Escape the Okie Zone

A bloke like Nos really was right in all of his predictions from what historians have said. (I've had a couple of hits of creativity but still depressed a little, but at least I'm not alone). Muffy and I got onto the Ouija in front of the fire, I made for her after getting blisters from chopping all the wood for her small fireplace. WE felt so cozy and both of us were wishing so much for some sort of communication with the spirits. Our fingers were pressing lightly on the plastic block. One time it, it moved or I think we moved it. I am very skeptical of the process but so badly want some sort of connection esp after the high IQ wicca introduced me to it and told me how her Mom and her had actually spelled out "Garvald" on the board a long time before she had met me.

The wicca used to do Tarot cards professionally and was into this new found sprituality so that I was seeing myself becoming a convert or really just a doubting Thomas...I have had a taste of this supernatural and I want more so I see an advertisement for tarot readings and decided to call "Erica" up. She had an attitude on the phone like some pushy con women get that are almost as agressively rude as Carney's. She was a young semi-attractive Latino (others might call her pretty but she appeared to have some thing stuck up her but to me) with a little child and had an attitude right from the start.

"I'm only gonna answer a few questions!"

I thought,
"What is this? 10 bucks a question.?"

Out loud, I replied,
"You told me that you would give a tarot reading for 30$."

She was angry that she discounted me 5$ on top of the 10$ coupon in the paper when I had called her up on the phone.

I thought,
"The bitch is gonna be stingy with the answers if she's stingy with the questions!
This is going to be a lousy reading. I can walk away from what will be a very poor and uncomfortable look into the future. If I'm face the future, I would like to be comfortable and not to be made unwelcome.

"I'll just leave," I said,
even though I drove about 20 miles out of the way for someone that only learned "English" maybe 10 years ago and has even more of an attitude than the middle school delinquents that I tried to help. I am proud of myself in my old age that I'm finally learning to assert myself with things that I have control of.
Folks ripping me off and disrespecting me. I can walk away from a situation where obviously both things would happen.

Do I sound racist or angry? I am not racist, but just proud of the way I can use my anger productively and write it down. I am learning to stand up for myself and minorities that think they push "whiteys" or "gringos" around.

Actually I might sound a little redneck but it is time when to say something back to others that have an attitude like they can walk all over you and still be angry and disrespectful.

We as a country can say FU to the government when they tell us what to do and tell us to F ourselves. We do not have to take it and can say no to them or anything.
We have that freedom but we have to fight for it or people will take advantage of you.

Obituaries

Former President George W. Bush Dead at 72

by Greil Marcus

Policy Review, October 5, 2018--George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, died today at Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. He was 72. The cause of death was announced as heart failure.

Mr. Bush's always controversial presidency left behind a changed nation and a changed world. Taking office in 2001 after a disputed election settled only by a 5-4 decision by a bitterly divided Supreme Court, and decisively reelected in 2004, President Bush led the United States into four wars, oversaw the dismantling of Social Security and Medicare, and enforced a drastic shrinking of elementary, secondary, and collegiate education. He spearheaded the transformation of President Bill Clinton's budget surpluses of 1999 and 2000 into permanent deficits of more than a trillion dollars a year, thus profoundly reducing the amount of capital available to address the needs of the vast majority of citizens and inhibiting the creation of new jobs with any promise of advancement or financial security, while at the same time pursuing tax reductions that increased the differences between the income and assets of, in his own terminology, "owners" and "pre-owners" of "the American ownership society" to extremes almost beyond measure. When he left office, taxation of personal and corporate incomes, while still legally extant, had been effectively replaced by a new payroll tax, so that almost all investment, inheritance, and interest income was left tax-free. "Those with the greatest stake in America," President Bush often said throughout his second term, "have the greatest stake in defending it. Thus we as a nation must do all that we can to ensure that the commitment of those with the greatest stake to the rest of us, a commitment on which our freedom and security rests, only grows greater."

Adding to Mr. Bush's statutory and administrative economic policies were a series of decisions by the "Bush Court," as the Supreme Court was known after 2005, when in that year Mr. Bush replaced three retiring members with very conservative justices (a fourth was replaced in 2006), depriving government regulation of corporations and the environment of any legal basis--decisions which many analysts considered more significant than the repudiation by the Bush Court of previous decisions upholding a woman's right to privacy in the matter of abortion and certain applications of affirmative action. Even with the Bush Court seated, however, the Republican-controlled Congress that Mr. Bush enjoyed throughout his presidency repeatedly passed legislation removing issue after issue from the purview of the state and federal courts, including questions of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to assemble, and the right to trial by jury. Despite these prohibitions of judicial review, the government, under Mr. Bush, did not press for any legislation curtailing what had previously been referred to as "First Amendment freedoms," but simply refrained from challenging such legislation passed by many states, rather filing supportive briefs before the Supreme Court when such measures were contested. Ultimately the reversal of the series of 20th-century Supreme Court decisions subjecting the states to the Bill of Rights, long-sought by certain conservatives, was achieved not de jure but de facto. "The press is legally free," the former New York Times columnist Frank Rich put it in 2007, writing in his online journal Thatsrichbrother.com. "It merely refrains from practicing freedom." Some said the same of the nation as a whole; others said the country was freer than it had ever been.

Mr. Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on July 6, 1946, and raised in Houston and Midland, Texas, where his father, the former President George H. W. Bush, began his careers in oil and politics. Mr. Bush attended Andover Academy and graduated from Yale University in 1968. During the Vietnam War he was a member of the Texas Air National Guard, known at the time as a safe haven from combat duty; whether Mr. Bush did in fact fulfill his military obligations became a subject of dispute during his second election campaign. In 1975 Mr. Bush graduated from Harvard Business School and began careers in oil and politics in Texas; neither flourished. Though he married the former Laura Welch in 1977 and fathered twin daughters Jenna (named for Mrs. Bush's mother) and Barbara (named for Mr. Bush's mother) in 1981, Mr. Bush's life through his early 40s was characterized by business failures, accusations of insider trading, reports of silent bailouts, and self-confessed "drinking." (Mr. Bush claimed to have renounced drinking--the word alcoholism was never used--the day after his 40th birthday, as the result of divine intervention and an act of will.) He became a public figure in 1989 when, through a questioned investment, he became part of the consortium that bought the Texas Rangers baseball franchise; his title as managing partner produced an impression of competence and good humor. In 1994 Mr. Bush ran for governor of Texas and proved himself a first-rate campaigner. When he was elected, Texas was a bipartisan state; as Mr. Bush's advisor Karl Rove once said, "He charmed Democrats into riding on his strong back as he forded the river of discord." When Mr. Bush left office as president, the Texas government was all Republican.

Mr. Bush was a politician opponents underestimated at their peril, and throughout his career his opponents did just that. He cultivated an aura of know-nothingness, of "a fine disregard" of inconvenient facts or opinions, but he was devastating on the attack, able to present himself as an ordinary man outraged by the self-superiority of whoever might be opposing him at any time and on any issue. Even as president, before the al Qaeda terrorist attacks on Washington, D.C., and New York City, in 2001, he was not always taken seriously by political commentators or the public at large; after that event he became a heroic figure, standing in defense of the United States as if that historic responsibility were his alone.

He launched an assault against Afghanistan, where al Qaeda had its headquarters and training grounds, weeks after the 2001 attacks, leading to the immediate fall of the totalitarian Islamic regime of the Taliban, which had given al Qaeda sanctuary. Though Osama bin Laden, the leader of the worldwide Islamist movement, escaped capture, his forces were severely weakened and scattered; during Mr. Bush's first term there was, against all expectations and predictions, no further terrorist attack on American soil. Arguing that Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq was a center of terrorist plotting and a repository of terrorist weaponry, from what turned out to be nonexistent chemical and biological arms to equally chimerical nuclear technology, Mr. Bush in 2003 led a limited international coalition into Iraq and replaced Mr. Hussein with an occupying force, which over the next year was pushed back into consistently shrinking enclaves in the face of a fierce insurgency. Following his reelection in 2004, Mr. Bush ordered the destruction of the cities where the insurgents were thought to be concentrated; though the cities were destroyed, the insurgency continued. Mr. Bush then pressed on to Iran and North Korea, which he had identified as "rogue states."

With U.S. Armed Forces tied down in Iraq, Mr. Bush turned to what critics called a "private army subject to no law and operating at the whim of a single individual"--that is, to large numbers of private contractors employed by U. S., Serbian, Nigerian, and Saudi corporations--to launch land, sea, and air attacks meant to destroy nuclear facilities in both Iran and North Korea. While the Afghan and Iraqi armies and governments had collapsed almost at the first sign of American assault, the Iranian and North Korean invasions were beaten back by sustained resistance and, in North Korea, the use of explosives that Mr. Bush denounced as "tactical nuclear weapons," though this was later proved not to be the case. Nonetheless Mr. Bush then ordered what he described as "pinpoint" nuclear attacks on the nuclear sites in Iran and North Korea, which, while achieving their goals, also led to the One-Day War, a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan that left Bombay and Karachi in ruins and led to the fall of the governments of both countries, and to the withdrawal of the American-led coalition forces from Iraq. The result was the series of still-continuing civil wars throughout the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent that, while involving no unconventional weapons since 2006 have, according to the United Nations, caused the deaths of 12 million people and the displacement of millions more. Mr. Bush's claim in action if not in words that the United States retained an international monopoly on the legitimate use of force left allies such as Great Britain and alliances such as NATO crippled; it also left the United States at least formally unchallenged.

It was often said, during Mr. Bush's first term, that he saw himself as a messianic figure, ordained by God to carry the flag of freedom ("God's gift," in Mr. Bush's words, "to every individual") to the corners of the earth, and that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, at least, were part of a crusade of transcendent significance. After Mr. Bush's reelection, it was increasingly argued that his wars were a diversionary and obfuscatory tactic meant to raise Mr. Bush's standing, and the power of the Republican Party both in Congress and in the states, solely for the benefit of Mr. Bush's domestic agenda, and that, as the poet Donald Hall wrote, "it was the United States itself that was the true object of conquest." While that is a matter for history to settle (when, as Mr. Bush himself once put it, "we'll all be dead"), few would dispute that Mr. Bush left the United States if not conquered then irrevocably changed--and, according to the American novelist Philip Roth, who in 2008, cited by the Swedish Academy as "the voice of a lost republic," was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, "less a nation governed by its citizenry, where each of us has one vote, than a stock exchange owned by its shareholders, according to the number of their shares."

Mr. Bush's Republican Party had, during his time in office, so effectively marginalized the opposition Democratic Party that it all but ceased to function in many states. After the suspension of the filibuster rule in the U.S. Senate, the remaining 45 Democratic senators were unable to block any of Mr. Bush's appointments to the federal courts or the executive branch of government. The Republicans had so successfully supported Mr. Bush as an infallible and irreplaceable leader that he came to seem, in fact, irreplaceable. There was no figure in the party who did not appear diminished as soon as his or her name was mentioned alongside of his, and the notion of any ordinary Republican actually succeeding Mr. Bush became, in the words of William Kristol, editor of the conservative journal the Daily Standard, "unthinkable." Thus was the strategy devised to introduce a constitutional amendment to remove the requirement in Article 1 that no one could be elected president were he or she not native born, supposedly to permit the presidential candidacy of the native-born Austrian Arnold Schwarzenegger, the enormously popular and skillful governor of California and the one Republican other than Mr. Bush who did sometimes appear larger than life. It later transpired that the amendment was a ruse: When Democrats attempted to "poison" the amendment by proposing that all restrictions on who might become president be removed (the requirement that a president be at least 35 years old, the two-term limit), the Republicans immediately acquiesced, and as a result of the passage of the 28th Amendment in 2006 and its ratification by the states the next year, in 2008 Mr. Bush announced his candidacy for a third term. He was overwhelmingly defeated that November by former President Bill Clinton.

Mr. Bush's life after his presidency was marked by misfortune. He soon lost interest in his status as the standard-bearer of his party and its chief fundraiser; many believed he had again begun drinking, and in any case he seemed to spend most of his time at private clubs in Houston, where he established residence in 2010 after selling his property in Crawford, Texas. ("At least I won't have to cut that f--- brush again," Mr. Bush was heard to say after his last election.) Then on May 1, 2011, Jenna and Barbara Bush were killed in a drunken driving accident in New York City, an incident that also took the lives of seven other people, four of them friends of the Bush daughters. Rumors that a Bush family friend attempted to bribe the police to report that a person other than Jenna or Barbara Bush was driving (the body of Barbara Bush was in the driver's seat) were never confirmed. Four years later, in 2015, Laura Bush, like her father, died of Parkinson's disease; she was 68. After a period of mourning, Mr. Bush announced that, to find his way back into "productive service" and "do God's will," he would welcome the opportunity to act as commissioner of baseball. But while Commissioner Bud Selig said that he would be honored to yield the position to Mr. Bush, he cautioned that the exigencies of the job would probably require him to remain in office "for another year, or maybe two," and the question was not raised again.

Mr. Bush was preceded in death by his sister Robin Bush, his brothers John "Jeb" Bush, the former governor of Florida, Neil Bush, and Marvin Bush, and his sister Dorothy Bush Koch. He is survived by his parents.



