| INTRODUCTION
The mail below is a personal mail that I at one time sent to a Peter Zegers. As expressed at the end of the mail, I claimed full copyright to it, and requested that he not republish it on any mailing list. In spite of this, he published it at the mailing list of the secretary of the small defamatory anti-Waldorf group "PLANS" in San Francisco at the site of Topica. To test how different internet parties handle copyright issues, I took action and requested that the personal mail I had written to Mr. Zegers be removed from the internet. I chose the mail below, not because of its content, but purely as a test case, as it was an explicitly personal mail I had sent to someone, explicitly requesting that it not be republished on the net in violation of my copyright to it. As a result, the mail was removed from the internet. To show that my action had nothing whatsoever to do with the content, but purely with the principle of defending your copyright to texts you have written, I publish the mail here at my own site for anyone interested to read It may not be republished in any other forum or media without my expressed permission. Feel free to put up a link to it if you want to, though, describe its contents in your own words and discuss it as much as you like. Below, I have made some in the main very slight linguistic corrections of the original mail, corrected some of the links to refer to ads free versions of the original links, added some links to pages discussing what the mail refers to, or pages that clarify what the text tries to explain, and done some layout of it to make it easier to read.
Subject: On the cultivated paranoia on the WC-list
Peter, I just saw on the web that you have commented on Debra Snell's last paranoic posting on the WC-list. You write: "I don't think the anthro's are dangerous in the physical sense of the word. Of course they will try to slander any critic as much as possible. But I don't think that anything more than verbal abuse and character assassination is to be feared from the anthro's. This as a general rule."What Debra quotes is a posting by someone who primarily criticizes the _anthroposop. society and movement_, not 'critics', and only mentions the activities of PLANS as a symptom of what he sees as problems with the AS and the anthrop. movement. As to the SJU list, characterizing some of the activities of PLANS as 'terrorism' in a general social sense is I think very much to the point, in its main representatives repeatedly on the WC list quoting personal mails by anthrop. or wald related people on lists whose contents not are published on the net to criticize them. The Ark mailing list is a closed list in the same way that 'waldorf-survivors-only', that Debra co-moderates, is, to cultivate it as a place where one can feel safe that ones postings not will be misused for purposes of personal harassment, as Dan Dugan did in partly quoting a posting by me on the Ark, that he in some way had gotten hold of or - possibly as a mole on the Ark - picked from one of his mailing list boxes. To demonstrate the serious way he not only has breached this safety of the Ark list with his 'white powder' mail but also seriously misrepresented my posting, I put up my mail in its totality on the Web for comparison by the participants on the WC-list. What DD engages in is a continuous harassment of participants on non published anthroposophical lists. That constitutes a conscious continuous social harassment. A colloquial term for that is 'terrorism', not in a physical but social sense and the description of it with that term on the SJU list is very much to the point. The posting by Tarjei Straume that Debra quotes from the Ark - again a breach of its intended setup and moderation as a safe haven for the discussion of the participants - and about which she writes: *In recent past, a WC and Ark list member, Tarjei talked about declaring war ...*however is not from a 'recent past' in relation to the discussion on the WC, but from Wed, 28 Feb 2001; this year, long before Tarjei rejoined the WC-list again in I think May to participate in the discussion according to the rules of the list. To the extent that the *['anthro's] will try to slander any critic as much as possible.*is meant to included in what you describe as a 'general rule' it's a gross exaggeration. To the extent that it is based on what I write about PLANS at (corrected link) I have put it in the context of a general description of PLANS at (corrected link) and what I write on the page is based on 2,5 years of participation on the WC-list with some +1.000 posting, from 1998 up to this year, trying to sort out and clarify some of the issues raised in the discussion. It is all based on postings on the WC and articles published at the site of PLANS. I made great efforts to contribute with material that could clarify the background of different anthroposophical views and stances, like scanning and putting up the whole lecture cycle 'Mission of Folk Souls' at my site. I have also made great efforts to sort out the general background of anthroposophy in history as an expression of an 'idealistic' tradition in philosophy, with Platonism and Aristotelism in Antiquity as representatives of its two central pillars, in the same way that a 'materialistic' tradition in history in the same Antiquity can be