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UP! 253// THE LARGEST LARGEST MOVEMENT MOVEMENT IN THE WORLD WORLD// 10  06  07

this could definitely be the Big One!

the Great Coming Together!

the Rooting & Sprouting

of the Post-Dinosaur Era!

HOW

the Largest Movement

in the World Came Into Being;

&

WHY

No One Saw it Coming

In his latest book Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came Into Being; And Why No One Saw it Coming, Paul Hawken - activist, green businessman, eco-philosopher, and author - makes the case that the disparate movements for ecological restoration and social justice are merging into one massive global movement.

>> the birth of the post dinosaur era.

Author of two of the seminal works on the green economy: The Ecology of Commerce and Natural Capitalism, Paul Hawken attempts in the new book to count and classify both the number of organisations in this movement.

He estimates about 1.5 million!

And the diversity of issues they work on at least 400.

WISER Earth (WISER = World Index of Social & Environmental Responsibility)

To help build the connective tissue that ties this movement together, Hawken’s nonprofits Natural Capital Institute (NCI) has just launched a related project called WISER Earth (WISER = World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility), which aims to build an interactive directory of all 1.5 million groups in this global movement.

The institute’s staff has seeded the database with profiles of over 140,000 organisations. But, realising they couldn’t possibly do all the research or legwork needed to grow the database to include all the groups they believe are out there, NCI has opened up the system so that, like Wikipedia, anyone can create or edit an organisation’s profile.

And they’ve added tools that make it easy for organisations to use the database for their own purposes. SO GET ON THERE! THIS COULD BE THE NODE POINT FROM WHICH IT ALL FINALLY KIKKS OFF!

www.wiserearth.org

UP! I bought some Armageddon cheese today, and printed on the packet was: 'BEST BEFORE END' [thanks to john morris]

Nu Rave, New Crackdown

"Illegal raves could sweep the nation again this summer”

British local authorities issued a 5 point plan for councils to fight free parties this week, urging them to monitor Myspace and to pay particularly close attention to dangerous 'nu rave' bands including the 'Klaxons, New Young Pony Club, Trash Fashion and Hot Chip' (the Guardian).

"Illegal raves could sweep the nation again this summer with many taking place around festival days," the Local Government Association (LCA) warned in their detailed set of guidelines about the imminent threat, "War will be waged against illegal ravers," they declared.

Defining 'nu rave' as 'a style of music fusing elements of disco, electronic and punk' the Association suggested councils should set aside approved venues though cautioned 'but it depends what partygoers wish to do there and whether what goes on is acceptable or not.'

"If they have nothing to hide, they should talk to their council about putting on a legitimate event” said LCA spokesman Councillor Chris White. “But if their motives are less honourable then they will be dealt with by using the full force of the law," he added.

The surprising declaration emerged days after cops in East Anglia used a helicopter and scores of officers to track suspected ravers - with mixed results, all 400 dancers reportedly got away with it by deviously managing to avoid upsetting any neighbours by partying in a remote forest near Swaffham.

Police helicopter game:

http://www.miniclip.com/games/police-chopper/en

[Skrufff.com]

UP! I went into a shop and said, "Can someone sell me a kettle?" This bloke said "Kenwood?" I said, "Where's he then?" [thanks to john morris]

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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! 253 12 06 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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I asked you once who had subscribed me. I still haven't found out.

>> now you'll never know! cos i don't. and can't find out at this late date.

c me as an angel maybe?

Then I got in trouble from my parents for getting you to send the UP!

to some conservative friends of theirs in the US -

unfortunately they found out I was behind it - my name was on it somehow!

Thanks a lot, fraser!!!

>> c me as a devil praps?

But it was worth it - love your opinions

although I do believe in the historical jeezuz.

>> well, nobody’s perfick :)

and nobody write in that that’s ambiguous cos i meant it that way :)

Peace love and harmony,

Nicole, somewhere in Canada.

UP! My mate is in love with two schoolbags. I reckon he was born a bisatchel.

[thanks to john morris]

contents...

p.04 Earth Is Not A ‘What’

p.05 If It Feels Good to Be Good, It’s Probably Only Natural

p.07 Hey Man, We’re All Hippies Now. Far Out! - The Times

p.08 THE JFK “PLOT”: ANOTHER GROSSLY INFLATED THREAT?

p.11 MDMA A Brief History - the facts.

p.14 Marijuana March Activists Brutalised by Moscow Police

p.15 DOGS & Festivals FEEDBACK.

p.16 the biggest israeli lie, FEEDBACK

Earth Is Not A ‘What’

In the reality outside our limited conceptions, our planet is something of which we do not yet have an even vaguely accurate metaphor. Our current concepts are flatter than our early maps of the world were — and in dimensions our knowledge hasn’t yet equipped us to locate, let alone take measure of.

