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“Fraser, what is so great about the UP! is the balance of types of information, which clearly comes from your own balance.” Jackie, London.
UP!
The Hippies Were Right!
by Mark Morford/The San Francisco Chronicle/Sat, 05 May 2007
Green homes? Organic food? Nature is good?
Time To Give The Ol' Tie-Dyers Some Respect!
Go ahead, name your movement. Name something good, positive, pro-environment and eco-friendly that's happening right now in the newly “greening” West.
I'm talking about, say, energy-efficient light bulbs. I'm looking at organic foods going mainstream. I mean chemical-free cleaning products widely available at supermarkets, and I'm talking saving the whales and protecting the dolphins, and I mean yoga studios flourishing in every small town, giant boxes of organic cereal at Costco and non-phthalates dildos at Good Vibes. You know, good things.
Look around: we have entire industries devoted to recycled paper, a new generation of cheap solar-power technology, an Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth” and even the soulless corporate monsters over at famously heartless joints like Wal-Mart are now claiming that they really, really care about saving the environment because, well, “it's the right thing to do” (read: It's purely economic and all about their bottom line because if they don't start caring they'll soon be totally screwed on manufacturing and shipping costs at/from all their brutal Chinese sweatshops).
There is but one conclusion you can draw from the astonishing (albeit fitful, bittersweet) pro-environment sea change now happening in the culture and (reluctantly, nervously) in the halls of power in D.C., one thing we must all acknowledge in our wary, jaded, globally warmed universe: The hippies had it right all along. Oh yes they did.
You know it's true. All this hot enthusiasm for healing the planet and eating whole foods and avoiding chemicals and working with nature and developing the self? Came from the hippies. Alternative health? Hippies. Green cotton? Hippies. Reclaimed wood? Recycling? Humane treatment of animals? Medical pot? Alternative energy? Natural childbirth? Non-GMA seeds? It came from the granola types (who, of course, absorbed much of it from ancient cultures), from the alternative worldviews, from the underground and the sidelines and from far off the goddamn grid and it's about time the media, the politicians, the culture as a whole sent out a big, wet, hemp-covered apology.
>> UN pensions would be perfectly acceptable :) we're not GREEDY - geddit?
Here's a suggestion from one of my more astute ex-hippie readers: Instead of issuing carbon credits so industrial polluters can clear their collective corporate conscience, maybe, to help offset all the savage damage they've done to the soul of the planet all these years, these commercial cretins should instead buy some 'karma credits' from the former hippies themselves. You know from those who've been working for the health of the planet, quite thanklessly, for the past 50 years and who have, as a result, built up quite a storehouse of good karma. You think?
You might easily claim that much of the nation's reluctant turn toward environmental health has little to do with the hippies per se, that it's taking the threat of global meltdown combined with the notion of really, really expensive ski tickets to slap the West's incredibly obese ass into gear and force consumers to begin to wake up to the savage gluttony and wastefulness of modern culture as everyone starts wondering, oh my God, what's going to happen to swimming pools and free shipping from Amazon? Of course, without the '60s groundwork, without all the radical ideas and seeds of change planted nearly five decades ago, what we'd be turning to in our time of need would be a great deal more hopeless indeed.
>> i've said it before and i'll say it again: when i became a hippy in the '60s it was a decision to opt out of what i saw as an insane, unhealthy materialist nightmare that threatened everyone and the planet. if everyone had been as insightful or as brave (u didn't need to be THAT insightful!) we'd now be living on a garden planet.
But if you're really bitter and short-sighted, you could say the entire hippie movement was just incredibly overrated, gets far too much cultural credit for far too little actual impact, was pretty much a giant excuse to slack off and enjoy dirty lazy responsibility-free sex romps and do a ton of drugs and avoid Vietnam and not bathe for a month and name your child Sunflower or Shiva Moon or Chakra Lennon Sapphire Bumblebee. This is what's called the reactionary simpleton's view. It blithely ignores history, perspective, and the evolution of culture as a whole. You know, just like America.
The proofs are easy enough to trace. The core values and environmental groundwork laid by the '60s counterculture are still so intact and potent even that the stiffest neocon Republican has to acknowledge their extant power. It's all right there: Treehugger.com is the new '60s underground hippy zine. Ecstasy is the new LSD. Visible tattoos are the new longhairs. And bands as diverse as Pearl Jam to Bright Eyes to NIN to the Dixie Chicks are writing savage anti-Bush, anti-war songs for a new, ultra-jaded generation.
