Gero rem imperialem!

<>

U.S. to Probe Disclosure of NSA's Domestic WiretapsFrom Associated Press WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of classified information about President Bush's secret domestic spying program, Justice officials said today.The officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, said the inquiry will focus on disclosures to The New York Times about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

So, now, as i understand, the Justice Department is going to secretly conduct an investigation into the telling of the secrets about the secret spying on US citizens conducted illegally by the US government. After they first make all sorts of deceptive and ludicrous attempts to justify the unconstitutional actions, they will then punish people for blowing the whistle on what they say was okay for them to do, hoping to get the punishment phase in place before Congress and the Court rule just how illegal and unconstitutional the activities were. But what is even more bizarre is that they will knowingly have to investigate a leak that is two to three years old, one they knew existed, indeed one they were so aware of that they met with the NYT staff to quash the story so it wouldn't come out before the election. Can we all now say together:
Blowing smoke and strange shaped mirrors, we must be in the fun house!

is it the end of the democracy as we know it?

When Harriet Myers vetted the following text in a letter signed by Georgie, did she reflect on the possible implications of what it means and what she would have had to opine had she been appointed to the Supreme Court???

" Safeguarding the security of the United States outweighs individuals' rights to privacy,"

Wow, i can't even begin to imagine the capacity of a US citizens to suggest that there is some entity other than the citizens that comprises the United States. Consider carefully the premise underlying the phrase itself, by changing just a few of the nouns to their appropriate and more relevant synonyms. Protecting the interests of a few in the United States requires the ending of civil liberties and civil rights for the mass of the citizenry. That really is what this says. Disregarding that the US Constitution quite literally puts all the political power into the hands of the people, that the people are the US, that their security and welfare are their interest and not that of a tiny minority of fascist totalitarian dictats, then you still have to struggle with the idea presented that there is something about the US that isn't about its people. I simply have no idea what that can be, do you???

sampling for the new year

All of you here are invited to participate and join us in a short ritual adventure.
Tonight we have the opportunity to ask our community some important questions as we move into the next solar cycle.
Out of winter we shall find the spring from which we all must emerge ready and prepared to move forward in all directions improving the quality of our lives and that of the Earth.
Step with us as we move through the cardinal directions, engage in the sharing of community and wonder.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.


From the South to the West - in the shade of Avalon,
From the West to the North and our home in Gaia’s womb,
From the North to the East hear the power of Babylon,
From the East to the South - far above the daily gloom

From our hearts to our spirits, collective conscious soon
From the deep sea of being, to the sun and adoring moon,
Carry us on the waves to the lands we've never been,
Carry us on the waves to the lands we've never seen.

We have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour.
Now you must go back and tell the people that this is the magic Hour.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past

And there are things to be considered
There are questions to be asked
There are responses to be generated:

Where are you living in body and mind?
Are you in your body are you healthy?
Is your mind focused living in the now?
Are you paying attention to the world around you?

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

What are you doing in your life to fulfill your spirit?
Are you dancing without mind, letting your spirit and soul freak free?
Are you seeking hope, joy, and peace?
Are you loving one another? Are you embracing cosmic wonder?

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

From what watershed does your water spring forth?
Is your water safe and clear?
Do you keep your watershed clean?
Do you keep the watershed of others clean?
(use hand mic and encourage a different person to respond quickly to each question as you repeat them)

There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold on to the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river,
Keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Are you right in all your relationships with all your relations?
Is your family healthy?
Are your loved ones safe and hope filled?
Are you prepared to be the best light spirit being you can be for the planet??

Know your garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!
See who is in there with you and celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally.
Least of all, ourselves.
For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones we've been waiting for.

Let us sail, let us sail, let the river within us flow,
Let us reach, let us beach on the reefs for which we care.
Let us sail, let us sail, let us stand upon your shore,
Let us reach, let us beach far beyond a place we dare.

thoughts about this day as mythic

I posted this yesterday over at Barlowz but it is important to cross it over here as well:

I would love to accept that the notion of Christmas represents the symbolic birth of an inspired (some could say--divinely) movement to change the behavior of people towards one another. Nothing could express this sentiment more powerfully than the Sermon on the Mount; a piece of "scripture" that i guess most of the evangelicals and fundamentalists find to be the literal word of God that needs to go unnoticed. Certainly our leadership chooses to not have their faith in it. From Chris Floyd today:

And what would happen today if a swarthy Middle Eastern man without wealth or political connections suddenly appeared in front of the White House proclaiming a radical doctrine of mercy, forgiveness, charity, self-denial and love -- love even for the "evildoers" who "want to destroy our way of life"? Would he be targeted by the lawless spy gangs that Bush has personally loosed upon the nation, as The New York Times revealed last week? Would he be condemned as a terrorist sympathizer and expelled from the country? Would he be seized and "rendered" to some secret CIA prison or Bush-friendly foreign torture chamber for "special interrogation"? (can we all say together: The Grand Inquisitor?)

And just what is this radical doctrine that all these self-describing christians find so offensive that they have to deny it during this supposedly most holy of times???
The "Sermon on the Mount called for a revolutionary transformation of human nature -- a complete overthrow of our natural instincts for greed, aggression and self-aggrandizement. This radical vision -- erupting in the turbulent backwater of a brutal world empire -- is the true miracle of Jesus' life, not the primitive fables about virgin births, magic tricks and corpses rising from the dead. The vision's living force sears through dogma, casts down the pomp of church and state, and gives the lie to every hypocrite who evokes Jesus' name in pursuit of earthly power."

"Blessed be ye poor; for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now; for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now; for ye shall laugh."

"But woe unto you that are rich! For ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full! For ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! For ye shall mourn and weep."

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto you: Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away."

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you: Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. Thus you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even publicans the same? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more than others? Do not even publicans so?"

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

"No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you: Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not life more than meat, and the body more than raiment?"

"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."

"Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets."

So to all of you i say i wish that by offering you a Merry Christmas we would be sharing the spirit and power of these words. But since it seems so intractable in the face of what is transpiring in our nation, i will just offer my aums and meditations on a healthier, happier, more joyous new cycle of spinning around the Sun on this spaceship Earth of ours.

sacred prime number memes?

Seven Things To Do Before I Die
1. See the ruins of the Great Zimbabwe
2. Meet canji sapa in Florence in 2012
3. Live in a US free from this GOP stranglehold
4. Increase taxes on the very wealthy to feed all the world's poor
5. Get back in shape to surf
6. Drive a race class world rally Subaru on a Finnish rally course
7. Hang out with John Seed and Neil Pike in Oz

Seven Things I Cannot Do
1. Get a job
2. Finish my three books
3. Ever be able to replace a certain someone
4. Live long enough to see my youngest son enjoy his middle age
5. Become a US Senator
6. Be overwhelming wealthy
7. See the Grateful Dead again


Seven Things That Attract Me to Blogging
1. Michael Berube
2. Cosmic Variance
3. Ed Brayton
4. Carla at Preemptive Karma
5. Goldy at Horse's Ass
6. Smirking Chimp
7. How easy blogging is to do!!!!


Seven Things I Say Most Often
1. Schweeet
2. Perf
3. Exactly
4. Phenomenal
5. Ooohh
6. Aums for lexi
7. faaaawk

Seven Books That I Love
1. The Baroque Cycle
2. Illuminatus Trilogy
3. Plants of the Gods
4. TIHKAL/PIHKAL
5. Kant and the Platypus
6. Child of Fortune
7. Seven Arrows

Seven Movies That I Watch Over and Over Again
1. The Grateful Dead Movie--now in 5.1 surround w/ bonus disc of concert footage
2. my Kubrick archive
3. my Gilliam archive
4. White Dawn
5. Grateful Dead NYE farewell to Winterland
6. Waking Life
7. Princess Mononoke

Seven People I Want To Join In Too
1. seven of my friends on myspace
2. seven of my peers with whom i grew up
3. seven members of the advisory board upon which i serve
4. seven leaders/producers of Peak Experience
5. seven friends of my youngest son
6. seven performance artist friends preparing for Burning Man
7. seven of the twenty blogs i read each day

preparing your consciousness for tomorrows

Yesterday Joe Bageant wrote:
It always comes down to the one thing we never study in school, the one thing we cannot learn about in this country without a great deal of personal extracurricular effort -- consciousness. As we have known at least since the Sixties, the core issue of our existence is consciousness, which our corporate state is compelled to control at all times. That's why drugs are illegal; that's why we have hundreds of television channels; and that's why you will never find anything much resembling the truth in U.S. newspapers and magazines. But there are
still those of us who remember our consciousness experiments in the Sixties. Remember what is like to peer into other realities, not to mention observe the inherent folly and frequent horror of our own war-profit-driven, animal murdering, death-and-sex-without-love obsessed culture. There are those of us who know that when a thrushcries out from the branch it echoes throughout the galaxy. All things are connected and ownership of things is meaningless. The purpose of life is to know this. Lao-tsu knew it, just like Einstein knew it. But you and I are not allowed to. It would shatter our revered hologram, the one that threatens to shatter the world. a friend responded:

stunning is an understatement - so I'm not the only one who thinks of
sleeping under bridge.....but that would be a cop-out - I'm sticking
around to fight the war for consciousness !