We can’t yet discuss this flatness problem whose results have afflicted our species in amplifying waves of confusion and atrocity since our ancestors’ early introduction to symbolic representation.

Earth is not a what, or a thing — or a god — she is more like something ‘beyond animal’ that is alive, complex, and self-aware in ways that put the broken toys of our common models to shame.

Our lack of a decent concept-form within which to contain or discuss her, however, doesn’t mean we cannot explore models more alike with reality than with our ‘expectations’. For example, we can understand that Earth is a transentient hyperstructure. Like our own bodies, she magnifies the diverse relation of her myriad constituents into seemingly impossible potentials of awareness.

As an animal, she invests her organismal, biocognitive, emotional and relational complexity in her children — of which she is comprised. Each organism on Earth i - not merely a participant - but a complete instance of her.

Which means that her offspring are entirely different from another of our brokenly flat concepts: animal. Organisms on Earth are sentient hyperstructures like Earth — first — and only ‘animals or plants or cells’ second — if at all.

Earth is not inhabited by animals. Just like you and I, she’s comprised of scalarly relational dimensions of biocognitive organs.

She is not a thing, or an object, at all. What Earth is has nothing to do with inanimacy. She is a cup into which sunlight flows and within which an endless living library has been learning itself for more biological time than we could make numbers about.

In at least three dimensions, Earth is many times the age of the physical universe she inhabits... and so are you.

Earth is a sentience nursery, with powers, transports, and purposes that are so beyond our expectations that none of our stories have ever more than hinted at what is actually here, with(in) and around us:

a living library billions of factors the age of our Star.

>> this next bit is probly wrong :)

As we rediscover the accessible realities of relation here on Earth, we will cease to long so fervently for contact with other worlds, for we will find, right here in our own biosphere — that there is nothing else going on. I believe that the direct experience of this is going to change what it means to be human, in a way no one ever imagined.

I think it’s happening now.

>> so do i. but the writer is correct only in the sense that the dimensions of space interpenetrate each other RIGHT HERE, rather than across the wilderness desert of inevitably endless space that we ‘expect’ now :)

http://www.organelle.org/organelle/eaindex2.html [remix]

up!

Science Finally Plods To The ‘Discovery’ That, If It Feels Good to Be Good, It’s Probably Only Natural

by Shankar Vedantam / Washington Post

The e-mail came from the next room.

"You gotta see this!" Jorge Moll had written. Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health, had been scanning the brains of volunteers as they were asked to think about a scenario involving either

1. donating a sum of money to charity or

2. keeping it for themselves.

As Grafman read the e-mail, Moll came bursting in. The scientists stared at each other. Grafman was thinking, "Whoa -- wait a minute!"

The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex.

Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges, but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired & pleasurable.

Their 2006 finding that unselfishness can feel good lends scientific support to the admonitions of spiritual leaders that it’s in giving that we Receive :) But it’s also a dramatic example of the way neuroscience has begun to elbow its way into discussions about morality and has opened up a new window on what it means to be good.

Grafman and others are using brain imaging and psychological experiments to study whether the brain has a built-in moral compass. The results - many published just in recent months - are showing, unexpectedly

>> to some :)

that many aspects of morality appear to be hard-wired in the brain, most likely the result of evolutionary processes that began in other species.

>> don’t miss this. altruism and helping the Big Picture is evolutionary while Dinos who go for power are anti-evolutionary.

No one can say whether giraffes and lions experience moral qualms in the same way people do, but it is known that animals can sacrifice their own interests: One experiment found that if each time a rat is given food, its neighbour receives an electric shock, the first rat will eventually forego eating.

>> the parallel with today’s planetary situation is, well, scary, yet inspiring.

What the new research is showing is that morality has biological roots - like the reward centre in the brain that lit up in Grafman's experiment - that have been around for a very long time.

The more researchers learn, the more it appears that the foundation of morality is empathy. Being able to recognise - even experience vicariously - what another creature is going through was an important leap in the evolution of social behaviour. And it is only a short step from this awareness to many human notions of right and wrong, says Jean Decety, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago.

The research enterprise has been viewed with interest by philosophers and theologians, but already some worry that it raises troubling questions. Reducing morality and immorality to brain chemistry - rather than free will - might diminish the importance of personal responsibility. Even more important, some wonder whether the very idea of morality is somehow degraded if it turns out to be just another evolutionary tool that nature uses to help species survive and propagate.