And oh yes, speaking of good ol' MDMA, even drug culture is getting some new respect. Staid old Time mag just ran a rather snide little story about the new studies being conducted by Harvard and the National Institute of Mental Health into the astonishing psycho-spiritual benefits of goodly entheogens such as LSD, psilocybin and MDMA. Unfortunately, the piece basically backhands Timothy Leary and the entire “excessive,” “naive” drug culture of yore in favour of much more “sane” and “careful” scientific analysis happening now, as if the only valid methods for attaining knowledge and an understanding of spirit were through control groups and clinical, mysticism-free examination. Please.
>> in fact, as we covered in UP! 249, the great thing about these tools is that they can help kick-off a natural healing process that doesn't even NEED therapists and experts - except perhaps those who have been there before.
Still, the fact that serious scientific research into entheogens is being conducted even in the face of the most anti-science, pro-pharmaceutical, ultra-conservative presidential regime in recent history is proof enough that all the hoary old hippie mantras about expanding the mind and touching God through drugs
>> and on the dancefloor
were onto something after all (yes, duh). Tim Leary is probably smiling wildly right now - though that might be due to all the mushrooms he's been sharing with Kerouac and Einstein and Mary Magdalene. Mmm, heaven.
>> u r more right than u or present scientists believe :)
Of course, true hippie values mean you're not really supposed to care about or attach to any of this, you don't give a damn for the hollow ego stroke of being right all along, for slapping the culture upside the head and saying, See? Do you see? It was never about the long hair and the folk music and Woodstock.
It was, always and forever, about connectedness. It was about how we are all in this together. It was about resisting the status quo and fighting tyrannical corporate/political power, and it was about opening your consciousness and seeing new possibilities of how we can all live with something resembling actual respect for the planet, for alternative cultures, for each other. You know, all that typical hippie crap no one believes in any more. Right?
>> did U think it wasn't fashionable? then you've been brainwashed.
[Ah... that felt good. Of course, while we're at it, we should probably also mention that the Beatniks were right about a lot of that stuff first. Unless the Bohemians were right first. But it's really the same thing, and that's as far back as I go... -psl]
>> it goes back to when the northern warrior tribes invaded and co-opted our peace loving, mushy goddess worshipping societies around 5000BC.
UP!
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Get UP! Stand Up For Your Rights! (and everybody else's too of course! :)
u can't understand the world without innerstanding yourself
UP! 250 9 05 07
LA- LA- LA- LAP-TOPPLING DA SYSTEM!
u cant innerstand yourself without understanding the world
Get UP! And Don't Give Up The Fight! (only we don't mean violence, ok? :)
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FEATURING exclusive re-writes & re-mixes of da freshest deepest hacks ancient & modern ,and
SAMPLES from media & mentalities all over, & all bubbling up! from da public DNA Herself!
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Steps In The Fall Of The Dinosaur Era
In 1950, Earth was embroiled in the Cold War after having suffered through two world wars in a single generation. Yet, surprisingly, 0% thought we needed to drastically change our way of life.
It wasn't until the stress-torn year of 1968 that 1% finally started imagining a different type of world. By 1970, that number increased to 5%.
It took another 20 years before it got as high as 10% in 1990, right before the first Gulf War. 10 years later, as George W. Bush was elected US President, that number rose to 14%.
By 2004, the willingness to change in order to save the planet rose to 25%. One year later, it quickly rose to 30%. It only took another year to reach 40%. And at the beginning of 2007 it finally hit 50%.
By April 1st, it was at 53% and it's 55% today. Throughout the rest of this year we should see an unprecedented increase in the dissatisfaction of human beings in the way man has mismanaged the Earth, its resources and our human relationships. This rate of increase has never before been experienced in the history of the planet.
Bryan James.
UP!
contents...
p.00 ?WOT'VE THEY DUN NOW - TO THE BLEEDIN' BEES?!
p.00 Jesustians For Jesus! - Why a Hindu Accepts Christ and Rejects Churchianity
p.00 Reagan Feared Armageddon Was Near
p.00 Can Science Validate the Psychedelic Experience?
p.00 Cops Planted Pot on 92-Year Old Woman They Killed in Botched Drug Raid
p.00 The Money Masters Chavez Withdraws Venezuela From IMF & World Bank - "Sooner or later, those institutions will fall due to their own weight."