Amen brother! I just wish i had the extra funds to make the trek to Basel next month for this super amazing event---

"The average person today is far below the level of ultimate consciousness. With Albert Hofmann's creation of LSD, and with competent support and guidance, vast new areas of discovery and understanding can be explored."

Detailed Program

Friday, 13 January 2006
From the Plants of God to LSD

07.30 Opening of the Registration Desk

08.15 – 08.45 Tune-in
Akasha Project
From the Sound of the Earthly Year to the Vibration of the LSD-25 Molecule
The Akasha Project presents a meditative electronic sound trip. Starting from the primeval sound of the earthly year, a C sharp with 136.10 hertz, we glide into the LSD-25 molecule's octave analoguous field of frequency.

09.00 – 11.00 Panorama
From the Plants of the Gods to LSD (1)
Simultaneous translation Ger/Eng and Eng/Ger
Moderation: Lucius Werthmüller

Dieter A. Hagenbach and Lucius Werthmüller: Welcome and Opening of the Symposium

Lucius Werthmüller interviews Albert Hofmann: The Discovery of LSD-25

Felix Hasler, Ph.D.: What is Lysergic Acid Diethylamide?

Rolf Verres, M.D.: Appraisal of Albert Hofmann’s Lifework

Rudolf Bauer, M.D.: Welcome speech of the Society for Medicinal Plant Research

Reynold Nicole: LSD, Albert Hofmann and the Quality of Time

Thomas Klett, Ph.D.: Albert Hofmann - Ernst Jünger: Notes on a Long Friendship

Jochen Gartz, Ph.D.: Teonanacatl: The Discovery of Psilocybin by Albert Hofmann

Carl P. Ruck, Ph.D.: Eleusis: Retracing the Sacred Road

11.00 – 11.30 Break

11.30 – 13.00 Seminars/Workshops/Panels

Seminar
Ralph Metzner
Albert Hofmann, LSD and the Quest for the Alchemical Philosopher’s Stone
(German, simultaneous translation Ger/Eng)

Originally, alchemy was a holistic system of methods for the physical, psychological and mental transformation, which is related to Indian yoga, among other things. Under pressure of the church esoteric methods of self-transformation were hidden in an obscure secret language. In modern age disapproved-of as superstition by natural science, alchemy’s symbolism was being revived in Carl Jung’s analytical psychology. The discovery of highly effective substances by Albert Hofmann and others, suitable for triggering physical, psychological and mental transformations, carries on smoothly where this western tradition of wisdom broke off.

Joint Seminar
Meaning and Implications of LSD for Science, Society, and Culture
With Günter Amendt, Rick Doblin, Felix Hasler, Martin A. Lee, Claudia Müller-Ebeling, Jeremy Narby, Juraj Styk
(German, English, simultaneous translation Ger/Eng, Eng/Ger)

About sixty years after its discovery, the significance of LSD in all spheres of life and knowledge becomes more and more evident. A high-calibre international team of experts discusses the manifold, and often unrecognized influences of LSD on their respective fields.

Seminar
Carl P. Ruck, Peter Webster
The Mythology and Chemistry of the Eleusinian Mysteries
(English, without translation)

A case pending before the United States Supreme Court presented by an appeal by the New Mexico chapter of the Uniao do Vegetal (UDV) Christian church cites the Eleusinian Mystery as precedent for a psychoactive Eucharist within a well-ordered religious ceremony. For approximately two millennia, beginning about 1500 BCE and ending with the conversion of the Greco-Roman world to Christianity, people gathered at the village of Eleusis outside ancient Athens to experience something that would change them and their expectations about the meaning of life and death forever.

Seminar
Wolf-Dieter Storl
Albert Hofmann and the Inspiration through Plant Devas
(German, without translation)

Mid-Twentieth Century: «Wasteland», Nuclear Fear and Desert of Materialism, and how the wise Alberich found the Nano-Flower which granted the Devas the access again and liberated the Flower Power Children from their exile.

Seminar
Society for Medicinal Plant Research (GA)
With Rudolf Brenneisen, Matthias Hamburger, Wolfgang Kubelka
Drug Discovery from Nature

Wolfgang Kubelka
"Pharmakon": From Poison to Medicine - the Chemical Improvement of Nature?

The Greek term "Pharmakon" was used for poison, at the same time for antidote and medicine. During centuries, poisonous and healing plants have been detected by trial and error; it was not before 1800, however, that natural science became successful in isolating and identifying active substances from plants. With the development of chemistry the number of known structures increased enormously, and in many cases their mode of action became explainable. Albert Hofmann in his work, sometimes led by serendipity, gives us excellent examples for classical natural products chemistry. To which extent is it possible to find and improve natural compounds for their use in medicine?

Rudolf Brenneisen
Cannabis - From Phytocannabinoids to Endocannabinoids

The Cannabis plant has been an essential element of traditional medicine for thousands of years. Today, its medicinal use is becoming again popular mainly within self-medication. However, the discrepancy between empirical and evidence-based data is obvious and therefore implies intensive pharmacological and clinical research. On the other hand, the recently discovered Cannabis receptors and their endogenous ligands are potential targets for new therapeutic tools.

Matthias Hamburger
Contemporary Natural Product Drug Discovery

Natural products have been the historically most prolific source for drugs and inspiration for designing synthetic drug substances. Recently, their role in drug discovery has been challenged by the advent of combinatorial synthesis and high-throughput screening. Contemporary opportunities for natural products will be discussed in the larger context of methodological advances and new paradigms in the life sciences. Selected examples will highlight the continued importance of natural products in target discovery and as source for new drug templates with unique properties.

13.00 – 14.00 Break

14.00 – 16.00 Panorama

From the Plants of the Gods to LSD (2)
Simultaneous translation Ger/Eng and Eng/Ger

Moderation: Martin Frischknecht

Christian Rätsch Ph.D.: Plants of the Gods: From the Jungle to the Laboratories of Pharmacologists

Ulrich Holbein: Writers and Drugs: From Charles Baudelaire to Aldous Huxley

Jonathan Ott: The Relatives of LSD: Ololiuqui und Ayahuasca

Ralph Metzner Ph.D.: The Beginning of LSD-Research: Canada, Harvard and Good Friday

David E. Nichols Ph.D.: The Heffter Research Institute USA and the Heffter Research Center Zurich: Centers for Hallucinogenic Research

Franz X. Vollenweider M.D.: The Effects of LSD: The State of Research Today

Felix Hasler Ph.D.: Special Case Switzerland: LSD-Research and Therapy

Rick Doblin Ph.D.: The Worldwide Use of LSD in Therapy and Medicine

16.00 – 16.30 Break

16.30 – 18.00 Seminars/Workshops/Panels

Seminar
Christian Rätsch
From the Plants of the Gods to LSD
(German, simultaneous translation Ger/Eng)

Chemically, and as to its mental effects, LSD belongs to the group of ancient Mexican sacred drugs, and probably also to the Eleusinian drink of initiation. Albert Hofmann’s phytochemical research enabled a special ethnopharmacological study of Mexican magic plants and mushrooms. In his seminar, the famous German ethnopharmacologist and author of the Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants goes into the complex significance of Albert Hofmann’s research for ethno(pharmaco)logy.