>> will they NEVER innerstand???!!! it’s this ‘ancient part of the brain’ stuff. it’s more likely we LOST contact with an integral part of our Psyche when we hit our current anti-Nature path around 5000BC. yes, our Problem is that deep, or did u think we just had to drive a bit less?!

Moral decisions can often feel like abstract intellectual challenges,

>> OH REALLY?! maybe i’m missing something.

but a number of experiments such as the one by Grafman have shown that emotions are central to moral thinking. In another experiment published in March, University of Southern California neuroscientist Antonio R. Damasio and his colleagues showed that patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex of the brain lack the ability to feel their way to moral answers. When confronted with moral dilemmas, the brain-damaged patients coldly came up with "end-justifies-the-means" answers.

Damasio said the point was not that they reached immoral conclusions, but that when confronted by a difficult issue - such as whether to shoot down a passenger plane hijacked by terrorists before it hits a major city - these patients appear to reach decisions without the anguish that afflicts those with normally functioning brains.

>> meaning the human is not well made for soldiering. or modern politics. or, actually, most of modern society.

up!

Hey Man, We’re All Hippies Now. Far Out!

The Times/Mary Ann Sieghart/May 25, 2007

Love isn’t quite all you need in life. But it’s a whole lot better than hate. And if that ideal continues to pervade British society, then we should be profoundly grateful to the Summer of Love which took place 40 years ago in 1967.

According to a YouGov poll for Readers Digest, we are all hippies now. And it’s not just the maxi dresses flooding out of Topshop or the instant sell-out of Glastonbury tickets. The values of peace, love, greenery, independence of mind and sexual freedom are no longer alternative but mainstream.

Three quarters of us now agree with sex before marriage, 82% want to save the planet and 48% believe in questioning authority. Roughly the same proportion think there are too many rules in society and a similar percentage – the same people, perhaps? – enjoy walking around barefoot. Nearly half of Britons say they agree with the slogan “MAKE LOVE NOT WAR” and 35% think there is never any excuse for war.

You may think that some hippy values have been taken too far. Perhaps a little more deference would be desirable. But you have to remember the world from which the hippies burst: the stultified, uptight, rigidly hierarchical society of the 1950s and early 1960s, in which wives were expected to give up their jobs and wear pinnies. The hippies’ rejection of 1950s values was a great hurricane of fresh air blowing into a stale room whose windows had been painted shut for decades.

People then felt trapped by social convention. Women in particular had very little power over their lives. It was the hippies’ insight that everyone should be allowed to break out and be themselves, not be forced into a persona that had been ordained by others – real freedom of expression, in other words.

The hippies were also green long before their time. Many of them tried to live a life of self-sufficiency, growing their own food, generating energy and building homes. Now 47% of Britons say they would consider trying to emulate them.

But if in general you prefer gentleness to violence, if you think nature should be tended not destroyed, if you believe optimism, however misguided, beats hard-faced cynicism, then you are probably, like me, an old hippy at heart.

And the great news is that much of the rest of the country is too. We, as a nation, have become kinder, more open and more broad-minded in the past 40 years. We should light an incense stick for the hippies of 1967.

>> light a joint as well :)

UP! I said to this man, "Correct me if I'm wrong but didn’t you invent Tipex?" [thanks to john morris]

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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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Conyers Requests Palast's "Vote Caging" Evidence

Tim Griffin, formerly right-hand man to Karl Rove, has resigned as US attorney for Arkansas, hours after BBC "Newsnight" reported that Congressman John Conyers had requested the network's evidence on Griffin's involvement in "caging voters."

Greg Palast, reporting for both BBC "Newsnight" and "Democracy Now," obtained a series of confidential emails dating from the 2004 presidential election, in which the GOP operative transmitted so-called "caging lists" of voters to state party leaders for their names to be struck from the lists.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060407R.shtml

up!

THE JFK “PLOT”:

ANOTHER GROSSLY INFLATED THREAT?

by Bill Van Auken

The news in the US was dominated by screaming headlines and sensationalist broadcast coverage of an alleged plot in New York to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport’s jet fuel tanks and supply lines. The attack would have been, according to many accounts, “more devastating than September 11.”

The indictment included features that have become almost invariable in every such “terror” case brought by the government in recent years.

1. the suspects had carried out no acts of terror

2. they lacked any means to realize such an attack.

3. a central figure in the alleged plot was a paid undercover FBI informant.

