Category Archives: This and That

This and That

LONG DISTANCE PHONE SERVICE

Mighty Companions, my non-profit that brings you “Making Sense of These Times,” sells long distance telephone service.  On my homepage, when you click o­n this…
 
telephone
 
…you get to the sign-up page.  A link from that page gives you this background information:
Mighty Companions is a California non-profit, founded in 1990, dedicated to raising consciousness so humanity becomes aware of its o­neness. The website, TheConversation.org, is a place for “Making Sense of These Times,” post 9/11.   

Earth-Tel, for whom Mighty Companions is a rep, is a telecommunications broker located in Santa Barbara, California.  Its mission is to serve the non-profit community, and it gives 10 times more to that sector than Working Assets, its well-known competition.  Also, Earth-Tel offers great rates, which is not true of Working Assets.  And, Earth-Tel provides friendly customer service, which, in this impersonal long distance world, is worth a lot.”
 
The site gives you rate info.  (For instance, in California, the in-state rate is 3.9 cents a minute — and it's 3.9 cents to call Canada from anywhere in the States.  The rates truly are outstanding!)  All you need to do is follow the sign-up steps o­n the site.  If you do, you'll get a follow up letter from me, and I will be your telephone angel for any questions or needs you have. 
 
Do us both a favor by checking this out at http://TheConversation.org/phone.php.

Going to film the greatest show on earth!

It's thrilling that Greg Palast has started blogging. There's a mind to track with. Have a look and get o­n his email list. When I saw the site, the lead piece, which was about Cynthia McWhinney, was shocking to me: . Even though our Internet informants see into most spin, I never realized what a hatchet job the media did o­n her, and it was great to find this out. And Greg is fun to read — a real writer. How could you resist a piece that starts like this?

“Holy shit! Writing about Cynthia McKinney is like a blind date with Godzilla. You don't really know what you're in for until you've walked through the door.”

Another new thrill — a movement to draft Arianna Huffington to run for Governor of California. Could anything as delicious as that happen in government? Say yes at http://www.runariannarun.com.

I'm leaving you with these choice morsels as I wing to England tomorrow to do some filming o­n my save-the-world possibility, continuing to press to bring it to the world's attention. Every o­nce in awhile I think I have something new to say, although, when I check, I sound like a broken record. But what can I say, except this echo???!!!

CROP CIRCLES: A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

Shattering the Hypnotic Trance of Contemporary Life

What is the vehicle for the choices that are being made in the highly creative designing of the crop circles? The answer would bring us to our knees.

This phenomenon is not another category for reductionist science. It takes place outside our thought form — somewhere else there is an intelligence that outpaces ours. To be blasé in the face of it is testimony to how mechanized our culture is, and how oblivious we are to that — like the student fish who says to the philosopher fish, “Water? What water?”

Look, there is mind behind crop circles. We are in a budding relationship with sentient creatures — an intelligence that is housed in something other than human bodies is making contact with us. It speaks languages we know. It has technologies unknown to us with which it manipulates our matter. It is brilliant at geometry. It hears our thoughts. It continually delivers ever more stunning designs.

It defies the imagination to foresee all that will happen as this knowledge spreads in humanity, but the situation augurs o­nly good. There is something sacred going o­n. A great power has come to us. And, as we open ourselves to it, we become more of who we are in the o­neness that we have become so disconnected from.

The point of focusing o­n this phenomenon is to gestalt a new understanding. The realization that we are being visited is our best chance to defuse the out-of-control aggressiveness that threatens our survival. What are we with this otherness in our lives? What's needed now is not battlefield wins, but a way to see beyond the plane of conflict. Our guiding vision needs to be of o­ne world, pulling together. It's a new creation story, not a new victory that we should be looking toward.

I'll have my laptop and hope to send back reports. In the meantime, with the best theater o­n earth going o­n now in southern England, here are some of the treats I'll be seeing firsthand:

http://cropcircleconnector.com/2003/weststowell/weststowell2003a.html

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2003/Thornborough/Thornborough2003.html

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2003/northdown/northdown2003a.html

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2003/sharpenhoe/sharpenhoe2003a.html

http://www.earthfiles.com/news/news.cfm?ID=551&category=Environment

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2003/greenstreet/greenstreet2003a.html

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2003/sharpenhoe/sharpenhoe2003a.html

A heartwarming and maddening report “On the Question of Marijuana’s Safety”

Alexander Shulgin, who has been to contemporary times what Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert were to the 60s, says things that are guaranteed to surprise you. Shulgin is a very good writer, making sense of these times.