UP!
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TEXT JOCKEY // TJ PHRASER (Fraser Clark) & THE MEDIA EVOLUTION
MIXING THE TRACTS LIVE ON THE KEYBOARD
@ A MEDIA-MEME RATE OF 160 IPP * * Ideas Per Paragraph
TO SUBSCRIBE SOMEONE, WRITE I wanna get UP! TO fraser@parallel-youniversity.com
TO UNSUBSCRIBE, HIT REPLY WITH REMOVE IN THE SUBJECT BOX
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\)))))(/
_______,,,,_{ô¿ô}_,,,,_fraser_
flow of propaganda?
am i the only one who receives - DAILY - anti-muslim 'news bites' from one or more jewish friend/contact/unknown informing me about some local terrible thing that's happened to someone in a muslim country? i really ask because i know absolutely that, if i was WELL paid to do it, i could EASILY come up with a daily negative story about the west, the Xtian west if u like. i'd probably start with irish sheep shaggers, move onto council estate crackheads, child gun shootings & stabbings, and then broaden out from there (teen pregnancies could keep me going for a YEAR!).
so i ask because i suspect that this is an organised effort to demonise the muslim faith - and almost certainly funded [by whom?!] tho sometimes obsession is enuff.
but, much more than THAT even, to excite HATRED & (eventually) VIOLENCE against them. a further question is this. are the jewish friends of mine who are participating in this 'flow of propaganda' doing it from fear of the muslims, from guilt over what israel's done to them and hence fear of inevitable revenge, or from aggression? certainly, when i look at the middle east with historic perspective, i see israel looming larger & larger, NOT shrinking in size and attitude.
i probly won't answer or publish any arguments about anti-semitism and all that nonsense. (we've covered that in the past and certainly will again). but i would genuinely like to get an idea of how broadly this (if it is) 'campaign' spreads.
fraser.
UP!
?WOT'VE THEY DUN NOW
- TO THE BLEEDIN' BEES?!
Honeybee Die-Off Threatens Food Supply
Unless someone or something stops it soon, the mysterious killer that is wiping out many of the honeybees could have a devastating effect on our dinner plate, perhaps even reducing us to a glorified bread-and-water diet. Honeybees don't just make honey; they pollinate more than 90 of the tastiest flowering crops we have. Among them: apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.
In fact, about one-third of the human diet comes from insect-pollinated plants, and the honeybee is responsible for 80% of that pollination, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Even cattle, which feed on alfalfa, depend on bees.
So if the collapse worsens, we could end up being "stuck with grains and water," said Kevin Hackett, the national program leader for USDA's bee and pollination program. "This is the biggest general threat to our food supply," Hackett said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070502/ap_on_sc/honeybee_die_off
up!
GM Maize MON 863 Toxic
French scientists find signs of toxicity to liver and kidney
in Monsanto's study on its controversial GM maize.
Controversial GM maize approved by European Commission
In 2003, Monsanto submitted a request to market the GM maize MON 863 with resistance to corn rootworm to the regulatory authority in Germany. Monsanto was seeking approval for importing the maize into the Europe for processing and use as feed, but not as food or for cultivation.
The German authority concluded that there was no scientific evidence of risk for human health or the environment.
>> people gotta start dropping first! and that's not enuff, you gotta PROVE a connection!
But other Member States raised and maintained objections over molecular characterisation, potential allergic reactions, toxicity and other aspects. Most controversially, the feeding study submitted by Monsanto turned up many adverse effects that were dismissed by Monsanto as “not biologically meaningful.”
Monsanto, supported by European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), kept the study from public scrutiny under a false claim of confidential business information until a German court order a year later forced Monsanto to release the full report.
Preliminary analysis by Giles-Eric Séralini and colleagues of Criigen (Committee for Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering, France) found serious flaws in the study at every stage, from experimental design, to data collection, analysis, and reporting. The GM maize fed group was compared, not just to the group fed the non-GM isogenic line as it should have been, but also to 5 more 'control' groups fed other non-GM varieties. This had the effect of increasing the range of variation and making the treatment group of animals too small, thus considerably reducing the sensitivity of the test.
