Monday, November 24, 2008

Police Department advertises we pay snitches in newspaper!

Albuquerque police want ad: We need snitches
'Make some extra cash! Drug use and criminal record OK'
From: The Associated Press
Date: Nov 22, 2008

During these difficult times, as people struggle to pay for their homes and care for their families. Some turning to the classifieds looking for work will see "Make some extra cash! Drug use and criminal record OK". That right, the Albuquerque police department ran an advertisement that they will pay drug informants to drop the dime and snitch! Even if they themselves are convicted criminals. This isn't the first time they did it either. The last time a similar advertisement was ran so many phone calls were received that they were forced to turn off the hotline!

Is this the best means for the police to obtain accurate information that may be used as evidence to raid the homes of American citizens?

What about those who may pass on unreliable information just in hopes of receiving some desperately needed cash? Unhappy with someone, why not turn them in as retaliation and get paid for doing it? Who knows the motives of these paid informants. However enticing them with cash is only going to increase the amount of questionable information that is passed on to the authorities.

Through out history there have been numerous examples of tragedies created by paid informants. Ann Frank and her family were arrested and sent to Auschwitz based on information collected by a Gestapo paid informant. Turning people against each other have always been a powerful method to maintain control over a population and to imprison its "undesirables".

If you haven't done so already, please read my entry's Police raids end in tragedy and Police Raid Mayor's Home and Kill His 2 Dogs. The consequences of police raids are horrific to say the least. Not to mention the enormous danger the informants are putting themselves in. As was the recent case of 23 year Rachel Hoffman who was murdered for her involvement with the police.

Rachel Morningstar Hoffman 

JUST SAY NO TO THE POLICE!
For everyone's safety!

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Rupert Sheldrake: The Extended Mind

Google Tech Talks

Speaker: Rupert Sheldrake

Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. is a biologist and author of more than 75 technical papers and ten books, the most recent being The Sense of Being Stared At. He studied at Cambridge and Harvard Universities, was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge and a Research Fellow of the Royal Society. He is currently Director of the Perrott-Warrick project, funded from Trinity College Cambridge.

We have been brought up to believe that the mind is located inside the head. But there are good reasons for thinking that this view is too limited. Recent experimental results show that people can influence others at a distance just by looking at them, even if they look from behind and if all sensory clues are eliminated. And people's intentions can be detected by animals from miles away. The commonest kind of non-local interaction mental influence occurs in connection with telephone calls, where most people have had the experience of thinking of someone shortly before they ring. Controlled, randomized tests on telephone telepathy have given highly significant positive results. Research techniques have now been automated and experiments on telepathy are now being conducted through the internet and cell phones, enabling widespread participation.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Robert Forte: Cultural Healing Lecture

Robert Forte 

From: The Psychedelic Salon

Subscribe: FREE

Guest speaker: Robert Forte

FREE Download:
MP3
Right click, save target as.
Macs - Ctrl-Click, select.

 

Robert Forte studied the history of religion with Mircea Eliade at the University of Chicago, and the psychedelic experience with Stanislav Grof at Esalen.  He has worked for two decades to help western society understand and benefit from the fruits of psychedelic mysticism.   A former lecturer on psychology and religion at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and former director of the Albert Hofmann Foundation.

PROGRAM NOTES:

"Every revolution is followed by a counter-revolution, and the pendulum keeps swinging back and forth. No lasting change is effected by politics; it has to come from within." –Nina Graboi

"How is it that people fail to see that when the stream dies we die. We are that stream." Robert Forte

As presented at the 4th International
Amazonian Shamanism Conference:
Download additional Mp3's FREE


Links:

Book list:

9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press
David Ray Griffin shows that the official story about 9/11 is riddled with internal contradictions. Two contradictory statements cannot both be true. These contradictions show, therefore, that individuals and agencies articulating the official story of 9/11 have made many false statements. Congress and the press clearly should ask which of the contradictory statements are false and why they were made.

This book is purely factual, simply laying out the fact that these internal contradictions exist. As such, the book contains no theory. Politicians and journalists who deal with the issues raised herein, therefore, will not be giving credence to some "conspiracy theory" about 9/11. They will simply be carrying out their duty to ask why the official story about 9/11, arguably the most fateful event of our time, is riddled with so many contradictions.