Greil Marcus is with Sean Wilentz co-editor of just published The Rose & the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad (Norton); his book Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads will be published next May by PublicAffairs. He is working on a book about prophecy and American identity.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The following is an item from Sunnyvale Ca. from the 2000 election.



"SUNNYVALE, CA - Telling reporters and critics to 'stick to the issues that matter', Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush declined to answer questions Monday concerning his alleged involvement in a 1984 Brownsville, TX, mass murder, in which 17 people were ritualistically murdered and skinned.



'I will not stoop to discussing that,' said Bush during a campaign stop at a Bay Area software-packaging plant. 'We've got people across this country without health care, a broken educational system, taxes that are way too high, and all you want to talk about is something THAT MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE HAPPENED 16 years ago? I'm sorry, but I find that offensive.' " (Emphasis added).



Bush, the son of a billioniare, was strangely living in the most impoverished place in America, Brownsville; living nearby to and also inside the headquarters of a Satanic Cult of which he was a member. Bush disappeared for three days during which ALL of the other of his fellow Cult Members were slaughtered. After he reappeared he could not explain where he had been. The local prosecutor continued to pursue Bush, sole Cult survivor, on mass murder charges for six months thereafter, heavily pressured by Daddy Bush to stop the investigation. For asking these questions the reporters were threatened with reprisals later by Bush and thereafter have feared for their life. Currently, as to 2004, Bush and Kerry have long been members of a Satanic Cult, Skull & Bones (Yale).



MORE DETAILS



Following the attempted assassination of President Ronald W. Reagan, ahortly after his inauguration, 1981, George Herbert Walker Bush, as Vice President, on a day to day basis, until the end of Reagan's second term, 1988, actually ran the White House. In 1988, Daddy Bush was himself elected President, actually Bush's third term.



In so doing, the elder Bush was violating the U.S. Constitution, 22nd Amendment, restricting the President to two terms.



During that time, and even before, Daddy Bush and son George W. Bush, had financial and satantic cult links with the drug trafficking from Colombia through the Brownsville/Matamoros area. Brownsville is in the U.S. right smack on the Mexican border above Matamoros, Mexico.



At one time Daddy Bush owned Texas Commerce Bank implicated in the drug traffic through their branch in Venezuela. That unit, starting about 1979, was run by Jeb Bush living in Venezuela with his latino wife. They laundered the drug proceeds from Colombia and from there, through Mexico to the U.S. The Bush Crime Family has for many years been business partners with the co-founder of the Medelin, Colombia drug cartel, Carlos Lehder. [See, the website series, www.skolnicksreport.com "The Chandra Levy Affair".]



This was convenient to Daddy Bush having been with the CIA since 1959, through their adjunct, principally owned by the Bushies, Zapata Petroleum, later called Zapata Offshore, still later their interests joined with Pennzoil which by an induced bankruptcy took over Texaco. [See, "Oil & Honor---The Texaco-Pennzoil Wars" by Thomas Petzinger, Jr., 1987, G.P. Putnam's Sons.]



The satanic cult mass-murders revolved around in the Brownsville/Matamoros area. Among those involved were El Padrino Cult; and located outside Matamoros, Rancho Santa Elena, having human sacrifice chambers; and the satanic ritual sacrifices and mind control conducted by Aldolfo De Jesus Costanzo with others. The Bush Crime Family with their dope trafficking, Colombia through Matamoros, Mexico/Brownsville, Texas, were interlocked with these situations.



The ranch was reportedly involved in snuffing out dozens and dozens of primarily latinos useful as "mules" in the drug trade and controlled through sexual satanic rituals and mind-control.



In the 1980s, Daddy Bush, actually running the White House, and former head of the American secret political police, was in perfect position to be part of the drug trafficking. The elder Bush was the head of the South Florida Anti-Drug Project, supposedly clamping down on drug trafficking from Colombia to Mexico.



During the 1980s, U.S. drug enforcement was near totally compromised and corrupted. A huge, heavy opus, mentioned in a moment, tells how the top people in the elite units of U.S. drug enforcement actually worked the other side. From time to time, they went to parties at palacial estates in Mexico and elsewhere owned and operated by the major druglords. The drug police rubbed elbows there with movie stars and bigshots from Hollywood, users as well as traffickers with dope. [In recent years. George W. Bush, William Rockefeller Clinton, and Mexico President Vicente Fox have visited and stayed at the estates of Mexico's major druglords.]



For naive, poorly informed persons to risk their neck reporting druglords to the drug police is both tragic and laughable. [See that very thick book about the top drug enforcers, being for sale and totally corrupt, "The Underground Empire---Where Crime and Government Embrace", by James Mills, Doubleday, N.Y., 1986.]



One of those convicted of the satantic cult mass murders in the Brownsville/Matamoros region and elsewhere was a fellow named Lucas. When George W. Bush was Governor of Texas, he mysteriously granted clemency to this mass-murderer. Yet, there was no basis in law or fact for the Governor to so favor Lucas, other than the Bush Crime Family was in business with him in respect to the drug trafficking and satanic cult operations of the Brownsville/Matamoros region.



With terrible-to-look-at pictures, the horrors of the one or more satanic cults so operating in the Brownsville/Matamoros region are detailed in a little-known, hard to locate book, "Hell Ranch" by Clifford Linedecker.



By 1999, some reporters had attempted to question George W. Bush as to some of the foregoing, while Bush was planning to run for President in the U.S. 2000 Election. As the head of an investigative group and Founder/Chairman, since 1963 of the Citizen's Committee to Clean Up the Courts, Skolnick began relating, on various radio talk shows, the problems the reporters were having in confronting George W. Bush with his apparent complicity in the satanic cult mass murders in the Brownsville, Texas area.



Quite some time thereafter, several websites did acts in some ways relating to all this. They palmed off as apparent jokes and parodies, purported stories about the Brownsville/Matamoros horrors. Whether their purpose was reputed damage control for the Bush Crime Family or to simply somehow make jokes about the satanic mass murders, remains for such website handlers and operators to explain.



These websites apparently gave the impression to poorly-informed, naive people that the whole series of events in the Brownsville/Matamoros region were purely imaginary, and never occurred and there was no complicity of the Bushies including George W. Bush.



Obviously to detail all the persons and entities involved with the satanic cultists, human sacrifice locations, and drug-traffickers and mind-control dictators, in the Matamoros/Brownsville region would and could fill a series of encyclopedias on the dope business, satanic cults, corrupted dope enforcers, and related topics.

The Politics of Victimization

By Mel Gilles on Mathew Gross' Blog

Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Donna and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more likable, more appealing, have a stronger message, speak to morality. Watch them awkwardly quote the bible, trying to speak the new language of America. Surf the blogs, and read the comments of dismayed, discombobulated, confused
individuals trying to figure out what they did wrong. Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, "Why did they beat me?"

And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic violence shelter if they have heard this before.

They will tell you, every single day.

The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.

As victims we can't stop asking ourselves what we did wrong. We can't seem to grasp that they will keep hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking around and asking ourselves what we are doing to deserve the beating.

Listen to George Bush say that the will of God excuses his behavior. Listen, as he refuses to take responsibility, or express remorse, or even once, admit a mistake. Watch him strut, and tell us that he will only work with those who agree with him, and that each of us is only allowed one question (soon, it will be none at all; abusers hit hard when questioned; the press corps can tell you that). See him surround himself with only
those who pledge oaths of allegiance. Hear him tell us that if we will only listen and do as he says and agree with his every utterance, all will go well for us (it won't; we will never be worthy).

And watch the Democratic Party leadership walk on eggshells, try to meet him, please him, wash the windows better, get out that spot, distance themselves from gays and civil rights. See them cry for the attention and affection and approval of the President and his followers. Watch us squirm. Watch us descend into a world of crazy-making, where logic does not work
and the other side tells us we are nuts when we rely on facts. A world where, worst of all, we begin to believe we are crazy.

How to break free? Again, the answer is quite simple.

First, you must admit you are a victim. Then, you must declare the state of affairs unacceptable. Next, you must promise to protect yourself and everyone around you that is being victimized. You don't do this by responding to their demands, or becoming more like them, or engaging in logical conversation, or trying to persuade them that you are right. You also don't do this by going catatonic and resigned, by closing up your ears and eyes and covering your head and submitting to the blows, figuring its over faster and hurts less is you don't resist and fight back. Instead, you walk away. You find other folks like yourself, 56 million of them, who are
hurting, broken, and beating themselves up.

You tell them what you've learned, and that you aren't going to take it anymore. You stand tall, with 56 million people at your side and behind you, and you look right into the eyes of the abuser and you tell him to go to hell. Then you walk out the door, taking the kids and gays and minorities with you, and you start a new life. The new life is hard. But it's better than the abuse.

We have a mandate to be as radical and liberal and steadfast as we need to be. The progressive beliefs and social justice we stand for, our core, must not be altered. We are 56 million strong. We are building from the bottom up. We are meeting, on the net, in church basements, at work, in small groups, and right now, we are crying, because we are trying to break free and we don't know how.

Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong. You must change only one thing: stop responding to the abuser. Don't let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (he'll win, not because he's right, but because force works). Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it failproof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side. But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, “loose”, irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.

Even if you do everything right, they'll hit you anyway. Look at the poor souls who voted for this nonsense. They are working for six dollars an hour if they are working at all, their children are dying overseas and suffering from lack of health care and a depleted environment and a shoddy education. And they don't even know they are being hit.

READ IT ALL HERE....

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Break Away

If at first you don't secede

Feeling they've lost any say in how the nation is run, liberals are turning to an unfamiliar philosophy: States' rights.

By Michelle Goldberg

In the days after the election, fantasies of blue-state secession ricocheted around the Internet. Liberals indulged themselves in maps showing Canada gathering the blue states into its social democratic embrace, leaving the red states to form their own "Jesusland." They passed around the scathing rant from the Web site Fuck the South, which lacerated the chauvinism of the "heartland" and pointed out that the coasts, far from destroying marriage, actually have lower divorce rates than the interior.

These sentiments were so pronounced that they migrated into the mainstream. Speaking on "The McLaughlin Group" the weekend after George W. Bush's victory, panelist Lawrence O'Donnell, a former Democratic Senate staffer, noted that blue states subsidize the red ones with their tax dollars, and said, "The big problem the country now has, which is going to produce a serious discussion of secession over the next 20 years, is that the segment of the country that pays for the federal government is now being governed by the people who don't pay for the federal government."

A shocked Tony Blankley asked him, "Are you calling for civil war?" To which O'Donnell replied, "You can secede without firing a shot."

Read the whole article here


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My Readers Mourn

In my newsletter, I asked readers: Report on the ritual of mourning you will carry out in the wake of Bush's re-election.

Here are some of the responses


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This Is a Perfect Moment

It's a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you and I are waking up from our sleepwalking thumbsucking dumbclucking collusion with the masters of illusion and destruction.

Thanks to them, from whom the painful blessings flow, we are waking up.

Their wars and tortures,
their crimes against nature,

extinctions of species
and brand new diseases.

Their spying and lying
in the name of the father,
sterilizing seeds and
trademarking water.

Molestations of god,
celebrations of shame,
stealing our dreams and
changing our names.

Their ingenious commercials
and bloodsucking hustles,
their endless rehearsals
for the end of the world.

Thanks to them, from whom the painful blessings flow, we are waking up.

*

Their painful blessings are cracking open more and more gashes in the shrunken and crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called "reality." And through the fractures, ripe eternity is flooding in; news of the soul's true home is pouring in; our allies from the other side of the veil are swarming in: inspiring us to become smarter and wilder and kinder and trickier.

We are waking up.

As heaven and earth come together, as the dreamtime and daytime merge, we register the shockingly exhilarating fact that we are in charge--you and I are in charge--of creating a brand new world. Not in some distant time or faraway place, but right here and right now.

*

As we stand on this brink, as we dance on this verge, we can't let the ruling fools of the dying world sustain their curses. We have to rise up and fight their insane logic; defy, resist, and prevent their tragic magic; unleash our sacred rage and supercharge it.

But overthrowing the living dead is not enough. Protesting the well-dressed monsters is not enough. We can't afford to be consumed with our anger; can't be obsessed and possessed with their danger. Our sweet animal bodies need love and fertility. Our imaginations crave tastes of infinity.

In the New World that we are creating, we've got to be steeped in lusty compassion and ecstatic duty, ingenious love and insurrectionary beauty. We need radical curiosity and reverent pranks, voracious listening and ferocious thanks.

*

So I'm curious, my fellow creators. Since you and I are in charge of making a brand New World, where do we begin? What wild truths do we want at the heart of our transformations? What fresh codes and stories will be our oracles? What crafty questions and uplifting desires will be our inspirations?

Here's where I want to begin: with pronoia. Pronoia is the opposite of paranoia--the antidote for paranoia.

Pronoia is the true theory that all of creation is conspiring to shower you with blessings.

Pronoia is the guarantee that life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.

Pronoia says that everything alive is working very hard to liberate you from ignorance and transform you into the gift of love you were born to be.

*

I am allergic to dogma. I thrive on questions, and don't trust any idea that tempts me to believe in it absolutely. There are very few perceptions or theories about which I am totally certain.

