isto é um vídeo do exército britânico testando lsd como forma de aumentar a resistência dos soldados no campo de batalha. a parte em que o soldado abandona o posto e sobe numa árvore para “alimentar os passarinhos” é hilária.

vale lembrar que medidas proibitivas em relação às drogas, em grande medida, ganharam força apenas depois que perceberam que a maioria delas não poderia ser usada como instrumento bélico. no vietnã, por exemplo, os soldados americanos consumiam maconha, heroína (nessa parte do globo a oferta era vasta) e lsd para entrar em combate.

mas em plena efervecência dos anos 60 isso apenas causava mais tensões entre os soldados que questionavam a guerra sem propósitos sendo que muitos acabaram “enlouquecendo” e até praticando o chamado fogo-amigo. ou seja, soldados americanos atirando em colegas em pleno campo de batalha. sem falar em casos de estupro de civis inocentes, desobediência, abandono de funções e deserções. alguém aí lembrou de “apocalipse now”, “full metal jacket”, “platoon”, etc?

este conjunto de fatores resultou na famosa “guerra contra as drogas” instituída pelo presidente nixon. que nada mais era do que uma cruzada hipócrita (e racista) visando interesses particulares. aproveito para abrir um parêntese para uma citação ao livro “contracultura através dos tempos” de dan joy e ken goffman. livro este que já estou para comentar há muito tempo por aqui mas que a (falta de) memória e/ou a preguiça me impediram. fica para uma outra hora.
mas recomendo com força.

“com a posse de nixon, no início de 1969, aumentaram as condições para a guerra cultural e o conflito político, assim como cresceu a guerra no vietnã. o novo presidente anunciou a “guerra às drogas” (uma herança que permanece até hoje), aprovando a lei “sem bater”, que permitia que a polícia invadisse as casas de suspeitos de posse de drogas sem aviso. (hoje nós consideramos isso normal, mas antigamente era comum que os agentes da lei batessem e anunciassem que tinham um mandado de busca).

(…) embora grande parte da repressão fosse, sem dúvida, uma reação natural de agentes da lei machistas às provocações de esquisitões negros, também estava em ação um grande programa secreto do governo dos estados unidos para espionar, enquadrar e, em pelo menos uma ocasião, assassinar radicais e/ou hippies. revelado mais tarde como resultado de uma investigação relacionada ao caso watergate, o programa era chamado de COINTELPRO e, com o governo nixon assumindo o poder, aproximadamente 250 mil novos esquerdistas, líderes hippies e até mesmo democratas liberais, além de astros do rock e outras personalidades, foram sujeitadas a um programa de estrita vigilância pelo FBI, que incluía infiltrações. além disso, nixon tinha uma “lista de inimigos” particular, composta principalmente de liberais e quase todos os seus críticos nos grandes meios de comunicação. a lista seria repassada para o IRS que, sem dúvida, sabia o que fazer.

(…) como foi revelado nas audiências do church committee em 1975 e por documentos posteriormente liberados com base na lei de liberdade de informação, a grande opressão de j. edgar hoover nos anos 1960 era impedir o crescimento da liderança política negra, e ele se concentrou em acabar com os panteras negras, que tinham se tornado heróis populares dos negros nos guetos. a maior parte do esforço do programa COINTELPRO do FBI era dirigido contra aquele partido. todos os diretórios tinham sido fortemente infiltrados com agentes que tentavam (com algum sucesso) levá-los a participar de atos de violência ilegais. cartas falsas eram enviadas de um membro do partido para outro, de modo a (com sucesso) provocar lutas internas. dezenas de membros do partido foram enquadrados, e pelo menos dois, fred hampton e mark clark, foram mortos a sangue-frio pela polícia de chicago enquanto dormiam.”

daí para começar a acreditar nas suspeitas de que elvis presley (logo quem) fosse um agente infiltrado do FBI no combate às drogas (inclusive delatando, primeiro os beatles - de modo a tentar reaver, de forma suja, seu reinado nas paradas de sucesso -  e posteriormente john lennon e sua ligação com líderes revolucionários, pacifistas e “gurus das drogas” tais como abbie hoffman e timothy leary) não custa, né?

hoje em dia é sabido que, por debaixo do pano, o exército americano (pelo menos durante a gestão de bush filho) testou drogas  em seus soldados no iraque e afeganistão de modo a aumentar o rendimento no deserto. sem falar nos soldados que se viciam em anfetaminas e outras substâncias depois que voltam da guerra, seja por causa do trauma ou para evitar a “cold turkey”.

Robert Graves

“There’s nothing classy or poetic about opium. It has the same effect as morphine and heroin. You get relaxed and energetic at the same time. Problems become unimportant. You feel sleepy, but if you go to bed you lie awake. You itch all over. You get constipated. You get hungry, especially for sweets. You get patient and understanding. You get nice…..an opium high can be described in one word: comfortable. It’s weird that people get to where they’ll give up their souls for stuff that just makes them comfortable.”
…………………………………………………………………….Eric Detzer

“Everywhere and at all times, men and women have sought, and duly found, the means of taking a holiday from the reality of their generally dull and often acutely unpleasant existence. A holiday out of space, out of time, in the eternity of sleep or ecstasy, in the heaven or the limbo of visionary fantasy.”
…………………………………………………………………….Aldous Huxley. “A Treatise on Drugs”

“Over the centuries our Hindu philosophers have seen everything come and go. Empires, religions, famines, good times, invasions, reforms, liberators, repressors….and drugs. Drugs are among the most influential and dangerous powers available to humans. They open up glorious and pleasurable chambers in the mind. They give great power. Thus they can seduce the searcher away from the path.”
……………………………………………………………………Sri Krishna Preem

“Why, the slave trade was merciful compared with the opium trade. We did not destroy the bodies of the Africans, for it was our immediate interest to keep them alive; we did not debase their natures, corrupt their minds, nor destroy their souls. But the opium seller slays the body after he has corrupted, degraded and annihilated the moral being of unhappy sinners, While every hour is bringing new victims to a Moloch which knows no satiety, and where the English murderer and Chinese suicide vie with each other in offerings at his shrine.”
……………………..quoted by Karl Marx in an article, Opium or Commerce, Sept 20, 1858

“The Way of Heaven is fairness to all; it does not suffer us to harm others to benefit ourselves. Men are alike in this in all the World; for they cherish life and hate what endangers life. O majesty, control your wicked. O, Majesty, you can order the opium not to be grown, the fields hoed over, and sown instead with the five grains, and thus show the sincerity of your politeness, and humility, so our countries may have peace, together.”
…………………………..Letter of Lin Tse Hsu about the opium trade to Queen Victoria, 1839

“Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.”
…………………………………………………………………….Jean Cocteau

“Oh, jab me with your needle a hundred times and a hundred times I will bless you, Saint Morphine.”
…………………………………………………………………….Jules Verne

“Woe to you, my princess, when I come. I will kiss you quite red and feed you till you are plump. And if you are forward you shall see who is the stronger, a little girl who doesn’t eat enough or a big strong man with cocaine in his body. In my last serious depression I took cocaine again and a small dose lifted me to the heights in a wonderful fashion. I am just now collecting the literature for a song of praise to this magical substance.”
…………………………………………………………………….Sigmund Freud

“If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you’re out of your mind….If you think you need stuff to play music or sing, you’re crazy. It can fix you so you can’t play nothing or sing nothing.”
…………………………………………………………………….Billie Holliday

“All excess is ill, but drunkenness is of the worst sort: it spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans men; it reveals secrets, is quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous, and mad. In fine, he that is drunk is not a man, because he is so long void of reason, that distinguishes a man from a beast.”
…………………………………………………………………….William Penn

“The Times reports that a new study has found that the use of such stimulants and antidepressants as Ritalin has increased dramatically in the past few years, not merely among hyperactive preteens and teens, but now among preschoolers. We’re talking about two-,three, and four-year-olds. Babies! Prozac is also being prescribed….to these tiny tykes!”
…………………………………………………………………….Jim Hightower

“Prohibition, a dismal failure, not only increased law-breaking, but also created a criminal class that turned to gambling, drugs, and prostitution when the 18th Amendment was finally repealed in 1933.”
…………………………………………………………………….George Bruce Woodin

“The drug war is just a U.S. excuse to control our countries.”
……………………………………………Evo Morales (Bolivian Presidential Candidate Aug,2002)

“When we finally decide that drug prohibition has been not more successful than alcohol prohibition, the drug dealers will disappear.”
………………………………………………………….Ron Paul (Republican Congressman Texas)

“No stars were visible in the long night of the opium habit.”
…………………………………………………………………….William Cobbe

“Narcotics in Hollywood is a complete story unto itself, and it finds parallels with the world of stage and music, all of which received unprecedented attention from magazines and newspapers; reading them now, one gets the impression that the world had succumbed to an epidemic of addiction.

