http://www.dea.gov/pubs/pressrel/pr122805.html
Listed below are Drug Enforcement Administration successes from Fiscal Year 2005. [...]Financial and Money Laundering Operations:
DEA Operations stripped drug traffickers of nearly $1.9 billion in drug proceeds. This includes $1.4 billion in asset seizures and $477 million in drug seizures.
According to the most recent available estimates from the US government (What America’s Users Spend on Illegal Drugs, from the White House Office of Drug Control Policy), the total US drug trade was worth about $64 billion in 2000. Levels of drug use seem to have declined since then, so I’m willing to give the D.E.A. credit for a FULL 1% effectiveness (instead of the 0.75% that a $64 billion drug trade would give.)
………
Now although I understand that determining how many people are actually using/selling/distributing/etc illegal drugs against those who actually get caught doing so is nearly an impossible task, I still offer these figures as ‘evidence’ presented by the same government that claims that we are getting a handle on the supposed epidemic problem.
Personally, I make no claim to the veracity of these government supplied numbers [no matter how silly], but at least they offer you an idea of how big a failure the war on drugs has [always] been.
Fred Langa outlines and explains his top decision points when purchasing new desktop hardware.
[good read]
http://www.informationweek.com/windows/showArticle.jhtml?sssdmh=dm4.162965&articleID=175801892
in other news……
>>>>>>>>>>>>>……
Hackers Rebel Against Spy Cams
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,69942-0.html?tw=wn_tophead_3
[hmmmmmmm....]
When the Austrian government passed a law this year allowing police to install closed-circuit surveillance cameras in public spaces without a court order, the Austrian civil liberties group Quintessenz vowed to watch the watchers.
Members of the organization worked out a way to intercept the camera images with an inexpensive, 1-GHz satellite receiver. The signal could then be descrambled using hardware designed to enhance copy-protected video as it’s transferred from DVD to VHS tape…….
……..Slunksy pointed out that searching for special strings in Google, such as axis-cgi/, will return links that access internet-connected cameras around the world…….
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2005-09,GGGL:en&q=axis-cgi%2F
[read more at site]
The following is the of a summary of an extensive collection of notes assembled as a result of interviews and experiences with over a hundred people, some living and some dead, regarding the fascinating history of LSD. My first personal encounter with LSD was in late 1989 and, off-and-on, I’ve been exploring its relation to human endeavors ever since.
This summary of the pre-history of LSD is being published in anticipation of the international symposium “LSD: Problem Child and Wonder Drug”.
In addition to a great deal of published material in many fields, these notes are largely the compiled accounts of many discussions with scholars, witnesses, psychonauts, initiates, spies and acolytes and given the nature of each individual recollection, may very well contain inconsistencies and contradictions.
While I have dispensed with the customary “probably” and “very likely,” it would be advisable to consider these notes as mere starting points for further, more rigorous, investigations.
Summary of the Notes –
1) Appreciation for the psychotropic effects of ergot is older than the human race.
2) In human pre-history, ergot was extensively used as an aid for mothers in childbirth and less frequently in the death process.
3) The close association between ergot and the fertility rites at Eleusis transformed this ancient birthing application into an enduring cult practice.
4) As the dominant cult for Athens, the Eleusinian Mysteries and ergot begin to became central to critical aspects of 2000 years of Western culture.
5) One of the subjects investigated at Eleusis was the relationship between dosage of a “poison” and one’s fate. What may be medicinal at small doses can become psychotropic and then lethal at higher doses – as shaped by one’s personal relationship to the Gods.
6) Following the end of ceremonies at Eleusis after Goths destroyed the sanctuary around 400, these ergot-based initiatory practices were preserved in the Greek community in Constantinople and elsewhere.
7) Early crusaders carried a version of these ergot-based practices back to southern France along with the relics of St. Anthony the Hermit (desert father of monasticism) in the 11th century. Centered near Arles, on the east side of the Rhone, the hospice escaped the Albigensian Crusade.
Based around this knowledge and these artifacts, a Roman Catholic monastic order known as the Hospital Order of St. Anthony (aka Antonians or Antonites) was established under the rule of Augustine in 1247 and spread its influence from London to Jerusalem and beyond. According to Sandoz’ corporate history, the Antonites eventually had two hospitals in Basel.
