Saturday, March 26th, 2011
ALEXANDER ZAITCHIK, - Southern Poverty Law Center
Stephan: Here is another report on the machinations of the religious right.
FAIRMONT, W. Va. — One fine Saturday morning last year, around 60 mostly middle-aged conservatives trickled onto the otherwise deserted campus of Fairmont State University. Clutching notebooks and coffee cups, they looked like groggy Continuing Ed students as they took seats in a modern lecture hall on the ground floor of the school’s engineering building. In a sense, they were Continuing Ed students. The room had been booked months in advance for a one-day, intro-level history and civics seminar entitled, ‘The Making of America.’
But this was no ordinary summer school. Randall McNeely, the seminar’s kindly, awkward, and heavy-set instructor, held no advanced degree and made no claims to being a scholar of any kind. He was, rather, a product of rote training in a religious and apocalyptic interpretation of American history that has roots in the racist right of the last century. His students for the day had learned about the class not in the Fairmont State summer catalog, but from the website of the obscure nonprofit run by fringe Mormons. Founded as the Freeman Institute in Provo, Utah, in 1971, the outfit now goes by the name National Center for Constitutional Studies (NCSS), and works out of a remote […]
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Saturday, March 26th, 2011
NIALL O'DOWD, - Irish Central
Stephan: The idea of nonlocal consciousness, and that an aspect of our consciousness survives corporeal death ought to be seen, as it was in many ancient societies, as an obvious truth. But our materialism has shut down what common experience reveals to us, leaving us shaken and disturbed.
What happens when you die? A fascinating new insight was given in a new study highlighted in the Irish Times called ‘Capturing the Invisible: Exploring Deathbed Experiences in Irish Palliative Care,
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JOHN MCMANUS, - BBC News (U.K.)
Stephan: The trend away from religion in most of the industrialized world -- the U.S. being the notable exception, although even here religious affiliation is declining -- is a fascinating trend, particularly because concurrently there is another trend towards increasing spirituality. Spirituality arises from a personal experience of nonlocal consciousness. Religion is the dogma that arises from that experience, particularly as articulated by a powerful and charismatic figure.
Nearly two-thirds of people do not regard themselves as ‘religious’, a new survey carried out to coincide with the 2011 Census suggests.
The British Humanist Association (BHA), which commissioned the poll, said people often identified themselves as religious for cultural reasons.
The online poll asked 1,900 adults in England and Wales a question which is on this month’s census form.
The Office for National Statistics has defended the wording of the census.
While 61% of the poll’s respondents said they did belong to a religion, 65% of those surveyed answered ‘no’ to the further question: ‘Are you religious?’
Two surveys were commissioned, one covering England and Wales, and the other for Scotland. The Scottish survey was commissioned by the Humanist Society of Scotland.
South of the border, 61% of respondents said they did have a religion.
But only 29% also said they were religious, while 65% said they were not.
Continue reading the main story
‘Start Quote
This poll is further evidence… that the data produced by the census, used by local and national government as if it indicates religious belief and belonging, is in fact highly misleading
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Stephan: One of the many tragedies arising from America's insane drug policies has been the loss of psychoactive drugs as tools of therapy. The research is very clear that they can be extraordinarily effective in psychiatry and for problems like PTSD.
Further Suggested Reading:
* A lovely, illustrated history of mind-altering drug use: High Society by Mike Jay Park (Street Press, 2010).
* More on the sixties, the CIA, LSD, etc.: Acid Dreams by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain (Grove Press, 1985) and Storming Heaven -- LSD and the American Dream by Jay Stevens (Grove Press, 1987).
* A glorious mytho-poetic encyclopedia of psychoactive substances: the Pharmako trilogy by Dale Pendell (North Atlantic Books, updated editions 2010).
* For the current state of psychedelic science, policy, and controversy, subscribe to the journal from MAPS -- the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Substances (www.maps.org).
The California ballot initiative for partial marijuana legalization (Proposition 19) may have been defeated for the moment, but nevertheless more than four million voters said ‘yes’ to it. Between the recent reduction in California’s penalties for use — now reduced to a fine for possession of under an ounce of marijuana — and the burgeoning medical marijuana industry, clearly the times are a-changin’. There are many hundreds of thousands of certified medical marijuana users in California, and twelve other states now have some reduction in marijuana criminalization as well. With scientific research into the clinical effects of psychedelics also burgeoning and a growing number of papers indicating benefit for various psychiatric conditions (post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, terminal illnesses, and drug addiction), thereby bolstering historic claims for clinical utility, and with the horrific costs of failed prohibition more and more obvious to the public, decriminalization — if not legalization — has become more of a possibility. With this as background, it is imperative to undertake a public reevaluation of where we are with respect to psychedelic use, its risks, and its potential to support personal, spiritual, and cultural transformation.
The History: Ancient and Modern
Psychoactive substance-induced alteration of consciousness is ages old, the […]
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THOM HARTMANN, - Truthout.org
Stephan: Here is an excellent exegetic essay on the reality of American democracy. This is an extract from Thom Hartmann's book. Truthout is publishing weekly installments of Hartmann's bestseller, 'Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became 'People' - and How You Can Fight Back.'
It is my belief that if there is not a voter backlash in the 2012 elections that this shift to a form of corporate governance which maintains the appearance of the forms of democracy will become permanent
The legal rights of the…defendant, Loan Company, although it be a corporation, soulless and speechless, rise as high in the scales of law and justice as those of the most obscure and poverty-stricken subject of the state.
– Excerpt from the judge’s ruling in Brannan v. Schartzer, 25 Ohio Dec. 491 (1915)
While corporations can live forever, exist in several different places at the same time, change their identities at will, and even chop off parts of themselves or sprout new parts, the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, according to its reporter, had said that they are ‘persons
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