The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Expose
Griffin has now written The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, which provides a chapter-by-chapter updating of the information provided in that earlier book. It shows that the case against the official account constructed by independent researchers - who now include architects, engineers, physicists, pilots, politicians, and former military officers - is far stronger than it was in 2004, leaving no doubt that 9/11 was a false flag operation, designed to give the Bush-Cheney administration a pretext to attack oil-rich Muslim nations. 
 
The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11
Taking to heart the idea that those who benefit from a crime ought to be investigated, here the eminent theologian David Ray Griffin sifts through the evidence about the attacks of 9/11 - stories from the mainstream press, reports from abroad, the work of other researchers, and the contradictory words of members of the Bush administration themselves - and finds that, taken together, they cast serious doubt on the official story of that tragic day.

9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, Vol. 1
Practically from the moment the dust settled in New York and Washington after the attacks of September 11, a movement has grown of survivors, witnesses, and skeptics who have never quite been able to accept the official story. When theologian David Ray Griffin turned his attention to this topic in his book The New Pearl Harbor (2003), he helped give voice to a disquieting rumble of critiques and questions from many Americans and people around the world about the events of that day. Were the military and the FAA really that incompetent? Were our intelligence-gathering agencies really in the dark about such a possibility? In short, how could so much go wrong at once, in the world’s strongest and most technologically sophisticated country?

Both the government and the mainstream media have since tried to portray the 9/11 truth movement as led by people who can be dismissed as "conspiracy theorists" able to find an outlet for their ideas only on the internet. This volume, with essays by intellectuals from Europe and North America, shows this caricature to be untrue. Coming from different intellectual disciplines as well as from different parts of the world, these authors are united in the conviction that the official story about 9/11 is a huge deception manufactured to extend imperial control at home and abroad.

The Psychedelic Salon

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Bolivian president, "US encouraged drug trafficking" + Cele Castillo Videos

Evo Morales

LA PAZ (AFP) — Bolivian leader Evo Morales on Thursday accused the US government of encouraging drug-trafficking as he explained his decision to banish the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Morales, a staunch opponent of the Washington government, said the staff from the US agency had three months to prepare to leave the country, because "the DEA did not respect the police, or even the (Bolivian) armed forces."

"The worst thing is, it did not fight drug trafficking; It encouraged it," the Bolivian leader said, adding that he had "quite a bit of evidence" backing up his charges.

Presidential Minister Juan Ramon Quintana presented a series of documents and press clippings at a news conference, which he described as "object data" that had influenced Morales' decision to suspend DEA activities last week.

Quintana said Morales was ready to present the evidence to incoming US president Barack Obama "to prove the illegality, abuse and arrogance of the DEA in Bolivia."

Throughout the 1990s, the DEA in Bolivia "bribed police officers, violated human rights, covered up murders, destroyed bridges and roads," said Quintana.

Morales earlier Thursday said that after a 1986 operation in Huanchaca National Park, it was determined that the largest cocaine processing plant "was under DEA protection."

He also charged that the DEA had investigated political and union leaders opposed to neoliberal economic policies, which he said amounted to political persecution.

On Wednesday, he had accused the DEA of shooting and killing Bolivians during their anti-drug operations, including members of the coca farmers' movement.

Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, has served as the leader of the Bolivian coca-growers union. The coca plant, from which cocaine is derived, has many uses in traditional Andean culture.

The Bolivian leader announced last Saturday he was suspending the work of the DEA in the impoverished Andean nation, and accused it of having encouraged political unrest that killed 19 people in September.

"From today all the activities of the US DEA are suspended indefinitely," the Bolivian leader had said in the coca-growing region of Chimore, in the central province of Chapare, where he was evaluating efforts to combat drug trafficking.

The DEA has denied Morales' accusations.

US President George W. Bush, in a finding released in September, added Bolivia to a list of countries that have "failed demonstrably" in anti-drugs cooperation.


Retired-DEA agent Celerino Castillo exposes the atrocities and drug smuggling involvement of the US government.

MORE CELE CASTILLO VIDEO'S

Sunday, November 16, 2008

EROCx1 discusses ethnobotanicals on the Entheogenic Evolution

Download the: MP'3
Right click and save target as

Recently I was a guest on the Entheogenic Evolution hosted by Martin W. Ball. For those of you who do not already know. Martin holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies with an emphasis on Shamanism, Native American Traditions, Entheogens, and Eastern Philosophy and Meditation. He is a musician and author of several books including Mushroom Wisdom: How Shamans Cultivate Spiritual Consciousness and Sage Spirit: Salvia Divinorum and the Entheogenic Experience.