“In spite of, or perhaps because of the evidence of misery, corruption and waste, our fascination with opium persists to this day. Stereotype-shattering contradictions such as the ease with which strict Victorians accommodated drug habitués throw into question our notions of pre-twentieth century lives, habits and values and in doing so, help clarify our present-day attitudes towards drugs and drug addiction. And though we may try to shake off the myth of the Morphean slumber and the promise of profound dreams and boundless creativity, it’s doubtful that opium will ever let us”.
…………………………………………………………………….Barbara Hodgson

“We are making these drugs for Satan-Americans and Jews. If we cannot kill them with guns, we will kill them with drugs.”
…………………………………………………………………….Fatwa of Hezbollah

“I remember someone saying if you try heroin once you’ll become hooked. Of course I laughed and scoffed at the idea but I now believe this to be true.”
…………………………………………………………………….Kurt Cobain

“Opium, horrible and blessed connection of pleasure, destroys our organs and senses. The healthy appetite and the bourgeois sensation of feeling good and tired have to be sacrificed. The eyes water, the ears ring. Objects, printed words, people look faded. Sounds and words wander randomly in the tiny mechanisms of the organs of hearing.”
…………………………………………………………………….Gezu Csath

“Intoxication is not unnatural or deviant. Absolute sobriety is not a natural or primary human state.”
…………………………………………………………………….Richard Davenport-Hines

“According to one analysis, retail sales of illegal heroin, cocaine, and marijuana generate close to $27 billion, with an unreported illegal income of about $21 billion. Illicit sales of all drugs have been estimated as high as $75 billion. Any way you cut it, that’s big business. Three groups have a vested interest in keeping it that way: Organized crime, terrorists, and drug enforcement agencies all make their living off drugs….”
…………………………………………………………………….Georgette Bennet

“In the roster of pop-culture medical doctors who don’t reflect well on the profession, includes the character of Dr. Henry Jekyll, created by Robert Lewis Stevenson. Jekyll’s self-medication experiments turned him into the sociopathic Mr. Edward Hyde, with fatal side effects. After dreaming the story, Stevenson, despite suffering from tuberculosis, wrote the 60,000-word classic in a six-day, cocaine-fueled frenzy.”
…………………………………………………………………….Erin Barrett & Jack Mingo

“The Incas believed that the Gods presented coca to the people to satisfy their hunger, to provide them with new vigor, and to help them forget their miseries…..It was intimately involved in their religious ceremonies and in the various initiation rites; and that shamans used it to induce a trance-like state in order to commune with the spirits. It was a far too important commodity to be used by the common Indians, and their exposure to coca was very limited before the invasion by Pizarro and his conquistadors.”
…………………………………………………………………….John Mann

“There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman.”
………………………………………………………………Andre Malraux, Man’s Fate

“Picture yourself in a boat on a river,
with tangerine trees and marmalade skies…”
………………………………………….John Lennon

“During World War II (1941-45), President Franklin D. Roosevelt legitimized smoking by declaring tobacco an essential wartime crop. Even Army training manuals of the day urged leaders to “smoke and make your troopers smoke.” Gen. Douglas MacArthur himself demanded a better supply of tobacco in the soldier’s daily ration. He ordered that $10 million raised for the war effort “be used to purchase American cigarettes, which, of all personal comforts, are the most difficult to obtain here.”
…………………………………………………………………….Tara Parker-Pope

“a deep dichotomy between reason and irrationality can be seen in the world’s tremendous appetite for alcohol and caffeine. Alcohol is the liberator of the irrational. Caffeine is the stimulator of the rational. It would appear that the human spirit craves both poles and turns to these most familiar of drugs to achieve those ends.”
………………………………………………………………………………...Braun

The Science and love of Alcohol and Caffeine

Thanks be to God, since my leaving drinking of wine, I do find myself much better, and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company.”
…………………………………………………………………….Samuel Pepys

By the early 1960s, though, something bigger was afoot than whether or not LSD was a truth drug. The public was discovering the wonders of the CIA’s brainwashing drugs, and attitudes towards hallucinogens in the United States were shifting.

The shift had resulted partly from the fateful chain of events set in motion in September 1952, when Robert Graves had alerted Gordon Wasson to the existence of teonanacatl, the ‘Flesh of God.’ This stage had culminated in 1957 with the publication of “The Discovery of Mushrooms that Cause Strange Visions” in Life magazine. That year, Graves visited Wasson in New York, and the two men spent an evening listening to a recording of Maria Sabina’s mushroom ceremony. This, wrote Graves, was “the most exciting event” of his stay in the United States.

On 31 January, 1960, the pair listened to the recording again, this time after they had eaten some mushrooms. Graves found the experience revelatory. A week later he wrote to Wasson that “this was not merely a red letter day but a day marked with all the colours of the rainbow.” The mushrooms, he said, had broken down the barriers in his consciousness with the result that “I am now able to see pictures in my mind far more clearly than I did before.” He concluded that the sacred mushrooms should be distributed across Europe and America. “Why reserve these drugs for the mentally sick?” he wrote. “They should be given to the mentally whole. Especially to poets and artists.”

Four months later he indulged again, this time taking synthetic psilocybin tables made by Albert Hofmann at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. On 8 July, 1960, he reported to his friend William Sargant that the synthetic product did not compare favorably to the real thing. “Don’t be deceived,” he told the psychiatrist. “It has left out the magical principle and sends you to Coney Island not to Eden (like the other).”
…………………………………………………………………….Dominic Streatfeild

I took Peyote in the mountains of Mexico and I had a dose of it that lasted two or three days with the Tarahumara, and at the time those three days seemed like the happiest days of my life.

I had stopped tormenting myself, trying to find a reason for my life, and I had stopped having to carry my body around.

I realized that I was inventing life, that that was my function and rason d’etre, and that I suffered when my imagination failed, and Peyote gave it to me.”

…………………………………………………………………….Antonin Artaud

A note on Peyote.

“Wow, I have learned more in six hours than in the last sixteen years!”
…………………………………………………………Timothy Leary in a letter to Arthur Koestler

“I have been born again. I have just been through a psychiatric experience that has completely changed me. It was horrendous, I had to face things about myself that I never admitted. I was an utter fake, a self-opinionated bore, a know-all who knew very little.”
………………………………………………………………….Cary Grant

“…the young men have a rude health which runs into peccant humours. They drink brandy like water. They chew hasheesh….taste every poison….”
……………………………………………………………Emerson, Essay on English Traits

Why Marijuana?

“It makes you feel good, man. It relaxes you, makes you forget all the bad things that happen to a Negro. It makes you feel wanted, and when you’re with another tea smoker it makes you feel a special sense of kinship.”
…………………………………………………………………….Louis Armstrong

“Which is better: to have Fun with Fungi or to have Idiocy with Ideology, to have Wars because of Words, to have Tomorrow’s Misdeeds out of Yesterday’s Miscreeds?”
…………………………………………………………………….Aldous Huxley

“If alcohol is queen, then tobacco is her consort. It’s a fond companion for all occasions, a loyal friend through fair weather and foul. People smoke to celebrate a happy moment, or to hide a bitter regret. Whether you’re alone or with friends, it’s a joy for all the senses. What lovelier sight is there than that double row of white cigarettes, lined up like soldiers on parade and wrapped in silver paper?….I love to touch the pack in my pocket, open it, savor the feel of the cigarette between my fingers, touch the paper on my lips, the taste of tobacco on my tongue, love to watch the flame spurt up, love to watch it come closer and closer, filling me with its warmth.”
…………………………………………………………………….Luis Bunuel

“Intelligent people discussing interesting things in an intelligible manner. Quite a concept. Steele’s newsletter became Tatler, the first modern magazine; his idea of correspondents and sections provided the prototype for the modern newspaper, the one institution that all agree is essential for a vital democracy (London’s second oldest newspaper is Lloyds News, which began as a bulletin board in Lloyd’s Coffeehouse.) Small wonder that pamphleteers of the time wrote that “coffee and commonwealth came in together…..to make a free and sober nation.” Coffee-houses had made civilized conversation into a popular sport.”
…………………………………………………………………….Stewart Lee Allen

The Devils Cup

“It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects….Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished by beer, and the king does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied on.”
…………………………………………………………………….Frederick the Great

“For this sparkling outburst, there is no doubt that honor should be ascribed in part to the great event which created new customs and even modified human temperament-the advent of coffee….which brings forth the sparkle and the sunlight of truth.”
…………………………………………………………………….Michelet

“One need only compare the violent coffee-drinking societies of the West to the peace-loving tea drinker of the Orient to realize the pernicious and malignant effect that bitter brew has upon the human soul.”
…………………………………………………………………….Hindu dietary tract

“When the sweet Poison of the Treacherous Grape
Had acted on the world a general rape…..
Coffee arrives, that grave and wholesome liquor
That heals the stomach and makes the genius quicker.”
…………………………………………………………………….anonymous Puritan (1674)

Aside from sobering up the workplace, coffeehouses gave Brits an alternative to taverns in which to meet and talk. Taverns were not the safest place to discuss politics or religion. Everybody was armed or drunk, usually both, and proprietors sensibly discouraged heated discussions. Coffeehouses, on the other hand, encouraged political debate, which was precisely why King Charles II banned them in 1675 (he withdrew the ban in eleven days).