Further, the results were analysed with the wrong statistical tests, and despite having compared many variables, the correct standard statistical tools (multivariate and principal component analyses) were not used. Instead, in comparing one variable at a time, the researchers failed to note significant trends in body weight differences between experimental and control animals. Statistically significant differences that nevertheless turned up were then all dismissed as biologically insignificant.
The EFSA, when consulted, agreed with Monsanto, and gave MON 863 maize a 'positive opinion'. In August 2005, the European Commission gave approval to maize MON 863, despite a persistent failure to reach an agreement by all regulatory authorities.
“GM food/feed looks like joining asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), BSE, tobacco and many others as yet another example of the government relying on bad scientific advice and ignoring the precautionary principle, with devastating consequences.” Prof. Peter Saunders.
# Female rats fed Roundup Ready soybeans gave birth to many severely stunted pups, with over half of the litter dead by 3 weeks, and the surviving pups were sterile; Roundup Ready soya has been approved worldwide for food and feed since 1996
# Farmers and workers exposed to Bt cotton and Bt maize have suffered serious allergy-like symptoms
# Livestock feeding on Bt crops and crop residues became ill and died in large numbers. (From a devastating report by the Institute of Science in Society which has been submitted to the European Food Standards Agency, the World Health Organisation/ Food and Agriculture Organisation Expert Consultation on GM Food Animals, and the UK Food Standards Agency, and has been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.)
up!
Women Harvesting Honey
People and bees have a long and mutually beneficial history. Ancient cave paintings in Spain depict a woman harvesting honey. The Egyptians moved bees on barges up and down the Nile. Originating near current-day Afghanistan, one species of honey bee, Apis mellifera, now lives all over the world, with the exception of the Antarctic and far Arctic regions. In every community and country, bees are kept for the honey and wax that they produce, and for the crops that they pollinate.
More than 30 years ago, we at the University of Montana (UM) began sending out bees to explore and sample environments of interest, as a way of collecting and mapping data over large areas within a two-to-four-km radius of the hive. A honey bee's body has branched hairs that develop a static electricity charge, making them an extremely effective collector of chemical and biological particles, including pollutants, biological warfare agents and explosives.
They also inhale large quantities of air and bring back water for evaporative cooling of the hive. As such, bees sample all media (air, soil, water and vegetation) and all chemical forms (gaseous, liquid and particulate).
>> and genetically modified shit that humans have imposed on their environment.
http://maic.jmu.edu/journal/7.3/focus/bromenshenk/bromenshenk.htm
up!
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -- it's the illusion of knowledge.' Daniel J Boorstin.
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the UP! is a global edutainment round-up, broadcast weekly to =[14,034]=
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Jesustians For Jesus!
Why a Hindu Accepts Christ and Rejects Churchianity
by Swami Abhedananda
A Hindu distinguishes the religion of the churches from the religion of Jesus Christ. Speaking from the Hindu standpoint, the religion that the churches uphold and preach today, that has been built around the personality of Jesus the Christ, and which is popularly known as Christianity, should be called 'Churchianity', in contradistinction to that pure religion of the heart that was taught by Jesus the Christ and practised by his disciples. The religion of Christ or true Christianity had no dogma, no creed, no system, and no theology. It was a religion of the heart, a religion without any ceremonies, without ritual, without priest-craft. It was not based upon any book, but upon the feelings of the heart, upon direct communion of the individual soul with the heavenly Father. On the contrary, the religion of the church is based upon a book, believes in dogmas, professes a creed, has an organized system for preaching it, is backed up by theologies, performs rituals, practises ceremonials, and obeys the commands of a host of priests.
The religion of Christ was a religion of love, renunciation and self-control; it was a religion of God-consciousness. As these are the highest ideals among the Hindus, they accept Christ and His true religion in so far as it is one with their ideals; but when they see that Churchianity does not preach renunciation, and that its advocates do not practise love for all, nor show self-control, when they see that Christian governments encourage vice by opium trade, liquor trade, and introduce intoxicating things among innocent and temperate people for the sake of gain, they reject a religion which allows such things. They believe in Jesus the Christ as the Son of God, and know that he did not teach such things.
