Albert flew away. So briefly we come to this place. The world has never been the same since his discovery.

I read "My problem child" a while back, and saw him speak about entheogens in San Francisco once many years ago. He seemed a kind soft spoken man. Somewhat overwhelmed at the unintended magnitude of his discovery. Coulda been worse, Oppenheimer had to live with the unintended wake of his work:

"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." - Oppenheimer, famously quoting from the Bhagavad Gita, right after the Los Alamos team first tested the bomb in New Mexico.

With that in mind, here's a quote from Hoffman:

"I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance LSD. It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be." —Albert Hofmann

It's not easy to blow people's minds wide open, but that quiet swiss chemist sure strummed his warp across time.

I smell Karl Rove's cologne:

Republican McCain says Obama is the candidate of Hamas

"I think it's very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States," said McCain, his party's presumptive presidential nominee, in a conversation with conservative bloggers.
According to a transcript posted on the website of the Weekly Standard magazine, he said: "I think that people should understand that I will be Hamas's worst nightmare ... If Senator Obama is favored by Hamas I think people can make judgments accordingly."

And people thought Hillary was negative.

If for whatever reason a soldier desired to come home from a dangerous tour of occupation duty in Iraq, you could try declaring yourself an atheist.

Soldier Sues Army, Saying His Atheism Led to Threats

When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.

But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement.

Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.

Last month, Specialist Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group, filed suit in federal court in Kansas, alleging that Specialist Hall’s right to be free from state endorsement of religion under the First Amendment had been violated and that he had faced retaliation for his views. In November, he was sent home early from Iraq because of threats from fellow soldiers.

Aside from the fact that the founding fathers (I hate that phrase) were deists (who would be considered naturalists/atheists by todays standards), I have to note that the Treaty of Tripoli quite clearly states America was not intended to be a "christian nation"

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

Treaty of Peace and Friendship, signed at Tripoli November 4, 1796 (3 Ramada I, A. H. 1211)

We all know how well we honor our treaties. Just ask a native American, if you can find one.

Nice collage.

Lying to children is a form child abuse.


Belief in God is viral. It spreads quickly to the young and vulnerable. They're also telling those poor children that God punishes us for our faults. That people who commit suicide are sinners doomed to burn in hell. That women are baby factories, etc. etc. etc.

Science is the most elegant tool we've developed for understanding the world we inhabit. As Carl Sagan pointed out, science is our candle in the enveloping darkness. That science has gotten us as far as it has in this world makes me hopeful, but I'm ever cautious of the damage religion does to our understanding of the universe.

That all said, the image of Jesus riding a velociraptor is teh lol.

From Daniel Ellsberg:

[These were my remarks to several hundred activists and supporters participating in a die-in in downtown San Francisco at noon today, March 19, 2008, on the fifth anniversary of the launching of shock and awe in Iraq. All those blocking traffic–surprisingly, for a couple of hours, before we were all arrested–were handcuffed, booked and released some hours later for a later court date. I chose to paraphrase, in part, a statement to the court I had heard my older son Robert make in Colorado thirty years ago this spring, when we were on trial for blocking the railroad tracks leading to the Rocky Flats Nuclear Production Plant in 1978.]


On this fifth anniversary of an ongoing American crime against the peace, it is well to remember the 40th anniversary–four days ago, this last Sunday–of an American war crime in a hamlet named My Lai. On March 16, 1968, American soldiers–as brave as any fighting now in Iraq–obeyed blatantly illegal orders to gun down 504 Vietnamese civilians, nearly all women, children and infants.

The war in Iraq is a My Lai writ large: on a scale of a thousand. The best estimate of the number of civilians killed in this war, as of last year, is 1.2 million. Not all of those, by any means, have been killed by Americans. Many have been murdered by Iraqis; but American airpower has killed a very high proportion of those civilians, along with indiscriminate ground fire; and it was an American decision that unleashed this slaughter five years ago. 1.2 million people. That corresponds to a My Lai a day, every day, for six and a half years. That’s longer than this war has yet lasted, but not nearly as long as it will probably last.

The Republican candidate for president has projected an occupation of fifty to a hundred years. That could very well prove to be realistic. Of the two Democratic candidates, neither one has been willing to commit–even to an intention–to have every American soldier out of Iraq by the end of her or his first term: five years from now. That is unacceptable. But that situation will not change unless the American people demand that it change. We must demand that our representatives in Congress–as Representative Barbara Lee and others have proposed in resolutions that have not reached the floor for a vote– cut off the funding for any American presence in Iraq, including enduring bases, except for purpose of withdrawal over a period of months. We must demand that a candidate who wants our support and our votes commit to that same goal.

The people lying in the street here [as I began these remarks, people had begun lying down in a die-in in the middle of the intersection of Market and Montgomery Streets in downtown San Francisco, in front of the office of Senator Diane Feinstein] symbolize both the nearly four thousand American dead and the more than a million Iraqis who have died in the war. But they also express, with our bodies, our lives, that this war is continuing, as it began, without our consent.