I have shared correspondence with Martin for quite some time and have made a few posts about some of his work in this blog. So it was an honor for him to invite me on his show to discuss the FDA and the recent escalation of their role in the prohibition of legal ethnobotanicals and tradition plant medicines.

I would like to apologize for all my ummms and pauses in our conversation. It was pretty burned out when we spoke and this was my first time using Skype. I typically listen to Martin's weekly show on the same headphones I was using for the call. A few times I felt like I was listening to his podcast and thought, why isn't any one answering Martin? Wait he's talking to me! LOL. Also considering the potential legal risks that haunt the subject of conversation, I was a little hesitant about how much personal information was wise to publicly share. If I am ever invited on another podcast, I promise to do better ;-)

In this episode of the Entheogenic Evolution we discuss:

  • The origin of Gaian Botanicals and my passion for entheogens
  • The ethnobotacial market, regulation & prohibition
  • Thoughts on Amanita muscaria, Salvia divinorum and Kratom
  • My New York Times interview on Salvia divinroum
  • The Internet as a tool for for sharing and learning about ethnogens

I would like to expand a little more on the prohibition of plant medicines. This practice is in direct conflict with the ideals held by the Founding Fathers and framers of the supposed supreme law of our nation, The US Constitution.

Thomas Jefferson himself wrote, "If people let government decide which foods they eat and medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny." and "The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture."

Dr. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Surgeon General under George Washington said, "The Constitution of this Republic should make special provision for medical freedom. To restrict the art of healing to one class will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic. ... Unless we put medical freedom into the constitution the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship and force people who wish doctors and treatment of their own choice to submit to only what the dictating outfit offers."

Why then are people not only restricted from access to, but are also incarcerated for choosing to use plants as medicines or for spiritual purposes?

This is more of a rhetorical question as a serious effort to answer this question would be far too lengthily for a blog entry. I highly recommend reading Dr. Timothy Leary: Criminalizing the Natural. Also The Emperor Wears No Clothes or more relevant to entheogens is The Proemium from Jonathan Ott's Pharmacotheon. It is well established that the authorities do NOT want people using any plant that may cause euphoria or induce a visionary experience.

I believe we are now witnessing a new approach by the federal government to further restrict its citizens use and access to traditional plant medicines. The traditional process of of making plants illegal under the Controlled Substances Act is supposed to require sufficient scientific evidence that a substance is not only a dangerous, but has no accepted medical use. NO ethnobotanicals can honestly be scheduled under this criteria as they all have a long history of being safely as medicines for thousands of years (if not longer).

Thus a new prohibition tactic is to have Customs stop the import of ethnobotanicals and turn the shipment over to the FDA who challenges the shipment legality as "unapproved drugs". The Dietary Supplement Act clearly states the FDA is to regulate herbs as food, not as drugs. They only have the lawful authority to ban or restrict a herb if it has been openly proven harmful. Also be aware that the description used for the sale of any botanical product could classify it as an "unauthorized new drug".

The FDA has taken steps to reclassify virtually all vitamins, supplements, herbs and vegetable juices as FDA-regulated drugs. Even massage oils and tools would be classified as "medical devices" and require FDA approval. Another alarming example of the FDA's new authority is the Bioterrorism Act signed into law by President Bush June 12, 2002. This requires foreign botanical exporters to have a registered resident agent. If they do not have one, the recipient is listed as the registered agent.

So far most cases of Customs and / or the FDA holding imported ethnobotanicals have been eventually released if contested by the recipient. Sometimes the receiver is required to submit signed statements that the material in question is not for human consumption. However some imports have be straight out refused entry and the shipment must be either returned to the sender, re-routed to an alternate location outside of the United States or destroyed. Since there are no real clear rules or regulations being made available. It is important for the ethnobotanical / herbal medicine communities to communicate their experiences and insight with each other to prevent abuse by the authorities.