Broadcast networks spoke of the worst threat since the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, while reporters conducted random interviews with passengers passing through JFK as well as residents living near the pipelines, asking how they felt about their supposed near brush with death.

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post referred to the alleged plot as an “INFERNO PLAN” and carried an editorial stating that the purported plan “to do calamitous damage to JFK International Airport and surrounding residential neighbourhoods underscores yet again the overarching threat Islamist terrorism poses to America.”

>> pardon?

The New York Daily News carried 5 pages on the “plot,” with a ludicrous front-page headline, “EVIL ATE AT TABLE EIGHT,” promoting an inside interview with the Brooklyn waitress who served a meal to Russell Defreitas, whom the paper describes as the “mastermind” of the alleged plot, just before he was picked up by federal agents and police.

Yet the profile of Defreitas, a 63-year-old US citizen who emigrated from Guyana 25 years ago, hardly suggests a terrorist “mastermind.” A former friend describes him as someone who, before becoming a Muslim, had declared himself a Rastafarian and grown dreadlocks. He recalled his involvement in various business schemes to ship air conditioners or refrigerators to Guyana, none of which ever came to anything.

“He couldn’t even fix brakes,” the former friend said. “He never built bombs.”

Other accounts described him as a retired worker living in an impoverished Brooklyn neighbourhood, who on various occasions had been homeless. New York Newsday, for example, reported, “Since being laid off from his job as a cargo worker several years ago, Russell Defreitas has lived a meek existence - at times sleeping in trains and trying to eke out a living running two-bit scams, selling incense on street corners and collecting welfare, acquaintances said.”

Also charged in the indictment are Abdul Kadir, a citizen of Guyana and former member of the Guyanese Parliament, Kareem Ibrahim, a citizen of Trinidad. A fourth defendant, Abdel Nur, also a citizen of Guyana, has yet to be arrested.

A key figure in the alleged plot, however, is named in the indictment only as “the source.” He is identified as a convicted drug trafficker who, in exchange for favourable consideration on a pending jail sentence as well as cash payments, agreed to infiltrate the supposed terrorist cell.

Much of the evidence contained in the indictment consists of recordings of conversations between “the source” and the defendants. What emerges clearly, however, is the leading role this “informant” played in the alleged plot. Defreitas is quoted as saying that they saw him as someone “sent by Allah” to lead them.

The indictment also refers to meetings and recorded conversations between both Defreitas and the source and individuals in Guyana, who are identified only as “Individuals A through F.”

These 6 unnamed men are quoted proposing a wide range of terrorist activity, including smuggling “mujahideen from Asia into Guyana and then into the United States,” blowing up US helicopters at the Guyanese airport and the plan to blow up the JFK fuel system. On this last proposal, these unnamed individuals also suggest the use of dynamite and chemical explosives and advise on how to obtain these materials. One of these individuals also proposes that the plotters seek the assistance of a Trinidadian Islamist group, Jamaat al Muslimeen. In the account of these conversations, Defreitas is not quoted as saying anything.

The obvious question is why have these 6 unnamed “individuals” not been charged. One likely explanation is that they too were, in one form or another, participants in an elaborate effort to ensnare a hapless and sometimes homeless retiree and others in a plot that was fundamentally staged by the US government for its own purposes.

The blood-curdling accounts in the media largely reflected the highly charged language of US prosecutors and police officials in presenting the indictment. Roslynn Mauskopf, the US attorney in Brooklyn, New York, in announcing the charges, said, “Had the plot been carried out, it could have resulted in unfathomable damage, deaths and destruction.” She added, “The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable.”

The words “unfathomable” and “unthinkable” were undoubtedly chosen carefully, as the type of chain reaction of explosions described in the indictment was quite simply impossible. Both airport security officials and pipeline experts dismissed the allegedly catastrophic disaster that supposedly would have been triggered by blowing up a fuel pipeline or storage tanks.

While the federal indictment suggested that such an explosion could travel along the pipelines linking tanks in Linden, New Jersey into Brooklyn, New York and across the borough of Queens, this is impossible, both because the pipelines are equipped with safety valves that shut off the flow of fuel in the event of a leak and because there is inadequate oxygen inside the pipes to sustain a fire.

The New York Times clearly signalled its scepticism about the federal indictment by placing stories on the JFK “plot” on its Metro pages, quoting Neal Sonnett, a defence lawyer and former federal prosecutor, as saying, “There unfortunately has been a tendency to shout too loudly about such cases.”

