Internal organs of dissent

[Swede Synopsis: People should not eat each other’s internal organs. That’s wrong. Proceed to comments.]

Two Bushes, George and Bandar
Two Bushes, George and Bandar
Over the past quarter century I’ve been exploring and adjusting, feeling embarrassment at mistakes and shock at new findings. There is no destination port on this journey, but not a day goes by that I don’t feel closer to some “truth.” The problem: truth can be so ugly as to be unbearable so that most either avoid it or turn away in disgust. They are upset not by what I view as “truth,” or something like it, but rather that I must hate my country!

I don’t hate the United States of America. People are the same everywhere. This country was blessed with two oceans and abundant resources. It could thrive in internal peace without being destroyed by the internecine warfare of Europe. I’ve traveled some – Europe, Canada, Mexico and Asia, and will do more. But each return home is welcome. I belong in this country.
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Public Citizen

[Swede Synopsis: Corporations are collectives. Proceed to comment section.]

imageBilly Bob entered the voting booth that November day to get it done early, before the crowds arrived. He caught the smell of coffee from the nearby cafeteria – his polling place is the local grade school. Seated at a long table were the aging troopers, mostly women, with large floppy registers full of names. He found his and signed and then entered the booth to do his duty.
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Marketing poison

[Swede Synopsis: Multiculturalism good thing. Advance to comment section.]

CokeThis falls under the “Why am I not surprised?” header, but the truth is, I am surprised. One of the nicest moments during the Superbowl was a rendition of America the Beautiful sung in many languages and including a woman in head garb. Zounds! There’s a controversy now among the small-minded, but about the wrong topic.

It was sponsored by the biggest pusher of high-fructose corn syrup in the world, the Coca Cola Company. HFCS is just another form of sugar, and as the name states, has higher fructose-to-sucrose ratio than table sugar. The body does treat fructose in a different manner than sucrose, but for us non-scientists, it helps just to think of it all as “sugar.”

Science journalist Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories, suggests here and there that sugar ought to be classified as a poison. While apples may not be harmful, perhaps even beneficial in some manner, drinking a glass of apple juice is the equivalent of eating four apples at a sitting, literally dousing the body with sugar. A 20 ounce Coca Cola is the equivalent of eating four glazed donuts – neither is good for us, but somehow Coke evades the spotlight while donuts are criminalized. How many Americans now start their day with four glazed donuts a Coke?

When New York Mayor Bloomberg tried to limit soda sizes, he was quickly demonized, and no doubt there were board meetings in Atlanta about how to respond. The usual bullshit about how market choice trumps good public policy won out, and Coke still flows in huge quantities there. “Information” is unwelcome in our “free market,” while advertising can hype any kind of shit and call it Shinola.

In Mexico, now officially the most obese country in the world, the government’s response to its health crisis has been to urge people to limit their daily intake of Coke. No doubt there are board meetings going on in Atlanta. Those death merchants, those high-profile sponsors of obesity and diabetes, are worried again about their freedom to market their poison. NAFTA means that corporate privilege trumps good public policy in Mexico, just like here.

But it was a nice ad. No doubt they intended to stir up a controversy. As long as the name is spelled correctly, the Coca Cola Company will reap millions in free advertising from a single paid one.

So sorry, great city. You’re still great.

[Swede Synopsis: Tea Party is an advertising gimmick. Skip to comments.]

imageProfessional and college football as they exist today are the stepchildren of gambling. Without that, they’d be but a minor obsession.

I used to care about teams and get some personal validation from their victories. This started as a child when I attached to the Milwaukee Braves and a Green Bay Packers. My mother’s family lived backed there, and I felt a connection. It did not hurt that they were really good teams.
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Lies, lies, and the lying liars who tell them

[Swede Synopsis: US lies about Syria. Makes terrorism. Skip ahead to comment section.]

When the United States National Security establishment decides to overthrow the government of another country, it does not back down. In the case of Syria it has funded terrorist elements imported into Syria by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, with arms funneled in via Turkey. If history is any guide, the arms are supplied by the US but carefully outsourced or stripped on any markings that would indicate the source. During the US-backed insurgency in the 1980’s in Afghanistan, the CIA supplied arms to the Mujaheddin (now called “Al Qaeda) manufactured in Czechoslovakia.

In addition, it appears the that “rebels” kidnapped children from the Alawite villages around Latakia. When the rebels staged a gas attack on August 22, giving a green light for a US attack, many were posed as dead while still alive, but some were murdered by the rebels so that their corpses could be put on display for world media. Of course this behavior is so outrageous that it is not believed here in the land of the low-information citizen – that is, by those who have even traveled away from mainstream news to be exposed to it. I am not surprised at all, as my awakening came in things like Operation Phoenix, the terrorist attack on Nicaragua in the 1980’s, the starving of half a million children in Iraq in the 1990’s. (etc.)