Seminar
Alexander T. and Ann Shulgin
«Ask the Shulgins»
(English, consecutive summary in German)

Sasha and Ann will answer everything you wanted to know about psychoactive substances. Alexander "Sasha" T. Shulgin, is a pharmacologist and chemist known for his creation of new psychoactive chemicals. In 1967, he was introduced to the possibilities of MDMA by an undergrad at San Francisco State University at a time when very few people had tried MDMA. Though Shulgin did not invent the chemical, he did create a new synthesis process in 1976. Since that time, Shulgin has synthesized and bioassayed (self-tested) hundreds of psychoactive chemicals, recording his work in four books and in more than two hundred papers. He is a figure in the psychedelic community, speaking at conferences, granting frequent interviews, and instilling a sense of rational scientific thought into the world of self-experimentation and psychoactive ingestion Sasha's partner, Ann Shulgin also conducted psychedelic therapy sessions with MDMA before it was scheduled in 1985.

Seminar
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)
With Rick Doblin, Charles S. Grob, John H. Halpern, Valerie Mojeiko, Andrew Sewell,
In the Midst of Darkness - Light:
US Government approved Psychedelic Therapy Research
(English, without translation)

Presentation by the principle investigators of all three FDA-approved psychedelic psychotherapy research projects in the US: Psilocybin in cancer patients with anxiety, MDMA in cancer patients with anxiety, and MDMA in subjects with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Further, MAPS presents information about the case report study of LSD/Psilocybin in cluster headache and plans for the study of Ibogaine in treating substance abusers, as well as information on building a non-profit psychedelic and medical marijuana pharmaceutical company.

2 Seminars
16.30 – 17.10
Wolf-Dieter Storl
"The Spirit of Basel"
(German, without translation)

Basel has a long humanist tradition, be it the spirit of Desiderius Erasmus, the activities of Paracelsus, or the discoveries of Albert Hofmann. Wolf-Dieter Storl takes a look at mysterious facts and backgrounds: Basel’s sacred geography since megalithic times; the Rhine as a sacred river, which embodies the triple-shaped pre-Indo-European goddess as a snake or a dragon; Basel as a centre of the cult of Celtic sun god Belenos; city of basilisks and sphinxes, city of alchemy and, today, city of chemistry.

17.10 – 17.20 Break

17.20 – 18.00

John Beresford
Psychedelic Agents and the Structure of Consciousness: Stages in a Session Using LSD and DMT
(English, without translation)

Experimental work with psychedelic agents permits a theoretical conception of consciousness unlike any posed by academic philosophy, analytic or existential. The sequence of stages revealed in a session adapts to the view that consciousness, at any rate human consciousness, possesses an inherent structure. What are the metaphysical consequences of this fact? In particular, how does the sequence of stages relate to activity in the brain? There is tension between the reality of the "LSD experience" – for example, karmic reaching-back to a significant past life event – and the reality of brain cells and their synapses. Speculation here may goad philosophy to explore the new paradigm we hear about.

18.00 – 18.30 Break

18.30 – 20.00 Seminars/Workshops/Panels

Film
Jon Hanna
Psychopticon Animatris: A Visual Tour of Hallucinatory Imagery in Animation
(English, without translation)

This collection of diverse clips showcases hallucinatory content and inspiration in pop-culture animation from the 1920s until today. Whether induced by alcohol, psychedelics or other drugs, dreams, music or meditation, the depiction of crossing liminal boundaries is frequently beautiful, often humorous, and always entertaining.

Panel
LSD and the Counterculture of the Sixties in Europe
With Brummbaer, Sergius Golowin, Urban Gwerder, Werner Pieper, Ronald Steckel, Simon Vinkenoog, Moderation: Günter Amendt
(German, without translation)

Contemporary witnesses share memories of the Sixties. They inform us about the specific movements of their country of origin and analyze the impact of LSD on the varied streams of the political and social counterculture.

2 Seminars
18.30 – 19.10
The Beckley Foundation / Amanda Feilding
LSD, Precious Key of Neuroscience
(English, without translation)

The Beckley Foundation Scientific Program conducts cutting edge research with LSD in human subjects, explores neurophysiological similarities between LSD and the mystical experience through observing modulations in the blood supply, brainwaves and a broad spectrum of cognitive changes. The Beckley Foundation Drug Policy Program advises governments and international agencies such as the UN. It produces reports and organises seminars at the House of Lords, which evaluate global drug policy and its impact on scientific and medical research.

19.10 – 19.20 Break

19.20 – 20.00
Stephen Abrams
Moving Sideways in Time: Miracles that Leave no Traces
(English, without translation)

This talk looks at synchronicity and the problem of coincidence in psychedelic experience. It brings together the views of Carl Jung and Alfred North Whitehead and considers the possibility that human fate can be understood in terms of a sideways motion in time between parallel worlds. The discussion may help to resolve the contradiction between the ubiquity of meaningful coincidence and the paucity of experimental evidence for so-called "psychic" phenomena. The speaker describes top-secret US government funded research at Oxford University.

2 Seminars
18.30 – 19.10
Jochen Gartz
From the Demystification of Teonanacatl to the Global Research on Psychoactive Mushroom Species
(German, simultaneous translation Ger/Eng)

Early in 1958, Albert Hofmann and collaborators succeeded in isolating psilocybin and psilocin from Mexican magic mushrooms for the first time. A new type of cultivation methods and a subsequent synthesis made it possible to analyze the structure of these agents and to produce them rationally. Since then many mushroom species, developing these alkaloids, have been found all over the world and have been chemically analyzed. Apart from these results of the research also the structure of a so far unknown derivative of psilocybin is being presented for the first time, which – as far as is known – only occurs in a single psychoactive kind of the inocybe species (a psilocybin mushroom).

19.10 – 19.20 Break

19.20 – 20.00
Ulrich Holbein
The Indescribable Doesn’t Mind who Describes it!
Three Thousand Years of LSD between Literary Artistry and Drivel
(German, without translation)

Ancient, medieval, romantic and other minds and reporters never took LSD, maybe only beer or nothing at all; but in their reports based on personal experiences they describe unmistakable typical LSD visions. Then, when LSD became available, the ability to describe of those concerned seems to diminish. German writer Ulrich Holbein documents his astounding thesis with many mostly unknown citational finds from all times and territories.

2 Seminars

18.30 – 19.10
Michael Horowitz
"Kissing the Sky": Writers on LSD
(English, without translation)

Psychedelic drugs and literature both tap into the realm of Creative Intelligence. Writers have used different literary genres and stylistic approaches to describe the LSD experience to readers and listeners. This lecture presents a survey of texts from Hofmann and Huxley to Leary and Lennon.

19.10 – 19.20 Break

19.20 – 20.00
Jonathan Ott
Albert Hofmann's Contributions to Chemical and Pharmaceutical Research
(English, with consecutive translation Eng/Ger)

A survey of the major contributions of Albert Hofmann to the research of complex chemical and pharmacological properties of several natural substances and their derivatives, with special reference to the derivatives of ergot.

•

Saturday, 14 January 2006
The Ecstatic Adventure

07.30 Opening of the Registration Desk

08.15 – 08.45 Tune-in
Star Sounds Orchestra
Mercury – Meditation

Resonance frequency is the "patron saint" of each successful communication so to speak; traditionally known as "Mercury", "Hermes" and "Toth". On this basis the Star Sounds Orchestra will get you into the right mood for the day’s events with a musical "Tune-in", and turn your nervous system into a state of expectancy and bless you with a pleasant day.

09.00 – 11.00 Panorama
The Ecstatic Adventure (1)
Simultaneous Translation Ger/Eng and Eng/Ger

Moderation: Martin Frischknecht

Carlo Zumstein M.D.: Transcendence and Back – In Favor of a Culture of Netherworld Journey

Juraj Styk M.D.: Psycholytic and Psychedelic Therapies

Mathias Bröckers: The Right to get High

Martin A. Lee: LSD and CIA and KGB

Ralph Metzner Ph.D.: The Meaning of Set and Setting

Micky Remann: Baptism, Wellness and Back: Water as an initiate Psychedelic of Nature

Alex Grey: Psychedelic Art in the 20th and 21st Century

11.00 – 11.30 Break

11.30 – 13.00 Seminars/Workshops/Panels

Seminar
Alex Grey
Impact and Influence of LSD on Art and Culture
(English, consecutive translation Eng/Ger)

Artist Alex Grey will trace the emergence of psychedelic imagery in 20th and 21st century graphics and fine art, including film and music. Grey will focus primarily on the art of painting and the current relevance of consciousness expansion on the ecstatic aesthetic in contemporary art. A Psychedelic or Entheo-Art that was born in the crucible of the Sixties has matured to the deeper and more spiritually compelling expressions of today.