The Times article went on to say that Sonnett, also a former president of the National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers, “noted that there is a broader risk in overstating the sophistication of a terror plot. At a time when many Americans live in justified fear of an attack, the risk is that drumbeating creates a climate of fear and drives public policy.”

>> which, of course, let us remember, is the precise AIM of any terrorist.

There is every reason to believe that the succession of “terror” cases, each one weaker than the last and virtually all of them driven by “informants” who seem to play more the role of agents provocateur, are aimed at achieving precisely this effect. They serve as a means of intimidating public opinion with fear, justifying attacks on democratic rights and diverting attention from the ongoing debacle in Iraq.

The problem faced by the government is that the public is growing increasingly sceptical about these cases, with a sizeable portion of the population having concluded that they are trumped up for political purposes.

Under these conditions, the danger is that those who now control the reins of power in Washington may be concluding that something more tangible is needed.

On the same day that the alleged JFK “terror plot” broke in the news, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published a revealing interview with that state’s new Republican Party chairman, who described himself as “150% for Bush.”

“At the end of the day,” said state party chairman Dennis Milligan, the owner of a water treatment business, “I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001 ], and the naysayers will come around very quickly...”

The question is whether elements in the Bush administration are reaching similar conclusions and preparing to engineer or allow another round of terrorist attacks “on American soil” as a pretext for suppressing the overwhelming popular opposition to its policies.

www.wsws.org

UP! I just met the bloke who invented crosswords. Can't remember his name, it's P something T something R. [thanks to john morris]

DMA A Brief History

MDMA [3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine: 'Ecstasy'] was first synthesized in 1912 by the German pharmaceutical company Merck. MDMA was patented in Darmstadt, Germany on May 16th 1914, issue number 274,350; and promptly forgotten. Merck's researchers had no idea of the significance of what they had done. Merck were searching for a good vasoconstrictor, a styptic to reduce bleeding. In 1912 two of their chemists, G. Mannish and W. Jacobsohn, created MDMA as a by-product while attempting to synthesise hydrastinin. MDMA is listed on Merck's patent-application merely as a chemical intermediate "for products of potential pharmaceutical value".

MDMA surfaced again briefly as one of a number of agents used in clandestine US military research during the 1950s. The CIA's Project MK-Ultra was investigating new techniques of brainwashing, espionage and mind-control. MDMA, code-named EA-1475, was tested at the US Army's Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. However, unlike LSD or the ill-named "truth drug" scopolamine, MDMA was used only on animals: mice, rats, pigs, monkeys and dogs.

Thankfully, MDMA's military potential was not realised. For although MDMA is no infallible truth-serum, its effects on the human user might indeed be abused for sinister purposes by skilled interrogators. The heightened emotional responsiveness, lowering of defensive barriers, openness and sense of closeness to others induced by MDMA can promote an honesty of self-disclosure that might be manipulated for malign ends. Fortunately, this hasn't yet happened on an organised scale.

The identity of the first human being to take MDMA/Ecstasy isn't known. The drug gained prominence only in the late 1970s. Tipped off by Merrie Kleinman, a graduate student in the medicinal chemistry group he advised at San Francisco State University, the legendary Californian psychedelic chemist Alexander ("Sasha") Shulgin synthesized and taste-tested MDMA at incrementally ascending doses.

>> his regular method.

Ironically, Dr Shulgin had himself synthesized MDMA in 1965, but hadn't tried it, an error of omission he later did much to repair. The effects of a 120mg dose of MDMA are recorded in Dr Shulgin's lab-notes (Sept 1976):

"I feel absolutely clean inside, and there is nothing but pure euphoria. I have never felt so great or believed this to be possible. The cleanliness, clarity, and marvellous feeling of solid inner strength continued throughout the rest of the day and evening. I am overcome by the profundity of the experience..."

In the first published scholarly paper [Shulgin,A.T. & Nichols,D.E.: Characterisation of three new psychotomimetics. In: Stillman,R.C. & Willette,R.E. (Eds.) The Pharmacology of hallucinogens. New York: Pergamon, 1978] on MDMA use in humans, Dr Shulgin and Dr David Nichols describe the effects of MDMA on the human psyche as "an easily controlled altered state of consciousness with emotional and sensual overtones." The well-connected stepfather of MDMA soon introduced the drug to the wider scientific community. Some of Dr Shulgin's friends, notably the "Johnny Appleseed of MDMA", Leo Zeff, were professional therapists. They in turn introduced MDMA to colleagues as a valuable adjunct to psychotherapy.