I one other idea I wanted to share about Salvia divinorum's remaining legal on a Federal level in the US. Over the years I have observed the governments response to Salvia divinorum with complete astonishment that it has not been scheduled or banned by the DEA or FDA. Could this be an experiment to see how states would react if the Federal Government did not criminalize a psychoactive plant or to see how the states may re-act should there ever be a repeal of the Federal Drug laws? Laws built upon a foundation of lies can not last forever. Especially in the information age. I have no evidence to support this, nor do I necessarily believe it. Its merely speculation on my part. But I thought I would put it out there to hear your feedback on the idea?

Links:
Gaian Botanicals
EROCx1 Homepage
Entheogenic Evolution

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Alex Grey's portrait of President-elect Barack Obama

Alex Grey's portrait of Presidential Elect, Barack Obama.

This portrait was begun at the Rock the Ink Tattoo Convention, in Rhode Island on October 23, 2008, in front of a live audience.

See this work in progress on AlexGrey.com

Alex-Grey-Barack-Obama

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The Start of the Sixth Day in the Mayan Calendar

mayacalendar

The Fifth night of the Mayan Calendar which was ruled by the energy of Tezcatlipoca, the god of darkness, temptation and war has just passed. Now the Sixth Day of the Galactic Underworld begins [November 12, 2008] with Yohualticitl, the goddess of birth. This period is the renaissance of each cycle and this time lasts until November 2009. It is the time in which the flower blossoms. Look with in to propagate your flower. Grow spiritually and remain centered. Stay true to your self, stay connected to community and the environment. Practice reciprocity and random acts of kindness for balance and connection.

This is all very representative of our nations events over the past decade. So this ancient knowledge is very relevant to us today. During this transition, things may very well become even more chaotic, before they improve. However remember to keep focused the big picture and do your best to spread and maintain the positive energy that the world needs so greatly right now.

The last Sixth “Day” was the time of Beatniks, Flower Children, mass spiritual transformation, orbital satellites and global communication systems) or distilled down to its essence, profound change.

The Sixth “Day” of the last cycle was the beginning of the European Renaissance.

Life is a loop. Help make change happen.

Peace & Blessings to all,
EROCx1

Monday, November 10, 2008

Evidence that Hopi Shamans used magic mushrooms?

Hopi-Psilocybe-and-Pipe

On a recent tip to Arizona, I visited the Navajo reservation, Hopi ruins, meteor crater, Sunset volcano and the Grand Canyon. This was an academic trip with my daughters school and I had a great time.

After reviewing my photos, one in particular from the Desert View Watchtower caught my eye. A portion of the Hopi Snake Legend mural appears to feature a fist full of Psilocybe mushrooms being passed from one man to another and near his feet is a very distinct smoking pipe.

The known sacred sacraments of the Hopi are:
Datura (Jimsonweed & Desert Thornapple)
Nicotinana trigonphylla & attenuata
Mirabilis Multiflora

I researched the Hopi ethnographic / ethnobotanical literature I had access to and found only vague descriptions of entheogens. I found no mention of mushrooms as shown in my photo (above). Kachinas, Hopi mythology and folklore are all very representative with those of a shamanic culture. The Hopi religion is rich mythology and has many sacred rituals. They are polytheists, having many supernatural beings or "gods". The head of each clan was a Shaman who had a number of initiated helpers. They believed the soul of the ecstatic could leave the body and visit the realms of gods, animal and ancestor spirits. They also brought the rains, ensured a good harvest, and healed the sick. Hopi ceremonies are for the benefit of the entire world.

Hopi is a derived form of Hopituh Shi-nu-mu, "The Peaceful People" or "Peaceful Little Ones". (Maria Sabina called Mushrooms "Little ones") The culture's religion focuses on spirituality, its view of morality and ethics. The Hopi follow divine instructions and prophecies received from the caretaker of this world, Maasaw. They are anti-war and have a total reverence and respect for all things, to be at peace with these things, and to live in accordance with the instructions of the Creator or Caretaker of Earth.

Why no reference to the mushrooms? This could be due to most traditional Hopi knowledge being passed down orally with very little existing in the form of written records. If a few generations did not have access to or use the mushroom, this practice could have been lost as was the case with many other extinct traditions.

According to the Hopi, they are a gathering of people from many separate tribes from distant areas. Should this be true, the Hopi ancestors would have had a very diverse pharmacopeia and Psilocybe coprophilia is native to the Colorado Plateau so it is plausible they were used. The artist of this mural is Fred Kabotie who was a Hopi born in 1900, was he trying to preserve this shamanic knowledge on the verge of being lost?