9) This Order was assigned the public role of countering the effects of ergot poisoning, otherwise known as St. Anthony’s Fire, through operating what may have been the first worldwide pharmacy as well as the specialized use of amputation. According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, the order was responsible for caring for the sick of the papal household.
10) Privately this Order continued to practice initiations, with the acceptance and participation of Church authorities, based partly on the use of ergot-derived preparations. In addition, there were various related “military” orders related to the Antonites, including the Knights of Saint Anthony.
11) There is widespread artistic evidence of these religious practices, particularly in the work of Antonite-related painters Hieronymus Bosch (see his c.1500 “Temptation of St. Anthony” triptych in Lisbon) and Mathis Neithardt (aka “Grunewald,” see the c.1515 Isenheim Altar polyptich, now in Colmar.) W.A. Stoll later mentions the Isenheim Altar in his 1947 account of the effects of LSD.
12) In the 18th century, the Roman church became increasingly threatened by “secret” initiatory societies — as shown by the 1738 order excommunicating Catholics who belonged to Masonic Lodges — culminating in the anti-clerical role of the “Illuminati” in the French Revolution.
13) In 1777, after having been nearly wiped out during the Reformation, a failed reform of the order in 1630 and confiscation of its properties in the French Revolution, the Antonites were canonically merged into the Knights of Malta, which in turn was broken up (and partially re-Romanized) after Napoleon captured Malta in 1798.
14) There is evidence that these Mysteries-derived and at times ergot-based initiatory practices did not disappear with the Antonites and found their way into 19th century Theosophical and Rosicrucian groups as well as those involved in “Greek” oriented classical studies.
15) In 1847 at Columbia College in New York, the “Greek” fraternity St. Anthony Hall (aka Delta Psi) was formed to continue this “secret tradition” and Col. Henry Steele Olcott — who was later join with Madame Blavatsky to form Theosophy — was one of four 1849 pledges at Columbia.
16) In 1866 at the University of Leipzig, Frederich Nietzsche and Erwin Rohde became ergot-based initiates of a “neo-Eleusinian” group that was devoted to understanding early Greek culture by actually living as the Greeks did.
17) In 1872 in Basel, Nietzsche published his first work, “Birth of Tragedy,” based on his close association with his mentor and prominent Basel citizen Johann Jacob Bachofen — in which he counterpoises Dionysis (i.e. Eleusis) with Apollo.
18) Nietzsche, who was removed from the streets of Turin in 1889 and presumed to have “gone mad,” was known to have been a wide-ranging drug taker, in part for his infirmities. Among the compounds citied is a preparation that is presumed to have included cannabis and opium as well as an ergot-derivative, ostensibly meant for migraines.
19) In 1896 in Wiemar, German Theosophist Rudolf Steiner was invited to become Nietzsche’s archivist by his sister, giving him access to Nietzsche’s private papers. Steiner had previously studied the esoteric aspects of Goethe’s work and had begun publishing his own theosophical writings in 1894.
20) In 1897 in Munich, Ludwig Klages (another Leipzig graduate), Stefan George, Otto Gross and others started a group known as the “Cosmic Circle.” Explicitly based on recreating “Eleusinian” cult activity and implicitly on using drugs to achieve “ecstatic” states, the circle also popularized the works of Bachofen and Nietzsche.
21) In 1918 in Basel, Sandoz scientist Arthur Stoll isolates the ergot alkaloid Ergotamine, which is later offered as Gynergen, intended to be used in birthing to stop post-pardum hemorrhaging as well as for severe migraine headaches.
22) In 1922 in Dornach, Rudolf Steiner’s original wooden Goetheanum “cathedral” is burned to the ground, presumed to be on orders from Steiner’s rival “magician, ” Adolf Hitler. Steiner’s Anthroposophy continues to have its headquarters outside Basel to this day, following Steiner’s death in 1925.
23) In 1927 in Basel, Sandoz hired 21 year-old Albert Hofmann to work as an organic chemist. Hofmann, who was born in 1906 in Baden and studied in Zurich, later describes a series of natural “mystical” experiences he had as a youth, perhaps similar to those described by Capt. Al Hubbard in his youth.
