It is absurd to call President Barack Obama a “socialist” when he is “very much an extension of the corporate state that has been squeezing out the juices of our democracy,” according to Princeton professor and famed black intellectual Cornel West.

ALSO SEE: Obama says he’s not willing to end the drug war

Let’s hear it for the US of A, the nation with more drugged and incarcerated citizens than any nation on Earth. We’re Number One!!!

[NOTE: Recordings of many famous talks and interviews by and with
Dr. Timothy Leary may be heard on the Psychedelic Salon Podcasts.]

(PATRICIA COHEN, New York Times, June 15, 2011)
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When the Harvard psychologist and psychedelic explorer Timothy Leary first met the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg in 1960, he welcomed Ginsberg’s participation in the drug experiments he was conducting at the university.

“The first time I took psilocybin — 10 pills — was in the fireside social setting in Cambridge,” Ginsberg wrote in a blow-by-blow description of his experience taking synthesized hallucinogenic mushrooms at Leary’s stately home. At one point Ginsberg, naked and nauseated, began to feel scared, but then “Professor Leary came into my room, looked in my eyes and said I was a great man.” . . . Ginsberg’s “session record,” composed for Leary’s research, was in one of the 335 boxes of papers, videotapes, photographs and more that the New York Public Library is planning to announce that it has purchased from the Leary estate. The material documents the evolution of the tweedy middle-aged academic into a drug guru, international outlaw, gubernatorial candidate, computer software designer and progenitor of the Me Decade’s self-absorbed interest in self-help. . » Continue reading “New York Public Library Buys Timothy Leary’s Papers”

(David Downs, East Bay Express, 25 May 2011
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Despite the US government’s staunch opposition to medical cannabis farms in Oakland and elsewhere, the feds have begun licensing a whole lot of large legal pot grows throughout the country. But this weed is not for cannabis dispensaries and their patients; it’s for Big Pharma.  . . . The Drug Enforcement Administration told Legalization Nation in an e-mail last week that 55 unnamed companies now hold licenses to grow cannabis in the United States, a fact that contradicts the widespread belief that there is only one legal pot farm in America, operated under the DEA for research purposes.  It appears as if the upswing in federally approved pot farming is about feeding the need of pharmaceutical companies who want to produce a generic version of THC pill Marinol and at least one other cannabis-based pill for a wide variety of new uses.  . . . In other words, if big corporations grow dope with the government and put it in a pill, it’s medicine.  But if you grow it at home or at a city-permitted pot farm and then put it in a vaporizer, it’s a felony. » Continue reading “Government and Big Pharma Organize Huge Marijuana Farms”

(Stephen C. Webster, The Raw Story, May 4, 2011 )
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A recent letter from the Department of Justice (DOJ), threatening state employees in charge of implmenting medical marijuana laws with prosecution, has forced some governors to re-evaluate and even veto popular legislation — all seemingly in violation of what the medical marijauana community thought was a cease-fire with the federal government. . . . Ultimately, the administration’s confusing legal position has led to a stagnation of medical marijuana reform efforts, with some states simply deciding it’s not worth the risk. . . . It also represents a significant change in momentum for the prohibition reform movement as a whole, and one that’s taken them almost entirely by surprise. . . . Meanwhile, the DOJ’s letters are expected in other states too, posing a sobering argument that if governors are wary of waging legal battles with the feds to keep their employees out of jail, they should instead keep them far away from any and all private producers of medical marijuana. . . . But it’s not just state workers who DOJ is currently targeting in its efforts to end the sale of marijuana for medical uses. As previously reported ^[9], the DOJ is coming after licensed growers and dispensaries with a very old tool: the tax code. . . . NORMAL’s executive director St. Pierre told Raw Story that this marked a change in tactics for the Justice Department. . . . Chasing after medical marijuana dispensaries not with SWAT teams, but with tax attorneys ^[9], he said, was “like what they did to Al Capone” and represented a significant change in tactics for the DOJ.

ALSO SEE: What’s Up With Obama’s Cynical Approach to Medical Marijuana?
The Obama administration has attacked medical-marijuana providers on several fronts. Since January 2010, it has staged more than 90 raids on dispensaries and growers, according to figures collected by the patient-advocacy group Americans for Safe Access. That represents a pace double the Bush administration’s, says ASA spokesperson Kris Hermes.

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Below is a video of Obama in 2008 telling one of the lies that caused people to vote for him, myself included. I would rather not vote in 2012 than to ever give this turncoat another vote of mine.

Around 2 minutes and 10 seconds into this interview Obama says, “What I’m not going to be doing is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue [medical marijuana].” From the article above it is obvious that he was lying. So remember that if you vote for him in 2012 just because he is the lesser of two evils, you are voting for a lier.

(Ed Vulliamy The Observer, 3 April 2011)
[CLICK the above credit line for the full article] … (also see video below)

On 10 April 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad del Carmen, on the Gulf of Mexico, as the sun was setting. Mexican soldiers, waiting to intercept it, found 128 cases packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine, valued at $100m. But something else – more important and far-reaching – was discovered in the paper trail behind the purchase of the plane by the Sinaloa narco-trafficking cartel. . . . During a 22-month investigation by agents from the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and others, it emerged that the cocaine smugglers had bought the plane with money they had laundered through one of the biggest banks in the United States: Wachovia, now part of the giant Wells Fargo. . . . The authorities uncovered billions of dollars in wire transfers, traveller’s cheques and cash shipments through Mexican exchanges into Wachovia accounts. Wachovia was put under immediate investigation for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme. Of special significance was that the period concerned began in 2004, which coincided with the first escalation of violence along the US-Mexico border that ignited the current drugs war. . . . » Continue reading “The Global Economy Depends Upon Laundering Drug Money”

(Posted in: Ampersand, Music, Pop Culture )

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Owsley “Bear” Stanley, a 1960s counterculture figure who flooded the flower power scene with LSD and was an early benefactor of the Grateful Dead, died in a car crash in his adopted home country of Australia on Sunday, his family said. He was believed to be 76. . . . The renegade grandson of a former governor of Kentucky, Stanley helped lay the foundation for the psychedelic era by producing more than a million doses of LSD at his labs in San Francisco’s Bay Area. . . . “He made acid so pure and wonderful that people like Jimi Hendrix wrote hit songs about it and others named their band in its honor,” former rock ‘n’ roll tour manager Sam Cutler wrote in his 2008 memoirs “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” . . . Hendrix’s song “Purple Haze” was reputedly inspired by a batch of Stanley’s product, though the guitarist denied any drug link. The ear-splitting blues-psychedelic combo Blue Cheer took its named from another batch. . . . Stanley briefly managed the Grateful Dead, and oversaw every aspect of their live sound at a time when little thought was given to amplification in public venues. His tape recordings of Dead concerts were turned into live albums. . . . » Continue reading “Psychedelic icon Owsley Stanley dies in Australia”