of synchronicity (Carl Jung wrote about this extensively) I became increasingly aware of things which I had never before given a thought to. It seemed as if I had entered into a new world in many ways. The beginning of this year , my mother was i n the hospital because of severe lung problems largely because the air in Zagreb is terrible (pollution or ecology was not an issue for the communists) and dangerous to inhale. Around the same time I was at the height of a revulsion towards civilization and felt like I had to get out of the city and away from people or I would go nuts. Shortly after my father had called me in Colorado Springs and told me the state my mother was in, I was still freaking out. I went downstairs to calm down and put on one of my favorite records. I dr opped ther needle on the record and the words :+ You can+t see the moon above the city, the sky is always full of clouds even when the sun+s gone down, it+s like living in the underground. Black and white in shades of brown. And you can+t breath the air in the city with the fumes of cars and factories, your lungs aren+t what they used to be. Breath in the new complacency, at least its good for industry, at least it smells like home. -...+Robots don+t get lung disease+ ... + And you can+t get healthy in the city. The sky is so gray it+s like forty fags a day and the water is hard beneath the foam+ the words jumped out at me so strongly. The song took on a completely new meaning . As if Citizen Fish had written it directly about me and my feelings at ther oment towards civilization and my mothers health, which I highly doubt. The song being played at that p[articular instance was not an effect of my feelings, it collided with events and empotions in a completely unrelated way.thus the concedpt of synchronicit y as it occured in my life recently . 6 It+s been interesting spending a lot of time in the last few months with my parents. I was looking forward to being with them and sharing a lot of my life and feelings for quite a while before leaving the US. I was especially looking forward to sort of getting to reknow my father. Most of my teenage years we had been a little distant personally and emotionally. I think in a lot of ways it had a lot to do with how I wanted to be at the time . I didn+t want to put up wit h any restrictions and his firmness about their rules at times infuriated me. My mother was easier to compromise with. In the last few years since they moved back to Zagreb, I+ve repeatedly come to amazing revelations about how similar my father and I think and work things out. At fourteen I would get pissed off when people told me I sounded like my Dad over the phone; a few months ago , when a friend of the family I ran into at a coffee shop told me how alike he thought we were I was flattered in a funny sort of way. As a missionary he+s motivated to an extent that brings him across borders and oceans , while I+ve been doing crazy shit myself for the last few years , driven by whatever other forces happen to drive me. We both have big ideas and try to make them real. We both just do it. However upon arriving and spending hours discussing and debating with him, I realized how really different we are. He+s a Christian, hella conservative maybe a little to the right ; I+m no ne of those , spiritually and polit ically on the other side of the fence entirely. Quickly almost every discussion or even light talk about my life would bog down into the eternal swamp of morality. AAAaaaAAAAA@@@@@GGGHHHghhhghh! : the first word that comes to my mind. Where do I get my values if not from God? I can be held accountable for nothing if there were no moral code of conduct to be followed. If I don+t follow moral laws of sexuality , I may as well be breaking them all , running down the streets murdering virg ins and raping cops. T hat people can love, fondle and fuck, possibly be promiscuous or possibly be gay , or out of wedlock while at the same time be compassionate and respectfull of others reads as an inconsistency or contradiction. There is no arguing with Christian logic. As my sister+s bumpersticker reads: The Bible says it, I believe it , That settles it (sic(k)). The line of conversation often would often turn into attempts at getting me to admit to following some sort of morality or code. For my dad , it just has to be. F or me , i+ve weaned myself from that thinking.6 I don+t help somebody out because I believe in a moral law that says I should be nice to people. I most probably do it because when i see a person suffer I share the pain to a certain extent, and when I assist them it alleviates the pain. I suppose in a way it+s selfish , but it+s really a matter of acknowledging our interconnectedness and acting on it. Yesterday morning I exploded in rage. Somehow the da y started off with the topic of people being gay. Co pletely on opposite poles of thought about an issue which carries a lot of emotional charge for me. Which relates to my life closely , both with my own sexuality and that of friends who are gay. The religious (in the west mostly Christian) anti gay values that plunged most western societies into the sexual xenophobia that keeps people afraid of themselves and of their feelings , the bigotry against gays in the streets, where ones open expression of sexuality can get you killed or hospitalized , is (comforta bly) beyond most Christian thinking. Christian moralist thinking is a real threat. Living in Colorado , where the family values bigots had worked hard at putting their morality into law, the realization should have come much earlier , but at the time it was too hard for me to fathom the depth of what was going on. The family values people made themselves into the best of the worst political clowns to take really seriously as someone threatening us6 directly. The fucked up thing beyond nazi lawmake rs is a so ciety infused with Christian ideas. Not necessarily born again Christians , but people who grew up with Christian concepts of morality. Homophobia doesn+t come from nowhere. It comes from biblical (and other religious) teachings about homosexuality being an abomination, from a culture so engulfed in christian structures of male domination that men deserting their seats in the sexual hierarchy appear as such threats that they are attacked and despised. It+s an incredibly scary thing to think about , that som eone else+s morals have made most of the society into such a hostile environment.6 My parents (bigoted) views completely bewidered, shocked and enraged me. I knew they disapproved of -gay lifestyle+ , but I never really faced it up close. The big difference here between them and the infamous bigots pushing the anti gay amendments in Colorado was that I wouldn+t hesitate for a second to punch Will Perkins in the face if I saw him in the street. My parents are a completely different matter. A fter the steamy a rgument I withdrew to the room I+m staying in for almost the entire day feeling incredibly lonely and mixed up. I+m determined not to let their morality get in the way of my love for them , but it no doubt limits how we can interact. I don+t feel like I can comfortably share most of my experinces with them like I would like to, because their moral convictions make a good chunk of my life completely disagreeable and probably repulsive to them. 7From my experience previously having been one and with talking to Christians, many feel as if they are in a hostile environment themselves. Churches teach young Christians as if they are facing an entire world that is incredibly hostile to Christianity. It+s easy to see things that way as a Christian , but I+ve never heard a Christian ever admit that their morals affect society to the point of intolerance. 8-us+ in this particular instance refers to those people who don+t like their expression of sexual freedom being fucked with in the slight est. It+s an expression of affinity with sexual anarchists. 9The Wiccan rede: -Do what thou wilt , harm none+. is possibly a loose moral law that I could more or less abide by. However life is rarely so simple. That one could truly carry out one+s will without inflicting harm on anyone whatsoever is at times impossible. With all the complex social structures and spiderwebs of interaction we live and take part in, we usually don+t have much of a grip on how we affect others with our actions. For instance: A well meaning college st ude nt attempts at carrying out his will , harming none by taking a woman he is attracted to out on a date to a restaurant. Although he maintains complete respect for her feelings and wishes and does her no harm whatsoever and they both go home feeling good, their visit to the resaurant contributed to enormous harm. The meat they ate at the restaurant was manufactured by a factory farm which brutally torured its cows for their entire lifetime before being slaughtered for this college student and his date. The t ortured cow was fed food imported from a third world country which was forced to pay back debts to first world countries in the form of cash crops while it+s poluation starved and relied on charity from other countries instead of being allowed to become self sufficient. The workers at the restaurant were subject to terrible work conditions and bad pay and although neither of the lovebirds were aware of it, they had been incredibly rude and pushy to the waiter who spent the entire night frustrate d with their behavior. On top of that , contributing to a capitalist system of work, exploitation and hierarchy as they had done in patronizing a capitalist institution like this restaurant put just about everbody a step back in terms of freedom and liberation. No harm done , it+s just an innocent date? puleeze! I suppose anything can be hacked to death like this. The thelemic philosophy as summed up in the Book of the Law as:+Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the L aw. Love is the law, love under will. Every ma n and every woman is a Star.+ All prejudices against Crowley and the connotations the Book.. stir upaside, living by this -law+ could bring a lot of people out of their own personal misery and break all the artificial borders that keep people from achieving their potentials. Moral conducty only builds the walls back up again. 10Though over the years I+ve gotten several articles in on DIY abortion techniques, I+ve never printed them . Ifeel most of these are way too surfacey and potentially da ngerous. I don+ t want to encourage people towards more back alley style abortions. . . evebn if they+re DIY. By all means know what+s up with your body and be aware of how and why some alternative abortion techniques may be dangerous. What you don+t know can kill you and yes I am trying to scare you into educating yourself for real before taking some punk zine+s advice on something this serious. 11This entire article consists of plagiarized thoughts. Every new idea is a synthesis of old ones and my entire life consists of plagiarized feelings, thoughts , emotions and dreams. 12semantics / si-+mant-iks/ n pl but sing or pl in constr 1: the study of meanings: a: the historical and psychological study and classification of changes in the signification of words or forms viewed as factors in linguistic development b (1): SEMIOTIC(a general philosophical theory of signs and symbols) (2): a branch of semiotic with the dealing with relations between signs and what they refer to and includi ng theories of denotation, extension , naming , and truth. 2: GENERAL SEMANTICS 3 a: the meaning or relationship of meanings of a sign or set of signs; esp : connotative meaning b: the exploitation of connotation and ambiguity (as in propaganda) - from Webster+s New Collegiate Dictionary 13 According to Websters New Collegiate Dictionary , reality is defined as -the quality or state of being real - and real is pegged as -of or relating to fixed, permanent , or immovable thing s+. Pretty unmystical, material definitions. 14or the way they have constructed their models of this world 15language can be thought of as cultural semantics 16 A culture+s language however has tons of other information from the past which it has accumulated. So sharing a language which was developed over centuries with it+s developers and former users , one absorbs incredible amounts of information which one would not necessarily come across during ones lifetime without taking part in this extra dimension of experience. 17 Ju st in. The word woman broken down reads Wife Of MAN. Also , the word misogyny is defined as having or showing a hatred and distrust of women. Why is it that there is no such word against men. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Love and peace from ZAGREB tel : +385-(0)41-422495 | |Antiratna Kampanja email : ark_zg@Zamir-zg.ztn.zer.de | |Tkalciceva 38 | |41000 Zagreb (Croatia) fax : +385-(0)41-271143 | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ ## CrossPoint v3.02 ##