Panel
Psychedelic Therapy: Chances and Risks
With: Rick Doblin, Charles S. Grob, Michael Schlichting, Manuel Schoch, Juraj Styk; Moderation: Martin Frischknecht
(German, simultaneous translation Eng/Ger)

It probably was Italian psychoanalyst Baroni who, in his "Confessions High on Mescaline" in 1931, first published on the use of psychedelics in psychotherapy. But it wasn’t before clinical experiments with LSD (discovered in 1943) that the therapeutic potential of altered states of consciousness was brought to light. During the sixties, psycholysis was being practiced in 18 European treatment centers on a regular basis. Through continuous further development and optimization, today we can refer to a fully developed, therapeutically valid and secure method. A high-calibre team of experts informs about the present-day level of knowledge as well as about chances and risks, using hallucinogenic substances in psychotherapy.

Seminar
Alexander T. and Ann Shulgin
Pihkal and Tihkal: A Chemical Love Story
(English, consecutive translation Eng/Ger)

"We met, married and formed a research team about twenty five years ago. This called upon a background of psychedelic drug invention and exploration of the previous twenty years, but it added a new dimension to this area of exploration. Besides the definition of a new material in synthetic and analytical terms, there is now a social and psychological aspect that can be explored. The increasing reluctance of the scientific research community to accept these new discoveries led to the writing and publication of the books Pihkal and Tihkal."

Seminar
Martin A. Lee
LSD and CIA – Demonizing of LSD & the Suppression of Research
(English, simultaneous translation Eng/Ger)

The CIA and the US military were both actively involved in anti-LSD propaganda (chromosome damage scare, etc.). The CIA and the army funded scientists favoring the psychosis-producing view of LSD as opposed to researchers exploring therapeutic applications. Martin A. Lee analyses how the CIA ties with the US Food & Drug Administration and how the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Public Health Service influenced U.S. policy decisions regarding LSD research and prohibition in the Sixties.

2 Seminars
Felix Hasler, Franz X. Vollenweider
Requirements for the Work with Hallucinogens (60’)
(German, without translation)

With practical examples the clinical, scientific, therapeutic as well as legal and ethical general conditions allowing the work with hallucinogens in Switzerland will be explained and discussed.

Rael Cahn
Psychedelic States and Meditation (30’)
(English, without translation)

Rael Cahn presents results of EEG studies with Tibetan monks in order to measure brain activities during meditation compared with studies with students under the influence of psilocybin. Among other things, with these studies research was made on how visual and auditory stimuli occuring during these altered states of consciousness were being assimilated. Similarities between these two kinds of experience suggest to take a closer look at connections and differences between meditative and psychedelic states. The increased switching-rate during binocular rivalry stimulation, as has been observed during both meditation and under the influence of psilocybin, is being treated exemplarily.

13.00 – 14.00 Break

14.00 – 16.00 Panorama
The Ecstatic Adventure (2)
Simultaneous translation Ger/Eng and Eng/Ger

Moderation: Lucius Werthmüller

Michael Horowitz: LSD: The Antidote to Everything

Sue Hall: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds – The Sixties

Martin A. Lee: Summer of Love and Woodstock – LSD and Counterculture

Simon Vinkenoog: From Amsterdam to Zurich – The Sixties in Europe

Günter Amendt Ph.D.: The Empire Strikes Back: The Demonization of LSD

Barry Miles: LSD and its Impact on Art, Design and Music

Hans Cousto: The Psychedelic Revival of the Nineties: The Global Techno, Rave and Trance Rituals

16.00 – 16.30 Break

16.30 – 18.00 Seminars/Workshops/Panels

Seminar
Hans Cousto
The Psychedelic Revival of the Nineties: The Global Techno, Rave and Trance Rituals
(German, simultaneous translation Ger/Eng)

Well-known drug expert and musicologist Hans Cousto demonstrates how different preferences in the use of psychoactive substances within the techno and party culture evolved, and the way these have influenced the cultural development as a whole. He especially explains the differences between entheogenically acting psychedelics like LSD and psilocybin, emphatically acting entactogenes like MDMA and stimuli like amphetamine and cocaine as well as different kinds and dangers of mixed consumption.

Panel
Natural and Pharmacological Paths to Expanded States of Consciousness
With Ralph Metzner, Bea Rubli, Manuel Schoch, Franz X. Vollenweider, Carlo Zumstein, Moderation: Lucius Werthmüller
(German, without translation)

Many spiritual traditions disapprove of the use of drugs in order to produce altered or expanded states of consciousness as inadmissible short cuts of a natural spiritual development. They refer to pharmacologically induced states as "artificial paradises" and claim that these states differ basically from states, which appear spontaneously or are being induced through persistent spiritual practicing. A group of consciousness researchers experienced in travelling inner worlds discusses the legitimacy of using psychoactive substances as well as common grounds and differences of these states and their long-term implications as to personality development.

2 Seminars
16.30 – 17.10
John Dunbar, John "Hoppy" Hopkins, Barry Miles
LSD and its Visual Impact
(English, without translation)

Three contemporary witnesses uncover the historic roots of 1960’s psychedelic art explosion, giving us impressions on the climate of experimentation across all art forms, cross-fertilization of ideas, life styles and drugs. They will take some significant examples from this very wide field: Influences on the Beatles, with anecdotes and sketches by Lennon under LSD; recordings of Mark Boyle’s early lightshows for UFO, the legendary nightclub; poster art of the London psychedelic school 1966-68 compared with its U.S. counterpart and present-day trance/dance wall hangings.

17.10 – 17.20 Break

17.20 – 18.00
Robert Forte
Lets Save Democracy: Timothy Leary and the Popularization of LSD
(English, without translation)

More than any other single individual, Timothy Leary is to thank, or blame, for the popularization of LSD. Here we honor the merits and madness of Timothy’s exuberant ministry within the social, political, and environmental context of the 1960s.

Earth Erowid and Fire Erowid
Current Views of Acid: What do LSD Users Say?
(English, simultaneous translation Eng/Ger)

In the 40 years since it first became widely available, LSD has solidified its position as the quintessential hallucinogen, front and center of an enduring psychedelic movement. But what role does LSD play today? How available is it? How many people ingest it? Why do they try it and what do they think of it? We will take a look at the way people think about and use this classic psychedelic.

2 Seminars

16.30 – 17.10
Torsten Passie
Thinking, Remembering, Guessing: LSD in Cognition Research, from 1950 to this Day
(German, without translation)

With changes of model conceptions to cognitive functions – from simple psychological and biological models to more complex neuropsychological and brainphysiological models – LSD has temporarily played an important role. Thus one wanted to find out through which neurotransmitters cognitive functions are being passed on. A number of experiments were carried out with which the implications of LSD on cognitive functions like thinking, remembering, associating, the guessing of time and so forth were analyzed. This widely scattered and little known research will be systematically presented and looked at within its historical and actual framework.

17.10 – 17.20 Break

17.20 – 18.00
Torsten Passie
Lasting Change of Personality as After-effect of Controlled Taking LSD: What Do We Know?
(German, without translation)

Already early on, the systematic use of LSD in research and therapy speaks against the assumption that LSD would trigger a "model psychosis." After taking LSD many test persons showed positive, sometimes personality-changing after-effects. The results of these experiments were the beginning of psychedelic (as distinct from psycholytic) therapy with single and very intense sessions with large doses. Systematic research was also done on this kind of (after) effects in a number of especially designed experiments. Both the experiments and the personality changing effects after psychedelic treatments will be presented and closely analyzed in this lecture.

18.00 – 18.30 Break

18.30 – 20.00 Seminars/Workshops/Panels

2 Seminars
18.30 – 19.10
Ralph Metzner
Expanding Consciousness - Seven Phases of Socio-Cultural Transformation
(English, simultaneous translation Eng/Ger)

The Discovery of the consciousness-expanding substance LSD at the height of WWII synchronistically coincided with the invention of nuclear weaponry. As the world geopolitical order attempted to come to terms with the existence of these horrendous weapons of mass destruction, the next few decades saw the birth and growth of a multifaceted movement of consciousness expansion in all areas of society and culture. We can identify a series of profound social-cultural transformations proceeding in seven stages, like the octave pattern described by Gurdjieff. These transformative movements represent a creative response of the collective human psyche to the evolutionary survival challenge posed by nuclear weaponry, world-wide environmental devastation and runaway population growth.