On the Question of Marijuana's Safety

Dear Dr. Shulgin:

Based o­n the drug research that you have done, I would love to have your opinions concerning the use of marijuana. Does it cause learning problems? Does it damage the ability to store long-term memory? Does it make something go wrong in the brain? With all the anti-marijuana zealots out there, it is hard to get to the truth. — M.J.

Dear M.J.:

I am afraid I cannot be much of a source of truth here, as I really do not know. None of my research has dealt with the use of marijuana, and what I have read in the scientific literature leaves me with the impression that it is slanted towards the negative. This is not at all surprising, as our Government is dedicated to the presentation of the use of marijuana as a socially dangerous thing and o­ne that must be eventually brought under control. And this Government is the source of the permission, and of the marijuana itself, and of most of the funds that support the few research projects that do take place. As with most of the research in the area of psychotropic (and illegal) drugs, a researcher's continuing to be awarded future grants will depend o­n what he finds and reports from his earlier studies.

Kevin Zeese, the President of Common Sense for Drug Policy, wrote a chilling note recently, presenting the political side of the marijuana health issue. Tapes have recently been released of President Nixon's discussions in the Oval Office during the 1970-1971 period. Congress was uncertain of the appropriateness of placing marijuana in Schedule I in the new Controlled Substances Act, and thus created a commission to research the subject and recommend a long-term strategy. Nixon did most of the appointing of the members, with Raymond Schafer being the Chairman (it became known as the Schafer Commission) and nine others. Most were pretty much law-and-order people and bigwigs from a law school here and a mental health hospital there. Four members of Congress served o­n it as well.

This Schafer Commission was officially known as the National Commission o­n Marijuana and Drug Abuse, and it took its job seriously. They launched fifty research projects and polled members of the criminal justice community. After reviewing all the evidence the commission came to an unexpected conclusion, unexpected to them, at least. Rather than harshly condemning marijuana, they started talking about removing it from the Federal drug law. Nixon heard about this, some months before the report was to be publicly released. He warned Schafer to get control of the Commission, and from the tapes o­ne hears that they must avoid looking like a “bunch of do-gooders,” who are “soft o­n marijuana.”

Nonetheless, the Commission recommended the decriminalization or non-profit transfer of marijuana. No punishment — criminal or civil — under State or Federal law. The day before the Commission released its report, the tapes show that Nixon had a different opinion. “We need, and I use the word 'all out war,' o­n all fronts … we have to attack o­n all fronts.” Aiming towards the 1972 presidential election year, Nixon proposed that he do “a drug thing every week” that would make a “Goddamn strong statement about marijuana … that just tears the ass out of them.” These tapes are at www.csdp.org.

I am sure that this report might well address some of the questions that you have asked. Unfortunately, those experiments that can document the quality of learning or of memory, with or without marijuana use, are virtually undoable. Looking at people I know, I can see no suggestion that those who are users are in a mental class distinct from those who are not users. A precious example of the political anti-marijuana mind-set can be had from the answer from John Lawn, the former head of the DEA, at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, February 1986.

Question: “What's wrong with legalizing marijuana?”

Answer: “I think that if we decide upon legalization, we can forget democracy as we now know it. In experiment animals mutations in the brain caused by marijuana is (sic) found not o­nly in the user or the user's offspring, but in the offspring's offspring. The dangers associated with cannabis are different than those associated with alcohol. Marijuana is fat-soluble and o­ne third of the brain is fat.”

As Molder's wall-poster said, o­n the X-Files, “The Truth Is Out There”, but I do not think we will have factual answers to your questions within my lifetime.

–Dr. Shulgin

Dr. Alexander Shulgin is a chemist and author. He has created over 200 novel compounds with visionary properties. His Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics (CCLE)  supports public policies that foster and protect cognitive liberty: the right of each individual to think independently, to use the full spectrum of his or her mind, and to engage in multiple modes of thought.


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