“At breakfast Beethoven drank coffee, which he usually prepared himself in a percolator. Coffee seems to have been the nourishment with which he could least dispense and in his procedure with regard to its preparation he was as careful as the Orientals are known to be. Sixty beans to a cup was the allotment and the beans were often counted out exactly, Especially when guests were present.”

…………………………………………………………………….Anton Schindler

Dear Arthur,

Things are happening here which I think will interest you. The big, new, hot issue these days in many American circles is DRUGS. Have you been tuned in on the noise?

I stumbled on the scene in a most holy manner. Spent last summer in Mexico. Anthropologist friend arrived one weekend with a bag of mushrooms. Magic mushrooms. I had never heard of them, but being a good host joined the crowd who ate them. Wow! Learned more in six hours than in the past sixteen years. Visual transformations. Gone the perceptual machinery which clutters up our view of reality. Intuitive transformations. Gone the mental machinery which slices the world up into abstractions and concepts. Emotional transformations. Gone the emotional machinery that causes us to load life with our own role-ambitions and petty desires.

Came back to the USA and have spent last six months pursuing these matters. Working with Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts, Allen Ginsberg the poet. We believe that the synthetics of peyote (mescalin) and the mushrooms (psilocybin) offer possibilities for expanding consciousness, changing perceptions, removing abstractions.

For the person who is prepared, they provide a soul-wrenching mystical experience. Remember your enlightenments in the Franco prison? Very similar to what we are producing. We have had cases of housewives understanding, experiencing satori describing it –who have never heard of Zen.

There are inevitable political-sociological complications. The expected groups are competing to see who should control the new drugs. Medicine and psychiatry are in the forefront. Psychiatric investigators (hung up as they are on their own abstractions) interpret the experience as PSYCHOTIC- and think they are producing model-psychosis. Then too, the cops and robbers game has started. Organized bohemia (and don’t tell me it ain’t organized, with rituals as rigid as those of the Masoic order) is moving in. There is the danger that mescalin and psilocybin will go the way of marijuana ( a perfectly mild, harmless, slightly mind-opening substance, as you know). And of course the narcotics bureau hopes that it will go the same way–so they can play out their side of the control game.

We are working to keep these drugs free and uncontrolled. Two tactics. We are offering the experience to distinguished creative people. Artists, poets, writers, scholars. We’ve learned a tremendous amount by listening to them tell us what they have learned from the experience.

We are also trying to build these experiences in a holy and serious way into university curricula. I’ve got approval to run a seminar here–graduate students will take the mushrooms regularly and spend a semester working through, organizing and systematizing the results. Its hard for me to see how anyone can consider himself a theologian, psychologist, behavioral scientist if he had not had this experience.

So how does it sound? If you are interested I’ll send some mushrooms over to you. Or if you’ve already been involved I’d like to hear about your reaction. I’ll be in London around June 8th and would like to tell you more about the cosmic crusade.

The memory of our weekend last winter remains as an intellectual and emotional highspot.

………………………………………………………Best Regards to you,
………………………………………………………………..T.L

………………………………………………..from the Letters collection on Leary.ru
………………………………………………..also see Tim Leary Correspondence on Archive.org

Do NOT Stop Spreading these Videos!

The Salvation of 3 Generations could depend on it!

1. Go to GoodFight Theater! http://www.theater.goodfight.org

 Check out the AWESOME exposes and eye-opening clarity of the surprising spiritual motivations of entertainers! You will want to spread the news and the link, and order the dvds… then go to these youtube videos and spread them like a virus! The salvation of your generation depends partly on the LABORERS. We are going to wear satan out with God’s Grace & Truth just like he tries to wear us out with his sin & lies!

2
ICP think they sold their soul to the devil… But Jesus Blood is powerful and can still redeem their soul into life, before they die.The Mercy of the Lord endures forever, and His Truth endures to every Generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-_3-YB2XMo

3
MTV and Madonna and Eminem and Method Man and Jimi Hendrix and Garth Brooks and Kid Rock think they sold their soul to the devil… But Jesus Blood is powerful and can still redeem their soul into life, before they die.

The Mercy of the Lord endures forever, and His Truth endures to every Generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKfGNEuGWMo

4
Dr. Dre, Eminem and others think they sold their soul to the devil… But Jesus Blood is powerful and can still redeem their soul into life, before they die.The Mercy of the Lord endures forever, and His Truth endures to every Generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oify6AtKkFs

5
Korn and Ozzy Osbourne and Frank Zappa and Limp Bizkit and Red Hot Chili Peppers think they sold their soul to the devil… But Jesus Blood is powerful and can still redeem their soul into life, before they die.The Mercy of the Lord endures forever, and His Truth endures to every Generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRPxkkP-ZGM

6
Do you realize the satanic plan in secular music and in the United Nations is the same plan that God foiled in Genesis 11. Why are these people doing it again? They will fail again!
Pick your team! Kingdom or Babylon!
Go hard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMDF4_zekbM

7
Carlos Santana, David Koresh, Jim Jones, Hitler, have a lot in common… But Jesus Blood is powerful and can still redeem their soul into life, before they die.
The Mercy of the Lord endures forever, and His Truth endures to every Generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wv9ldtDGds

8
This clip tells the story of Robert Johnson, a Black man who is called ‘THE FATHER OF ROCK & ROLL’ admitted that he sold his soul to satan in the 1950s. The roots of rock in satanism…  But Jesus Blood is powerful and can still redeem their soul into life, before they die.
The Mercy of the Lord endures forever, and His Truth endures to every Generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Aml1RZsxqw

9
Robert Johnston blues star and founder of Rock, actually sold his soul to satan. This is the root of the secular music you listen to. That’s why it does what it does to your soul. satanism…  But Jesus Blood is powerful and can still redeem their soul into life, before they die.
The Mercy of the Lord endures forever, and His Truth endures to every Generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvMfM_87tec

10
Eazy E, Bone Thugs & Harmony, Snoop Dogg, Method Man, Master P, DMX, Three 6 Mafia, and others think they think they sold their soul to the devil… But Jesus Blood is powerful and can still redeem their soul into life, before they die.
The Mercy of the Lord endures forever, and His Truth endures to every Generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC0WRXRrp2w

11
Wow… this guys testimony is amazing. He actually was writing music for satan when God delivered him! From Elvis to today… Jesus Blood is powerful and can still redeem their soul into life, before they die.
The Mercy of the Lord endures forever, and His Truth endures to every Generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p0MruAg8wM

12
More mind-blowing footage about Elvis, Backstreet Boys, Christina Aguilera, and other stars that masked themselves as harmless. Jesus Blood is powerful and can still redeem their soul into life, before they die.
The Mercy of the Lord endures forever, and His Truth endures to every Generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yusiv3JDng

13
Singers like Spice Girls and Brittney Spears teach children to reject God’s laws and their parents laws like “Keep your mouth shut Keep your legs shut” Jesus Blood is powerful and can still redeem their soul into life, before they die.
The Mercy of the Lord endures forever, and His Truth endures to every Generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJCWydWB9tY

15
The Truth about Elvis Presley… he was not a Christian. His bodyguards, the “Memphis Mafia” reveal his demonic forces and deception.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX7FJgtOti8

16
The Truth about Elvis Presley… he was not a Christian. He was deep into occult and actually thought he was a false christ and read from satanist Madame Blavatsky at his concerts! Also notice how SIMILAR Michael Jackson’s life ended the same way Elvis did – with PILLS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8AOzOvXwu4

17
More on Elvis… and Jerry Lewis actually condemns himself to Hell, he thought he sold his soul to satan. I wish he had repented before he died. Same thing with Little Richard. They don’t know how merciful Jesus Christ is!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0wHc10VGMw
19
Most rock & roll artists have been influenced by Aliester Crowley… he taught drugs, sex, and “Imma Do Me.” In order to promote satanism and the Anti-Christ. How Timothy Leary and the Beatles helped spread satanism.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6vLnAYjK2A

20
How Aliester Crowley sowed seeds of satanic discipleship (Harry Hayes and Dr. Alfred Kinsey) for the sexual revolution and how promotion of homosexuality and the rape of little boys is related to the Anti-Christ.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnNkmNPptk0

21
HOw the Beatles promoted satanism under the influence of Aliester Crowley… they brought yoga (yoking yourself to a demon) to America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGy0Sk80amQ

22
“Making Movies is casting spells…” how the Rolling Stones and the Beatle helped promote satanism in 1967…. the end of this is DEEP!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgOzb_1wjig

23
Let’s look at the FRUIT of satanism, idolatry, and rebellion against God, from 1967. NOT Freedom- addictions, broken lives, sexual diseases, suicides, abortions, and broken families
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRcHT14oQr8

25
How drugs are related to witchcraft. Jimi Hendrix testifies to his servanthood to satan. Whoever is taken captive to this, there is still time. Jesus Blood is powerful and can still redeem their soul into life, before they die.
The Mercy of the Lord endures forever, and His Truth endures to every Generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDH9j_f0YPk

26
Demon worship and Jim Morrison of The Doors – the connection.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6duGqjEFoVQ

27
satan is a lie. Even thru the greatest entertainers (false prophets) in the world. How the Beach Boys created the culture of southern California and created witchcraft music. Jesus Blood is powerful and can still redeem their soul into life, before they die. The Mercy of the Lord endures forever, and His Truth endures to every Generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKmh1mmjHV0