The duty of true religion is to broaden the human mind, to open the spiritual eyes, to lead humanity to the realization of oneness with the supreme Father in Heaven, and to repress all quarrels over dogmas and creeds. As long as we are not spiritual, we fight and quarrel, but when we realize that God dwells within us, that we are all children of God, irrespective of nationality, creed or denomination, when we rise above all dogmas, above beliefs, theories, and sectarianism, then, and then alone, we are the true followers of the Christ. Then, and then alone, are we able to say with Jesus, "I and my Father are one". The Hindus leave aside the disputed personality that dwells in each individual soul and believes that each soul is a latent Christ. They believe that the voice of God tells this truth within each soul, but we do not listen to it, through our ignorance and selfishness. Krishna says: "Giving up all the formalities of religion, come unto Me, take refuge in Me, I shall make thee free from sins, sorrows and sufferings".
Jesus says: "Come unto Me all ye that are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest". Let us listen to that voice, for it is one and the same, and let us follow it. Let us realize the spirit of true Christianity that was exhibited in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Let us live as he lived, and be living Christs on earth. The Hindu is not satisfied merely to accept Christ in theory, but he strives hard to live the life, which Jesus lived, to lead a life of renunciation, of self-control and of love to all. Thus he seeks to fulfil the mandates of that eternal Religion which is taught by Christ-Krishna, Christ-Buddha, and Christ-Jesus.
http://www.jesustians.com/Jesus_Christ.htm
up!
Reagan Feared Armageddon Was Near
Ronald Reagan saved his most private and dramatic thoughts for a diary in which he recalled his running frustration with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, his fear that Armageddon was near and coughing up blood on the day he was shot.
He also reveals that he wore a bullet-proof vest during a speech at the National Press Club during which he asked the Soviet Union to join the United States in eliminating medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe.
These excerpts have been released by Vanity Fair magazine.
'I Believe Armageddon Is Near'
"Funny -- I was talking peace but wearing a bullet-proof vest. It seems Qaddafi put a contract on me & some person named Jack was going to try for me at the speech," Reagan wrote. "Security was very tight."
Events in the Middle East concerned him so much that he wrote on May 15, 1981, "Sometimes I wonder if we are destined to witness Armageddon."
Then on June 7: "Got word of Israel bombing of Iraq -- nuclear reactor. I swear I believe Armageddon is near."
up!
Can Science Validate
the Psychedelic Experience?
by Charles Hayes
A portal to heaven opened up last summer when a study by a psychiatric team at pre-eminent Johns Hopkins School of Medicine revealed that psilocybin, the all-natural ingredient that packs the magic in magic mushrooms, can “occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance.”
Published in Psychopharmacology, the results of the double-blind study led by psychopharmacologist Roland Griffiths were blindingly persuasive and unambiguous. A whopping 79% of the 30 mentally healthy, well-educated, hallucinogen-naïve, religiously or spiritually active adult volunteers, reported that their psilocybin sessions were one of the five most important events of their lives, right up there with the birth of their first child. 30% said it was the single most significant event ever. What's more, after two months, most reported lasting positive effects on their sense of well-being and life outlook-confirmed by significant others.
While some reported experiencing strong anxiety and a few would decline to repeat the experiment, the potent breadth of the psychedelic's positive effect on the majority constitutes a home run on almost anyone's scorecard. In a society that fancies itself foremost as faithful, an encounter with divinity would seem to have optimal value. We're not talking about a nice buzz or an amelioration of the jitters; we're talking godhead, unitive ecstasis.
One might well ask, “Since when is science equipped to quantify spirituality, anyway?” Doesn't more flow out of an entheogen-induced mystic union with God than can possibly be caught in the clinical chalice? To tend The Garden and ingest its ennobling fruit, do we really need to wait idly for an approving nod from secular authority, be it Big Brother Science or his more imposing sibling, Government?
The Hopkins results highlight the struggle between our culture's twin idolatries, science and spirituality, both of which render themselves incomplete and exclusionary by their certitude. “Science without religion is lame,” Einstein observed, and “religion without science is blind.” But there's good news: the science applied by the new psychedelic researchers at Hopkins and elsewhere is both more rigorous and more humane - even capable, in fact, of working in league with religion. The mystical models that arise will deliver unprecedented insight into the subjective phenomena of the religious experience.