I would like to conclude with I am NOT an expert on the Hopi people and my research was somewhat limited. If there are any inaccuracies in this post or if you have any thoughts or answers about this mystery. Please do share them in the comments or email me. Thanks!

Sunday, November 9, 2008

R. Gordon Wasson audio recording of Maria Sabina

Mushroom Ceremony

 


Recorded by R. G. Wasson
Maria Sabina
in Huautla de Jiménez
July 21, 1956


FREE: MP3 DOWNLOAD
Right click, save target as

 

These Mp3 audio files were made from the nearly impossible to find "Mushroom Ceremony Of the Mazatec Indians Of Mexico" record. This recording was made by R. Gordon Wasson in 1956, in an attempt to chronicle a religious ceremony involving the investigation of psychedelic mushrooms by Indians who are attempting to communicate with the Divine Spirit. Lots of wild, hallucinatory chanting and the like, which might even appeal to fans of phonetic sound poems or dadaist utterings. Another unusual historical document that only Folkways would have released.

"Here is a shamanic performance complete. Gordon Wasson, a pioneer in the study of the role of mushrooms in religious ritual, gives us a transcription of an authentic "consultation" of the sacred mushroom, in sound. The occasion was the illness of a youth. The mushroom, through the mouth of Maria Sabina, a female shaman, decreed that the boy must die. He heard the bad news and died days later. Gordon Wasson taped the entire Velada. Wasson is able to prove that the words and undoubtedly the chant are pre-Cortes, going back for many centuries. Nothing like this record has been done for the new world; it is rivaled in the old world only by the Vedic chants of India".

Track list:

1. Chjon Nka
2. Chjon Nka Catsin
3. Santo...nana
4. Papa Papai
5. Na Ai - Ni Tso
6. Santo...Ji nai...na
7. Jan Jesu Cristo
8. Ji Nai
9. San Pedro
10. Soso Soso
11. Name of Plants
12. Pedro Martinez
13. Don't Be Concerned, Old One
14. Birds
15. Humming, etc.
16. Soft Singing
17. Finale

Recorded by R. G. Wasson in Huautla de Jiménez, in the Mazatec Mountains in the northern corner of the State of Oaxaca, July 21, 1956.

Friday, November 7, 2008

Jan Irvin: Announcing The Gnostic Media Podcast & The Holy Mushroom!

I would like to share with you an excellent new Podcast hosted by Jan Irvin of Gnostic Media. Jan is one of the researchers and producers who brought us The Pharmacratic Inquisition and authors of AstroTheology & Shamanism.

TheHolyMushroomcover

He is also the author of the recently released book:

The Holy Mushroom
Evidence of Mushrooms in Judeo-Christianity:
A critical re-evaluation of the schism between John M. Allegro and R. Gordon Wasson over the theory on the entheogenic origins of Christianity presented in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross.

 
The Gnostic Media Podcast!

Episode #001 is a recording he did back in April of this year, 2008. He went with Richard Andrew Grove of 8thestate media and Paul Verge of Divergent Films to the home of pioneering entheogenic researcher, Professor Carl A. P. Ruck of Boston University. Professor Ruck co-authored Persephone’s Quest with Gordon Wasson, he also co-authored Apples of Apollo with Clark Heinrich and Dr. Blaise Staples. He’s the author of the book Sacred Mushrooms of the Goddess, Secrets of Eleusis, and more recently he co-authored The Hidden World, Survival of Pagan Shamanic Themes in European Fairytales. This episode features the entheogenic rites of the Eleusinian mysteries, John Marco Allegro’s research in The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, and Ruck’s upcoming books.

FREE Download: MP3
Right click, save target as.
Macs - Ctrl-Click, select.


Episode #002 features an interview Professor John Rush regarding his new book Failed God: Fractured Myth in a Fragile World. This is the first academic book since the publication of John Allegro’s The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross (1970) that argues Allegro was correct - and provides ample support for the mushroom foundations of Judeo-Christianity.

FREE Download: MP3
Right click, save target as.
Macs - Ctrl-Click, select.


Episode #003 features an interview with my friend & author Dr. Martin Ball, host of the Entheogenic Evolution podcast series. They discuss the spiritual use of entheogens, especially mushrooms and Salvia Divinorum, as well as religious vs. spiritual freedom. Do you think you have religious freedom?