Later, in 1991, Dr Shulgin and his wife Ann published PiHKAL [Phenethylamines I Have Known And Loved]: A Chemical Love Story. PiHKAL describes the synthesis and systematic testing on human subjects of a range of novel or neglected phenethylamine research drugs. PiHKAL also offers a uniquely sophisticated methodology for human psychopharmacology and the scientific study of mind as an experimental discipline.

By the early 1980s, over a thousand private psychotherapists in the USA were using MDMA in their clinical practice. It was commonly known as "Adam", an allusion to "being returned to the natural state of innocence before guilt, shame and unworthiness arose". MDMA was used discreetly; no one wanted a re-run of the 60s. Dr Shulgin himself reportedly felt MDMA came closest to fulfilling his ambition of finding the perfect psychotherapeutic drug.

Inevitably word leaked out. MDMA was profiled by the San Francisco Chronicle as "The Yuppie Psychedelic" (10 June 1984). In Newsweek, J Adler ["High on 'Ecstasy", April 15 1985] likened his experience to "a year of therapy in two hours". Harpers Bazaar described MDMA as "the hottest thing in the continuing search for happiness through chemistry". Unsurprisingly, MDMA use soon spread beyond the couch and clinic to the wider world. Its now universal brand-name, "Ecstasy", was coined in 1981 by a member of a Los Angeles distribution network. The unnamed distributor, quoted in Bruce Eisner's Ecstasy:The MDMA Story (1989), apparently chose the name "Ecstasy" because "it would sell better than calling it 'Empathy'. 'Empathy' would be more appropriate, but how many people know what it means?" Condemned by purists as a cynical marketing ploy, the brand-name "Ecstasy" isn't wholly misleading [ecstasy: "an overpowering emotion or exaltation; a state of sudden intense feeling. Rapturous delight. The frenzy of poetic inspiration. Mental transport or rapture from the contemplation of divine things"]. Many first-time MDMA users do indeed become ecstatic. Some people report feeling truly well for the first time in their lives.

In the early 1980s, American production of MDMA beyond the research laboratory was effectively controlled by chemists known as the "Boston Group". Somewhat incongruously, MDMA was especially popular in Texas, where the Southwest distributor for the Boston Group launched his own commercial operation. Mass-production by the so-called "Texas Group" began in 1983; supply (and demand) soon mushroomed. Ecstasy was distributed openly in bars and nightclubs in Dallas and Fort Worth. It could be purchased via toll-free 800-numbers by credit card. The drug was even marketed via pyramid-style selling-schemes. Ecstasy could be bought in little bottles at convenience stores under the label "Sassafras", a tongue-in-cheek allusion to the botanical origins of its precursor.

>> my information is that it started to really first take off in the gay scene.

The DEA reacted by petitioning to have MDMA banned altogether. In 1985 the drug-warriors succeeded in having it made Schedule One, one is the most restricted of all drug categories i.e. MDMA had allegedly "no legitimate medical use or manufacturer" in the USA; it lacked safety for use even under medical supervision; and it carried a "high potential for abuse". But by then MDMA's fame had spread across the Atlantic. It had metamorphosed from "Adam", the psychotherapeutic tool, to "Ecstasy", the dance drug.

>>dancing being, of course, one of the finest forms of therapy for Westerners:)

MDMA was first introduced to Europe via the sannyasins, disciples of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Interestingly, "Sannyasa" is Sanskrit for complete or perfect renunciation. Cult members slipped MDMA into the drinks of rich sympathisers to open up their hearts and their wallets.

>> imagine what the CIA would have done with it!

Ecstasy became associated with the birth of Acid House music in the Spanish tourist resort of Ibiza. By the summer of '86, Ibiza was popularly known as "XTC Island". Returning tourists and disc-jockeys took the message back home. The UK's rave scene was born. Hundreds of thousands of tablets were consumed each weekend in the famous "Summer of Love" (1988). The Conservative Government and its allies in the British press were aghast. A moral panic set in at the threat to the nation's youth. MDA, MDEA, MDMA and assorted psychedelic amphetamines had been outlawed in the UK since 1977. Yet the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 sought to criminalise an entire youth-culture by suppressing music played publicly with "sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats".