But I am absolutely certain that pronoia describes the way the world actually is. Pronoia is wetter than water, truer than the facts, and stronger than death. It smells like cedar smoke in early spring rain, and if you close your eyes right now, you can feel it shimmering like the aurora borealis in your soft, warm animal body.

Some Buddhists say the inherent nature of existence is suffering; they long to escape into nirvana. Many Catholics say the inherent nature of life is sinful; they long for the purified peace of heaven. But pronoia assures us that the inherent nature of life is to liberate us.

Being born on the earth is the highest honor and greatest privilege. To be alive as human beings gives us the chance to pull off exquisite and Herculean feats of magic that are not possible in nirvana or heaven or any other so-called paradise, higher dimension, or better place.

I'm not exaggerating or indulging in poetic metaphor when I say this. Visualize it if you dare.

The sweet stuff that quenches all of our longing is not far away in some other time and place. It's right here and right now.

As Elizabeth Barrett Browning knew, "Earth is crammed with heaven."

*

"This Is a Perfect Moment" is an excerpt from:

PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia:
How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings
to be published in early 2005

Muffy repoted her experience,
"It was almost like an alien was inside of me moving around my tummy.'
You should have had the medium cooked burger that you ordered. It was probably sitting out forever while these cooks are trying to entertain us with xmas carols instead of watching out for ufos waiting to infest these innocent pieces of ground meat. I ordered the well done one but they put the grilled onions on the well done burger which you ate. It's your fault!"

She admonished Garvald.

"I will never eat at the Westport Flea Market again."

Garvald was happy that he had won a brilliant chess match while Muffy watched while the alien hatched inside of her while both of them enjoyed the burgers.

His holeopathic medicine of green tea , ginger and local honey helped her kick the alien's ass out of her body! Earlier she was heaving the alien microbes from the bowels of her digestive tract having her whole life pass before her eyes and the bowl of the toilet.



Today has been fun with a kick ass game of scrabble with Marcy challenging his word, "feint". She was not aware of that spelling. He wanted her to challenge him teasing her into questioning his credibility. Garvald did the Jimmy Connors dance after the challenge and telling her who the word meister is. He also had a bunch of triple word scores!

Lately, I've been having much more vivid dreams, but always I'm in my 20's and Mom and Dad are still together worried about me being out all night with homeless hippies. This morning's periods of REMS while ocassionally waking up to the warm cuddles of my best friend and companion at this point in time in life's very short journey were in more technicolor and seemed more real to the point where all the characters made sense. We were all in a bus and one pagan girl was showing me that this city has a great amount of the same feeling that you do. We waved to them all as we gave them the friendly peace sign of loving each other. I could feel that we all had the same conciousness...We were all on the same plane of thought and harmony and it felt so strong ...this wave of love would overwhelm and cleanse all the stifling anger and ignorance that has been more and more restricting and strangling the country and the world...

We were all the hippies of past present and future feeling this same energy ...
the same energy you feel when you are so in touch with your lover that you can read her thoughts...

Muff wakes me up,

"WHO FUCKIN CARES. WHAT'S THE POINT?"

Garvald prints it and it's ripped up before it even exits the printer...it's thrown in his face...the end of what he thought was a beautiful day. They saw Leigh Ann and Eric and bought them food/ They went down to the chess club and he saw his friends of intellect...he realized how much he missed Westport. Everyone seemed friendly and the air was filled with good spirits and a great chess game.....He could let it spoil the rest of the night and wonder if this is another moment in the up and down cycle from one moment to the next...
Is it weed that makes him want to speak or write so much that makes her tired of his "sophistries" or does it only make her make her angry...Maybe they both ought to lay off the stuff if it only causes problems....
He realized how lucky that he had such a brief time with Alene and how much she really loved him...

CHAPTER EXCERPTS

Introduction

When I was seventeen I was first asked to write this book on my personal experiences of suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). I did not give the idea a second thought. The answer was a plain and simple—“No!” I did not want to talk about it. I didn’t even want to think about my personal experiences with ADD.

Why I did not want to write this book was that I was sick and tired of always being looked upon as that “crazy little child” who seemed to be a burden on everyone. My school life was hell, not just for me, but for my parents as well. Not to mention the teachers who I challenged every day in the classroom. I hated the fact that I was different and at times even hated myself for who I was and what I was doing.

When gathering my research material from the many schools where I was a student, I was embarrassed by a lot of the terrible things I had done. But at the time I did not know what I was doing. I was often confused, not understanding what I was doing. This caused a lot of depression in my early school days. As I got older it became a lot easier to deal with my problem. I overcame it in a number of ways including medication and self-taught techniques that I will discuss in greater detail in later chapters.

Looking back on my short life at the age of nineteen now, it all 1seems like a far away story when I recall these things in my life. I still have no idea why I did these things that normal society sees as abnormal. If you or your child has ADD you will understand what I mean when I say abnormal behavior—those fits of anger and impulsive behavior that are unleashed on family members and which seem to have no reason or specific purpose. It must be very hard for parents to deal with and understand why their child is behaving in this abnormal manner. This book, I hope, will help you understand why your child acts in this uncontrolled way.

It was not until I turned nineteen that I seriously considered the challenge of writing this book. After watching a story on children with ADD on the Channel 9 program Sixty Minutes, I felt that I had to write this book to help other people suffering what I have endured throughout my life. However, again I put it off! One day it will happen, I thought to myself. I didn’t have the time, I had study at university and I was going out all the time. But it was really just an excuse. I just didn’t care enough, I guess.

A young boy down the road has ADD. For the past couple of years my mother has been saying, “Why don’t you go talk to the boy’s mother?” I usually brushed it aside with, “Yeah, maybe later.” Then one day I decided to talk to the mother and she was pretty upset with her son’s progress at school because he was behind in reading and math, etc. This was a shock to me. I did not understand what she was worried about because I could not read a short sentence until I was in Grade Five. I told her this, along with other personal experiences.

It always seems to surprise people when I tell them things about my life at school and home. They often look at me with amazement and even confusion. I believe this is because now I do not act like a freak, as my sister called me. However, I can understand where this confusion comes from. If you’d said to my parents when I was ten, “Your son will pass Year Twelve and pass it well,” they would probably have bet their house that this would not happen, or that their child would go on to university and write a book—they would have probably bet their lives on that not happening. Well, it did and this book will tell you about the remarkable turnaround in my life and I hope it will help your child achieve the best results possible.

I have no accredited medical knowledge of ADD. However, I do not understand how so-called medical experts develop theories and strategies for parents with children with ADD. Their advice is often very useful. But how can they really understand it without actually living with someone who has ADD or having it themselves? I am not knocking the medical experts because my doctor is an excellent one and does understand ADD in great depth. The strategies that I
developed were invaluable in my remarkable turnaround from very possibly ending up in a child detention center to making it to university.

However, I have skimmed through many books on this topic and at times it makes me very angry because these books are often filled with medical mumbo-jumbo that really does not help with the treatment of your child with ADD. They do help partly in understanding what ADD is, in a medical sense, which is always a good start for parents. But techniques and strategies are often not found in these books. I searched in many libraries and on the Internet to find a book by a young person who has ADD, and I could not find one. The closest I found was a book written by an American author which included personal experiences written by college students. This was a surprise to me. I could not believe that someone had not written a book on their experiences and how they overcame their problems in everyday situations. Well now someone has and I guess it’s about time!

This book will not give the answer to all the problems you will come across in managing your child’s condition, but it will help. Many parents feel isolated. They feel depression, confusion, and a sense of blame—and of course anger and frustration. My parents have lost a number of friends throughout my life as a result of my behavior. People would not invite my parents to parties and gatherings because I would cause too many problems. Along with this, my parents would cut themselves off from people because they were embarrassed by my behavior. My dad told me that they were invited to a lot of gatherings, but only once! Narrow-minded people who did not understand would often make comments such as, “Leave him with me and I will give him a good belting and pull
him in line.” My parents were often accused of being bad parents who could not control their son. This was not true, because I have a sister two years older than me. She is the most polite and nicest person you could ever meet. In my younger years my parents took me to see a number of psychiatrists who said it was my parents’ fault and that there was nothing wrong with me. How wrong they were!

Now, getting back to the little boy I am tutoring. After offering my services to the mother with his schoolwork I was quite worried the first time I went to their house. I did not know what to expect. I thought I might have bitten off more than I could chew. Well, the first day I went over there the mother showed me his schoolwork, which was simple word games to promote word recognition. It often took the mother over an hour to get him to do it. This hour was mostly taken up with erratic behavior including swearing, yelling—basically everything except doing his homework. The first time I went over to their house it took me only fifteen minutes. I had promised to play a game of Nintendo with him afterwards. He had done his work and he knew it and was playing his Nintendo. The mother told him to get up and do his homework. I told her that he had done it and done it twice. This was accomplished without medication through techniques I have developed while suffering from this condition. I get great pleasure out of helping people with this problem. I enjoy it more because I know how isolated these children feel at school and at home. These techniques and strategies will be discussed in greater detail in later chapters.

I will discuss a number of issues in this book, including picking the right school for your child, and the teacher, if possible. This is of great concern to me because I went to six schools and I know what works and what doesn’t. I will talk about other areas: parenting techniques, including anger management; homework, which can be basically impossible for some parents; discipline, what works and what will never work. I know my parents tried everything: medication, which is always a hot topic in the ADD network; relationships between parents and siblings and the child with ADD. These are just a couple of issues that I will discuss. I hope that you will find this book as useful in the management of your child as I believe you will. I would just like to add that this book will be most useful only if you are prepared to put in lots of tiring and frustrating hours of work with your child!

I wish you and your child the greatest success in overcoming this problem.

Benjamin Polis

I think about Muffy learning to become more patient the way she was complimenting me today on being a "beautiful person" and how patient I was with her and her daughter. It's the 4th day of ScroogeMas on another gorgeous but cold Sunday having been down to the teens. Maybe that some of my exgf's felt this way towards me so I would love one of them to read this and help understand why it never worked out :( The italicized comments are my thoughts and responses evoked by Ms. Baileys guide:

ADD In Adult Relationships
From Eileen Bailey,
Your Guide to Attention Deficit Disorder.
FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!

ADD in adult relationships can be rewarding and exciting.
In researching for this article, I spoke with several partners in a relationship where one of the spouses had ADD. I also took the time to read thousands of posts on different forums relating to this subject to gain a wide perspective of the problems and issues that result from such a union.

Over and over I heard the same thing: Although ADD is many times blamed for the downfall and difficulties within a ADD/NonADD Partnership, it is not really the ADD at all that causes the problem but how the couple chooses to deal or not deal with the diagnosis of ADD.

Many times, the Non ADD spouse feels put upon, being the main organizer, cleaner, cooker, bill payer and much more. The stress that these responsibilities, when held by only one partner tend to create annoyance at least and irreconcilable differences at most.

Often in relationships with my parents and especially Alene, I was passive surfing the waves of life letting others handle many of the responsibilities but then being impulsive enough to go a thousand miles away to Houston as a logging geologist after doing college on the 7 year plan (hey I'm special ed). I would love for all of them to get together with me just being a fly on the wall to hear them all talk about my frailties and then smile at the little things that made them love me or fall in love with me. I wonder how many of them still think of me in bittersweet sadness. I often thought that I would make my folks happy and it hasn't happened yet (Willie Shatner, "Has been" song ). Then he sings about how maybe you die or think why did I waste it ? Johnny Cash, Joey Ramone, etc. I want to commiserate with others.... that I'm still trying for relationships in the past, present and future....for the kids that I've never had.... or for the kids that might still bear my legacy along with my father and his grandfathers.''''Pegasus , Grecian Urn....So much to learn...together...(putting all of this with music).

How will I build a book,(uh oh the kids have arrived...They snuck up on me. They remind me so much of how devious middle school kids that can be like the Children of the Corn Cheerleaders from Chickasha that loved to get the teacher in trouble when they played pranks on them. The guest of Muffy's daughter was about to walk off with my keys when her mother was picking them up almost acting like they were her own. It was weird. They would have laughed with Muffy and I looking all over the house for the keys. All my important keys were on it. I would have been lost without them and had to have a locksmith come out and make a new set. Hopefully those kids aren't that malicious. Maybe they would mysteriously show up in the couch like the remote. Muffy would be mad at me because I'm absentminded and lose keys and remotes all the time! o

For couples that have stayed together for a long time, these differences seemed to have worked their way out, with each partner contributing to the marriage with their strengths. For example, one couple wrote down every household chore that could be thought of and from there decided which of the partners best fit that responsibility. The lines of social norms were ignored and the wife went out and cut the grass while the husband did the ironing (much too boring of a task for an ADD Woman.) Every task on the list was placed in one of three categories: His, Hers or Together. For the past forty years they have successfully used this system, creating a sense of well being for both partners and allowing each to use their own personalities to contribute to the household. (Although the wife was not diagnosed with ADD until a few years ago, they had the foresight and love to have learned to work out their system many years prior.)

Now it's the 7th day of Scroogemass. Muffy doesn't think that's funny but now we finally have the house to ourselves. It's finally some quality time for us to spend some time together. I will do a chore outside that doesn't require much in organizational skills, getting and chopping firewood. It was so nice last night to start a fire and her friend Marie brought a water foot massager that does foot reflexology that helps with all the pain and headaches she's been having lately. She doesn't have major medical just like I don't. It costs a few hundred dollars often just to visit a specialist! Ron says that should be the first priority otherwise medical costs could bankrupt you!