29
Michael Jackson spread sexual perversion and contacted demon spirits for his music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRf7wM6vLuI

31
Kurt Cobain… 90s grunge satanist, (I think he may have gotten saved before he died… Hallelujah!). Also NIN and U2 are covered in here! Jesus Blood is powerful and can still redeem their soul into life, before they die. The Mercy of the Lord endures forever, and His Truth endures to every Generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdWHjFhIvcs

32
U2 and CREED still has time to repent from their sins and trying to decieve Christians into the New World order. U2 is more blasphemous than Marilyn Manson. CREED signed their record deal in blood. Jesus Blood is powerful and can still redeem their soul into life, before they die. The Mercy of the Lord endures forever, and His Truth endures to every Generation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp26vedLKDM

33
Charles Manson, rock musician and mass murderer, a satanist who worked with the Beatles and Beach Boys and taught his family to kill. Jesus Blood is powerful and can still redeem their soul into life, before they die. The Mercy of the Lord endures forever,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yqt2DLXDE7c

34
Anton Lavey and the satan worshippers who love Hitler and the soon coming antichrist, and national socialism. This is CRAZY!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXs7Xd4JBXA

35
How the music is leading to anti-christ. Son of Sam was a satanist murderer as well, but I heard that he got saved in prison thanks to the mercy of the Lord. He sold himself to the devil but Jesus brought him back!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd3v4tR0sM8

There is a point here, I promise. But first, here’s the scene. My desk, at work. A wobbly stack of books, papers and files, some dating back to last spring. A to-do list, also written last spring. On the other side of my mousepad, a pile of resumes for the letters of rec I need to write. On my computer, some 200 emails that at least have to be opened.

Plus the steady buzz of folks, either in the hall, or in my office. Kinda like a roving cocktail party, but without the booze. This is not necessarily a good thing. The latter, I mean.

My home office, not much better. At least 100 unread emails. My desk is cleaner — today — but you still never know what you’ll find. A friend once described my work-at-home digs as a junk drawer. At times, the description is apt.

On Tuesday I got up early, graded papers, scanned two newspapers, got ready for school, found and paid my Macy’s bill while my Cheerios got soggy, blew out the door and off to work, taught some classes, and met with a bunch of students who have the end-of-quarter heebie-jeebies. (They’re contagious).

Last week, we hosted a party to celebrate a friend’s engagement. Next week is Thanksgiving (Yikes! I forgot to order the turkey). It’s my husband’s and son-in-law’s birthdays. Shannon and I are knee-deep in writing this book. And this blog. My hair is stringy and I’m low on clean clothes.  So here I am.

Don’t get me wrong.  I fully realize that those balls I’ve got in the air mark me as a lucky woman.  Nonetheless, I’m somewhat breathless just itemizing all this. I’m frazzled. Distracted. And probably like you, just a little bit crazed: Too much going on, going on all at once.

Maybe it was ever so. But now, add this. The San Francisco Chronicle has reported on some new studies on the way that techno-stimulation — texts, tweets, IMs, Facebook, news alerts, the list goes on — has led to a new form of attention deficit disorder. We’re always on. Uber-connected. Addicted to short bursts of constant information. And despite our best intentions, we get sucked in. All of which, experts say, impacts our ability to analyze. From the story:

“The more we become used to just sound bites and tweets,” [Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, director of Stanford University's Impulse Control Disorders Clinic at Stanford University] said, “the less patient we will be with more complex, more meaningful information. And I do think we might lose the ability to analyze things with any depth and nuance. Like any skill, if you don’t use it, you lose it.”

Dr. John Ratey, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, uses the term “acquired attention deficit disorder” to describe the way technology is rewiring the modern brain.

I don’t know about you, but I really don’t need to know what Suzy from Ohio is doing every five minutes. And yet. There’s the seduction of the buzz, the flash. She has me at beep-beep.

Which brings me belatedly to my point: Is all this stuff, this stimulation, this juggling, cluttering up our already cluttered brains to the point where we are not only overwhelmed — but chronically undecided?

The science suggests the answer is yes. Shannon wrote earlier on our blog about the Paradox of Choice, about how the more choices that confront us, the less likely we are to make one — or to be happy with it when we do. There’s the iconic jam study, where shoppers confronted with 24 jars of jam — versus just six — walked away empty handed. And the pivotal Magical Number Seven study, which dates back to the 1950s, that found that the human brain has trouble processing more than seven items at a time. The study was the basis for similar research in 1999 by Stanford Marketing Professor Baba Shiv, then an assistant professor at University of Iowa. He sent two groups off to memorize a series of numbers. One group had to memorize three. The other, seven. At the end of the task, the groups were given their choice of a treat: gooey chocolate cake or fruit salad. The three digit group overwhelmingly chose fruit. The seven digit group — cake. The point? Overwhelmed with the memory task, the rational brain of the seven-digit folks begged off and let the emotional side take over.

Shannon wrote recently about Zen and art of multi-tasking where, really, what we need to do when we drink tea –is to just drink tea. I wrote about the need to just play cards. Put all of this together and I think you find that maybe, for our own mental health, not to mention our ability to make decisions, we need to turn down the chatter.

Sixties guru Timothy Leary (he of LSD fame) once exhorted the youth of the day to “turn on, tune in, drop out.” I’m thinking it’s time to flip the switch: Turn off, tune out, drop in.

But wait. Did that make the slightest bit of sense? Not sure. I’m off to find some chocolate cake.

Space rock with a splash of Timothy Leary.

The prolific Klaus Schulze, still recording today (most recently with Lisa Gerrard), was briefly a member, as he was briefly a member of Tangerine Dream.

Enjoy

Info

I went through a wannabe hippy phase and was greatly influenced by many a 60s countercultural guru. Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters; Dr. Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass) and his Be Here Now (one of the most mind blowing books ever, if you’re in the right frame of mind); and, of course, Timothy Leary, doctor of things chemical.

The phase lasted for quite some time but I eventually grew out of it after it lost its luster but it helped carved the path towards embracing the gift of life.

So, in tribute, I suppose, to all things hippy, I’ve included a handful of his recordings, mostly spoken word, but, culturally and historically significant.

Enjoy

Info (not sure if this is the actual album but it’s what’s floating around out there)

Enjoy

Info

Enjoy

Info

Feel free to clarify, edit or correct if any of the above isn’t quite right.

Eaten by Vultures

The ancient Zoroastrians believed life was a constant battle between light and dark, good and evil. Their duty was to preserve the natural balance until, as with all eschataological beliefs, the world would end and a new better world would be born in which true believers would live forever in spiritual delight.

However, in the boring material world people die and need to be disposed of. How to do this without upsetting the elements? Well the Zoroastrian way, which still exists in parts of Iran and India, is to perch the naked body onto a ‘dokhma’ (a stone tower) and let it be eaten by vultures. No waste, you see. Apparently in recent years a lack of vultures in India has made this process more difficult.

A very similar custom called sky burial was practised by Buddhists in Tibet who believe the body is nothing more than flesh after death.

Hanging Coffins

In certain regions in China and the Philippines it won’t be just birds you find nesting on cliff faces. Because the ancient tradition of coffin hanging amongst some groups, primarily the Bo people in China, in Sagada on Luzon Island in the Philippines and amongst the Sa’da Toraja people of Indonesia ensured some of the best spots for the deceased. The coffins were lowered down on ropes and fixed between wooden stakes. The practice does not exist today but the coffins are still there with their beautiful sea views.

Eating the Ashes

The Yanomami tribe of the Amazon do not believe in death. Or at least they do not believe in death as a natural state. They believe all death is inflicted from a hostile source, an evil spirit, a shaman of another tribe. To ensure the evil is destroyed the Yanomami cremate the body after death and swallow the ashes, during which there is a lot of screaming and shouting, thumping the earth and singing.

Another form of endocannabalism is practised by the Amahuaca tribe of Peru. They like to crush the bones of their tribe members into a paste, cook and eat. They also take hallucinatory drugs and kill their children. Still if you’re a woman you get to enjoy the company of all your husband’s brothers.

Funeral bundles

In the Andes the Paracas people would shape their dead into the fetal position and wrap them in a bundle with gifts, clothing, food and gold. The funeral bundle was then moved to a nearby burial site, often in a cave and marked with a pole or a cane.

Exploding Ashes

The great thing about ashes is you can scatter them anywhere. Off a cliff, in the sea, on a football pitch, in a computer, even in space. And yes all of these scatterings have happened. To be buried in a computer was the dying wish of one William Alan Watson who is now spending his time inside a SPARCstation. The floppy drive, hard drive and power supply had to be removed to accommodate William but apparently he now rests very peacefully. Condolences were written on Post-it notes and posted through the floppy slot.

One of the first men on Earth to have their ashes exploded in space was Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry. In 1997 Gene along with the ashes of writer Timothy Leary and nineteen others were popped into a space capsule and blasted into orbit. Unfortunately after ten years the capsule dropped back to Earth and burnt up in the atmosphere. Still they were ashes not people.