“It was as good a job as science can do today,” says William Richards, the Hopkins study's chief monitor and a veteran of LSD research for treating the terminally ill at Spring Grove Hospital. “It almost makes me believe more in science than I did before.” The very first session, decades after his last work in the field, was profoundly mystical for him. “Just to be able to do it…. I felt awe and privilege myself.” Richards believes we're finally in the “early dawn of psychology's recognition and understanding of the spiritual experience.”
>> but of course nobody has to wait till they ploddingly arrive.
The prime mover behind all this progressive science is Robert Jesse, a former vice president of Oracle for whom life-changing entheogenic events inspired him to found the Council for Spiritual Practices (www.csp.org) in 1994 to develop “approaches to primary religious experience.” Working stealthily under the media radar, Jesse navigated the bureaucracy and moved the study to fruition, a strategy that kept it from being blackballed. Jesse once told me his aim isn't to legalise psychedelics but to demonstrate their value. Mission accomplished at Johns Hopkins.
Bolstering the new science with the requisite judiciary buttress for the pursuit of spirituality through chemistry is yet another ray of light that pierces our Drug War benightedness. Early last year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously against the Bush administration's attempt to block the ingestion of the hallucinogenic Amazonian brew ayahuasca by a branch of União do Vegetal (UDV), a Brazilian religious order that insists the hoasca tea brings members closer to God. In the opinion written by new Chief Justice John Roberts, the court affirmed that the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act protects the church's taste in tea. Sounding a distinct note for reason, he observed that federal law already allows peyote use by Native Americans, and that Congress ought to be “striking sensible balances between religious liberty and competing prior governmental interests.” And there's an ecclesiastical catch: The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Association of Evangelicals defended the UDV's case for religious freedom, prompting psychedelic researcher and UCLA professor Charles Grob, an expert witness at the hearing, to notice that “religious rights can apparently trump the Drug War.”
There's a real movement afoot. The field of psychedelic research is opening up, blossoming worldwide. The landmark study of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder victims unresponsive to other treatment, launched at the University of South Carolina in 2004, has been showing “tremendous results,” according to Rick Doblin, president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (www.maps.org), its sponsor. Privy to the extant data, Doblin noted that a telltale sign that subjects in the double-blind study had received MDMA rather than the placebo was their query of the monitor “And how are you doing?” once the drug kicked in.
A similar MAPS-funded study will begin soon in Israel. The Israeli Ministry of Health had been waiting for U.S. federal approval for the South Carolina study before launching its own MDMA work, to treat casualties of war and terrorism, under the direction of former IDF chief psychiatrist Moshe Kotler. Comparable MAPS-sponsored MDMA studies in Switzerland and Spain await approval.
MAPS is also hoping to start research at Harvard into LSD and psilocybin as treatments for cluster headaches, a horrifically painful affliction thus far resistant to lasting relief. A Neurology article by prospective monitors Andrew Sewell and John Halpern reports strong anecdotal evidence that unauthorised use of either of the two drugs - even in sub-psychoactive doses - has halted both shorter episodes and months-long cycles of these headaches.
Arising from the supplications of an underground population of law-breaking self-medicators, this research proposal demonstrates the moral authority of grassroots, people-driven science and how an overlooked, even factious interest group (www.clusterbusters.org) can force action and keep science honest.
“The psychedelic renaissance will have really begun in earnest and completely when we have LSD underway for both physiological and psychotherapeutic studies, particularly the latter,” says Doblin, who expects imminent approval for a MAPS-funded Swiss study of the psychotherapeutic use of LSD to ease anxiety in cancer patients. Still other psychedelic studies are in the pipeline, at different stages of the bureaucratic maze, including psilocybin research at NYU, and a not yet publicised LSD study to investigate brain function.
Psychedelic therapy has shown enormous potential to decouple minds from various kinds of captivity. Ketamine has been used successfully In St. Petersburg, Russia, to separate heroin addicts from their abusive habits. At the Iboga Therapy House (www.ibogatherapyhouse.net) in Vancouver, Canada, MAPS will conduct an investigation of ibogaine, a trance-inducing African tree bark, as a treatment for opiate dependence. Acute relief of obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms, after treatment with psilocybin, is described in a Journal of Clinical Psychiatry report on a University of Arizona study.