FREE Download: MP3
Right click, save target as.
Macs - Ctrl-Click, select.

www.gnosticmedia.com

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

12,000-year-old shaman grave site found

shaman-rockart

Earliest known shaman grave site found!

Reuters: Nov 4, 2008
By Michael Kahn

An ancient grave unearthed in modern-day Israel containing 50 tortoise shells, a human foot and body parts from numerous animals is likely one of the earliest known shaman burial sites, researchers said on Monday.

The 12,000-year-old grave dates back to the Natufian people who were the first society to adopt a sedentary lifestyle, Hebrew University of Jerusalem researcher Leore Grosman and colleagues said.

"The interment rituals and the method used to construct and seal the grave suggest this is the burial of an ancient shaman, one of the earliest known from the archaeological record," they wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Shamans play an important role in many cultures, mediating between the human and spiritual worlds and acting as messengers, healers, magicians to serve the community, the researchers said.

The Israeli team found the bones in a small cave in the lower Galilee region of present-day Israel that was a Natufian burial ground for a least 28 people.

At the time of burial, more than 10 large stones were placed directly on the head, pelvis, and arms of the elderly woman whose body was laid on its side. The legs were spread apart and folded inward at the knee.

The special treatment of the body and use of stones to keep it in a certain position suggests the woman held a unique position in the community, likely some sort of a shaman, the researchers said.

"The burial of the woman...is unlike any burial found in the Natufian or the preceding Palaeolithic periods," Grosman's team wrote. "We argue that this burial is consistent with expectations for a shaman's grave."

The woman was also interred with some unusual grave goods, including the complete tortoise shells and select body-parts of a wild boar, an eagle, a cow, a leopard, and two martens, as well as a complete human foot.

The grave portrays several hallmarks that later become central in the spiritual arena of cultures worldwide, the researchers added.

"Tortoises, cow tails, eagle wings, and fur-bearing animals continue to play important symbolic and shamanistic roles in the spiritual arena of human cultures worldwide today," they wrote.

"It seems that the woman in the Natufian burial was perceived as being in a close relationship with these animal spirits."

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE4A251K20081104

Dr. Timothy Leary: The League for Spiritual Discovery

League for Spiritual Discovery


From:
The Psychedelic Salon

Subscribe: FREE

FREE Download:
MP3
Right click, save target as.
Macs - Ctrl-Click, select.

Jan 1966 Radio interview with Dr. Timothy Leary and Elsa Knight Thompson.

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations below are by Dr. Timothy Leary]

"Psychedelic art is the public face of the communication device of our new religion."

"Man’s attempt to turn on just staggers the imagination. There’s hardly anything that hasn’t been used one time or another, or in one culture or another, to get this [psychedelic] experience."

"We don’t care what method people use [to turn on]. We treasure and glorify any method that can get you high, that can turn you on. But we also insist that no one tell us that we can’t use our sacraments that seem to work for us."

"We’re convinced, and I think it wouldn’t be hard to prove my point, that most Americans are involved in a meaningless, robot, assembly-line series of activities. They don’t really know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, but they’re just pushed off to this assembly-line and off they go."

"[By drop out] we mean drop out of the meaningless and tune in to the productive."

"You have to go out of your mind to come to your senses."

"There’s no more room for mythological, supernatural religious teachers."

"We use this word ‘psychosis’ the way we used the word ‘devil’ or ‘devil-possession’ or ‘witchcraft’ two or three or four or five hundred years ago."

"When the time comes, let your kids turn you on. That’s my message to the middle-age, middle-class, whiskey-drinking American suburban family."

"So jail to us is not a middle class disgrace. Here I am, a former Harvard professor, I’ve been arrested three times in the last year. Isn’t that disgraceful? To me that just means I’m doing my job. And if I don’t get the establishment a little worried, I wonder if my message is not getting through."

www.PsychedelicSalon.org

Monday, November 3, 2008

Dale Pendell: Anarchist to Vote!

From: The Huffington Post

This morning I awoke before dawn. I had been dreaming politics. The sky was pink and red in the east, and an owl was hooting -- a great horned, but young, with a high pitched voice. I had been dreaming politics -- action committees, meetings, proposals. I too have succumbed to the Great Hope.

I remember the last time there was Great Hope. Let me tell you about 1968. I was in prison, in Texas. It seemed like a lot of people were in prison that year -- not by today's standards, of course -- not by a long shot. The bull market in prisons was still in the future.