19.10 – 19.20 Break

19.20 – 20.00
Rolf Verres
LSD, Meditation and Music
(German, without translation)

Psychedelic music of the 1970s does not conform to present-day Zeitgeist any more. Albert Hofmann’s preferences are with certain kinds of classical music. Why? This seminar will present examples of music which Albert Hofmann loves.

Panel
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds: LSD and the Counterculture of the Sixties
With John Dunbar, John "Hoppy" Hopkins, Michael Horowitz, Martin A. Lee, Barry Miles , Moderation: Stephen Abrams
(English, simultaneous translation Eng/Ger)

Without a doubt the legendary sixties were the peak of the "ecstatic adventure". LSD's rapid dissemination and the upcoming counterculture of hippies and students were fervently discussed topics of this period of new departures and general renewal. Several decades later, witnesses of the times remember the wild years in England and the USA. The turned-on Beatles and their trippy songs, Flower Power, Be-ins and Sit-ins in San Francisco, Woodstock in the acid fever and much more will be exchanged and remembered in this English-American panel.

Seminar
Heffter Research Center / University Hospital of Psychiatry Zurich
With Mark Geyer, Charles S. Grob, David E. Nichols, Franz X. Vollenweider
From Molecule to Mind: Recent Advances of Psychedelic Research
(English, without translation)

Widely known researchers of the HRC will present following topics:

David E. Nichols: Neurochemistry and Molecular Action of LSD

Mark Geyer: Behavioral Pharmacology of Hallucinogens: A System Approach

Franz X. Vollenweider: Psilocybin and it’s Brain: A Neuroscience Perspective

Charles S. Grob: Hallucinogens in Clinical Practise: Basic Principles and Results

2 Seminars
18.30 – 19.10
Mathias Bröckers
From "Open Mind" to "Open Source": how the Counterculture of the Sixties led to the Personal Computer and to Unlimited Information
(German, simultaneous translation Ger/Eng)

Albert Hofmann’s discovery has not only significantly marked 20th century culture it also influenced technology. Personal computer, Internet and "Open Source" software would not have been developed the way the were without LSD-induced inspirations. "Acid heads" laid the foundation for what we nowadays call computer revolution and information age.

19.10 – 19.20 Break

19.20 – 20.00
Mark McCloud
Bring the Fire! A Pictorial History of LSD Blotter Art
(English, without translation)

A colorful presentation of forty years of art history on LSD impregnated blotting paper. Over one hundred images of "The Greatest Hits" of the past four decades from the world’s biggest collection will be shown.

2 Seminars

18.30 – 19.10
Wolfgang Sterneck
LSD and Sexuality
(German, without translation)

Filled with the psychedelic movement’s euphoria, Timothy Leary described LSD as "the most potent aphrodisiac ever found by man". Meanwhile this view has given way to a more realistic approach, which describes both potentials and dangers in an appropriate way. LSD can, also in the erotic context, open up new and so far unknown spaces, but it also can totally close them. The “cosmic orgasm” is as much part of the spectrum of perception as is a total distance between partners who are captivated in their own worlds.

19.10 – 19.20 Break

19.20 – 20.00
Fred Weidmann
Albert Hofmann’s, Fred Weidmann’s and Gaia’s "Romantic Principle"
(German, without translation)

Since the inside equals the outside, small things may equal big things. Pictures turn into means of knowledge, if small-scale creation gives an idea of the allover creation. The "Romantic principle" reads: while creating beauty in miniature, you help to improve the whole. Through interaction of doing and looking the painter becomes Gaia’s lover. This lecture is based on a correspondence with Albert Hofmann.

20.00 – 20.15 Break

20.15 – approx. 22.15

Concert
Introduction by Hans Cousto
Akasha Project
Barnim Schulze

The substance's frequencies, measured in the infrared spectrum, are being transposed to octave analogous sounds. By logically using data thus obtained to all musical parameters like sound modulations, tempi and frequencies, a sometimes strangely meditative sound originates: quantum music which Barnim Schulze calls "Klangwirkstoff", active sound substance. While you tune in to these molecular fields of sound and rhythm, you may state for yourself in which way the experiencing of substance analogous effects via perceiving octave ananologous sounds is possible.

Star Sounds Orchestra
Steve Schroyder, Jens Zygar

The Star Sounds Orchestra will musically interpret harmonical occurences at the moment of the discovery of LSD. This psychedelic symphony in five movements describes significant astronomical positions of our solar system's planets at the time of this moment of birth of a new door of awareness, so important for psychedelic history. Musical citations from the history of psychedelics in connection with the sounds of planets are the starting point for a spherical trip of the cosmic kind.

•

Sunday, 15 January 2006
New Dimensions of Consciousness

07.30 Opening of the Registration Desk

08.15 – 08.45 Tune-in
Banco de Gaia
Toby Marks

With his sensitive electronic style mix of Techno, House, Ambient-Trance, and musical influences from Arabian, Indian and Far East areas, English composer and musician Toby Marks helps us tune into the last day of the Symposium, opening our mind and our senses to a variety of new dimensions of consciousness.

09.00 – 11.00 Panorama

New Dimensions of Consciousness (1)
Simultaneous translation Ger/Eng and Eng/Ger

Moderation: Lucius Werthmüller

Ralph Metzner Ph.D.: The Meaning of Psychedelic Experience

Rick Doblin: The Revival of Psychedelic Medicine

Günter Amendt Ph.D.: No Drugs – No Future: Sketches of an Adequate Drug Policy

Christian Rätsch Ph.D.: The New Rituals: LSD as a Sacred Substance

Ronald Steckel: Freedom and Hedonism: The Way of the West

Claudia Müller-Ebeling Ph.D.: LSD and Creativity

Rolf Verres M.D.: LSD, Meditation and Music

11.00 – 11.30 Break

11.30 – 13.00 Seminars/Workshops/Panels

Seminar
Stanley Krippner
LSD and Psychic Phenomena: Attempting to Grasp the Unpredictable and the Intangible
(English, simultaneous translation Eng/Ger)

LSD-type drugs have often been used to facilitate so-called "psychic phenomena", in other words, those experiences that seem to defy mainstream science's concepts of time, space, and energy. An Italian investigation met with meager results, and few formal studies have been attempted since. Such hypothetical phenomena as telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis appear to be intangible, and people’s laboratory reactions to LSD often are unpredictable. However, there are several anecdotal reports that could serve as the basis for continued exploration, especially those coming from shamans' usage of such substances as ayahuasca and their contemporary use as religious sacraments.

Panel
Towards an Adequate Drug Policy
With Günter Amendt, Mathias Bröckers, Roger Liggenstorfer, Luc Saner, Moderation: Thomas Kessler
(German, simultaneous translation, Ger/Eng)

The American "War on Drugs" is but the visible peak of an international drug policy which measures everything with a different yardstick and is strongly defined by economic interests and irrational motives. A drug policy in keeping with the times should be oriented towards the risks of drugs, not towards their being legal or illegal.
Switzerland – and above all the city of Basel – has taken on a role as trailblazer as far as a pragmatically oriented drug policy is concerned; even though the National Council wasted the chance, last year, to discuss new, already completed forward-looking bills. A group of drug experts, politicians, journalists and activists outlines ways out of a hopeless situation towards an adequate drug policy in keeping with the times.

11.30 - 12.10
Seminar
Sue Hall
LSD - A Tool for Life
(English, without translation)

LSD may be more versatile than generally believed. This seminar will explore the use of different dosages.

12.10 – 12.20 Break

12.20 – 13.00
Jeremy Narby
The Future of Biology
(English, without translation)

The idea of a kind of intelligence active throughout nature is gaining support within the scientific community, affirming a view long held by indigenous people and shamans. Shamanic use of such plants as ayahuasca and tobacco deals centrally with contact with other beings including plants and animals. Ayahuasca and LSD enhance people’s concern with the natural world. Hallucinogens are tools for exploring little-known facets of the human mind, for thinking ourselves as animals, and as predators, and for rethinking our place in nature and our relationship with other species. Biology has a date with shamanism and with altered states of consciousness.

2 Seminars

11.30 - 12.10
Micky Remann
Water as a Medium and the Muse of Consciousness
(German, without translation)

It's in the nature of nature that it opens its artistic realities preferably to the consciousness, which dives under the surface. An entry into this world is offered by a stay in water where nobody can avoid experiencing an altered functioning of senses first-hand. The way eye, ear, consciousness and feeling are being touched in water, depends on which sensory stimuli are being transported there. What happens when water becomes the medium for multisensory, multimedia stagings, is to be demonstrated with pictures, sounds and tales.