Getting religion has its health benefits. As William James once observed, “Religiomania is the best cure for dipsomania [alcoholism].” It was one such breakthrough in a legal LSD session in the 1950s that inspired Alcoholics Anonymous founder William Wilson to propose (unsuccessfully) to AA's board that it use psychedelic therapy to help alcoholics break their bondage to the bottle.
Ponder for a moment the awesome power behind a force so strong that it can tear asunder a drug addict from his slave master, an obsessive compulsive from her involuntary rituals and ideation, and the searing vice of pain from a cluster headache sufferer.
Yet psychedelics may also play a gentler role, in family or marital counselling.
While not as rending as addiction busting, such religious communions are hardly trivial. Says Grob, who did biomedical psychiatric research into community ayahuasca ceremonies in the Amazon, “The intensive moral inventory of a night on ayahuasca is like the longest Yom Kippur you could ever imagine.” Grob places the family in a central supportive role in psychedelic therapy. His current study, using psilocybin to treat the anxiety of terminally ill cancer patients (beginning each session with a Native American-inflected ritual calling on the spirits of the four cardinal directions) has yielded highly positive results. He recalls how one sobbing subject underwent a bout of profound empathy for her husband, soon to lose her. The reunion of the two at the end of the session brought tears to all present. Having treated seven of the twelve in the study design, Grob still needs five more volunteers (www.canceranxietystudy.org).
The new science of neurotheology invites us to ponder the biochemistry of religion and its evolutionary role as a source of meaning and structure in the face of impending death. According to the Time cover story “The God Gene,” scientists have pinpointed a variation on a single gene that produces the monoamines that regulate mood, the presence of which determined how well volunteers scored on a self-transcendence test. Neither the variation nor the gene is the sine qua non for a spiritual life, of course, but the finding demonstrates both the value of science in detecting spirit-specific loci in the human biosphere - and the slippery slope of materialist/determinist interpretations of such findings.
So then, how do we construct a science devoted to human need and potential? Science is naturally driven by political culture. It's only right that the tools of science are regulated by our (duly) elected officials. But what happens when the government censors its own scientists, and political or industrial cronyism overrules sound medical policy? Witness the FDA's vacuous, contra-scientific pronouncement last year that cannabis has no medical value whatsoever. “Zilch, zero, nada,” sneered opioid gobbler Rush Limbaugh, impossibly rubbing it in.
Functionally speaking, science is only as good as its institutions and what makes it into print. When the science is rigorous, as Griffiths' was, it helps build the case for sound medicine and public health policy, which can, if necessary, be hauled out and resurrected after its eclipse by unfavourable political leadership. No, we don't need doctors or Congressmen to tell us that good can come of cannabis or psilocybin ingestion. But a reformed legal framework for the judicious use of psychedelics, as well as extensive scientific inquiry into how they work on the human psyche, would be welcome evolutionary tune-ups for our civilisation.
The efflorescence of new psychedelic research is an emerging pattern of stars in the night sky of indiscriminate proscription. Once the dots are connected and reinforced by ongoing inquiry, we'll be well on our way toward a wholesome science marked by
up!
Cops Planted Pot on 92-Year Old Woman
They Killed in Botched Drug Raid
by Rhonda Cook, Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
According to US federal documents released this week, these are the events that led to Kathryn Johnston's death and the steps the officers took to cover their tracks.
Three narcotics agents were trolling the streets near the Bluffs in northwest Atlanta, a known market for drugs, midday on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
Eventually they set their sights on some apartments on Lanier Street, usually fertile when narcotics agents are looking for arrests and seizures.
Gregg Junnier and another narcotics officer went inside the apartments around 2 p.m. while Jason Smith checked the woods. Smith found dozens of bags of marijuana -- in baggies packaged to sell. With no one connected to the pot, Smith stashed the bags in the trunk of the patrol car.
A use was found for Smith's stash 90 minutes later: a phone tip led the three officers to a man in a "gold-collared jacket" who might be dealing. The man, identified as X in the documents but known as Fabian Sheats, spotted the cops and put something in his mouth. They found no drugs on Sheats, but came up with a use for the pot they found earlier.
They wanted information or they would arrest Sheats for dealing.
While Junnier called for a drug-sniffing dog, Smith planted some bags under a rock, which the K-9 unit found.
But if Sheats gave them 'something', he could walk.
Sheats pointed out 933 Neal St., the home of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston where, he claimed, he had spotted a kilo of cocaine when he was there to buy crack from a man named "Sam."