A black saxophonist from Las Vegas came and sat on my bunk and started talking about Robert Kennedy. I muttered something about George McGovern, the "peace candidate." Rocky just scoffed, and carried on and on about Robert Kennedy. It was the same with the Chicanos. They were the majority party and they were for Robert Kennedy to a man. The young Black revolutionaries were also for Robert Kennedy. There was great hope -- that "we" could win and end the war and stand united for social justice. Then the impossible happened. Robert Kennedy won the California primary and then he was dead. Martin Luther King had been assassinated two months before at the age of thirty-eight.

At the Democratic convention in Chicago the party bosses chose Hubert Humphrey -- not a "bad" man, just one who had not won a single primary. The police staged a riot. We watched the televised pictures of the beatings and the bloodied faces from our cells. And we got Nixon.

Would history have been different with Robert Kennedy in the White House instead of Richard Nixon? Duh, yes. Would it have been different in Jakarta and in Chile? Yes.

The last two presidential elections in the United States were stolen. As Larry Beinhart shows in Fog Facts, using any of the six proposed methods of recounting the votes in Florida, Al Gore would have been the winner. Would recent history have been different, if Al Gore had entered the Oval Office instead of George W. Bush? Yes.

Unless someone can explain to me why the exit polls in 2004 agreed with the tallied votes in states using paper ballots, but differed by huge margins in states using electronic machines -- the overwhelming evidence is that John Kerry won the election. Despite himself. Would history have been different -- perhaps a little kinder, with a little less bloodshed, with a little more responsibility? Yes.

After stealing the elections the thieves moved into the treasury and looted that. When such things occur in South America, in Africa, or in Eastern Europe, we are appalled but not surprised. But it is hard for us to accept that it could happen in the United States of America -- even when it happens right in front of us.

So I have succumbed to the Great Hope -- that the dark ages can end. The bills are coming due. The third notice from the credit card company is in the mail and the thieves are packing their bulging bags. And I think of Jimmy Carter -- another honest man -- who became president when the bills from the war in Vietnam had to be paid and how everyone turned against him.

This is not Spain. It is not 1936. We don't have a CNT or organized unions or collectives ready to take control of the country. Right wing calls for less government exempt the military and the police and the prisons and the judges who would even more callously defend big capital and an orthodoxy of superstition. At this point in history we have government and we must not ignore the choice. It is true that anarchism is an easier sell in dark times than in hopeful, but that is not enough reason not to vote for hope. A moderately progressive president will not solve the problems embedded in a global system based, at its corporate center, on greed and individualistic accumulation. Sullen opposition is less demanding than active politicking, but cynicism doesn't help us. Obama is our best chance to stop being the pariah of the rest of the world community.

Having had our hopes dashed and trampled so often, we -- my generation anyway -- approach it warily. But it is time to again accept a share of the responsibility for the United States of America -- even if it is only to get to the polls on November 4 and to vote for Barack Obama and the new generation. It does make a difference--even if the machines (again) are stacked against us.

Dale Pendell is the author of Pharmako/Gnosis, Inspired Madness, and Walking with Nobby: Conversations with Norman O. Brown. His talk on "horizon anarchism" is available for free Mp3 download from The Psychedelic Salon.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Disinformation: The Podcast series

Disinformation 
Disinformation company, the people who brought us DisinfoCon: Featuring Robert Anton Wilson, Mark Pesce, Douglas Rushkoff, Grant Morrison, Kenneth Anger and other great thinkers / speakers. Also they published the works of Graham Hancock, Richard Dawkins, Jim Marrs, Robert Bauval, Preston Peet, Richard Metzger, Grant Morrison among many other excellent authors. Have teamed up with Raymond Wiley and Joe McFall, the former co-hosts of Out There Radio to bring us the The Disinformation Podcast series!

In this inaugural episode of the Disinformation Podcast, Raymond and Joe speak with author Robert Bauval about his new book The Egypt Code. Robert Bauval is the author of The Orion Mystery and co-author, with Graham Hancock, of Talisman. His new book, The Egypt Code, explores the relationship between ancient Egyptian myth, ritual, architecture and astronomy. Mr. Bauval discuss his life, his work and his philosophy.

Direct download: Disinformation_Podcast_1.mp3 (right click, save target as)

Visit Amazon Disinfo