Writer Hunter S Thompson (pictured above) was determined to cause a bang. His final wish after he shot himself through the head was to be the central part of a huge fireworks display. His ashes were exploded from a 150ft cannon during a party at his home in Colorado, all paid for by the actor Johnny Depp. It cost millions apparently.

Novelty Coffins in Ghana

Getting buried in Ghana is fun. Especially if you’re a member of the Ga tribe. The Ga tribe do coffins in a big big way. Basically whatever your job was or your love, interest or hobby is exactly what you are going to be buried in the earth in. So that guy down the road who loved cigarettes and smoked 100 a day and died yesterday at the age of 45 will be buried in a giant cigarette. The man who wore new shoes everyday will enter the ground in a giant shoe. The woman who washed floors is buried in a bucket, the fish man in a fish, the kid who liked coke a Coke bottle. You get the idea? It is simple and it is brilliant and I want to die in Ghana.

The Religions

We need to devote at least three lines to the world’s main religions so here goes:

• Christianity: House, church, coffin, burial, cremation
• Judaism: House, synagogue, burial (as soon as possible after death, same day or next day) seven days of mourning
• Islam: Bathe the body (males wash males, females wash females (except husbands and wives)) ,enshroud body in white sheets (no more than three), funeral prayer, burial, head pointing towards Mecca
• Buddhism: Prayers and cremation
• Hinduism: Funeral before sun goes down on day of death, body laid head pointing south, oil lamp lit next to body and burnt for three days after death, body washed and dressed, body covered with flowers and cremated

Go Green

As the world gets greener so do the funerals. You can now be buried wearing a bio-degradable shroud inside a cardboard or bamboo coffin within an eco-cemetery (a park or natural woodland) with a tree planted on top. No one will know you were ever here.

Source

Since we’re on the trippy path (such a nice path…just don’t stay there too long).

Nice downtempo grooves laid down by DJ Kriece with samples of some Ram Dass and Timothy Leary conversation sprinkled throughout.

Try

Info

My shift in Children’s today started off perfectly, with two 10 year olds who were looking for books on art. Because they were going to the Art Gallery and wanted to know something about art before they went. Oh, and they wanted to know about Vivaldi and the books about composers just weren’t doing it for them did we have anything about Jonahan (pronounced similarly to Callahan) Strauss and the Pizzicato Polka? He was Barock, you know. They wanted piles of information so they could show their teacher and then their teacher could teach everyone else in their class what they found out. Put that way they sound like horrible little jerks but they were funny. I had to send them on a scavenger hunt through the library for Vivaldi stuff because we didn’t have anything with more than a couple of paragraphs that they’d be able to take out, only reference material. Up at Special Services they found a DVD and a Vivaldi biography after Mary told them to go downstairs and they explained that I’d sent them up there. I don’t know how things went up at Info/Ref.

There was also a girl who came to the desk to make sure that the copy of Alice in Wonderland that she’d gotten from the shelf was “the real one. The one with all the twisted stuff in it?” She seemed maybe 15? She talked a mile a minute and I couldn’t quite tell if it was natural or chemically induced. Do the kids today take lots of speed or anything? I thought if you were 15 you’d just be smoking pot. She also asked about a Timothy Leary book “about Tibetans and Death and stuff? I guess you’re supposed to take a bunch of acid and then have someone read it to you and then freak out? A guy showed me this book on the bus once, and I said ‘I have to get that book!’” I found it in the catalogue and placed a hold on it for her. We also changed the phone number she had on file to her cell phone to avoid parental inquiries about what she’s getting from the library. I’m not sure if I’m actually supposed to do that. But I did.

And then she was still talking (she got completely sidetracked by a picture book with the title I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato – eventually she was all “It is a double negative! She’s completely going to eat a tomato!”) and said “You know what? You seem pretty cool. Like I could see chilling with you.” To which I replied, “If you hang out with old men like me, there’s something fairly wrong there.” Which ended the conversation before it got creepy. I think before it got creepy. The whole thing was odd. I’m used to the creepiness being from crazy/drunk people, not possibly-high teenagers with a thing for psychedelia.

Le cyberdelic naît de la fusion de la cybernétique et de la culture psychédélique dans les années 1980. A ce moment, certains rêves des cybernéticiens sont devenus réalités : les machines dont ils annonçaient la création existent désormais et sont à la portée de presque n’importe quel informaticien de garage. Des communautés commencent à se former sur Internet et établissent leurs propres règles.

John Barlow

John Barlowe, écrivain et poète américain, activiste politique et, dès les années 1960, « cyber-libertaire », co-fonde l’EFF (Electronic Frontier Fondation). Sa « Déclaration d’indépendance du cyberespace » reste un document marquant de la cybernétique et, par extension, du mouvement cyberdelic.

Timothy Leary à Los-Angeles en 1989

Au même moment, d’anciens gourous hippies cherchent à se renouveler et se reconvertissent à la cybernétique. Le plus connu d’entre eux est Timothy Leary,célèbre partisan du LSD.

Il affirmait qu’à condition d’être correctement dosé, le LSD pouvait changer radicalement le comportement, et permettre de traiter mieux l’alcoolisme, réhabiliter les criminels et dynamiser la libido.

Et à sa décharge, ses expériences n’étaient suivies ni de meurtres, ni de suicides, ni de psychoses, ni, en principe, de « bad trips ». Mais les temps ont changé, « le PC est le LSD des années 1990 » affirme-t-il.

Il est donc peu étonnant que Timothy Leary et John Barlow soient vus comme de vrais prophètes de ce mouvement. A leur suite, les artistes underground californiens en profitent pour se recycler dans la cyberdélie, « un mélange de new-age, spiritualisme oriental, libertarisme et utopie technologique sur fond de musique électronique et de drogues chimiques censées ‘reprogrammer notre cerveau’, assimilé à une sorte de super-ordinateur » (article du nouvelobs.com du 04/08/09).

Pour les adeptes de la cyberdélie, la haute-technologie, alliée à une utilisation intelligente des drogues hallucinogènes, est censée aider l’être humain à dépasser ses propres limites, le libérer de toute autorité et même le rendre capable de transcender l’espace, le temps et le corps.

Art cyberdélique

Ce mouvement donne naissance à une nouvelle forme d’art, qui calcule des fractales et les représente en images fixes et colorées, parfois animées, avec de la musique… Il s’agit de rendre accessibles à tous les visions que pouvaient avoir les utilisateurs de drogues hallucinogènes. Côté musique, une variante de la techno, la trance, apparaît et s’accompagne de projections lasers, d’images et de brouillard artificiel.

A la fin des années 1990, la plupart des adeptes de cette contre-culture cyberdélique réalisent que les ordinateurs, Internet et d’autres nouvelles technologies n’apportent finalement pas vraiment les changements sociaux, politiques et personnels attendus. Le mouvement perd alors de sa vigueur, et ses adeptes sont aujourd’hui de moins en moins nombreux pour ce qui est du côté informatique – la partie artistique et musicale, elle, est toujours vivace.

Fête trance - Sensation White en 2006

I told you Jennifer Hecht has good breaking stuff. The curveball she hurls in today’s reading is wicked, especially coming right on the heels of Brandon’s report on our cultural “happy pill” addiction the other afternoon:

“It is a modern myth that some mood drugs are good and some are bad… our public rhetoric is mythically against drugs, and yet our individual lives include all sorts of intoxicants, stimulants, antidepressants, and other happiness drugs.”

Sounds like maybe she’s going to defend a libertarian loosening of attitudes and statutes on this hot-button issue, maybe even defend the idea that psycho-pharmacology promises a royal road to happiness? But then the pitch veers sharply through the zone and it’s past you. Before the final pitch of this inning (“Drugs”) she “would not counsel the use of illegal drugs for happiness… if you get caught, you won’t be happy.”

Alright, I’ll drop the baseball metaphor. World Series doesn’t start ’til Wednesday. (I’m picking the Yanks in six.) But Hecht’s approach to drugs is not easy to score. I think the best angle on it is from William James’s famous, notorious remarks on alcohol:

And:

“The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the Yes function. . . . Not through mere perversity do men run after it. “

Some might call alcohol and other intoxicants “artificial,” but James is not pointing to the genesis of an episode of imaginative flight but, rather, emphasizing the resultant expansiveness, the sense of cosmic unity and affirmation, and the general feeling of existential reconciliation. These are not artificial, no matter the instigating agency. They are vehicles of transcendence. But subjectivity and transcendence are not unqualified goods; they are rimmed by relations of consequence that must figure prominently in our final evaluations.

I think that’s Hecht’s approximate position, too. We’re “trapped in our era’s assumptions and anxieties” about chemicals, legal and otherwise, and she wants to snap us out of our trance so we can think more clearly about the admissible limits of self-medication and its possible contributions to our happiness.

James again: “How at the mercy of bodily happenings our spirit is… [A] cup of strong coffee at the proper moment will entirely overturn for the time a man’s view of life. Our moods and resolutions are more determined by the condition of our circulation than by our logical grounds.”

(Nice pun, Willy. As one who begins every day with strong coffee and thrives under its influence, I take particular interest in this passage. I remain confident that my better early-morning moments are mine and not Starbucks’.)