Soon production and distribution of the world's leading empathogen-entactogen fell into the hands of organised crime. By the turn of the millennium, perhaps 80-90% of the world's MDMA was manufactured in Belgium and the Netherlands. Russian-Israeli syndicates and Eastern European chemists are now increasingly active too. The expertise needed in MDMA production varies according to the route of synthesis. Over 20 recipes have been described in the literature. Only 7 are common. Clandestine production is easiest starting with MDP2P. MDP2P (3,4-methylenedioxyphenyl-2-propanone) is a commercial product used by the flavouring and fragrance industry. Groups with access to MDP2P can make MDMA via a simple conversion process. Otherwise, MDMA must be synthesized from piperonal, isosafrole, or safrole. These primary precursor chemicals of MDMA are produced in India, China, Poland, Germany, and increasingly elsewhere. Typically, safrole or isosafrole are first converted to MDP2P. The essential oil safrole occurs naturally as the primary constituent of oil of sassafras. Oil of sassafras is found in the root-bark of US East Coast tree Sassafras albidum and from the above-ground woody parts of the South American tree Ocotea pretiosa. Safrole is also present in nutmeg (Myristica fragrans), dill, parsley seed, crocus, saffron, vanilla beans, and calamus.

Early in the 3^rd millennium, an estimated several million people worldwide were taking Ecstasy and allied research chemicals each month on college campuses, in high schools and on dance-floors. Purity varies; perhaps 10%-15% of tablets consumed contain MDMA as the sole active ingredient. Illicit knowledge of the "penicillin of the soul" is spreading rapidly around the world, but in corrupt and contaminated form.

http://www.mdma.net/#ecstasy

[NEXT UP! - MDMA The Experience]

UP! This policeman came up to me with a pencil and a piece of very thin paper and said, "I want you to trace someone for me." [thanks to john morris]

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 the UP! is a global edutainment round-up, broadcast weekly to =[13,035]=
Alternative// Activist// Zippy// Trance// New Age// Peace folks
recommended to the Parallel YOUniversity// Megatripolis Dance Dept as
 "showing signs of life".  Since recipients forward it widely to their own lists & sites
we conservatively estimate 50,000+ direct recipients.
A further 40,000 read it on the YOUniversity's site.
And, because of its 'mix' of 'specialist' & 'general' content,
   it's increasingly being posted on a variety of sites worldwide,
making an estimated total weekly readership of =[275,000]=

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Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

William Rivers Pitt

June 14 is going to be a big day, it’s the date that Lewis "Scooter" Libby will hear the outcome of his appeals process. Bush's decision on whether to pardon Libby presents, "perhaps the most dangerous tipping point facing the Bush administration." Does Bush pardon Libby to avoid "the kind of terminal public backlash Nixon absorbed after the firing of Archibald Cox during the Watergate scandal," or should he avoid pardoning Libby and risk Libby's decision to "escape prison by telling Fitzgerald what he knows?"

>> as well as scaring the other lying thugs around him to make their own ‘arrangements’. that’s the biggest.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/060707R.shtml

up!

Bush Envisions US Presence in Iraq for 50 Years

Bush would like to see a lengthy US troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea where the US has had thousands of US troops for 50 years to guard against a North Korean invasion. Iraq's neighbours have raised concerns about the possibility of the US maintaining permanent bases in Iraq, and some US lawmakers think the Iraqi insurgency may have been fuelled by perceptions that the United States wants a permanent presence in the country.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/053107J.shtml

UP!

Marijuana March Activists Brutalised by Moscow Police

Eugene Kazachenko, Moscow, May 6, 2007

>> didn’t read about it anywhere among all the gay parade news?

Today my friends from the annual Marijuana March were arrested as they were trying to unfurl a banner calling for marijuana legalisation. The goal of the march was for medical marijuana legalisation. Now there are people arrested. The police were very cruel, and have arrested about 20 marijuana activists.

With fear for life of our brothers and sisters, my friends and I are receiving periodical news on the radio station Ekcho Moskvy ("The Echo of Moscow"). This is the only free radio channel which really informs on social and political life in Russia. It reports that police have placed people face on the ground, have dragged girls onto the ground and have beaten young men. Policemen have banged young mens’ faces against parked cars, and in the police department one young activist was beaten so badly they had to call an ambulance.

Federal Service of drug control representatives have charged all activists on the Marijuana March of making propaganda for narcotics. Some policemen are trying to plant drugs on activists, and no attorney was allowed to visit his clients. Indeed a policeman with a sub-machine-gun did not allow attorneys to even enter the police department.

The Marijuana March was organised by the Cannabis Legalisation League. At this moment all the marijuana activists are being held in Presnentsky administrative (misdemeanour) court of Moscow (phone number of this court: +7 495 254-53-59). They are accused of undertaking unsanctioned meetings. This government position breaks 31 articles of The Constitutions of Russian Federation and Public International law.