Ron finally reached me on my cell phone so happy that he finally found my number. The cards were sent to Oklahoma so I'll have his card and his beautiful children's card will be in the mail. I am looking forward to writing back to them! It's getting close to Xmas so I need to send it off! They are the best behaved children that I have met and so proud that they are in my family! :)


Couples in which one spouse assumed that the other has ADD, yet the partner refuses treatment and lives in denial are by far the most difficult. This situation deserves an article of it’s own and will be addressed in a future newsletter.

For those couples that are working to find coping mechanisms for creating a harmonious life together, there are a few steps that can be taken:

1) Be sure your diagnosis is accurate. Be sure that there are no physical causes and check for co-existing conditions that might be present. This will allow you to make sure that you receive the proper treatment. Discuss whether you will consider medication, therapy, both or alternative means.

2) Look for the positive. Find out how ADD adds excitement, spontaneity, and fun to your life together and make a list of the great things about your relationship that you can contribute to having one spouse ADD. Keep these in mind as you go along so that you don’t lose site of why you are together.

3) Determine which behaviors are causing strife. This is certainly not a reason to go hog-wild and bash the partner with ADD (it is so important to complete step 2 first). Look at both the behaviors and the current reactions to them. Place in order of importance for improving your relationship.

4) Choose one or two behaviors to begin working on and brainstorm for strategies for overcoming or compensating for the behavior. Each couple is unique and the strategies must be worked out for your situation.

5) Decide on a method of communication. If you are having a difficult time with communication right now, you might consider some of the methods used by other couples:

One couple uses the phone. The husband is ADHD and tends to talk incessantly during conversations, but dislikes the telephone, so he is much quieter and this gives the wife an opportunity for him to listen to her for a few minutes.
One couple uses email to discuss issues. It works for them by allowing the emotional part of an argument to be removed so that they can work on the real issue.
Another couple uses a kitchen timer to make sure that each partner receives time during the conversation to talk without being interrupted.
6) Keep up your communication and work with each other to not only change unwanted behaviors but also to change unwanted reactions.

All marriages require work from both partners to continue a loving relationship. Marriages with one spouse with ADD can be even more difficult and trying, but can also be rewarding, loving relationships as long as both partners value and respect the other person and the strengths they bring to the relationship.

Other relationships in the past have not done well because of my own lack of organization. When the "future" mother in law comes down to visit, she see's what an idiot I am with practical skills and helps the daughter realize how could this man be a father when he doesn't even know how to fix a toilet.


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10 Things Adults with ADD Would Like Their Partners To Know

20 More Things

I made it safely to a much bluer city...It's nice to feel different vibes and get away from the volcanic activity and be where I am loved. I celebrated the beginning of the 50th year (I'm 49 ) with Muffy and a glass of Muscatel (?) called "My Sweetie", saving the Oklahoma bottle of "something Fork" (?) after I bought it coming back from my last trip to KC. Maybe today can sort of a an Xmas greeting card to all my friends and mmies. I'm wishing good will to mostly everyone, maybe even the angry folks that misunderstand me and I don't fully understand their redneck behavior of violence and narrow minded thinking.

It is such a gorgeous day and I feel like driving around KC today. Muffy has to work so I will do my best to not become bored and make the most of the Holy days after my release from being incubated in Mom's womb and the celebration of Jesus's birthday (when it's really the beginning of the winter soltice and a substitute for that pagan festival) Maybe she and I will discover some pagan festival and join them in their discussion with the Gods. (I'm kidding, ok!)

I am trying my best to keep my sense of humor yet not get on Muffy's nerves with the silly jokes. i.e. I was buying brekkie for my hypoglycemic love interest.

"Keep the Change"

I said to the Schlotsky window man when there was only one penny change thinking of Tom Hanks in the movie "Terminal".
She yelled at me and said that was an insult and wanted to give him all my car change that I leave for the toll takers. I told her that I was just trying to be funny or maybe it would have been more appropriate to say,

"Hey mate, no worries about the change"

But then it would not have been as funny. It's all about timing. Not making that can save countless hours of labor from minimum wages workers and CO poisoning from being way too long breathing car exhausts in a drive thru! Cashiers have to break open 50 cent rolls so they can make pointless change! Pennies have not been in existence for several years in Australia!

Wow. She will be rolling her eyes and tell me to smoke weed or I will say things that are not funny and make a fool of myself in front of strangers or insecure little bartenders.

The libraries in Kc give you 2 hours of internet but I just want to drive around the country on this gorgeous day and maybe find a friendly pub to partake in the happy hour rather than stay depressed?? I also need a swim at the Y but feel too lazy too exercise or if there was an extra pair of goggles??

Well now it's the next day and I'm so absentminded that I did not put the stash in the right place (the stuff was with my photos and I stupidly left the photos in the restroom. Now the photos were there but the elvidence has mysteriously disappeared. My absentmindedness puts me into real predicaments. In some respects I used to recheck and recheck to make sure that I had not forgotten anything often taking me a few hours to finally have everything that I think I need and I still forget stuff. I plan on making out a list and then missplace the list. I don't think and plan ahead about situations or especially with middle school age kids. I think where I try to do good, it only seems to backfire on me. Muffy was seeming to get tired of me yesterday when I was buying her schlotsky's sandwich. I came all the way to KC for two days to get away from shit and shit's gonna be everywhere you walk sometimes so do you eventually learn to save it for fertilizer?? Maybe something will blossom out of the turds. Are the only places that you can avoid anger and hate are far away from humanity or they only in Schwagatopia?? I don't even want to go into the details realizing that so many see this site and it will only give them ammunition to say that I shouldn't be teaching. I suppose all of this would not be a big deal if the weed was made legal. Well, maybe I have a purpose??

I decided to do something productive today and Muffy wanted me to at least check my brakes but it's the tie rod ends that need work. With my life time brakes warranty at Firestone, they'll at least check them and try to help muffle the screaching sound (often louder than an angry redneck!)....
I walked a mile to the library to to say hello to everybody and just be brutally honest with my own frailties and shortcomings. It was nice that Muffy finally was able to talk to Dad in Australia telling him how honest and upfront I was with her about my short and long comings. Maybe my brother and his wife have already read the site and that's why Ron didn't call for my birthday as he always has in the past. (oh well :(

It doesn't really even bother me that she wanted me to go. It seems that I often just chalk my failures as "another one bites the dust" and maybe eventually learn but I am so stupid and such a slow learner. How will I survive into old age gracefully when my own absent mindedness and disorganization gets me in trouble.

I do things to save money, like buying postal scales just to make sure that I won't get ripped off and the one time my vehicle is searched, there they are and so the cops want to say that I'm a pusher when I have never sold any and had about a 1/16th of an ounce. If I survive all this and organize it all it might be funny enough to sell a few copies. We looked at camcorders the other day and a really nice one with tripod and everything is selling for $440. I become hesitant and worry about the money but for a moment I am feeling good with myself and about to buy it. I chicken out on my impulsive mood and put off doing something that will be good for myself.
A documentary of either my downward spiral or how many hard kicks in my ass will it take for me to get my shit together.

I was almost too embarassed to mention the loss to Muffy fearing that it would only widen the schism between me and her daughter. I do not want to go into how far children will go to mess with you if they don't like you and will generally always succeed in making the man look stupid or evil to the mother. I look like an idiot to her and seeing her and other friend just sniggering or laughing at me when I walked in last night waiting for Muff to get off work. If the kids don't like you, you should realize that the relationship won't last. If the mother doesn't like you there isn't much chance either. So you think what is the point of even pursuing a relationship when you only want a friendship without any point of commitment when the relative (s) will do anything to sabotage the relationship if they don't like you.

When I saw the stuff gone from the Walgreen envelope, I thought that this will blow up if I mention it and I'm generally psychic when I feel like shit is gonna happen. (someone out there will say that I need therapy...duh.) So I mention it and it brings it all out into the open and it only brings out a can of worms and more confrontation. I can't sleep and Muffy would just prefer if I crashed on the leather couch.

Now the daughter was angry and confrontational with me for the first time. I just said that it was in the envelope and now it's gone from that envelope that I was stupid enough to leave in the restroom. Another one of my blunders. How would my ancestors with my problems have survived when they kept forgetting things? They wouldn't and I would have been so myopic without glasses. Cavemen didn't have glasses let alone laser surgery!
(I will be so happy when it's legalized, even if I have to wait until I'm 90, I will be writing letters to congressman about how it is far less harmfull than even a couple of beers. The last 2 presidents and I even think Jimmy Carter smoked it. Most likely Ronald Reagan or Gerald Ford didn't have any. So what's the big deal?)

Well at least I beat Muffy in scrabble last night probably I wasn't smoking. She even had a 50 point bonus for using up all her letters but I caught up using up all my letters and getting some triple word scores! Maybe that was her birthday present before she kicked me out after her daughter's insistence and her disrespect for me being lazy and not making a serious effort to go back to work. I think what is the point of going to work when you will get fired or forced to resign because your female bosses don't like you and get on a vendetta until you submit to them. Last year the psychologist would come into my room and spy for the principal and the emotionally disturbed director (all females). They decided to pick on my IEPs and lesson plans when the other special ed teachers were not keeping their IEPs and lesson plans up to snuff either. They even docked my pay for 2 days so I could observe other teachers that were not under the same scrutiny that I was. Their IEPs were far from perfect and did not have to have Kansas benchmarks for every item of the lesson! (Some other time, I will really get into that).

I realize that there is no real hope of a long term relationship when there is too much anger for me to want to stay in it.

WHY DOES SO MUCH ANGER SEEM TO PARK ITSELF RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO ME? I KNOW. IT'S NOT YOU. IT'S ME.

Maybe I should have just stayed home and not even ventured out in my car. I could have bought a little cake and a candle and just hibernate. Wow! How pathetic.

And then I think, that there is hope in the world and to go ahead and start this travel through Jesusland and the United States of Canada instead of just being holed up in a nowhere situation. In 11 years, I'll be 60 which might be too old to be teaching emotionally disturbed adolescents. I will definitely to old then to still be looking for my magical schwagmaiden that apreciates for exactly who I am and all my longcomings. I think sometimes I am so passive in relationships that it is easier for someone else to finally say it's over and then I am momentarily happy that I am free, but then I get depressed about being alone (boohoo! Get out the violin)

It will be fun to interview folks and write on my laptop. I have less than 2 weeks before the new year to really decide. I will make an intinerary of my travels and interview folks about everything from George Bush to why or why not Marijuana should be legalized. I can stay in touch with my lawyer on the cell phone. Maybe I could even write a letter to Rolling Stones Magazine and tell them about this trip and documentary. It will actually fun to let others see this stream of conciousness as you discover the country and the world (at least Australia) for other to see. It will be great to meet other Australian aborigines with my same last Scottish name. (Scottish was the word Muff used when she used all of her seven letters!) My greatgrandfather left Scotland and managed a station (sheep farm) for at least 10 years. We always believed that there were Aborigines with our name until we finally saw the evidence when there was a photo of him in the front page of an Australian paper fighting for Aboriginal Rights. They said they he hung himself in prison. I wonder! It would be so fantastic to go try to find out where they live and interview them and what they might remember about their own ancestry going back over 120 years. I would love to write about the history of our family too when one Scot escapes to Australia and his brother goes to the States to fight against slavery. He was shot while trying to escape Andersonville. Dad is much more interested in finding more about him than going on a wild goose chase in the "outback" looking for Aborigine relatives.

Hey isn't this far more interesting to write about than missing bud and girl problems?

"Great day for the Race"

"What race?"

""The Human Race!"

Somedays you feel a positive energy that is definitely accentuated by "no news is good news" from the lawyer. The preliminary court date is set for the 21st and when he was talking with the prosecutor, there was still no news of any other charges, so that gives me a little more peace of mind and talking with the lawyer about the false charges from a very judgemental field sobrietry test.

I told him that I had asked the cop how I failed after I blew .000 on the test and questioned the validity of the field test. He said that I put my foot down after counting to 10 Mississippi's! My lawyer laughed. Then I said how they might have an illegal search when I had failed an invalid test. My feelings are that the cop might have been too embarassed about the situation and threw away the other evidence rather than pursue it. The short fat balding inexperienced(one year)policeman seemed to be almost apologetic I was leaving the station with my friends (who would fit the hippy profile).

The date will be reset for the middle of January and then I can schedule my journey south relaxed for at least a few months. That is enough time to really enjoy my last year before this half century of my life is over!

Charles and I went for a nice walk. There was litte relative wind compared to the cold biting wind of yesterday. I am looking forward to renting it out to someone that I can trust rather than an unstable tent with an obsession for guns and axes.
We saw his old grey Japanese car drive by not checking to see if he was in it, but I keep seeing his car every other day at the wierdest spots and times. I know it sounds paranoid, but you never know with some folks. They rob from you, walk off without paying the bills and then still want some sort of revenge. They remind you of the quiet type of people that go on murderous rampages. No matter what you do those folks will be on some sort of vendetta wanting to make your life uncomfortable.