By lying here– obstructing for moments or hours business as usual–fifty of us, a hundred, a thousand across the country, do not have the power to end this war. But we are trying to show that we as a people–if we have the will and determination–do have that power: the power to change ourselves and history. We as a people have the power to end this war. And that is what we must do.

Let’s get on with it.

[At this point my wife Patricia and I joined more than sixty others stopping traffic by lying in the intersection, awaiting arrest.]

If you've been to jail for justice, then you're a friend of mine.

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Daniel And Patricia Elsberg:

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Cops Cops and more Cops:

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COPCLOWN!

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COPCLOWN!

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My work building:

Wanna know how America's wars are going? Ask those who are fighting them - in our names and with our tax dollars.

Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness accounts of the occupations

Hundreds of veterans and active-duty soldiers of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are gathering for the Winter Soldier hearings. The soldiers are giving eyewitness accounts of the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, the gathering is modeled after the 1971 Winter Solider hearings organized by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War

Here's a clip highlighting Friday's testimony. (mp3)

• Live Video Feed
• Live Blog

KPFA's coverage archives:

• 03/14/2008 - Friday
• 03/15/2008 - Saturday
• 03/16/2008 - Sunday

KPFA's special coverage website: www.warcomeshome.org

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Winter Soldier Mike Prysner testimony Pt1


Winter Soldier Mike Prysner testimony Pt2

Feb 12 was Darwin Day and I forgot to post! 

He would be 199, born Feb. 12 1809 

Such a brilliant man.



The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online

They bomb from the ground. We bomb from the sky; and we are doing it a lot more these days.

"The United States and its partners dropped an average of four bombs a day on Iraq in 2007, up from four a week in 2006, The Washington Post reports.

The number of airstrikes by U.S. and other coalition forces more than quintupled. Officials say the targets included al-Qaida safe houses, bomb factories and weapons stockpiles.

Military commanders in Iraq say that better intelligence allows targets to be pinpointed and expect the heavy use of air power to continue. Air Force Col. Gary Crowder said that airstrikes on insurgent targets support the surge tactic of sending U.S. troops into insurgent areas.

But critics say that the bombings increase the risk of civilian casualties."

We are bombing Iraq five times as often as last year and it is five years after the war began. Its so not like Vietnam:

"He said the support could include U.S. air power for five to 10 years, close air support for ground operations, helicopters and "an appropriate number of ground forces that go along with that." Odierno gave no figure for the ground forces, saying "that will be dictated by the situation on the ground.""

Consider the humidity! Okay, Iraq may not be Vietnam, but America remains America. Ever trying to bomb our way freedom. Not only are we bombing frequently, we're bombing harder:

The US military has launched an intensive series of air strikes on what it says were al-Qa'ida targets in the southern outskirts of Baghdad. US warplanes dropped around 40,000lbs of explosives on more than 40 targets during the 10-minute bombing blitz.

I'm imagining al-Qa'ida was much impressed by a foe who could drop 40,000lbs of bombs on a city in 10 minutes from the sky. They don't seem to manage nearly as effectively with car bombs.

"We just. don't. get. it. about bombing people" - Joan Baez, when asked about the American bombing of Afghanistan in 2001.

My condolences to Justin Raimondo on the passing of his mother.

The 2007 Darwin Award candidates have been posted.

2008 es aqui, and the digit counters constantly fall, so let's make it a good one.

Intellectual property is on everyone's minds, or at least one everyone's computers...

Steal This Film II, has been released. Go download (and seed it), Some Negativland clips are used therein.

Remember: Copyright infringement is your best entertainment value.

What kind of world is this?

The Christmas Truce

	The Christmas Truce of 1914: When the Guns Fell Silent
	Peace on Earth: The Christmas Truce of 1914
	Truce Is Stranger as Fiction
	A Christian Take on Joyeux Noel
	Short Outbreak of Sanity; War the Only Casualty
	In Memory of the Christmas Truce
	Christmas in the Trenches
	Stop the War and Love Thy Enemy
	The Christmas Truce
	The Christmas Truce
	The Astonishing War Story That a Nation Chose to Forget
	Silent Night, Holy Night
	Faded Letter Leaves Record of Famous Truce
	Short Peace in a Terrible War

( Via http://www.antiwar.com/ )

CBC-TV: Doc Zone - The Pagan Christ PART_01/05


CBC-TV: Doc Zone - The Pagan Christ PART_02/05
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlTtMsHUFak

CBC-TV: Doc Zone - The Pagan Christ PART_03/05
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my97_xZPMo4

CBC-TV: Doc Zone - The Pagan Christ PART_04/05
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZZcpeCtllc

CBC-TV: Doc Zone - The Pagan Christ PART_05/05
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtaJYZwfgRI

(Via Crooks and Liars)