Hecht: “You were happy today. Does the fact that you had two cups of strong coffee and a dose of over-the-counter painkiller have anything to do with our assessment of this happiness?”

Could be. “Imagine that coffee beans could be cultivated so that they packed more of a euphoric punch.” Yeah!

And what if it wasn’t coffee, but something flatly illegal?

How about it, John Prine?

Or Bertie Russell? “I am not prepared to say that drugs can play no good part in life whatsoever.” Moments when a wise physician will prescribe opiates are “more frequent than prohibitionists suppose.”

Hecht: “We have drugs that can help make people happy– short-term bliss, long-term grins.” We should think about it. And we should think about all the money we’re wasting on all the wrong wars.

All that said, I confess that I’m no Tim Leary or Albert Hofmann (his obit) or Aldous Huxley. I don’t even like nitrous oxide. Coffee, beer, and whisky are my drugs of choice. I don’t believe I abuse them, though I’m not going to ask my GP to review my position on that.

I do agree with Huxley, though: “I cannot discover that I was any stupider (under the influence) than I am at ordinary times.” I have occasionally experienced “that state of uninhibited and belligerent euphoria which follows the ingestion of the third cocktail.” And you know what? I liked it.

Hecht: “When we drink alcohol we can think about it as a possibility for minor metaphysical events, not only as a technique to numb ourselves. We can see it as a different kind of intelligence rather than as stupidity.”

But be VERY careful, don’t overestimate your intelligence, and don’t drive. (Dr. Hofmann was very lucky, on his bicycle. And for the record, he made it to 102 but his son, an alcoholic, died at 53.)

And if you’re ingesting something of more ramifying impact, don’t skip class , don’t neglect your children or other relationships or your health and mental stability. ”Here are some of the things long-term happiness requires in the short term: studying for exams; caring for children… being responsible at work; forgiving friends and spouses who have hurt you terribly; keeping the promises of marriage… taking a walk…” There’s more, but I have to go walking now.

See you in class.

P.S. Happy birthday, Older Daughter! (Don’t read this post ’til you’re 21.)

•••CLICK HERE•••

© Copyright 2009 Paola Lopez

On se fait souvent une image idéalisée du mode de vie de nos aïeux. Francis Cabrel et autres réacs chantent les louanges du bon vieux temps, du “c’était mieux avant”. Une époque plus détendue, sans mobiles ni internet, où on prenait le temps de vivre…

Les produits qui suivent apportent un nouvel éclairage sur la douceur de vivre ancestrale… Les drogues ont souvent été expérimentées et introduites sur le marché par la médecine. Ce n’est pas pour rien que les drugstores portent ce nom. Le père du LSD, Timothy Leary, travaillait en outre sur des projets pharmaceutiques. Il y a quelques années, drogues et médicaments qualifiaient les mêmes produits.

C’est toujours le cas aujourd’hui : morphine ou cannabis sont utilisés pour calmer les douleurs. D’autres substances ont connu des succès populaires avant d’être considérées comme dangereuses. C’est le cas de l’héroïne (cousine de la morphine), de la cocaïne et des amphet’, présents sur le marché au début du siècle sous de nombreuses formes :

Bayer’s Heroin, vendu comme une version smooth de la morphine, devenu plus tard l’aspirine :

Boehringer & Soehne, des pilules à base d’héroïne, à des “prix défiant toute concurrence” :

Opium pour enfants… Avec ça, les nourrissons devaient faire de bonnes nuits…

Du sirop à la morphine spécial bambins :

Le vin à la coke… Le Pape Léon XIII adorait ça… Et dire que les agences se targuent d’avoir (ré)inventé les stratégies d’influence…

Les amphétamines à sniffer. Un franc succès au sein des compagnies aériennes pour calmer les gens un peu stressés…

L’opium contre l’asthme :

Des dragées contre la toux à la cocaïne. Chaudement recommandée contre les douleurs de gorge des chanteurs et des professeurs… Les cours devaient être rock’n'roll.

Une potion à la cocaïne contre les rages de dents :

Dans une autre veine, on trouvait également moult produits à base de radium pour guérir les gens… Preuve que n’importe quel produit peut être perçu comme bénéfique avant que la science ait prouvé le contraire. De là à réactiver la psychose sur les ondes de téléphone ou du wifi, il n’y a qu’un pas… Nos petits-enfants hallucinerons, sans doute.

Source : ZMEScience

Dieser Hunger nach digitalen Daten, nach häufigerem und schnellerem Zugriff auf Informationen, ist ein modernes Bedürfnis der Spezies. Das Gehirn braucht Elektronen und psychoaktive Substanzen genauso  wie der Körper z.B. Sauerstoff benötigt. So wie der Ernährungsfachmann unsere tägliche Versorgung mit Vitaminen auflistet, wird in Zukunft der Gehirn-Psybernetiker (Psychologe und Kybernetiker) unser tägliches Bedürfnis nach den verschiedenen Arten digitaler Information erforschen und festhalten.

Eine Seele

konstruieren zu lernen,

braucht eben

seine Zeit.

Die übliche Vorgehensweise,

um die unmögliche Komplexität,

die uns umgibt,

zu unterwerfen und zu domestizieren,

besteht darin,

ein paar Wunder vollbringender Götter

(je infantiler je besser)

zu erfinden und dazu

einige kindliche Regeln

festzulegen

wie etwa:

Du sollst deinen Vater

und deine Mutter ehren usw.

Die Regeln sind einfach und logisch:

Du gehorchst passiv,

du betest,

du opferst,

du arbeitest,

du glaubst,

du lebst.

Just one more obscure, drug related video for today.

Haha, Ohh Timothy!

Chris

I’ve been doing radio interviews this week, the first with CBC’s Sheryl MacKay, and the second with Tamasine Drisdale (Tamasine, what a great name, right? The kind of name that will end up in one of my books.), who works at a community co-op radio station in Nelson, British Columbia. In both instances I was reminded that radio was the easiest money I ever made.

I worked in radio full-time for only about two years. This would have been back in ‘75 to 77. Somewhere around there. I had a talk show in Phoenix that ran from 6-7:00 every night. All I ever did to prepare was read, usually the books that the authors were pitching. I interviewed lots and lots of folks, including Jerry Rubin and Timothy Leary.

Rubin was strange. He showed up with a reporter from the Arizona State University newspaper, and insisted that the guy, about my age, I should add, sit in for the interview. I wasn’t real stoked about it but Rubin wouldn’t budge. Fine, whatever. During the interview he responded to even tough questions with surprising equanimity, but during the commercial breaks he was about as talkative as stone. At the end of the show, I thanked him and he said — words to this effect — “I want to say something else,” and I thought, Oh yeah, here it comes. He said, again words to this effect, “I just want to thank you for actually reading my book and asking good questions.” Still brusque, for sure, but grudgingly endearing. I signed off and he left with his student reporter in tow, and still wearing a frown that appeared better suited to a bathroom emergency.

But here’s what’s interesting: After I started publishing, I understood his gratitude. Rarely, and I mean rarely, do reporters or talk show hosts actually read your book. This week, however, I had the enormously pleasurable experience of finding that both Sheryl MacKay and Tamasine Drisdale had read PRIMITIVE, and they understood it. They couldn’t have asked the questions that came to them if they hadn’t spent hours with the novel. So often as an inteviewee, I’ve had to do the heavy lifting: that is, I’ve had to take insipid questions and segue from them to the material that I wanted to address most. But when an interviewer is probing, even challenging, you’re at your best. And you feel…grateful. Just like Jerry Rubin.

As for Tim Leary? He looked and sounded bored. But I still loved his autobiography, the hardcover with the shiny silver cover. “Flashbacks” was the title, if I’m remembering correctly.

I went to a wedding in Missouri last year, and saw one of my closest lady friends from Peace Corps marry another woman. It was a small ceremony on the roof of a five story brick building a few miles away from downtown. My friend wore a long, white dress and bubbled over herself with blushing cheeks and an uncontained smile. Her wife came down the aisle in a suit, holding onto her father’s arm. It was a small ceremony, less than forty people pressed against each other on folding wooden chairs with the sun going down against our backs.

In 2004, 70% of the people of Missouri passed an amendment to the state constitution that banned gay marriage. Four years later I was watching one of my favorite people in the world oppose the democratically determined law of the state in which she was born and raised; to marry a woman she loved.

One of the ironies of Obama’s election last year was the next wave of anti-gay state legislation that sailed through the polls around the country. Arkansas declared gay couples cannot adopt children. Arizona and Florida banned gay marriage. Even California, the bellwether of American laissez faire, the old arena of Cesar Chavez, the place that nurtured the Black Panthers, the Hell’s Angels, and Timothy Leary; this state of cultural independence and insubordination, chose by popular fiat to define marriage as something for one man and one woman.

In 1996 Bill Clinton, the last celebrity president to dampen Democratic underpants around the nation told The Advocate, “I remain opposed to same-sex marriage. I believe marriage is an institution for the union of a man and a woman. This has been my long-standing position, and it is not being reviewed or reconsidered.”