————————————————————-
Nice pieces on Albert Hoffman (who will soon be 100), discoverer of LSD, in the New York Times & Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The stories are inspirational and optimistic, until that last little detail at the end. Surely, LSD doesn’t teach us to feed the head by cutting off the dick, but if that’s what Dr. Hoffman has to say on his 100th birthday, I will politely do my time behind bars with Dr. Leary:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/254832_lsd07.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/international/europe/07hoffman.html?incamp=article_popular
…….or why VA and SC [both on the border of NC] have better roads, yet lower gas taxes than NC?
http://www.stopthegastaxhike.com
At this very moment there is someone on this planet doing the exact same thing and thinking the exact same thoughts as you. There are only so many different actions that can be ‘performed’ before those very same actions are repeated and circulated. Granted there very well may be thousands of different choices that are offered, for every event there may only be a particular action in which we could possibly partake in.
People aren’t really as different and unique as they would like to believe. We all need to eat, we all need to drink, and of course we all need to defecate. There will be some who implement each action to a greater or lesser extent, but over all we are in essence doing the same thing.
The more our paths cross the more likely we are to partake in copying the same actions of someone we socialize or associate ourselves with.
There is not a significant amount of originality to your thoughts, nor do they necessarily belong to you. Thoughts come and go, much as night and day do, some lost within the realms of existence, some remembered long enough to be consecrated and accepted as our own…………..OR………Thoughts are the direct result of your processing of information you gather from the outside world. As such my thoughts, here and now, are likely to be subtly different to what I might experience if I were sitting but 1 metre to the right. Given that a lot of incoming ‘data’ comes from others [and other entities] around us, the people we meet [and the experiences we have in relation to those 'events'] shape us, in terms of our persona, a great deal.
What is the point of trying to convince ourselves that we are individuals? We are but collective wholes, identified by stereotypes and clichés, which resemble other tangible realities that exist? We have labels for a reason and that reason is to define our likeness to one another. Thus again I state that originality and/or individualism cannot exist.
What is a thought? What does it mean to be an individual? Is it possible to be a complete individual? What is your perspective on clichés and stereotypes?
…………….
Cliches are a way of expressing yourself lazily, but there’s no reason to make poetry out of everyday speech. Cliches have their place. Stereotypes are a means by which we group certain people together, by assuming that because they all share trait X, they must also all share trait Y (where, usually, X is concrete and Y abstract). Stereotypes have their place too.
On the other hand, what makes us an ‘individual of the whole’ is the unique combination of the unoriginal things that exist in ourselves and in our lives. Perhaps there isn’t such a thing as a unique idea, but we as human beings tend to define the world by our own perception[s], which are constantly changing and constantly evolving. We may have never thought a certain way about a certain matter until now.
Obviously there must be originality, or else nothing would ever evolve or change. Incorporating old ideas to change things is still original, IMO.
As for individualism, we live in a world where it is primarily discouraged, not celebrated. The vast majority of people who consider themselves individuals are simply falling for the counter-culture propaganda.
However, bc time will always exist as an independent variable, there is no way that two events could ever happen in the exact same way, if given the chance, to the exact same person. The universe holds more variables than we could ever imagine. It’s in a constant state of flux, hence everything, in some way, has to be original and individual to its own parts.
Every ounce of matter and energy in your body has been and will forever be in the process of recycling itself into all the other matter and energy in the everlasting cosmos…….
Unfortunately since we have no way of checking the mind of every entity that has ever existed everywhere, this will always be a matter of conjecture. Still, it’s an interesting idea… $@}
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?
http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_index.html
AllPeers Is The FireFox “Killer App”
[move over sell-out & filtering p2p networks, here comes the REAL DEAL!]
AllPeers is a simple, persistent buddy list in the browser. Initially, interaction with those buddies will be limited to discovering and sharing files – If you choose to, you can share any file on your network with one or more of your friends. They will be able to see what files you choose to share (even getting an RSS feed of new files you include), and with a single click download it to their own hard drive. AllPeers is a bittorent client!
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/01/03/allpeers-is-the-firefox-killer-app/
http://www.allpeers.com/blog