said to be represented by Pythagoras and Democritus. I have also tried to demonstrate that these two pairs of 'pillars' are mirrors of each other and reflect the basic structure of the sense organism in man, with the 'materialistic' tradition cultivating the inner nature of the hearing and the sight experience, and with the 'idealistic' tradition cultivating the corresponding experience of the 'smell' and the taste-touch experience (corrected link). As to 'character assassination', the only one of the kind that I can be said to have participated in concerns Peter Staudenmaier, contrasting his self description as 'historical scholar' with his breaking of all the basic rules that one would expect an actual 'scholar' of _any_ kind to follow in terms of truthfulness in relation to the sources one refers to as the basis of one's argumentation. I think what he has written is an insult to the concept of 'historical scholarship', even if he seems to have become somewhat more careful lately. But I fully stand behind what I have written on his writings. His reference to himself as a 'historical scholar' is an insult to any basic concept of scholarship except as a parody. If you ask him, he will tell you that he does not take it very seriously that what he knows are serious untruths by him, that not only published at different places on the net, but also continues to be published at his 'home site' (as also at the site of PLANS). In a personal mail to me he wrote Thu, 29 Nov 2001 17:12:18 -0600: *I didn't realize the ISE site had the old version up until you alerted me to the fact. I don't know why none of them replaced the older version; I'm guessing they thought it was too much work, and I didn't bug them about it. I don't take these things nearly as seriously as you do;*.[Comment after I sent the mail to Peter Zegers: I publish this quote from the personal mail from Peter Staudenmaier to me in Nov 2001, based on an explicit question from me to him in a public discussion if he permitted that I publish his mail in the discussion, and he explicitly told that I could post anything he had written.] 'Too much work'. It would take 15 minutes at most to correct his first article at the site if ISE according to his instructions. His last position seems to be that what he refers to actually is 'Mission of Folk Souls'. If that is the only correction he has made to his article 'Anthroposophy and Ecofascism', that would make his 'paraphrase' refer to the first lecture in the series making it even more obviously untrue as everyone then can read the lecture in question on the net and compare it with what PS writes about it. Still more than a year after serious criticism of his description of it, he had not used 5 minutes to find out that the original of what he 'describes' at the beginning of his article could be ordered for some 10 bucks from http://www.amazon.de and get it to check out if the criticism of him was correct or not. I repeat: he and his writings are an insult to the concepts of 'historical scholar' and 'historical scholarship'. If you want to call that description character assassination, I have no problem with that, as I think my description is very much to the point in relation to him. Even if I understand the (possible) background and personal motivation of what he and you write in the persecution of Jews through history and the atrocities connected with the Holocaust, that is no defense for more than 50 years after the Holocaust making up stories about anthroposophy and Rudolf Steiner. The comment by a coworker at an anthroposophical book shop in Germany this Summer to PS on anthroposophy as the wrong tree to bark up is I think also completely to the point in looking for promoters of anti-Semitism. The main origin, leader and inspirator of the basic development of post-glacial civilizations is not an 'Aryan hero' in any Nazi sense, but in Steiner's - and my - view, is Noah, being identical with the 'Manu' that Indian mythology points to. The _theosophical_ tradition just as well could have used the term 'Semitic root race' to describe the post-glacial civilizations. PS gets it basically wrong on all central points he discusses and argues about. You also write: *I have heard of cases where they tried to contact relatives and friends of critics to influence them. According to the German critic Colin Goldner the anthro's keep files on critics (which is illegal in Germany).*What your description refers to is the fact that someone in some comment on an article that Goldner had written in 'Der Spiegel' had pointed to texts Goldner had published 20 years earlier. To him, that indicated that 'within Anthroposophy there were apparently maintained "dossiers on disagreeing journalists" ', as one source writes. I don't know if it was Detlef Hardorp who had referred to the earlier article. In a comment on it in TAZ, he pointed out that it was pure rubbish (to the extent that it referred to him), and that the only 'archive' he had was the, until the time of commenting on Goldner in TAZ, empty box, where he now put the article by (possibly) Goldner. Goldner's comment: "The Anthroposophists have a very good network and quite obviously have a sort of private intelligence service at their disposal for the observation of critics. It is exactly this dealing with those who think differently that creates a parallel in Anthroposophy to totalitarian cults."to my knowledge is pure rhetorical paranoia, seemingly projected out of his contacts with the EAP or some similar group. You also write: *It is obvious that Sune Nordwall has been surfing the internet to find information on Peter Staudenmaier and me lately.