12.10 – 12.20 Break

12.20 – 13.00
Peter Webster
Psychoactive Plants and Human Evolution
(English, without translation)

Psychoactive plants have been omnipresent during all the stages of hominid evolution - but is there any evidence that they may have had an important influence or been the evolutionary catalyst for the emergence of modern humans? Mythological tales of a "forbidden fruit" acting to awaken humankind from their “natural” or protohuman state are not uncommon, but some recent findings of science now seem to give new meaning to such stories.

13.00 – 14.00 Break

14.00 – 16.00 Panorama
New Dimensions of Consciousness (2)
Simultaneous translation Ger/Eng and Eng/Ger

Moderation: Lucius Werthmüller

Stanley Krippner Ph.D.: The Future of Religion: Dogma or Transcendental Experience?

Jeremy Narby Ph.D.: The Future of Human Consciousness

Ulrich Holbein: Future Society: "Brave New World" or "Island"

Ralph Metzner Ph.D.: Psychedelics and a new Paradigm: Personal Responsibility and Self-Reliance

Alexander T. Shulgin Ph.D.: New Psychedelics and their Specific Effects

Mathias Bröckers: Handling Hallucinogens: Visions and Initiatives

Carlo Zumstein M.D.: Neo-Schamanism for a Neo-Consciousness

Albert Hofmann Ph.D., h.c.: The Meaning of LSD from the Discoverers Point of View

16.00 – 16.30 Break

16.30 – 18.00 Seminars/Workshops/Panels

Seminar
Claudia Müller-Ebeling
LSD and Creativity
(German, simultaneous translation Ger/Eng)

The well-known art historian and ethnologist gives a comprehensive summary of creativity research in the sixties and seventies. Furthermore, she allows an insight into the work of artists who implemented, in their work, personal LSD experiences, or who have met Albert Hofmann personally.

Panel
Consciousness and Future Society
With Mathias Bröckers, Stanley Krippner, Ralph Metzner, Jeremy Narby, Micky Remann, Moderation: Martin Frischknecht
(English, consecutive summarization in German)

"The evolution of mankind is in the alteration of consciousness," states Albert Hofmann. Having a close look at different developments on our planet, we soon realize how urgently a new consciousness is needed, in order to do justice to the requirements of a future existence worth living. Representatives and experts from different spheres of life and fields of knowledge discuss the major challenges, which we only can meet with an altered or expanded consciousness.

2 Seminars
16.30 – 17.10
Manuel Schoch
Meditation and Mind-expanding Drugs: complementary or irritating?
(German, without translation)

The focal points of this lecture are: the power of silence in a state of mind-expansion; the understanding of the emotional chain and its effects in meditation; drugs as mystic experience of timelessness; consciousness-expanding drugs as therapeutic means without the "detour" via the past.

17.10 – 17.20 Break

17.20 – 18.00
Seminar
Ronald Steckel
The Way of the West, or the Rise of the Occident
(German, without translation)

This lecture deals with aspects of the present-day consciousness-mutation: with the new (cosmic) view of man as a new paradigm; with the significance of the "individual" with the "all"; with "initiations" and "paths"; with the "Occident" as a spiritual Fort Knox.

Workshop
Carlo Zumstein
Everybody his own Shaman
(German, without translation)

Everybody needs his own myth of life. In ancient cultures shamans were not solely healers. Above all they were visionaries: creators and organizers of their community’s self-image and view of the world. For centuries we have left this to the church, to the government and to schools. In this workshop Carlo Zumstein demonstrates how a present-day shamanism opens one’s own doors towards dreams and visionary powers - for a fulfilled self-creation within new communities.

2 Seminars
16.30 – 17.10
Bruce Eisner
LSD, Its Past and Potential
(English, without translation)

Bruce Eisner explores LSD's past, including its ancient lineage, uses in research, significance to the counterculture of the Sixties and the consequences of its suppression. Within this context, he will bring his own experiences and the development of the Island Project, named after the work of Aldous Huxley. Bruce Eisner covers the host of potential future roles for LSD including psychotherapy, spiritual/religious awareness, creativity and problem solving, in the experimental production of new cultural memes and the evolution of a neo-Eleusinian mystery.

17.10 – 17.20 Break

17.20 – 18.00
Myron Stolaroff
The Future of Consciousness
(English, without translation)

The average person today is far below the level of ultimate consciousness. With Albert Hofmann's creation of LSD, and with competent support and guidance, vast new areas of discovery and understanding can be explored. Maintaining these findings require intention and discipline, as new learned values may slip away. Attention will be given on how to best retain these fresh discoveries, and keep them active in our life. Also covered will be examining sources of difficulties and how they can be avoided.

18.00 – 18.30 Break

18.30 – 19.30
Closing Ceremony

For three days we have obtained a variety of suggestions and information on all aspects of LSD or discussed, in the words of its discoverer: Insights and Outlooks in connection with this highly potent substance. In this closing ceremony with musical framework famous speakers will draw balance, pay tribute to Albert Hofmann and take a hopeful look at the future of the human consciousness.

there's more to the story....

When the test was last administered, in 1992, 40 percent of the nation's college graduates scored at the proficient level, meaning that they were able to read lengthy, complex English texts and draw complicated inferences. But on the 2003 test, only 31 percent of the graduates demonstrated those high-level skills. There were 26.4 million college graduates.<> The college graduates who in 2003 failed to demonstrate proficiency included 53 percent who scored at the intermediate level and 14 percent who scored at the basic level, meaning they could read and understand short, commonplace prose texts. Three percent of college graduates who took the test in 2003, representing some 800,000 Americans, demonstrated "below basic" literacy, meaning that they could not perform more than the simplest skills, like locating easily identifiable information in short prose.

<>
First, understand that on the NYT website upon which these sentences were viewed, the column directly to the right of them was filled with advertisements for "career colleges" such as: AIU, University of Phoenix, DeVry, and Grantham University. Herein lies the most glaring issue with this literacy testing data. The suggestion that so many more US citizens are graduating from colleges implies that they are pursuing quality academic experiences. Nothing could be further from the truth. Career colleges and technology universities are simply businesses operating to produce trained monkey's who attend them solely because the students were never successful in school. Millions of these "graduates" are entering the lush academic fields of HVAC, IT service, fax and copier repair, auto & diesel mechanics, etc. They came from poor quality high schools with mediocre grades hoping to buy into the hype that getting a BA degree from the ever so important sounding University of Phoenix will provide the same level of "wealth" that a BA from UC Berkeley will. All one need do is simply look at their local University of Phoenix or ITT and they will immediately understand that this can never be the case. We are talking strip mall schools here people. With strip mall consumers as students, buying tech training to be "professionals" who will never need to read past the fourth grade but might find some success at the seventh grade reading level.

<>The NYT wants us to believe that college graduates are less literate even though there are more of them. This is true on paper. But the NYT doesn't evaluate or report on the quality of the schools that these graduates attended. Nor does the NYT mention the ever expanding population which really represents the apparent increase in graduates rather than more percent of high school students graduate college. In fact, the actual percent dropped from 23% to 19% of high school graduates who successfully go on to get Bachelor's degrees from fully accredited four year universities across the country.

<>

Jefferson and the imposter...

A few progressive and liberal journalists, academics, and bloggers, have been dropping Jefferson's revolutionary rhetoric from the Declaration of Independence into their efforts recently. The words started flowing out especially following Katrina, Rita, and the other umpteenth next natural and manmade disaster that Bushco chose to ignore all but the very wealthy. Coupled as it has been on the ever broadening and expanding corruptions and usurptions of power by this most dangerous to the world cabal, one might, if one was not a citizen of the US, think that the people of this nation might actually do something about it all. They would be wrong.

When Jefferson wrote: "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. ..." he was outlining, prefacing?, the recitation of facts regarding these evils that could no longer be tolerated. If we, as citizens, can't figure out that we are now so far past "light and transient" and even well beyond the suffering from so many evils, then really all is pretty much lost here.

The planet is providing the most instant and demanding karmic lessons and US citizens praise their oil company execs for subsidizing the price of gasoline to get through the holiday season in happy ignorant bliss.