I try my best to understand hate and what motivates folks to do "evil". They are misunderstood and often rationalize evil behavior such as the Murrah building bombing
by folks obsessed with guns and TNT. Michael Moore interviewed Terry Nichols on "Bowling for Columbine". It is interesting to see what goes on in the mind of someone that does not care about human lives.

Maybe I should come back after a few days in case anything happens to my place again. My friend Charles says that they wouldn't do it especially since I will call the police. I'm not so concerned about the social chairman as I am by someone else that is filled with hate and it can be easily directed to someone that they hate.

I wish that all of this never happened but we don't have crystal balls to tell the future. You bend over backward to help someone and then they justify doing evil.
It so much seems a small scale of the way the world is.

Our government helped out Saddam and Ben Laden. We helped them become the monsters that they are. We endorsed Hussein's behavior because he was fighting against our mutual enemy, Iran. We gave money and guns to Ben Laden and the Afghanis to fight our common enemy, the Soviets. We gave Afghanistan no more help after the Russians were gone. This only helped rationalize their new directives to the other major power after the USSR, the United States.

It's now a couple of hours later after a couple of 25 ounce beers for only 3.00!

As long as we stay consumed with hate we will eventually destroy ourselves. Folks filled with hate and obsessed with weapons will eventually use nuclear weapons and help finish off our own species.

Littleton and Beyond; Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" Explores America's Obsession With Guns and Violence

by David Sterritt and Mikita Brottman


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




"Bowling for Columbine," the latest film from director Michael Moore, pictured, will be back in the spotlight this week when in is released on DVD. Image courtesty United Artists.

[Editor's Note: indieWIRE originally published this review in May 2002 as part of our Cannes coverage. The film is is being released this week on DVD.]

"Bowling for Columbine" explores more profound problems than "Roger & Me," the 1989 documentary that put Michael Moore on the filmmaking map. The question he tackled there -- why would a fat-cat corporation ruin a city with shutdowns and layoffs? -- had an easy answer: greed. This time he takes on America's penchant for violence and guns, a wide-ranging issue that eludes the clear explanation he'd like to find.

Moore bases "Bowling for Columbine" on a series of paradoxes. Firearms and mayhem are ingrained parts of the American scene, often traced to a legacy of violence predating the Revolutionary War, and to a love affair with weapons going back just as far. Yet countries like Germany and Britain have equally violent histories, and Canada couples a low murder rate with gun-ownership figures similar to those of the United States.

In his effort to discover why America dotes so much on guns, Moore talks to all sorts of weapon-toting patriots, from camouflage-clad members of the Michigan Militia to a brother of Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols and a napalm-happy suburbanite who tests homemade bomb recipes from "The Anarchist's Cookbook."

Moore also spends time in Littleton, Colo., where he persuades survivors of the Columbine high-school shooting to confront representatives from Kmart, which sold the bullets still embedded in their bodies. Farther north, he chats with Canadians about their country's low level of violence and barges into people's houses through the front doors they cheerfully leave unlocked.

Moore hasn't lost his knack for digging out oddballs from the sticks, with special interest in poker-faced PR people and small-time authority figures who don't know how to parry his sardonic questions -- like a state trooper who soberly considers whether a rifle-carrying canine might be culpable in an accidental shooting.

Such mordant vox-pop footage is juxtaposed with more sobering montage sequences, including tapes from security cameras in the Columbine cafeteria and news coverage of American military interventions over the past 50 years. In case you didn't notice, the most savage U.S. bombing in Kosovo took place the same day as the Columbine massacre.

The film's strongest argument is that most American violence is either legally sanctioned -- police actions, military operations, and the like -- or committed by citizens saturated with media-generated paranoia. Exhibit A is the hugely popular cable show "Cops," followed by nightly news programs with their "if it bleeds it leads" mentality, often permeated with a barely disguised racist subtext.

Moore uses a mosaic of TV news headlines to demonstrate media obsession with disasters du jour, from gang warfare to "Africanized" killer bees -- despite the fact that most of urban America is safe and even dull, as he shows by taking an uneventful stroll through much-maligned South Central Los Angeles. The real causes of crime, according to "Bowling for Columbine," are rarely dramatic and seldom newsworthy: social inequities, cultural anxieties, and welfare policies that force poor single mothers into minimum-wage jobs that separate them from their kids.

These are a far cry from out-of-control gangs, kill-crazy video games, and other scapegoats lurking "out there" in the mythical boiler-room of American culture. In one of the film's most striking scenes, goth rocker and veteran scapegoat Marilyn Manson argues that fear is a major fuel for modern capitalism, as people frantically consume to allay the anxiety fostered by media rumor-panics and other scare-mongering propaganda.

"Bowling for Columbine" would be more powerful if such insightful moments were delivered with fewer digressions, and if some of its arguments didn't seem so sketchy. American history is far too recent and idiosyncratic to be compared with that of England or Germany, for instance, let alone reduced to the oversimplifications of a "South Park"-style history lesson Moore injects into the movie. He doesn't ask why American news is driven so constantly by urban violence, or why shows like "Cops" draw such enormous audiences.

"Bowling for Columbine" also contains too much of Moore himself, morphing from indefatigable populist to grandstanding scenery-chewer as he commiserates with sobbing schoolteachers, waves around pictures of murdered children, and congratulates himself for getting Kmart to stop selling bullets. He pushes the envelope in the final sequence, where he tracks down National Rifle Association honcho Charlton Heston in his Beverly Hills home and badgers the bewildered star until he throws up his hands and totters out of the room.

It's a quintessential Moore moment: The mighty Moses of the NRA turns out to be a courteous old fool who can hardly comprehend the accusations thrown at him, much less answer them. But it's also a reminder that Moore didn't become a culture hero -- or a movie star -- by being Mr. Nice Guy, and that this friend of the common man can still pack a nasty punch when the time is right and the camera is pointed his way.






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You couldn't be more wrong POSTED Mon Mar 15 [11:48 AM] BY jayn1

I do not know whether or not Michael Moore has made any money on this film, I think that it is irrelavant - if you ever have the chance to watch this movie I think you should.

It is a documentary - movie, that looks into the right to own a gun in america. The film makes a pretty normal assumption in saying that the law which dictates that every american has the right to own a gun - also is the law that causes so many murders every day in America.

When you can by ammunition in your nearby wallmarth and the media blows the fear of criminals way out of proportions, is it then strange that the murder rate in US is 10 times that of the country with the second highest murder rate ?

Cause and effect.

Great movie !

I live in Denmark and it gave me a new perspective on the american system as a whole. Glad I don't live there.

Jakob




POSTED Fri Sep 5 [1:36 PM] BY kyounshi

i think its great to finally have a voice, a small one, but a voice come out, but in the form of relatively widely spread art. besides, i dont think people choose to make movies for the money. especially not michael moore, in his most recent book, he writes that he will not make another film. with all the ink and attention hes gotten, i think this proves he doesnt want money above all, and even less from others' pain.


Why Teenagers Turn to Violence
Page Two


3. These are deeply troubled, tragic teenagers
Anyone who kills is a troubled person. But teenagers who ruthlessly take the lives of fellow students in mass murders are generally even more psychologically disturbed than an adult who kills a person in a fit of passion or during a crime. These teenagers have such distorted emotional lives and thinking processes that they lack some of the very most basic ingredients of a normal person. At the core, they have a very deep inability to love or connect emotionally in any meaningful way with another human being. They neither feel loved, nor are they able to love. They are tragic, lost souls seeking to find a place in life. Lacking almost any deep human connectedness, life becomes a game, and killing someone evokes no more remorse than shooting a tin can or a target at the county fair. One of the shooters in Colorado , for example, is reported to have been laughing as he murdered his fellow students. Such callous disregard for human life has to reflect a deep, deep absence of the normal human capacity to love and care for others.

Some of these emotionally disturbed individuals have psychotic features; that is, they have serious distortions in their thought processes and their capacity to judge reality. Others have a long-standing failure to form deep emotional ties, a severe lack of guilt or remorse, and a tendency toward impulsive or uncontrolled actions.

Most of these disturbed adolescents have a horrible self-concept. Whether that is because of long years on the receiving end of parental neglect, hostility, or abuse, or for other unknown causes, these teenagers fundamentally do not like themselves. They hate others because they hate themselves and believe others have it better than they do so they envy them.

When children see parents fight and argue
and blame everyone else for their problems,
they learn to handle problems the same way.

When the Colorado killers focused much of their rage on athletes, they apparently envied the athlete's success or stature and felt they could not live up to their abilities or status. Feeling inferior, less privileged or less gifted, they decided the best way to even the score was to strike out at someone they envied. And when they targeted minorities they were saying, "We disdain or despise you. We are better than you!" In both instances they were attempting to level the playing field in their own minds. They wanted to lift themselves up in their own distorted thinking by tearing others down-even to the point of death.

Nearly all violent teenagers come from violent homes or homes where there are serious emotional and relational problems, even if they are not apparent to those outside the family. When children see parents fight and argue and blame everyone else for their problems, they learn to handle problems the same way. In other families, there are silent battles, or emotionally uninvolved parents, or serious mental confusion. It is not uncommon to read that the parent of a teenager who murdered others says, "He didn't mean to hurt anyone."

Understandably, parents of these children would be horrified and devastated and have difficulty accepting what their child has done. But one cannot help but wonder what kind of thinking and relating was going on in a home where, after a teenager has murdered five people and wounded ten others, the parent says, "He didn't mean to hurt anyone." When parents are this incredibly unaware or naive or prone to make excuses for their children, is it any wonder the children feel confused? And how can a child learn to be a responsible, mature person in this environment?

4. Many violent teenagers are seeking to feel powerful, important, admired, or big
They have vivid fantasy lives and dream of proving how powerful and potent they can be. Since they feel so alienated, unloved, and different, they try to silence their distressing feelings by turning to illusions of power and importance. They don't realize, of course, that their presumed strength is actually incredible weakness. Instead of having the strength and courage to face their hurts, admit their needs, and seek help from God and others, they turn to a pseudo strength-the pseudo-strength of violence.

This search for power is apparent in the military-type uniforms some members of fringe groups wear. It can be seen in Nazi dress, obsession with guns, identifying with angry music, or in the angry friends and fantasies that potentially violent adolescents harbor in their minds. In a perverse sort of way, violent teenagers also imagine that others will admire them. They believe their plans are incredibly brilliant and that they will demonstrate their exceptional intelligence, superiority, cunning, and power by showing that they can outsmart others and commit horrible murders. Since they idealize destructive men like Hitler, or devious, malicious men, they assume that others will admire their imagined "strength," "cunning," "intelligence," or "power."

5. Some acting-out teenagers are suffering from neurological problems or attention deficit hyperactivity disorders
While such physiologically based problems do not excuse hateful, destructive acts (since most people with these difficulties do not commit murder), the physical difficulties can help us understand why some teenagers act the way they do. To live maturely, we need to feel at least reasonably good about ourselves and others, and we need to learn to control our impulses and our negative emotions.

Children with neurological difficulties that make it hard for them to learn, or to concentrate and pay attention, can have great difficulties feeling good about themselves in our competitive world. They also often have trouble controlling their thoughts, feelings and responses.

When most of us become upset, we try to calm ourselves so that we don't do anything irresponsible. But when hyperactive children and those with attention deficits become upset, they tend to act without thinking. Recent research actually shows neurological differences in the brains of many criminals who impulsively act out crimes of violence. The combination of feeling negatively about themselves, being angry, and being impulsive, increases the likelihood that they will engage in various kinds of antisocial activities.

They have grandiose and
bizarre fantasies of being
superior to everyone else.

6. Adolescents who turn to violence are also spiritually confused or lost
Most have no real relationship with God at all. In fact, their weird clubs or odd choices of friends typically substitute for a relationship, not only with healthy people but also with God. Lacking any spiritual purpose and direction, they attempt to create meaning in life by building their own view of how the world should be. They decide who the bad people are-"sinners" who are different from them. They decide who the good people are-the underdogs or inferior feeling people like them. And then they decide to even the score. In essence, they have created their own mini-religious worldview. They have become their own omnipotent gods, deciding who should live and who should die. They may not be psychotic like mentally ill people who believe they are Jesus Christ. But they do have grandiose and bizarre fantasies of being superior to everyone else. They have an arrogant pride in their own devious plans. And they have their own completely distorted way of understanding the world.

Once in a while, these disturbed individuals actually have faith in God and may even be born-again Christians. When they are, however, their Christian experience is extremely distorted by their mental confusion and their emotional pain. Even if they are active in a church or other spiritual activities, they are not personally and emotionally connected to God and others in a healthy way. They may even wrench a few verses of Scripture out of context to justify their distorted theories.

PARADISE LOST: REMEMBERING BATES BEACH, CALIFORNIA

By Gary Mussell

Three years ago, the last of the nude beaches near Los Angeles was lost. After a tradition that had lasted over thirty years, county sheriffs started issuing tickets en masse at Bates Beach following complaints from a few local homeowners, who didn’t like “those people on our beach.” Within months, the ticketing campaign had its desired effect, and those who had enjoyed the surf, sand, and weekly volleyball games sans clothing at Bates were all gone. This was not the first time it had happened in Southern California, indeed the pattern of complacency followed by sudden sweeps of ticket-issuing police, followed by a frantic but failed effort to negotiate some compromise had occurred several times during the preceding decade at other local beaches. In retrospect, nudists should have seen it coming and prepared by making friends in the community with local homeowners and officials while things were going well, but nobody wanted to believe it could actually happen until it was too late.