*That is also completely wrong, maybe based on a similar faulty inference as in the case of Goldner. To the extent that it refers to you, I can imagine that it possibly is based on what I have set up at (corrected link). But it is not based on any surfing the internet to find information on you. It is based on someone having read the discussion in Kleintje Muurkrant and sent me a mail commenting on it. The surfing I did as a result of it was not of the internet in general but of the site of Kleintje Muurkrant (http://www.stelling.nl/kleintje/) and not to find info on you or Peter Staudenmaier, but on _Peter Edel_ and the discussion related to the his works. The surfing I did of the internet as the result of the mail on the discussion in question was to search for info on Israel Shahak, to put an informational link to at the page, not on you. My comments on what you write in no sense can be described as verbal abuse and character assassination but is very restrained: *Zeger's accusations of not only Rudolf Steiner, but also Israel Shahak and Noam Chomsky for anti-Semitism indicates that he at present seems to tend in a somewhat extreme black/white position and perspective on the issue.*As to surfing the net for info on Peter Staudenmaier, the only surfing I have done with that purpose lately has been suggested by PS himself, when I asked him about in which languages translations of his first article AaE has been published. He wrote that they could be found on the internet PS: *Do a web search and you'll find some of them.*,causing me to search for them. Not finding them where he said I would find them, I made a somewhat lemon-sour comment on that I maybe should have expected the result in question, having noted the unreliable speculative nature of his earlier writings. As to the concept of 'root races' being one focus of the criticism: Reading the basic work on 'anthroposophical cosmology', which is 'Occult Science - an Outline', not 'Cosmic memory', you will see that the theosophical concept for it has nothing to do with 'race' in any biological sense, but to stages in the evolution of our solar system, implying an understanding of it in the sense of the 'contracting matter' model, with the first phase 'Polaria' (that theosophy refers to as 'the polarian root race') referring to the very first stage of it up to a stage where the beginning of the present planet Saturn buds off from the further contracting 'gas cloud'. In 'Occult science' Steiner hardly even refers to it with a name, only I think using the term 'Polarian phase' to refer to it. The second stage, 'Hyperborea', generally refers to the phase in this evolution that takes place from the budding off of Saturn up to the budding off of the present Earth at a first stage from the further contracting future (present) Sun. Only with 'Lemuria' does the first development of the future (present) Earth take place, with the origin and meaning of the term on a deeper level probably being Pangea. As to the sixth and even more the seventh phase in the development of the Earth within the context of our present solar system, (that theosophy called and calls the sixth and seventh 'root race'), in anthroposophy referred to as 'Earth epochs', they also have very little to do with 'race' in any present sense, but with stages, that possibly will mean large changes in the living conditions on Earth up to its probable reunification once again with the Sun and the end of our present solar system. As to the discussion by Peter Staudenmaier of Steiner's view of the origin, nature, development, fading away and ceasing existence of 'races' in any present sense, he really repeatedly succeeds in getting things wrong, stuck in his preconceptions about it. In passing I at one time, tired of what he (and you ... ;-)(( ) have published as articles, just checked up on one of the many notes given in one article. It was said to document the wide spread overlap between membership in the anthroposophical society and the Nazi party. All the source - to my memory this moment - pointed to (Werner) said on the page in question was that there _were_ people who were members of both, not a word about the _extent_ of the overlap. In the same way in one late article by him, the 16 quotes by Steiner, that by today's legislation in Holland could be considered to be discriminating, are referred to as 'sixty'. The way the articles by him (and you) use sources and comments on them is an insult to the concept 'scholarship' lacks all credibility. I can't understand how you can engage in it. The obsessive unfounded paranoia cultivated day in and day out, month in and month out and year in and year out on the WC-list really drains your brain, soul and heart to the extent that you participate in the discussion on the WC-list, and actually try contribute to some serious understanding of anthroposophy in the context of the list. This is a personal mail and I take it that you not will put in on any mailing list. Greetings, Sune
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