Bush says that the US must be: free to torture, free to spy at will on its citizens, free to incarcerate and detain indefinitely anyone it chooses without having to present any information to justify such behaviors, free to exercise the most corrupt practices of governance to better provide relief to the wealthy who are struggling against the increasing wealth and power of Asian and European rich, free to act with irresponsible military aggression whenever it chooses for no reasons whatsoever if it is felt that doing such will provide capital largesse to those in power.

The MSM buys this up, eats it for fodder in order to shit out the pablum diarrhea to feed the masses so that they will be saited and happy to watch "reality" tv that is scripted and edited and rehearsed and reshot all in the name of keeping the eyes on the bouncing distracting balls.

If you really believe that spying on you is the best thing to keep your wealth safe, then i guess you won't mind if the rest of us also keep track of you and your expenditures and personal behaviors. Contrary to what most might think, neighborhood watch has taken a whole new form, with an entirely new cast of humint and agent provacteurs waiting on your street corner for the signal to round up the untidy and those who exercise the poor judgement of dissent. I really hope you are next.

sorely embarrassed but still freaking cold

i have been on the road working again but i still can't excuse my failure to blog regularly. I notice that the last time i was here, three weeks ago, i was complaining about the cold and snow. Well it is only gotten worse. The full moon arrived, and that meant it was visible, which also meant that the freezing fogs were absorbed by the crystal clear dry air. It is a beautiful sunny day out there, and a lovely 7ºF or -14ºC. Not at all fun.

Alas, i am deeply concerned with the state of the consciousness of the amerikan people when their president admits to authorizing spying on them, a direct constitutional violation and highly illegal, and yet there is no immediate and dramatic call for impeachment. Bush is beyond guilty, he is a tyrant that has assumed power and uses any and all means to retain it. The people are sheep, complicit in their acquiesence with power to as they think that spying on one another is a valid practice, in the same league as torture and pre-emptive demolition of foreign nations. We are freezing and we are laying down and letting ourselves die of exposure. It is a grievous and sad day in the united states.

winter.. early.. dark, icy, and freezing butt cold

Spending most of november trying to write the novel, not getting much done, and now it is time to hit the road again for the holiday season of shows. Where has that non-dimensional dimension of time gone???

Sparking up the thought machine today was a bit of midnight pondering. If one were to assume that the Iraqi insurgents were simply terrorists out to get the US out of Iraq, wouldn't it make sense, in all sorts of ways, if they simply went dark. Cutting off all such actions, letting the winds whisper some stillness in the freezing winter, the US would find itself without resistance and go home. Logic and strategic thinking would dictate that path---well only if the insurgents really were what our government says they are. But they are not.

No, what we have in Iraq is a reformed government full of Iranian mullahs, militia forces, ayatollah bureaucrats, revolutionary guards---all of whom are Shia's bent on destroying the presence of Sunni's throughout the region. The US has no business of course turning Iraq over to Iran, if we again were to believe the US in its critique of Iranian goals for the dominion over the region's resources. But this is not the case. Rather our PNAC Straussian policy creators have found a way to keep US forces on the ground ostensibly to protect the oil, but more so to balance w/ Israel the anti-china, anti-russian idealism of the Shias. If we help Iran now, they will help us against China later, or so the straw goes. Unfortunately, the Shias and Sunnis have been at each others throats for 1500 years and will continue to be so.

Our war mongers chose a path, stepped into the camel dung, and are now incapable of believing that they are losing on every front. We can't win a war we never intended to fight. We can't claim victory when the civil war will go on for another millenia. We can't save Israel from Iranian nuclear development, because we have given them all of Iraq's oil already. We can't keep China and Russia from beginning to dominate the region's resources, because we have no more money. We are screwed..

can we really save lives?

Just a quick note, as i get back finally to blogging.

In conjunction with the Alito "campaigns" and the various cancer charities et al, i have noticed the consistent use of something i find deeply errant; that is the premise upon which the pro-life and the pro-pharma/ health system forces are based: "Save a Life". As a lifeguard who argued that calling the association of lifeguards lifesaving was philosophically absurd, i still find myself appalled at this notion that we humans have the capacity to save lives. We may have the capacity to save species through avoiding behaviors that produce and increase extinctions of them (which of course we never seem to be able to act upon) but there is as yet no possible way in which humans can keep a living human from dying. We can only prolong life by our actions. We can extend it some time with lesser or greater degrees of suffering for one and/or many, but we cannot in any sense of the word keep a human being alive indefinitely. Saving a life means keeping it from ending, and that we cannot do. We all die, we all must die, we all will die and not one bit of technology or pharmacology or intentional spiritual prayer will keep that from happening. Death is fundamental to life. Without death we would not understand the relationship we have with time and the space in which we find our dependence upon interrelated constructs and species and matter.

It is important that we begin to share this message with people. When pro-lifers argue that we cannot kill fetuses because it is taking a life, that is philosophically wrong. Life kills life, life is death postponed. They might be more successful if they argued that ending a life now fails to prolong its possible successes and failures. Cancer fighting advocates need to remind people that we aren't saving the lives of people who develop cancer, merely prolonging the time before their inevitable death. Alleviation of suffering maybe, but not the alleviation of death. We need to teach our children that the only true knowledge that they can rely upon about the world and their relationship to it is that they will die, that that relationship will cease. Then life can be more fully lived. Lifeguards don't save people from dying, they merely act in ways to change the pattern of the life moving inextricably towards death.

tókha sandefur????

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"The failure of the reform measures in California’s election last night has brought out a lot of negative punditry, some of it good. On the way to work this morning, in between the car accidents, I was listening to Armstrong And Getty (the only morning show in Sacramento worth a damn), and they were making the amusing but accurate point that California is a lot like a beautiful, kind, good woman who just happens to be insane, and every few weeks comes at you with an axe. You try hard to be kind and make her well, but at some point, many people are just going to leave. I don’t agree with those who think Schwarzenegger was naive about California politics. People including Dan Walters—the only great journalist left in California—contend that he was just overly optimistic and thought that he didn’t have to go out and push for these measures."

Novel writing is going painfully slow, and i am far behind. I just couldn't pass up this opportunity to point out further evidence that tim sandefur, in his own words, is nothing so much more than a far right conservative. He may feign his allegiance to objectivist libertarianism, and speaks oft at Federalist Society meetings, but deep in the core of his being is another good Goebbels type fascist waiting until he assumes the political power he feels he righteously deserves. For the record Armstrong and Getty are cheap imitations of Hannity and Combes, begging to move up the Fox News/ Clear Channel food chain. They will make horrendously ugly statements, filled with outright lies, innuendo, deceipt etc. and if called on them, even within a five minute period, will claim that they didn't say what they just said. It is tawdry and vile. And for Timmy to claim his wonder in them is really disheartening but all too expected. Likewise with Walters who would love to be O'Reilly or even Tierney of the NYT, but is a pseudo-intellect used to synchophantic adoration of those conservatives in power. His reports distort and deceive, his book is truly a nightmare. Yet Tim, think Monty Python here, loves them and adores them. It could be no more obvious. It is a shame the others on the Positive Liberty website have to put up with him.

National Novel Writing Month

November is for NaNoWriMo so i won't be posting anything here most of the month. I will however make the effort when something so horribly vile stirs my passions. Thus, i feel i need to comment on what should have made for great TV, but didn't. Putting the Senate on double secret probation for a day needed to make so much more of the impact than it did. The lies compiled upon lies spewed by the GOP leadership needed to be attacked at each and very single moment that they were stated. Frist's comments alone should have immediately inspired parody and satire, not just among the comedians, but among the reporters present. If ever he was feeling emotionally wounded, wouldn't it have been when the SEC asked the Justice Department to conduct a separate investigation of his financial dealings. Or for him to say that Reid hijacked the Senate, it could have created the great demographic of the GOP rigging pieces of legislation, usurping this or that power to get their way or no way, and so many many more instances of GOP mismanagement of the Senate and the country. At least Rockefeller pointed out Robert's lies and hypocritical grandstanding, but where was the MSM to point out the truth and the facts. These guys are vile and despicable human beings, corrupt beyond any measure in the history of the planet, and determined to move forward with their fascist agenda no matter what happens.

how much greed is too much greed

live from Las Vegas, it's Monday afternoon:

Already we know that Exxon is generating profits at a rate of more than $1200 per second. That is alarming enough in itself, but it tends to get the public to overlook that Exxon is just one of four major oil/energy companies that are regressively redistributing large quantities of cash from the millions of not so well off citizens to the offshore/ out of taxable range coffers of secret accounts around the planet. We also know that most of the Halliburton and friends lobby are busy paying off those who have blessed them with billions of dollars of taxpayer funds to rebuild various parts of the US stung by natural inclement weather crises. What more don't we know.