People from other parts of the country are always surprised to learn how few nude beaches there are along the Southern California coast. Traveling north from Black’s in San Diego, one finds San Onofre about 40 miles farther up the coast, but then it is another 200 miles before one can find another at More Mesa, north of Santa Barbara. An attempt to make Venice Beach clothing optional during the late 1970’s failed and the Los Angeles City Council and County Supervisors responded with legislation that effectively killed any chance after that for a nude beach in the Los Angeles county. During the 1980’s the two remaining nude beaches near Los Angeles, at Smuggler’s Cove, near Palos Verdes, and Dume Cove beach near Malibu both were shut down when sheriff deputies swept in and starting handing out citations. To the north in Santa Barbara, another favorite nude beach, Summerland, was also repeatedly swept clear of bathers without proper swimwear, although there remains a stubborn small group of nudists there to this day who continuously challenge the “No Nudity” signage. That brings us to Bates Beach, located about 10 miles south of Summerland at the boundary of Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, about 50 miles north of Los Angeles.

Bates sits on the north side of Rincon Point. At the Point is a small, gated community of multi-million dollar homes and a group of very organized homeowners. To the south of the Point, on the Ventura County side, is the traditional clothed beach that the locals refer as Rincon. It is about a mile long, and it has some of the best surfing waves in Southern California. On any given weekend the water is populated with dozens of surfers and boogie-borders. To the north of the Point is another beach, also about a mile long, referred to by the locals as Bates Beach. It is in Santa Barbara County. It has a separate inclined path from the parking lot to the sand, with its textile beach to the left and the nude beach to the right, starting up the sand about 1000 yards. Because Bates is a county beach – not a state beach – the Cahill Policy that gives some protection to California nudists does not apply. Still, a “live-and-let-live” tradition had allowed the beach to remain nude for years without incident.

At its peak during the late 1990’s, an average of 300-500 nudists per day used to populate the northern end of the beach. On holidays that number often quadrupled. The beach attracted nudists of all ages, both families and singles, but especially those who enjoyed playing volleyball. The weekend games often ran continuously for hours at a time, and participants remember it as pure joy to play and to watch.

Each day ended with a BBQ. One person brought down a car battery and a mixer so the group could mix Margaritas. Those who came to he beach every weekend brought down a large 30-gallon drum in which they stored the BBQ, mixer, and their volleyball equipment so that they didn’t have to carry it up and down the hill on each visit. Nothing was every stolen from the drum.

One of the local nudists, Marc, recalled the story of the Amtrak train engineer who used to frequent the beach on his days off, and who drove his train on the main track beside the beach on his twice-weekly run between LA and San Francisco. On the day the engineer retired and was making his last trip, the entire group stood along the tracks and mooned the train.



Others had similar stories.

Kim met his future wife at Bates a few years ago. He said he used to be a Summerland person before the ticketing began there. “I just moved to a different beach, found new friends, and stayed for the volleyball.”

In 1979, Bob and Julie also met on Bates and eventually married. Bob had been a regular at Black’s but when he moved to Ventura County he soon discovered Bates. They have two daughters and brought them to the beach often.

Wayne remembers coming to Bates beach as a kid in the late 1950’s. Like Kim, he preferred Summerland, but moved down the coast when the police began cracking down there in the early 80’s.He enjoyed the volleyball every weekend, but said, “ I especially like the feel of swimming nude in the ocean.”

Frank discovered nudity while vacationing at a secluded beach near Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in 1970. He also was a regular at Black’s Beach in San Diego, then started going to Bates when he moved to Ventura in the mid-1980’s. Frank, however, found a way to earn a living off the beach: “On weekends I sold drinks on the beach: Fruit drinks and beer. None of it licensed of course, I just bought a load at the market and resold it on the beach. Made a nice profit for my efforts.”

During the summer of 1999, some new residents moved into the homes at the Point who began complaining about the nudity as they took their daily walks along the beach. The nudists generally ignored them. Soon thereafter, a single county sheriff would come down the beach once a day. A few nudists recalled that he never told them to get dressed, and the group became quite friendly with him.

Early the following summer, things suddenly went terribly wrong. One of the Point residents who walked the beach daily began calling the Sheriff daily to complain about the nudity. By law, the deputies had to come down to the beach, and this time they began insisting that people get dressed. At the same time, the Homeowner Association at the Point voted to raise funds for their own pair of deputies to focus “their beach” and enforce the no nudity law. The first large-scale busts for nudity began over Independence Day weekend of 2000.

The nudists responded by placing lookouts at the top of the ramp with a walkie-talkie to alert the beach group when the deputies were coming. The deputies responded by placing a spotter of their own on the cliff above the beach, equipped with binoculars and walkie-talkie so he could direct the deputies on the beach to the persons who had been nude but who had gotten dress as the law was approaching down the sand.

Tickets were $70 each for the first offense and gradually rose on a sliding scale to nearly $300 after the third ticket, plus the threat of being registered as a sex offender. Most people did not want the ticket on their record, and those who defiantly fought the ban found that soon the accumulative effect of the fines was more than they could continue to afford to pay.

Marc and some of the other nudists tried to speak to the local homeowners, but it was too late. By that time it was too late. The homeowners wanted no dialog. The Sheriff’s office was more sympathetic to the nudist leaders, stating they had no problem with the nudity itself, but by law they had to act upon a complaint. And the homeowners made sure a complaint was made on a daily basis.

“We tried everything,” said Marc. “We tried the homeowners, the local Sheriff’s office, even the local County Supervisor. Nobody would listen to our side of the story.”

The ticketing sweeps continued every weekend during the rest of the summer and by September; even those who wanted to fight the law found they were economically unable to handle the fines. The 30-year tradition of nudity at Bates was over.

Many of those who preferred the nudity, more so than the beach, moved on to Elysium, the closest resort about 50 miles to the south. The volleyball games continued there for another year, until Elysium closed in the Fall of 2001.

Since the nudists abandoned the beach three years the number of clothed beachgoers has also dwindled. Yes, some of them used to take walks down the beach just to “take a look”, but many of them didn’t come down at all and most exhibited a live-and-let-live attitude.

Ironically after the nudists left, that part of the beach became quite cluttered with trash and became a center for sexual and drug activity. Ironically, these degrading factors seem to have driven the textiles off their part of the beach also, and at times the entire beach no longer feels safe. Ironic the residents got the nudists off their beach but now they have a beach even they don’t want to be on!

Those who preferred the beach came back occasionally – clothed – but not in great numbers. Those who do return say they love the sand and water more than the nudity and so they obey the law and remain covered up. They play volleyball occasionally, dressed. Deputies still walk the beach daily, but the heavy enforcement ended soon after the summer of 2000 when the majority of nudists were chased away. The beach remains posted with a “No Nudity Allowed” sign at the top of the ramp leading to the sand.



On April 24, 2004 About 25 of these nudists-in-exile returned to their favorite beach to help cleanup the trash and symbolically reclaim their stretch of sand. SCNA joined these Friends of Bates Beach as an Earth Day activity to clean up the glass, paper, and other garbage, collecting several bags worth. A traditional volleyball game followed. It was the first time many of the former nudists had returned to their favorite beach. The activity was promoted in the local paper as a way to alert the local residents that someone besides themselves cared about the beach’s fate.

“What we want to do here is reclaim the beach back from those who are destroying the neighborhood,” said a Friends of Bates spokesperson. “Our very presence there – whether nude or not – will discourage these others from coming back. Our long term goal is to hope the neighbors realize they have more to gain by having us back.” Some of these participants wanted to talk more about their nudist experiences during the 2000 crackdown, and their feelings about losing the beach: Kim was of the opinion that the goodwill gesture was futile. “I understand that The state budget crunch may mean there will be fewer deputies available to patrol the beach. On the other hand, as long as those homeowners live there, it may not make a difference. We may have wait until those people at Rincon Point either die or move away. “It’s terrible. I hope (the nude beach) will come back some day.”

One Nudist who wanted to be identified only as “Errol Flynn” said “I never got a ticket. I heard they were giving them out so I just stopped coming down. There was no use in fighting it.” That summed up the feelings of many on the beach. Wayne said he didn’t really mind the $70 tickets because “They’re cheaper than spending a weekend at a nudist resort in Palm Springs.” He said he continues to visit Bates regularly, and that he continues to be nude when possible, “quietly sitting under my umbrella, and nobody bothers me. I am just sad I cannot get up and move around or go down to the water anymore.”

Lee missed the weekly volleyball games. “I still come back occasionally but it isn’t the same wearing clothes.”

Frank said “I am more angry at the sheriff for chasing away my customers than I am for losing the nudity. Basically, I’m a beach person more than a nudist. I love Bates and if it means I have to remain dressed to be here, then I guess I will be dressed. I still come to the beach almost every weekend. I don’t go nude unless I am the only one here.” Bob and Julie are raising their children in a clothing optional home. “We bought a boat and go sailing often out to the Channel Islands and we are nude on the boat.”

Dianne said “I love that beach! However I am not willing to risk a fine or jail time to keep it (nudist). If you can get the Sheriff and locals to agree to our return, I will be happy to be there on weekends.”

A small group of Bates refugees said they have been going to More Mesa, about 20 miles to the north, where the local nudists and homeowners actually did talk to each other several years ago and reached a compromise so that half the beach could remain clothing-optional. “It is smaller that Bates and a more rugged climb down to the sand from the cliffs, but the good news is there are very few “lookie loos” because it is so hard to get to.”

At the end of the day, as the sun was getting much lower in the sky and the clothed beach-goers had all left the area, we noticed a few of the Friends were again textile-free, if just to regain the beach for a few minutes. A few even ran down to the water and dipped themselves in the cool Pacific.

The lesson here is obvious: we can never take our nude beaches for granted. Strive to make and keep friends in the local community. Keep a constant vigil for problems with developers of property nearby, and strive to isolate those self-appointed vigilantes whose agenda is the extinction of our chosen lifestyle. We have lost this battle too many times recently and so we serve as a warning to the rest of you.


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I'm wondering about heading up north towards the blue areas for a little while away from the volcanic activity but then I wonder about the safety of my place and making sure to take anything of value with me. I'm sure with my good friend, Charles looking over the place, it will be ok but you can't help but be paranoid when you are worried about stray bullets hitting your reproductive organs especially if you still might be entertaining thoughts of a family before you get to old for it to still work.

I've run out of stuff and so that has a tendency to not help writer's block or just things to write about. It will be nice when I have my computer working that has not been working right since the redneckgate burglary. Maybe they will leave me alone after my last post and that maybe them making something out of nothing will backfire with neighbors tired of temper tantrums and the loud grating noise pollution.

PROBING THE "CHEMTRAILS" CONUNDRUM
A Briefing Paper by William Thomas


Filing cabinets bulging with photographs that could be depicting air attacks on American towns and cities, hours of videotape showing the same criss-crossing "contrails" that are not contrails at all, and corroborative reports by thousands of Americans - including pilots, police officers and former military personnel - of unusual aerial activity and illness on the ground have prompted wild speculation and a pastiche of glib "explanations" masquerading for denial and disbelief.

Only now are the secrets behind Gulf War Illness, the "Green Run" deliberate radiation release on the residents of Hanford, Washington and 50 years of "open air" biowarfare experimentation over hundreds of U.S., Canadian and British cities being revealed. After 10 months of investigation, what do we really know about a phenomenon whose true origins may not be known until "insiders" speak - perhaps decades later?


THE PHENOMENON
Once you have watched two, six, eight or more unmarked planes weave broad white plumes into cross-hatched grid patterns, giants X's or furrows of expanding parallel lines that turn clear blue sky into a milky, dripping overcast that sometimes reveals prismatic bars of chemical coloring - you will never look at the sky in the same way again.

In the representative words of eyewitnesses across 48 states:

"I watched a clear blue sky become criss-crossed with the white trails from many jets. The sky then became overcast, in spite of the forecast calling for sunny weather. I felt stunned as I witnessed this event."

"I've lived here for 26 years never seeing this number of contrails at once."

"One morning I saw so many I almost had a car accident. They were X'ing, probably 50, 100 of them, as far as I could see. Lots of X's and parallel lines. Definitely not normal air traffic."

"They look like they're playing tic-tac-toe up there. You know darn well it's not passenger planes."

"These contrails do indeed behave differently from the usual contrails made by jets. They don't dissipate right away. They like linger, hang there. But they were so heavily concentrated that I just about fell over."

"Everywhere from horizon to horizon, as far as I could see above the trees and buildings, perfectly parallel streaks or stripes of clouds."

"I am under the understanding that we have regular flight patterns. This however, broke all the rules, as these patterns criss-crossed one another over a dozen times."

"Real jet trails are not as low as these."


POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS
A wetter, warmer atmosphere and increased commercial air traffic are leading to the formation of artificial cirrus clouds in heavily-frequented air corridors over the Atlantic Ocean, Europe and North America. With more than 62 million commercial and military flights taking place every year over the United States, scientists say that the moisture from so many jet engine exhausts has increased cloud cover over the U.S. by as much as 5% since the jet age took off.