They needed someone to go inside, but Sheats would not do for their purposes because he was not a certified confidential informant.
So about 5:05 p.m. they reached out by telephone to Alex White to make an undercover buy for them. They had experience with White and he had proved to be a reliable snitch. But White had no transportation and could not help.
Still, Smith, Junnier and the other officer, Arthur Tesler, according to the state's case, ran with the information. They fabricated all the right answers to persuade a magistrate to give them a no-knock search warrant.
By 6 p.m., they had the legal document they needed to break into Kathryn Johnston's house, and within 40 minutes they were prying off the burglar bars and using a ram to burst through the elderly woman's front door. It took about 2 minutes to get inside, which gave Johnston time to retrieve her rusty .38 revolver.
Tesler was at the back door when Junnier, Smith and the other narcotics officers crashed through the front.
Johnston got off one shot, the bullet missing her target and hitting a porch roof. The three narcotics officers answered with 39 bullets.
5 or 6 bullets hit the terrified woman. Authorities never figured out who fired the fatal bullet, the one that hit Johnston in the chest. Some pieces of the other bullets hit Junnier and two other cops - friendly fire.
The officers handcuffed the mortally wounded woman and searched the house.
There was no Sam.
There were no drugs.
There were no cameras that the officers had claimed was the reason for the no-knock warrant. Just Johnston, handcuffed and bleeding on her living room floor.
That is when the officers took it to another level. 3 baggies of marijuana were retrieved from the trunk of the car and planted in Johnston's basement. The rest of the pot from the trunk was dropped down a sewage drain and disappeared.
The three began getting their stories straight.
The next day, one of them, allegedly Tesler, completed the required incident report in which he wrote that the officers went to the house because their informant had bought crack at the Neal Street address. And Smith turned in two bags of crack to support that claim.
They plotted how they would cover up the lie.
They tried to line up one of their regular informants, Alex White, the reliable snitch with the unreliable transportation.
The officers' story would be that they met with White at an abandoned carwash Nov. 21 and gave him $50 to make the buy from Neal Street.
To add credibility to their story, they actually paid White his usual $30 fee for information and explained to him how he was to say the scenario played out if asked. An unidentified store owner kicked in another $100 to entice White to go along with the play.
The 3 cops spoke several times, assuring each other of the story they would tell.
Junnier was the first to break. On Dec. 11, three weeks after the shooting, http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/51151/
UP!
The Money Masters
Chavez Withdraws Venezuela
From IMF & World Bank
by Andrew Buncombe in Washington
"Sooner or later, those institutions will fall
due to their own weight."
Venezuela's leader Hugo Chavez has underlined his intention to develop an alternative economic vision for Latin America by pulling his country from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund - organisations that have long had a controversial role in the region.
Though Venezuela has paid off its loans to the two international lending organisations, Mr Chavez's announcement that he intends to quit the organisations is powerfully symbolic. It is likely to lead other smaller nations to question their membership and demand a greater say in the organisations' policies.
>> a helluva lot more than symbolic! chavez has probly now signed his own death warrant.
"We will no longer have to go to Washington, nor to the IMF, nor to the World Bank, not to anyone," said Mr Chavez. "I want to formalise our exit from the World Bank and the IMF."
Despite Venezuela's close trading relationship with the US over oil - it is the fourth largest supplier of crude in the United States - Mr Chavez has long derided the IMF and the World Bank for being controlled by US and Western interests and has said their policies of tight budget controls, privatisation and open markets have benefited foreign companies while leaving much of Latin America in grinding poverty.
>> see The Money Masters in UP! 248.
Venezuela recently repaid its remaining debts to the World Bank five years ahead of schedule and paid off its debts to the IMF shortly after Mr Chavez first took office in 1999. He has steadily worked to provide alternative forms of credit and financial support for countries in the region, backed up by Venezuela's oil wealth. He has referred to such a project as the "Bank of the South". He has also invested millions of dollars on social programmes inside Venezuela that have reduced poverty and increased access to education and healthcare.
Mr Chavez made his announcement on Monday, a day after criticising the lending organisations during a meeting with leaders from Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti. He predicted that "sooner or later, those institutions will fall due to their own weight".
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2502081.ece
UP!
Pagan-Magik
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