A decade later, a new Democratic hero, just lauded with a Nobel Peace Prize, remains silent on the national stage about any potential plans to tear down the unjust bindings on people of a specific sexual preference. The debate is insane and lacks any moral or logical weight. It comes from a religious text that is defined by levels of hypocrisy that now thinking person should be asked to accept as legal precedent, irrespective of the valor of personal faith. The bible must not be the source code for any American law.

Many of these rights so innate that you don’t even realize you’ve had them until someone takes them away from you. In Florida last February, the newly enacted state law to not recognize same sex marriage, even in couples from states where the practice is legal, deprived a woman of seeing her wife and children during her last hours on earth.

Lisa Pond collapsed on a cruise ship just getting ready to pull out to sea from Miami. She was with her wife and their four adopted children. Pond was rushed off the ship and taken to Jackson Memorial Hostpital where she would later die. As her wife Janice tried to follow along the gurney as it came off the ambulance a hospital staff member stopped her and asked her to stay in the waiting area. Pond had no other family members present, and Janice offered proof of the Durable Powers of Attorney that she had signed with Pond, but the hospital was insistent. Only blood relatives or a husband would be allowed to see Pond.  The next morning Pond was declared brain dead.

In his inauguration speech, Obama made passing reference to gays. Candidate Obama called the 1996’s Defense of Marriage Act “abhorrent.” In eight months in office he has issued a presidential order to close Guantanamo Bay, pushed through the biggest piece of financial legislation in the history of the country, and forced the country into a debate on whether or not the government should become a health insurance provider. And yet, he has failed to challenge the Defense of Marriage Act and his Defense Department, like Bush’s and Clinton’s, is actively supporting the policy as legitimate American law, despite its having been declared unconstitutional in a number of state circuit courts.

This is the mundane nature of politics, picking a handful of issues worth fighting for from an overflowing bushel. What’s sad is that Obama has not spoken out about any of this. How can anyone of conscience be a leader of a country that so indifferently deprives its citizens of something so fundamental as legal partnership and not even speak about it? It’s not the president’s place to meddle in state laws and amendments, and the Justice Department can’t be expected to issue briefings in direct opposition to American law.

This is an old issue, and it’s one that deserves public reckoning. It’s one we argue over all around the country, in millions of quibbles and drawing room debates. And it’s one that’s not even on the president’s agenda, at this point. It’s a political liability. Just as Clinton advised John Kerry to support gay marriage bans for pick-up in the polls, Obama’s silence is a calculation.

The man who once chastised his own community, in a church no less, for having been unkind to their gay “brothers and sisters” is now absent from the overdue cause of ending government-sponsored discrimination. I voted for Obama, but I remain cynical about his presidency. In his first year, unemployment has gone from six percent to ten percent. He’s made a national debate of a marginal policy about the creation of a government bloc (another one, there are already two) to offer health insurance to less than 5% of the total population.

In truth, I am ashamed of Obama on this. I watched a woman, barely thirty, climb on to the top of a building in the middle of the South, and took another woman as her wife, in a state where she was suborning the law. How can I consider any president who contributes to her position as someone beneath the law, susceptible to cruel separation from her wife in time of death, placing no legal claims in their ability to raise children or build a lifelong financial partnership, a moral and courageous man?

Someone who accepts political credit on one immoral issue so that he can transform them it policy on another, more preferable issue. I’m an uninsured freelance writer. I make $20,000 a year and live in Manhattan. I don’t want health insurance from a country that won’t provide those basic rights to its citizens, so fundamental I wouldn’t have even known they were there until reaching for them in a time of crisis.

During the campaign, candidate Obama said change doesn’t come from Washington, it comes to Washington. On this issue, the proponents of change return to Washington again and again, in show of their readiness and persistence. And the door remains shut in their face.

I’ve received three texts today from my 12 year old daughter letting me know that her teacher has assigned another school project. That’s three in one day and she’s already got several on the go. We sat down together last night to discuss prioritizing and to create a schedule for the projects. These projects are not “one paragraph writeups…”, but “research, drawing, bibliography, etc.” projects and there are several of them. I felt overwhelmed just looking at the list and she burst into tears soon after. Is it worth it?

More and more the slow movement is appealing to me. The more I read, the more I’m convinced. I’ve often felt that our minds and bodies are not meant to keep up with all of this. I look at the state of the world around us and can completely understand the desire to “Tune In, Turn On and Drop Out”. Thanks Leary for the great advice, I might just have to take you up on that!

Check out this great article so that you can start living slowly today!

A Hollywood joke of what might be called the “Manson period”: You’re in Hollywood, you’re walking the streets, you’ve eaten nothing but bananas (what else?) for four days. As you droop at the corner of Hollywood and Vine, a long black limousine pulls up beside you. The door opens: a fat man with short arms emerges. He’s wearing a beret and jodhpurs and there’s a cigarette holder between his lips. He’s definitely in the movies. He’s holding a sandwich and he says, “Hey, kid.”

Your attention is arrested. The sandwich is a very tasty-looking California sandwich, full of good things, like avocado and watercress. And you know somehow that it’s not just nourishment, but maybe…a career!

“You want this?” asks the Hollywood man. “It’s yours!”

One day everything changed. One afternoon Janice and I were smoking dope with a couple of actors, a married couple, around our age. They were friends of John Wayne’s and often appeared in his westerns, and they observed that he would not have approved of their smoking gage. 

The wife had been to the beach, where she said she had seen two animals fighting. 

“What kind of animals?” I asked her, picturing, I suppose, Kodiak bears or elephant seals.

“I think…I think,” ventured the stoned lovely, “I think they were winkles.”

Everyone watched in leaden-eyed tolerance while I rolled around the fuzzy rug, convulsed. It was the funniest line I had ever heard in my life. Forty minutes later, when I had suppressed my last yak, we went outside to look over BenedictCanyon. It was the kind of Los Angeles summer day that Nathanael West could describe with such exquisitely turned admiration and loathing. Sumptuous, sensual, euphorbia-scented. Hummingbirds sipped nectar.

“That’s the house,” the young woman who had seen the animals said.

The four of us stood and looked down at an attractive greenswarded property on Cielo Drive in Bel-Air. I had stopped laughing. For quite a while we stood and looked at it. Everyone had to have a look.

I was walking into the coffee shop of the Beverly Hills Hotel the next day, and a couple of women who worked in the gift shop were in close converse. One listened open-mouthed and pale. The other, the speaker, said her husband was a deputy and had been to the house. He had seen awful things there and had been unable not to tell her.

“He said it looked like a fag murder,” the deputy’s wife said.

I filed the line away, never to use it, but her story sort of spoiled my day. I went back to the Chateau to do a joint with Janice.

“Where did you get the dope?” she asked. “Did you buy some?”

It was Jay Sebring’s dope, and he had given it to me at a party. Jay Sebring, who had named himself after the Florida seaside raceway, was now dead, a victim of the Mansonites. He had been a hairdresser from New Jersey, had reinvented himself in the Hollywood style, a nice man. He was a friend of Abigail Folger, a woman I knew a little. Abigail was born to ride in pursuit of those boars up in the CarmelValley, as beautiful a flower of California as grew. Her wealth came from coffee. She was intelligent and kind and as classy as could be. She spent a lot of time volunteering with children in Watts. Many people say they will never forget what she was like, what her smile was like, until the young nonconformists eviscerated her to write misunderstood Beatles lyrics in blood on the wall of the house on Cielo Drive.

It was saturnalia time in Hollywood, a very grim feast of the meaningless. The youngsters disappeared from the boulevard as though the bad father of the feast had eaten them. For some time Manson went uncaught and the police put out false leads. Before his capture, the most extraordinary speculations as to motive and perpetrator went around. The most unsettling involved the number of people who suspected one another of having a hand in the murders. This included famous people who used not to do such things.

Then the Manson Family went down, and the theorizing and the interpretation exfoliated. Nixon had done it. Why? To embarrass the antiwar movement. A well-known person offered a theory that naval intelligence had killed the victims, which I personally resented. A droll speculation, that one, because it involved the CNO, old Mormon Admiral Moorer, reviving the Phineas Priesthood and sending forth the assassins, all in the name of victory in Vietnam.

Fear appeared in a handful of dust. When the bearded trolls and their consorts were run out of town, fear remained. People hired bodyguards. At one house (I swear) the protection would follow a swimmer doing laps up and down the length of the swimming pool, admittedly a very long one. One movie person claimed she had fired her security when the man asked if he could come inside and play the piano.

“I’d just as soon…you know.” Indeed.

Something over five years after the John F. Kennedy assassination, and the event had something of the same resounding emptiness. Hollywood is a self-referential place and then as now it was full of rise and fall and blighted hopes, anger, disappointment, dope, and toadying and jealousy. Everything except maybe good sex. Suddenly something happens that makes everything even less sensible and significant than before, the total nothingness at the heart of thingness explodes in front of you. Not everyone’s a philosopher. Never did the lights go on so fast and the glitz come off the columns and the glass balls shatter as in the wake of a couple of murders.

Things could not be made to be the same. There was an earthquake, really–a small one, but we felt it at Oblath’s.