Even normal contrails can linger and spread over considerable spans of time and distance. Recent studies by NASA and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration have found that under certain conditions in high-traffic areas, concentrations of contrails can cover 13,000 square miles, while being tracked by satellites for more than 14 hours.


BUT...
Changes in atmospheric processes and airline travel have been gradual. Why are people who have lived next to airbases and airports most of their lives - and would not normally give a contrail a second glance - stopping their cars and hauling family members and neighbors outside to point cameras and camcorders at sudden concentrations of aerial trails they instinctively recognize as not-the-normal contrails?

Why are formations of grid-weaving jets suddenly appearing over communities unused to seeing commercial or military air traffic?

How can these overflights be explained as "scheduled air traffic" when they abruptly cease, only to start up again weeks later?

According to Canadian and U.S. aviation officials, pencil-thin contrails normally form above 33,000 feet - and usually dissipate within less than a minute like the wake behind a ship In contrast, the broad white plumes
known as "chemtrails" are often spread by formations of tanker-type aircraft far below commercial airliners that even in colder upper-air leave short-lived contrails or no contrails at all.

Most sightings take place far from air navigation beacons and established air routes Even over VORTAC beacons, commercial aircraft do not cross each other's flight paths in Xs and grid-patterns at the same altitude. Nor do airliners spend hours laying long-lasting plumes across the same patch of sky. To do so, air force pilots say, would violate many air safety regulations mandating minimum three-mile aircraft separation.

(Because windshear and temperature gradients at different altitudes would disperse contrails differently, the consistency of X's, grid patterns and parallel plumes show crossing aircraft to be flying at close to the same altitude.)

Commercial airliners prominently display their airline logo, "colors" and registration numbers. KC-135 and KC-10-type spray aircraft observed through binoculars are painted white and carry no identification markings.


PATHOGENS AND ILLNESS
Contrails do not make people sick. Yet many observers have become ill within four to 48 hours of watching chemtrails form. A metallic, oily or corrosive smell and taste has also been widely reported in the wake of chemtrails.

"Spikes" in emergency room admissions match by date and location reports of heavy "spray days". Last winter, during 15 consecutive weeks of what the Centers for Disease Control called "epidemic levels" of pneumonia and upper-respiratory illness, hospital admissions across the U.S jumped up to double normal peak flu-season rates - even in states reporting a "mild" flu season.


MDs across America told the New York Times and other newspapers:

-- "This is the worst crisis I have seen."

-- "We have people double- and triple-parked in the ER on stretchers."

-- "Respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses are filling up the beds."

-- "It was surprising to me how sick they got and how quickly it happened."

-- "The increase in respiratory infections may not be due to the flu."

-- "We know there's a lot of sickness, but our diagnosis shows that it's not the
flu."

-- "We've seen a lot of cases that you can't typically classify as flu."

-- "We don't know what it is or where it came from."


Often degenerating into pneumonia, chronic bronchitis, and/or increased frequency and duration of asthma attacks, these severe "flu-like" symptoms lingered for months.

This November, residents in heavily sprayed areas - including Arizona, Virginia, Tennessee, Oregon, Washington state, New Mexico, Colorado, California, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina and southern Vancouver Island - are also complaining of extremely severe headaches, stiff necks, fatigue and joint pain.

Other symptoms associated with heavy spraying include disorientation, depression, inexplicable anxiety, and an inability to concentrate.


DO YOU MIND?
"Whatever they're dumping on us does something to your mind," says William Wallace. The Washington state resident who launched my chemtrails investigation for the Environment News Service last January claims to
have been repeatedly targeted by low-flying spray planes after going to the media with his concerns.

Wallace says he constantly forgets errands - and can't even remember the name of the town closest to his own.

Despite their isolation in a remote mountainous area of Washington, his wife Ann has been diagnosed with Epstein-Barr. According to Wallace, "Her heart is bothering her and her white blood cell count is very low and she remains in terrible pain, almost too weak to move."

In mid-September, 1999, a California resident wrote: "Will, they are really doing their job in a big way - chemtrail overlords, that is. My IQ has been rated at 180 IQ. I feel as if I'm functioning like a 12 yr. old. Also feel close to physical exhaustion. The feeling down here is rather scary. Cats nervous, ducks nervous. I'm on guard. That's the best way I can describe it. Cats sticking very close. We sit up at night, outside, and wonder."

According to the October, 1999 edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry, nerve agents can cause depression, insomnia and impaired thinking. Dr. Cleto DiGiovanni of the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, notes that "Biological weapons can diminish the ability to think clearly and produce
depression, irritability, and hallucinations."

One mother whose white blood count is down by half speaks for many Americans when she says, "I live in a rural community and most of these people work outside and have their whole lives and have never
experienced these kind of symptoms till the contrails started showing up last fall. We live in no flight area, yet it is not uncommon for us to see up to 50 contrails a day...flying the multiple line pattern and the X pattern."

Referring to the resulting illness, she added, "Not just the usual sicknesses...ones that doctors have no idea what is causing them and have no cure for. We had two children die here from totally unexplained illnesses
when the contrails were flying all the time. We have dead birds in our yards...we have dead animals. The livestock are sick. Suddenly last winter my nine-year-old daughter came down with an asthma problem out of the blue. My uncle died of respiratory problem, again, out of the blue."

This correspondent concluded: "Then just a couple of weeks ago my sixteen-year-old daughter started having panic attacks, just sitting at the computer it started and went on for a week till I took her to the doctor and he gave her Xanax."


FALLOUT SAMPLES ANALYZED
Ice-crystal contrails do not rain cobwebs and "goo" over porches, powerlines and police cruisers.

Tests done in 1998 and 1999 by government-licensed laboratories on cobweb-like filaments, gel-like material, carbon-laden rain water, and a red powder dropped by aircraft over Washington, California, Oklahoma, Idaho, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Espanola, Ontario have identified:

Pseudomonas Aeruginosa, Pseudomonas Fluorescens, various bacilli, Streptomyces, Enterobacter cloacae, Serratia marcescens, human white blood cells, and molds capable of producing heart disease and meningitis, as well as acute upper respiratory and gastrointestinal distress.

After my colleague, health researcher Erminia Cassani, brought in samples of a gel-like material obtained from a thoroughly splattered aluminum-sided home, the surprised director of an EPA-licensed lab wanted to know where we had obtained this "probable biohazard material".

Normally taking three or four days to grow in a Petri dish, Cassani's bacteria-laden sample "flowered" less than 48 hours after being cultured. Stating that "it was all over the plate," the lab staff said they had never seen anything grow this quickly. A similar gel sample obtained one year earlier in Pennsylvania and analyzed by the same lab matched our first sample's "Top 3" pathogens.

Skeptical of the link between this airborne fallout and reported illnesses, Cassani herself soon fell victim in May 1999 when she was stricken with a serious upper respiratory infection, swollen lymph glands, sore throat, and general "flu-like" symptoms, 24 hours after being outdoors beneath what she described as a "huge, vertical river" of suspect chemtrail.

Perhaps not coincidentally, earlier that spring, a pervasive radio ad campaign urged Americans to call special 1-800 "flu" tracking numbers. A similar campaign this winter advertises a 1-800 migraine number. Are these ways of tracking nationwide reports of illness? Could this have been a "planned" epidemic, similar to those seen in previous biowarfare experiments conducted in hundreds of cities across the USA, UK and Canada?


STATE GOVERNMENT RESPONSE
In September, 1999, John Volkerdin of the New Mexico Environmental Protection Division, responded to a letter from Alan Hutner of the Santa Fe-based Skywatchers organization. The environmental enforcement
specialist stated that after contacting the National Guard, U.S. Army, New Mexico Agricultural Department, New Mexico Department of Military Affairs, and the Federal Aviation Administration - "the data does not suggest that any illegal or clandestine activity is occurring."


BIOWARFARE TESTS ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
But the recently revised U.S. Code Title 50, Section 1520 states that the Secretary of Defense may conduct tests or experiments "involving the use of a chemical agent or biological agent on a civilian population" - if they are related to research activity.

The law also stipulates that biowarfare tests can be carried out on Americans only if Congress is notified 30 days in advance, and "only if informed consent to the testing was obtained from each human subject in advance of the testing on that subject."

There is plenty of pattern and precedent to suggest that clandestine biowarfare experiments were routinely practiced on the American public without their informed consent. Two congressional investigations in 1977 and 1994 - and recently declassified British defense documents - detail 50 years of "open air" testing that used ships and spray-equipped aircraft to spread biological warfare simulants on hundreds of cities across the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

As recently as 1997, 61 secret tests sprayed the residents of Minneapolis with germ warfare simulants over a period of several months. Respiratory illness increased sharply in the sprayed areas.

Even as aerial atomic detonations were being conducted upwind of cities, American airborne biowarfare tests began in earnest in 1957 and 1958, when a cargo plane criss-crossed the country, spraying highly toxic zinc cadmium sulfide chemicals. A U.S. Army report states that "virtually, the whole country of the United States was covered with this material."

Prof. Leonard Cole testified at the first congressional investigation into large area biowarfare experiments. The author of Clouds of Secrecy described how "The plane would take off from the Canadian border, and fly slowly down to the Gulf of Mexico. These materials would be spread, and were found to be landing as far away as New York State. So, you know that, as the air would push the zinc cadmium particles around, most of the people who were residents of the United States during that time were inhaling at least some of the zinc
cadmium sulfide. And the cadmium in that compound was clearly known then to be toxic, even in small amounts."

In the Sixties and Seventies, British germ-warfare trials spread Bacillus globigii and E. coli from a ship and a Canberra bomber converted with stainless steel tanks and sprayers.

For people with breathing problems or poor immune systems, these bacteria can cause septicemia, fever, pneumonia and chest infections.

Congress also learned that in 1956, U.S. military personnel released mosquitoes infected with Yellow Fever over Savannah, Georgia and Avon Park, Florida. Following each test, Army agents posing as public health officials tested victims for the effective spread of this disease.

In 1966, U.S. Army bioweaponeers dispensed Bacillus subtilis variant Niger throughout the New York City subway system. More than a million civilians were exposed when army scientists dropped lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto ventilation grates. Similar biowarfare canisters were released in London subways.

In 1977, Senate hearings found that 239 U.S. populated areas had been contaminated with biological agents between 1949 and 1969. Some of the areas included San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Key West, Panama
City, Minneapolis, and St. Louis.


CONGRESS RESPONDS
Concerned citizens have asked many mayors and congressional representatives to intercede. Among those contacted in writing without receiving a response are senators Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Wayne Allard, Jesse Helms, Edwards, Murray and Bingaman.

In the House of Representatives, Jon L. Kyl, Charles Taylor, and Wayne Allard have also been contacted. New Mexico representative Mark Udall has met with Skywatcher's Clifford Carnicom and Alan Hutner.

On March 5, 1999, Senator Joseph Lieberman wrote to the EPA head Carol Browner regarding constituent concerns "about the possible release of toxic chemical substances from jet contrails" and "reports of toxic spraying over populated areas in 41 states."

In calling for a response from the EPA, Senator Lieberman noted that "My constituents further point out recent outbreaks of flu-like symptoms and other sicknesses in Connecticut and other states that may possibly be linked to jet fuel exhaust fumes."

No reply from the EPA has yet been forwarded.


THE FAA RESPONDS
Speaking from his Los Angeles office, head of the FAA's Western region, Charles Lieber, told this investigator that "There are no unidentified aircraft flying over the USA. There's different people looking at different types of aircraft flying back and forth across the country."

Three regional FAA Centers in the East, Central and West United States track all transiting aircraft flying at or above 18,000 feet. Each must file a flight plan identified by a flight number.

"We know where they are all the time," Lieber affirmed.

While no noise complaints have ever been received in connection with chemtrails, Lieber recommended that Creeland's complaints concerning unusual airplane activity be sent in writing to the Noise Ombudsman in
Washington, DC.

Is this "file-a-noise-complaint" response a cover-up for clandestine operations by the U.S. Military for which airspace is specially cleared by the FAA and therefore needs no filed flight plans? When a Toronto chemtrail observer called the Pearson International Airport authority last spring, he was startled to hear "an obvious military voice" on the phone. Pretending to be an airplane buff, the caller excitedly asked where the airshow was. The airport authority was taken off guard.

"There's no airshow today," he stammered.

"Well," the caller responded, "I'm watching KC-10's and KC-135s painting low contrails over the West end of Toronto. I'm looking at them right now."

"Contrails!" The official was clearly taken aback, almost shouting the word "I have no information on that!" To the caller he actually sounded scared - before giving out the FAA number for noise control.

Perhaps the best official response came last March, when a Michigan caller complained of three bouts of illness after heavy chemtrail activity. An FAA representative calmly explained the unusual aerial activity as
"delayed Christmas traffic."


THE AIR FORCE RESPONDS
Initially responding to complaints by citizens suffering adverse chemical reactions under high-flying aircraft, U.S. Air Force representatives pointed to "routine fuel dumping" over Las Vegas and other populated areas by fleets of multi-engine jet aircraft. The air force has since repeatedly declared, "Those are not our planes."