Though many religions concern themselves with rehabilitation and spiritual counselling for drug abusers, they never call attention to the actual position of medical cannabis. Regrettably Christians and other Russian religions do not raise a voice on rights protection for drugs consumers from unjustified state repression.

Eugene Kazachenko, MDiv of Moscow Theological Seminary.

http://www.hempevolution.org/media/stopthedrugwar/s070506.htm

UP! I visited the offices of the RSPCA today. It's so tiny, you couldn't swing a cat in there! [thanks to john morris]

July 1 ~ 7

2007 Annual Rainbow Gathering

The 2007 Annual Rainbow Gathering of Living Light will be celebrated July 1st through July 7th. Consensus at the 2006 Annual Vision Counsel was that the 2007 Annual Rainbow Gathering of Living Light will be held in either Arkansas, Oklahoma or Texas.

Currently there are folks in Arkansas focalising scouting efforts along the Buffalo River. Word at this time is there will be several Holding camps in that area as well as other locations as soon as the Ozarks Spring Regional is over. Look for more information on the holding camps and a call for Vision Counsel soon.

For local potlucks, regional gatherings, campouts and other good news please surf to the Community Calendar, The Rainbow Guide or look in the Forum under the state you are looking for information about.

http://welcomehere.org/2007/news.php

UP! I phoned the local ramblers club today and this bloke just went on and on and on. [thanks to john morris]

FEEDBACK.

>> oh why in goddess’ name do i STILL fall for this lying self-serving shit!?

Some would ask this question in connection with the lies of the official story of 9/11....

Ken Jenkins, LA.

>> fair comment :) tho it doesn't prove anything.

UP! I phoned the local gym and I asked if they could teach me how to do the splits. He said, "How flexible are you?" I said, "I can't make Tuesdays or Thursdays." [thanks to john morris]

DOGS & Festivals FEEDBACK.

>>> i loathe the idea that festivals can only spread by self-emasculating along the way. we MUST find the right way forward or we shall end up with yuppie jamborees, whether it’s by insisting all dogs wear muzzles or they get licensed at 24 hour test camps before being allowed in.

So do I, this stuff gives me the right hump. I will boycott any 'event' that does not allow dogs to be freely with masters (oh and mistresses). They'll be making us chip children next, and imposing inspections on the food - inspectors 'sponsored by Monsanto'.

>> a very correct point :)

And while they are at it the lighting will zap all big insects, and the odd tiny hand. Special chip bootee overshoes for adults - padlocked on of course since we are all submersible under the influence of appearances by celebs and disney much-larger-than-decent Mickey Mice.... with guitars.

any more for any more?

Jackie, West Hampstead, London.

up!

actually fraser its the police that bans dogs from festivals, and on several grounds, its likely that the agreement to hold the festival would have included a specification that a no dogs policy would be enforced before they issued the license - i.e. no dogs or no festival. i work in festivals and i know i signed an agreement with the police to this effect quite recently.

Bernadette Valelly, Liverpool

>> well i’ve been pretty involved in festivals over the years and i never came across such in my time. what motive would the police have? hygiene? chasing sheep? i can see the farmer landlord taking an attitude - and quite rightly so, up to a point - but... ?

UP! When I told my girlfriend I had a job in a bowling alley, she said "Tenpin?"

"No, it's a permanent job" I told her. [thanks to john morris]

the single biggest israeli lie, FEEDBACK

>>> parroted for decades by every israel-supporter, is that the surrounding arab states attacked first.

Hey fraser, don’t forget the Israeli attack on Egypt (almost certainly with the Backing of France and probably UK) that acted as an excuse for the Suez war.

Jeff Lewis, Brighton, UK.
UP! So this lorry full of tortoises collided with a van full of terrapins. A turtle disaster. [thanks to john morris]

Fraser, could you resend UP! 252?

Enjoy your writing, but my server "filtered it" and put it in another format. I have received your newsletter for years w/out any problems. I look forward to it and linked to it on my educational website on sustainable culture w/ around 1,000 links. unifiedcommunity.info Keep up your fine work.

From the left coast republic of Santa Cruz.

Paul Gaylon, Santa Cruz, California.

UP! This blond Swedish bloke with a didgeridoo was playing Dancing Queen. Abbariginal, right? [thanks to john morris]

a l l g o o d t h i n g s c o m e t o a n e n d

which don't justify nuttin'

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UP! "Eurostar?" asked the driver when I asked for a train ticket. "Well,” I said modestly: “I've been on telly but I'm no Dean Martin". [thanks to john morris]