A number of people who were friends or acquaintances of Kesey passed through town. Kesey’s credo was that nothing human was alien to him, and most folks were close enough. Ken’s friends, a wandering band known as the Hog Farm, had coalesced around a cultural figure who called himself Wavy Gravy. Wavy had once been a cafe poet in New York and had followed the sixties trail to California, where some transcendent experience had provided him with a renewed identity and new name. One of the stories current about him was that he had been cashiered from the comedy troupe the Committee for appearing for a show in a tweed jacket with salami arm patches. The Hog Farmers were fine young people for all I ever knew, but it was bruited about that they spent some time out at the Spahn Movie Ranch with the Mansonites. Me, I was a friend of Kesey’s, too, a friend of a friend of Richard Baba Ram Dass Alpert, who had bum-tripped me back when. Alpert was the ex-colleague of Timothy Leary, who knew everyone and had connections with the Brotherhood of Eternal Life, who were considered heavy. And connections proliferated. Leary’s “archivist” was my NYU and Paris pal Michael, the man who would go on to become the father of a beautiful movie star, although this was naturally unknown at the time. We were smoking Jay Sebring’s dope, and so on and so on.

As the summer of 1969 lengthened, there was a whole lot of shaving going on in

We decided to go back to England. Life was sane, sort of, and relatively predictable. Before setting out for London we went to what might be called a farewell party. Nitrous oxide was currently big on the scene. In the nineteenth century, many will know, it played a role in American scientific and intellectual history. At Harvard, the very place Ram Dass and Leary were experimenting with LSD and turning students on to William James, the author of The Varieties of Religious Experience and brother of Henry, the brother of the master novelist had conducted his own experiment with nitrous oxide, some eighty-odd years earlier. Nitrous oxide was used early as an anesthetic in dentistry, and Harvard students had taken to frolicking with the stuff. So joyous were the cries of delighted insight that Professor James heard echoing through the Yard that the liberal-minded and adventurous scholar thought he might try some.

One evening the savant set a tank by his bed, connected to a pipe. As the chimes sounded across the gables, Professor James passed into a profound reverie. Suddenly he came to consciousness, his intellection ablaze with discovery. He had happened, with the aid of this wonderful elixir, on the very meaning–but the very meaning!–of life. Pen and ink were at hand. No sooner had he time to write than a second drowsy numbness passed over him. In the morning he awakened to the merry bells. Leaping from his stern scholar’s bed, he seized the sheet of paper upon which he had inscribed life’s meaning.

How true! And even the obvious must be reexperienced down the generations. That this wisdom not perish but be found by each age in its time may have been the reason for the sudden very-late-sixties popularity of nitrous oxide.

Another joke of the era:

“Man, can you fix me with a doctor that writes?”

“No, man. But I can put you with a hip dentist.”

Anyway, nitrous oxide and its discontents. The party we were attending was indeed a farewell party, since we were bound back to England, now home. But it was, further, a farewell party for the late owner of the nitrous oxide, a graduate student who had delighted in taking his gas while relaxing in a hot bath. While asoak, the luckless man passed out. While he was out, his head slipped beneath the water to rise…never.

Farewell, as Poe observes, the very word is like a bell, and Poe and this graduate student I’m certain would have liked each other.

There was a lot of gas left over, which was good because there were a lot of us there. Here I steel myself for confession. Few readers will fail to experience outrage at what I now feel bound to disclose. But if there is a God in heaven–William James would have known it.

All right, our kids were with us. Everybody’s kids were with them. So we were doing gas with balloons, and you know how kids are with balloons. I mean you had to be there. It was a beautiful day. The kids were having such fun! There was so much gas. And it was hardly as though the late owner of the gas were lying there drowned in a bathtub; he had passed on, and he certainly didn’t require any more gas.

And the kids so liked the balloons, and of course they liked the gas too, taking the gas from the balloons. How this happened, what happened next, nobody is sure because everybody was ripped and fighting greedily over the gas, and the children were fighting greedily over the gas too. So to square it, even-steven it, we declared, we the adult authority, come on, kids, just one balloon’s worth to a kid.

When, would you believe, this one little tyke made this snarky face right at me and said ha ha or hee hee or some shit, “These aren’t balloons! They’re condoms!” And by the spirit of William James, they were condoms. We’d been getting loaded watching small innocent children sucking gas from condoms.

So if the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children had finally caught up with me there, would not the cry have been: Exterminate the brutes!

So we left for London.

—from Robert Stone’s memoir Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties

“If you want to change the way people respond to you, change the way you respond to people.” – Timothy Leary

…jedenfalls kann es einem so scheinen, wenn man auf dem Portal “myspace” ein Gedicht mit diesen pfui bäh “Unwörtern” als Kommentar zu einem Videoclip hochladen möchte: Ein solches Erlebnis hatte Tom de Toys, als er ein neues “mobile trash art video” auf seiner dortigen Seite hochlud. Zur Erläuterung des Vorgangs: Während ein Video “verarbeitet” wird, hat man Zeit, die Felder für Titel+Beschreibung auszufüllen – und das nutzte der Autor, um ein spontanes englischsprachiges Poem “anstelle” einer Beschreibung zu ersinnen, und weil es AUCH von Präsidenten UND Drogen handelt, entschied er sich, das Video in der Kategorie “Nachrichten und Politik” zu veröffentlichen. Es wurde SOFORT wieder gelöscht. Da dachte sich der Künstler, es läge gewiss an der EIGENTLICH falschen Kategorie (es gibt leider weder eine ausgewiesene für “poetryclips” noch für “Kunstvideos” oder für “Naturbetrachtungen”) und lud das ganze nochmals hoch, DIESMAL in der Kategorie “Unterhaltung”, da es ihm noch am naheliegendsten erschien, daß ein schönes, meditatives Lichtpunktespiel der Sonne auf dem Wasser für manchen einen alternativen Unterhaltungswert darstellen könnte. Weit gefehlt: wieder gelöscht! Letzte Option: Titel ändern, Wörter streichen, die “gefährlich” sind – und hoch das Vieh ein drittes Mal! Diesmal in der Kategorie “Extremvideos”, wo sich auch Unappetitliches sowie lustige FAST-nackte Tatsachen ansiedeln. Bingo! Akzeptiert… Allerdings ist nun eben dort nur das ZENSIERTE Gedicht zu lesen, während das korrekte ORIGINAL nun hier im ideologiefreien “Schutzraum für Lyrik” sein Unwesen treibt. Da ließe sich das Thema der von Kersten Flenter 2005 verlegten uep-Literatur-CD wieder leicht aufwälzen, daß Poesie wie “ein Virus in der Automatik der Städte” wirkt – so mancher alte Hut bleibt eben ewig jung in dieser wunderschönen neuen Welt… Hier nun das toysianische Teufelswerk, auch mit dem ursprünglichen Original-TITEL versetzt:

Tom de Toys, 4.8.2009, für myspace

COSMIC OCEAN
(Several Suns Say Shine)

a very normal day on this planet earth and the sun shines on the waters like a million galaxies i say yes THE SUN SHINES LIKE GALAXIES there are billions of stars shining thru our one and only own sun i love you sun i need you sun you are my biggest love i say yes THE SUN IS MY BIGGEST LOVE as long as i am alive and what happens afterwards is not my problem it is just the solution the sun is my very now being a real being being a life alive a life alive a simple single sun i say each human is a sun is a sun each human is more than just a human is a sun is a billion of suns is a galaxy is a whole and holy infinite universe each human is even more than universe is a part of the emptiness flowing thru it all like the waters flowing thru the brains like the energy flowing invisible thru it all thru it all thru the emptiness i say look thru the emptiness LOOK THRU THE EMPTINESS can you see any other side of the emptiness of the universe of the sun can you see the sun from the other side of the universe come on tell me if you know something tell it to the world we need your wisdom our presidents need it so much yes they need you they need us they need such enlightened beings that know that we ARE alive that we SEE the sun that we KNOW how big universe REALLY is and how crazy THE OTHER SIDE OF INFINITY feels yes we feel it and yes we want it and yes we need no more drugs to excuse our point of no points of view of points of stars of points of light of points of points of nowadays is now a days is NOW a DAYS is nowadays nowadays nooooow aaaaaa daaaayyyyyssssssssss

In der als “SUNSHINE STARS IN THE WATER” betitelten Video-Version lauten die zensierten Zeilen nun so: “we need your wisdom / we need it so much yes / we need such enlightened beings” UND “yes we need no excuse / for our point of no points of view”. So leicht lässt sich ein “neuropoelitisches” Gedicht (nämlich aus 3 Komponenten bestehend: neuro= bewußtseinserweiternd auf das Nervensystem wirkend; poetisch= gemäß welcher Poetologie auch immer; politisch= sozial-engagiert in einem freien, plastischen Sinne) in eine stinknormale schwärmerisch-spirituelle Naturbetrachtung verwandeln, die selbst Alan Watts nicht vom Zen-Hocker gehauen hätte, und Timothy Leary dreht sich sicherlich lieber für andere Dinge im kopflosen Grabe um…

ORIGINAL SOURCE: http://www.myspace.com/tomdetoys -> “Videos”
/ Tom de Toys (zuerst im L&Poe-Forum bei Facebook)