To put it mildly, our country is run by desk murderers – men and women in fine and fancy cars and clothing order death and mayhem around the globe while traveling the cocktail circuit of Georgetown. One of them, Secretary of State John Kerry, opened the talks in Switzerland with the following remarks:

“There is no way, not possible in the imagination, that the man who has led the brutal response to his own people could regain legitimacy to govern.”

Such blatant hypocrisy! Kerry is either deliberately lying or is ignorant of the situation. Who are those remarks directed at? The rest of the world knows what is going on. The American public is oblivious. Are the words meant to reinforce the will of the National Security State even in the face of the rest of the world and the Russians? That’s my guess.

There are party differences!

[Swede synopsis: Parties same. US make many wars, blame victims. Skip to comment section.]

I often say, here and elsewhere, that there is no difference between the two parties. Indeed, they have the same corporate masters and push the same policies, usually repackaged for their own constituencies. The party faithful switch sides on various issues depending on who is in office. Democrats seek peace during Republican wars and are warmongers while their own party holds power.

But I have to fess up here – there are indeed difference, and not just the wedge issues like abortion, immigration and guns. I’ve come to realize this lately, and have to publicly state that I have been wrong.
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Submission requirements

[Swede Synopsis: Student loans bad thing. Should make better. Move ahead to comment section.]
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handsThe biggest thing holding a country together is fearsome enemies. Since we don’t have any, we have to invent them. A great deal of effort is expended in this country to create those enemies and make sure that we know they are there and threaten us. Fake attacks have been staged, and television and movie drama highlights how our special men and women of the armed forces are keeping us safe. The FBI spends uncounted hours finding, arming, and then thwarting terrorist attacks, sometimes by pizza delivery boys. The idea that there are terrorists “cells” out there who are planning bad things comes right out of the 1950’s when we were told there were Communist cells planning to do bad things to us.
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Now it can be told

Bill Maher’s Real Time last Friday was a pretty good show. He had Erin Brockovich (the gal who made Julia Roberts seem smart), Josh Barro, Carly Fiorina and Howard Dean. Willie Nelson stopped by at the end, and was his great old usual self. (He said that there was a guy one time who was hit on the head with a bale of marijuana, and that is the only known death from the substance.)

Somewhere in the latter part of the panel discussion, all three agreed that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was Romneycare, and that it had been written by industry executives. According to Dean, and the panel knew it as well, these people descended on Baucus’s office and had the run of the place, moved over the the White House for implementation, and are all now back in private industry.

I’ve been saying that for years now. However, it was on TV. Now we know it is true.

Tripping in Costa Rica?

This is something that has been on my back burner for quite a while, ever since David Sirota mentioned on his radio show in Denver that Steve Jobs credited much of his creative success to having taken LSD on a couple of occasions. He said it was a positive experience and made him more sensitive to touch and color.

I’ve mentioned to friends that I think it might be fun to take LSD, and I get a frightened response, as if it would fry my brain, the old reefer madness syndrome. It’s not legal in the US, but is in Costa Rica, I’m told. Hmmmmm…

Reddit did one of their ask-me-anything forums with Rick Doblin, PhD, of MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for a Psychedelic Studies. It’s very long but kept my interest. I liked the following exchange:

Hey Rick et al. Matt Johnson here from Johns Hopkins. Glad you’re doing this AMA. My question is: What do you think the world would be like today if psychedelic research (including therapeutic use research) had not shut down in the 1970? That is, both in terms of medicine and the larger culture. Good luck with all the questions… Thanks!

Hey Matt! If psychedelic research had not been shut down in the 1970s, and if the cultural crackdown had not taken place, I believe there is a very good chance that the United States would never have invaded Iraq and that the War on Drugs would have ended. The reason I say this is that the whole process of scapegoating and finding external enemies is in part because of our inability to handle our own flaws and imperfections, which we then project outward. Also, the process of dehumanization, the demonization of others, is reduced if we have a culture where spiritual experiences and a sense of unity are more widespread, and where we realize that we share more in common in other people than we have differences.

The UNESCO charter says, “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” I think the psychedelic mystical experience is one of the strongest defenses of peace that can be constructed. Albert Einstein said that the splitting of the atom changed everything but our mode of thinking, and that as we “drift toward unparalleled catastrophe,” what shall be required by mankind to survive is a whole new mode of thinking. This new mode of thinking is, I believe, a spiritual orientation.

For me personally, and for many others, psychedelics, more so than traditional religious rituals, have opened the door to spiritual experiences. I therefore think that if our culture had mainstreamed psychedelics in the 1970s rather than demonized them, 45 years later we would have a more spiritual world, a more compassionate world, and would be dealing with the stresses of globalization in much healthier ways.
-Rick Doblin, Ph.D., Founder and Executive Director

Sounds a little peacenicky, but I like it.