Well this tidbit came out today. Tomorrow Bush will give a speech on the bird flew, no, wait the avian flu; yeah that's it. He will of course tell the people that the rest of the world is keeping the US from hoarding tamiflu jabs and that we are in another imminent crisis requiring the use of the military to protect our nation from chaos. What he won't be telling the people is that his own Secretary of Defense is sitting on millions upon millions of dollars of stock in the US patent holder of tamilflu and that his connection has pushed the mass of our nation's stockpile into the hands of the military at greater than retail prices. Nope you won't hear that in the speech. You also won't hear how the new nominee to SCOTUS doesn't think that owning hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock assets in a company matters when deciding cases involving the corporate behaviors since that company is worth millions. Nor will you hear Bush discuss the complete breakdown in the accounting, auditing, and use of US taxpayer funds that were to be used to rebuild Iraq.

This is all business as usual, and there are many who support it for wonderful ideological reasons. Some of course are corporate fascists like those connected to government; some are libertarian advocates running around the country spouting their propaganda to Federalist Society events at colleges, hoping to raise the banner for ending government oversight on all manner of economic decision making--but of course maintaining and strengthening the military to protect these neo-feudal lords of capital. One such freak is Timothy Sandefur. Here is a sampling of his line of thinking:

"Californians are so extremely wealthy that they are willing and able to pay to live in hyperregulated environments like San Francisco and Santa Monica—where prices on everything from homes to consumer goods are needlessly driven up to serve the agendas of the demagogues whom it delighteth the economically illiterate to honor. But what could we have, and what could we be, if it weren’t for the stifling interference of the government?""

"Progressivism as an innovation intended to curtail racial violence. Among other Progressive ideas were forced sterilization and other eugenics programs, peacetime military conscription, the prohibition of alcohol, and forced government schooling, complete with a Pledge of Allegiance written by a socialist. Progressivism (which I take to be in many ways the ancestor of today’s liberalism, and certainly a word of which contemporary liberals seem fond) represented a massive attempt to make men good by force. It was profoundly evil, and profoundly anti-conservative.

"More recently, those regarded as “liberals” have promoted a program of “multiculturalism” and cultural and moral relativism which teaches America’s youth that America and its founding principles are essentially evil, and that capitalism and individualism are the causes of environmental destruction, social oppression, and other social ills. I, for one, regard this as deeply wrong. Movements to purge American school textbooks of fundamental elements of American history, and to label important and great historical figures as evil, and to make martyrs out of people with questionable causes, have all been defended by “liberals.” Those described as “liberals” have included such propagandists as Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore—apologists for Islamic terrorism and foreign regimes of enslavement and misery, and defenders of people like Saddam Hussein."

"But down to brass tacks, as Will Baude points out, “conservatives” is usually the term applied to people who opposed the relentless expansion of communism in the twentieth century—communism being the single most evil thing ever created by man.... That is to say, Leiter continues to this day to defend a political ideology that enslaved and continues to enslave more than a fifth of the world’s population; depriving them of the most basic human rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, private property, economic liberty, and many others. Leiter would regard those who resisted communism as evil, which is to say, he is among those whom Robert Conquest called “fucking fools.”

"Will Wilkinson points out the example of Social Security, a horrendous fraud on the American public, which today redistributes wealth from poor black men to rich white women at an astonishing rate. “Conservatives,” under the generally accepted definition generally think Social Security was a bad idea and needs to be overhauled or eliminated."

“Conservatives” generally opposed (at one time) the massive expansion of the regulatory welfare state, particularly the “Great Society” programs of Lyndon Baines Johnson: an expansion which has created a semi-permanent underclass, wreaked havoc on families, nurtured dependency, throttled self-reliance, and indebted the nation to an astonishing degree. Conservatives were behind the welfare reform programs of Governor Ronald Reagan and President Bill Clinton, programs which worked very well. "

"Well, that’s right. We have to examine the fundamental principles of our society and then face the fact that we live in the midst of a massive regulatory welfare state that is directly contrary to those principles. It’s a daunting thing, obviously, to have to admit that the government is regularly engaged in massive perversions of the Constitution. But there is really no sane alternative. In this regard I strongly recommend Gary Lawson’s great article, The Rise And Rise of The Administrative State, 107 Harv. L. Rev. 1231 (1994). And it’s always worth bearing in mind that nothing is impossible. There was a time—a long time—when abolitionists were regarded as the lunatic fringe; the idea that slavery might be abolished and blacks and whites freed to live together was regarded as truly beyond the intellectual pale. But it happened, and we were transformed, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye. There is absolutely no reason why America cannot take stock of itself and its principles, and rededicate itself to those principles by swearing off the unconstitutional things it does today."

and if his own temerity is not fully revealed in its magnificent self-aggrandisement try his bit on jass:
"... It’s been so over-intellectualized that much of the fun is taken out of it for most people. I don’t mean that we shouldn’t ask questions about art or seek a deeper understanding of music, including jazz. The problem isn’t ideas, the problem is intellectuals. They’ve screwed up a lot in this world, and jazz along with it.....I was deeply unimpressed by the Shorter album everyone was raving about recently, Alegria. It had some nice moments, but they were often crippled by bizarre, unpleasant moments that were just musically meaningless to me—"

Over the next couple of days i will critique each of the quoted points, but suffice it for now i make this one observation: "Those who profess to be objectivist libertarians are arguing for the establishment of corporate feudal fiefdoms protected by raising taxes to provide security forces for property holding capitalists, subjegating all others with the overwhelming burden of "eating their own children to survive."

celebrating the Acid Tests!!! too much kool

http://www.at40vegas.com/halloween2005.html

For all hallows eve this year, a group of like-minded and beautiful people (as jimi sang: not necessarily stoned but beautiful, are you experienced?), will come together to celebrate and share the 40th anniversary of the acid tests. Among this troupe of elder merry and younger enthused pranksters will be the remaining luminairies of the period most well deserving of the title: the psychedelic sixties; these are the only people who can lay any claim to the expression " too much kool aid" as well. Too much kool aid has come to mean nothing especially when used by regressive servative trolls attempting in the most ignorant of vile ways to cast a dysphemic note upon those to their not so distanct left. What stands out for these kind, peace and love focussed sixties heroes is that the use of too much kool aid, the taking of 250 to 500 mcgs, or more, of LSD on a regular basis, is that they are as a group some of the most productive creative and powerfully inspiring people on the planet. They have stepped forward into the future as warriors returning from some of the most extraordinary of adventures to lead the human species into an era of caring about constructs other than matter. There is no possible way to overstate the impact of taking so much LSD on one's psyche and conscious creative mind. Regardless of the spewed venom of jealous gen x'ers the use of LSD in the 60's is still providing innovations and creative reconfigurations in so many aspects of human living. Organic farming and environmental action has been directly sparked, as have the movements of sustainable building, bioneering, cognitive liberties, multi-media interactive experiential relations, transhuman consciousness, and so many many more. the list is huge. So the next time you hear someone "idiot" say someone else has used too much kool aid, suggest that they maybe should learn a great deal more about their elders. In the meantime, come to Las Vegas--it is gonna be a whole lotta fun.

i am not the only one... who sees the future

Allen Snyder: 'America heading toward feudal fascism'
Posted on Thursday, October 27 @ 10:08:12 EDT (2482 reads)

Signs of America's devolution into a feudal/fascist/military state are everywhere; including the rather inconspicuous occurrence of these themes together in at least three articles I've read at www.SmirkingChimp.com in the past few weeks. A clear pattern began emerging during the Reagan/Bush I years, continued almost unabated under Clinton (although it was disguised a little better), but has now, under BushCo, become brazen and accepted public policy; so in-your-face, you can't help but see it -- providing you're looking. Here are some of the more obvious indicators.

Practically all definitions of 'fascism' (including Mussolini's -- who oughta know) talk in terms of the blending of corporate money and interests with political power and those who wield it. If this is all it takes, we've been heading towards fascism ever since the Supreme Court decided that corporations were persons and their monetary donations to political parties, candidates, or their surrogates constitutes free speech, protected under the 1st Amendment (can anyone point to a SCOTUS decision that has wreaked more havoc?).