According to Major General Gregory P. Barlow, Office the Adjutant General, Camp Murray, Washington, "Our KC-135 jet aircraft operate at altitude below 33,000 feet which is typically the altitude where jet contrails form."

U.S. Air Force spokeswoman Margaret Gidding expanded on this theme when she told the Spokesman-Review of Spokane in November, 1999: "The Air Force doesn't do anything that emits anything other than a normal contrail, which is vapor."

But lab test MEL 97-1140 done in September, 1997 on a sample of JP-8 jet fuel by Aqua Tech Environmental Labs in Ohio found 51 toxic substances - including ethylene dibromide (EDB). Banned in 1983 by the Environmental Protection Agency in a rare emergency order, EDB is a potent pesticide, chemical irritant and known carcinogen. Air Force pilots routinely jettison JP-8 to lower aircraft weight for safe landings.


WEATHER MODIFICATION
A U.S. Air Force study - "Weather as A Force Multiplier: Owning The Weather In 2025" - also describes how jet tankers are deployed to spray chemicals that form "cirrus shields" capable of hiding aerial activity from observers on the ground.

In contravention of the U.N. "Convention On The Prohibition Of Military Or Any
Other Hostile Use Of Environmental Modification Techniques" - adopted by the
White House in May, 1977 - the report also revealed how U.S. military
researchers are already trying to influence the weather "by adding small amounts of energy at just the right time and space."


HAARP
The joint US Air Force and Navy project known as the High Altitude Auroral Research Project (HAARP) has for the past several years been using phased-array antennas situated near Gakon, Alaska to steer powerful beams of tightly-focused radio waves "to stimulate," heat and steer sections of the upper atmosphere.

The first of three HAARP patents awarded to MIT physicist Bernard Eastlund describes his Method and Apparatus for Altering A Region of the Earth's Atmosphere, Ionosphere and/or Magnetosphere. Issued on August 11, 1987, commercial US patent #4,686,605 claims that directed energy beams of more than one-billion watts can be used for "altering the upper atmosphere wind patterns using plumes of atmospheric particles as a lens or focusing device" to disturb weather thousands of miles away.

In February, 1990, a restricted-circulation "Plans and Activities" report RFP N00014-91-R-0001 jointly issued by the US Air Force Geophysics Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research declared, with emphasis, that the program will go "beyond basic research to "controlling ionospheric processes" by "significantly altering" regions of the ionosphere at a range of 1,200 miles or more.

Though HAARP is currently operating sporadically at relatively low power levels, it's ability to bounce tightly focused beams of radio-frequency energy off the ionosphere gives its beams tremendous range. And as Dr. Len Horrowitz observes: "Very weak EM signals were often found to have the greatest effects, whereas strong signals produced none at all. The toxic effects of frequency vibrations are most commonly associated with specific EM amplitudes and wave frequencies."

Other USAF weather modification techniques spread carbon black to heat up the atmosphere. Perhaps serving the same purpose, iron oxide has been found in spray samples taken in Tennessee and Washington state.


FUNGUS AMONG US
In a recent survey among 179 patients reportedly suffering from chemtrail-related illness, naturopathic Dr. Joseph Puleo found that 22% had been to a hospital Emergency Room, 34% exhibited rashes and sores, half or more had experienced disorientation and suffered from stiff neck and gastro-intestinal problems, 72% had a sore throat and 78% reported severe headaches, 81% complained of congestion.

Almost everyone surveyed experienced short-term memory loss and difficulty in concentrating - and fully 99% were found to have fungus in their blood.

Fungi have been found in many chemtrail samples. Puleo and Horrowitz note how dormant fungus can be "raised from the dead" by exposing it to ultraviolet light. Could fungal spores sprayed from high-flying jets be activated by increased UV at those altitudes, turning it into a mycotoxin?


TREATMENT
Dr. Joseph Puleo has successfully treated many extremely ill patients with his own naturopathic formula. He also recommends that all of us "Detox, deacidify, boost immunity and eliminate dairy products and sugars that form mucus and grow fungus while reducing blood pH."

Vitamin supplementation to rebuild and shield the immune system, and increasing oxygen in the blood through exercise also help.

Puleo also found that cell phone users, and those using Walkmans or who had clock radios near their beds and electric blankets failed to respond to naturopathic treatment that provided relief to many others.


THE CANADA CONNECTION
On November 18, 1999 a petition submitted by 500 residents from the community of Espanola, Ontario was submitted to the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa by the NDP Defense Critic Gordon Earle.

The residents of this small town located west of Sudbury, Ontario demanded an end to continuing spraying. They also wanted an explanation for widespread respiratory problems and strange aches and pains among Ojibway people over a 50 mile area following spraying by what some eyewitnesses have identified as C-130 aircraft that began in March, 1999.

Former Ontario Provincial Police Officer Ted Simeola reported lingering X's and numerous contrails, some of which "just ended" as if they had been shut off but remained in the sky. Tests on rainwater conducted by the Ontario Ministry of Environment found carbon black, as well as "chaff" used to jam radar signals - or track airborne dispersion patterns.

The Canadian Health Protection Branch calls chaff highly toxic to human lungs. Yet Espanola, or its nearby environs of Whitefish Falls and Birch Island, typically resort areas, are not U.S. military exercise areas.

The U.S. Air Force denies flying its aircraft over Espanola. But a red, powdery material was also eyewitnessed as coming out the back of a very low-flying C-130 Hercules aircraft passing over the rooftop of a Birch Island home. In the 72 hours following this drop, the residents of this property - in addition to their
neighbors and their dog - became very ill with upper respiratory illness and severe gastrointestinal disorders. Samples of this red powder are being further analyzed after initial lab tests found infectious, human pathogens of bacilli and molds.


AERIAL VACCINES
Could widespread aerial spraying be an attempt to inoculate us against an undeclared biowarfare threat?

US Patent 5756104 filed June 5, 1995 by the Department of Defense describes an intranasal/inhalation vaccine formulation. Instead of the attenuated or killed components of inoculations, this highly experimental "whole pathogen" delivery method uses a live virus or bacteria which may have "undesirable side effects".

Four years later, the Maxygen corporation was given a $6.7 million grant from the Department of Defense to develop "aerosolized vaccines."

There is no indication that air-delivered vaccines are yet in production. And none of the immune-weakening pathogens identified in collected samples of air-delivered cobweb-like material or gels can be construed as antidotes to germ warfare.

When bioweapons can be genetically altered overnight, effective inoculation is impossible. As Ken Alibek, former head of the Soviet biowarfare program pointed out in a recent interview, "in many cases it's impossible to vaccinate the entire population of the country against all possible agents. It's absolutely impossible."


WHO IS DOING THE SPRAYING?
A clue to this key question was presented by investigative reporter John Titus. In his updated story, "Who's Who in the C-130 Scandal," published in the March/April 1997 edition of the Portland Free Press, Titus documents the diversion of an estimated 42 former Navy P-3 Orions and spray-equipped Air Force C-130's from firefighting duties with the U.S. Forest Service to the CIA.

According to Titus, "after leaving the Air Force, Roy Reagan used a network of contacts to successfully broker former military aircraft on the open market."

At least one C-130 obtained by Reagan in 1986 was sold to CIA operatives after former director of the Forest Service aviation program, Fred Fuchs and Reagan diverted spray-equipped C-130s to Evergreen Aviation. This "front company" for CIA aviation was established in 1975 at Marana, Arizona.

Titus also learned that "Top CIA aviation officers, including the legendary George Doole, worked for Evergreen. Prior to working for Evergreen, Doole had managed all of the CIA's proprietary airlines."

C-130s have been used by the CIA for drug smuggling to procure arms for the Contra terrorists and other covert operators. As Titus reveals, "Tail number N69-P operated on contract for the U.S. military's Nuclear Defense Agency and was later busted by the DEA in Miami, Florida, on a cocaine smuggling mission."

But the ubiquitous Hercules transport - sometimes called the "DC-3 of the 'Nineties" - can be leased or purchased without range-reducing spray equipment. Why does the CIA need spray-equipped C-130s? Is there any tie-in with the many reports of low-flying C-130s spraying communities across the U.S. as well as Canada?

In Pagosa Springs, Colorado last summer, I was stunned to see a throttled-back, camouflaged-colored C-130 Hercules swoop silently over this remote resort town. Pulling out at 500 feet - well below the 1,000-foot separation from inhabited structures mandated by federal regulations - I watched two spray trails spurt from the wings outboard of the engines. Though it was the height of the warm weather season, I was later surprised by how many store employees were coughing and sneezing.

Titus again: "The C-130 scandal is but the tip of an iceberg, with dozens of companies and individuals operating beyond the Forest Service and congressional oversight."


FUNDING THE SPRAY PLANES
The world's most lucrative business could easily fund clandestine spray operations that may be using leased or purchased C-130s, 707s and DC-10s for low and high-altitude spraying. Covert CIA funding from drug sales
would allow air force officials to maintain an arms length stance - while servicing these unmarked white aircraft at newly reactivated USAF airbases.

My book, Scorched Earth, also describes an investigation by Mother Jones magazine that documents $100 million-a-day "back door" transfers of tax dollars used to fund the Pentagon's black operations. None of this money - or the projects it funds - are accountable to Congress or the American people.


SPRAY PLANE BASES
Outside Dobbins Air Base in Marietta, Georgia, one observer writes: "We drove up to a light, and saw the runway, and saw a large, white plane, with a blue stripe, no markings at all, taxiing to take off."

A delivery person at Tinker AFB states that "I have seen more than 30 of these white, KC-135 parked on the tarmac. I have seen six to 10 take off, one after another. They are, indeed, white with no markings.

The white planes have also been spotted at a former AFB near Phoenix, and at the previously closed George AFB in the Mojave Desert.

It must be emphasized that no photographs have been obtained to corroborate these ground sightings.


SUMMARY
Photographic evidence and thousands of detailed eyewitness reports confirm that hazardous bio-materials are being deliberately sprayed on North American city and rural dwellers by high-flying unmarked tanker-type aircraft, and low-flying C-130 turboprop transports.

Weather experiments, and attempts at "aerial obscuration" may be the purpose for some of these flights. The inadvertent or deliberate release of JP-8 jet fuel containing ethylene dibromide and dozens of other toxic chemicals may also be a factor in adverse health reactions among people on the ground. JP8 fuel used by military aircraft leaves a lingering broad white plume.

But instead of revealing concentrations of jet fuel, independent lab tests from samples obtained from low-level drops of cobweb-like and gel material reveal a mix of pathogenic bacilli and molds capable of producing severe illness that could cause fatalities to children, the elderly or those with weakened immune systems.

While background bacteria commonly found in dirt could have contaminated some samples, the uncommon mix and concentration of bacteria and molds in our lab-tested samples - as well as restricter enzymes used in research labs, and fluorescent organisms used as laboratory "markers" - indicate the artificial origins of these pathogenic "cocktails".

It is curious that a hazard materials HAZMAT team responding in full protective garb to air-dropped gel-like material splattered in several different areas of a Salt Lake City suburb last spring did not collect samples before washing it away with high-pressure hoses filled with a chlorine bleach mixture. Though no sewage was found, city health officials explained these occurrences as "a prank" - someone who filled airplane tanks with "sewage" and sprayed them over the houses overnight.

While anecdotal evidence points to sharply increased sudden deaths among young and elderly spray victims, no statistics are available to back up these observations by family members, registered nurses and other health
professionals.


WHAT IS NEEDED
Commensurate with the hearings that uncovered the truth behind the Gulf Bio-War and resulting Gulf War Illness, a full congressional investigation must be called to question key FAA, CIA, CDC, EPA, USDA, and other administrative officials under oath.

The questions are simple: "What is the purpose and who is behind the sudden concentrations of unmarked tanker-type aircraft emitting lingering plumes of stripes, X's and grids over American towns and cities?"

"What is the purpose and who is responsible for low-level spraying by C-130 Hercules transports and unmarked black or dark green helicopters over Pegosa Springs and Fort Collins, Colorado; Burnette, Texas; Espanola, Ontario and other towns across America?

Congress must also demand a full accounting of all U.S. military weather modification techniques and experiments, as well as a publicly-accessible monthly description of all experiments undertaken at high level bio-labs across the country.

ALSO NEEDED
More sophisticated (and expensive) labratory analysis of low and higher-altitude spray residue aimed at detecting or confirming the absence of mycoplasms, prions, ethylene dibromide, magnetrophic bacteria and other "stealth" pathogens.


HOW YOU CAN HELP
So far, the financial burden of this investigation has been borne by this writer and other chemtrail researchers. While our mounting expenses have been partially reimbursed by donations from concerned American and Canadian citizens, their contributions are not enough to pay for more lab tests or further aerial sampling.

Urgently needed are samples taken by a trained technician and analyzed by an independent, government-licensed lab from the actual chemtrail plumes.

A Chemtrail Research fund has been set up in Aspen, Colorado for the purpose of consolidating public donations in order to charter an aircraft equipped to sample for chemical and biological material at altitudes above 22,000 feet where chemtrail aircraft congregate. Records of all donations and expense receipts will be available to the public at all times.

For further information contact Dave Peterson at: dcp@sopris.net.


FURTHER PARTICIPATION
To join a nationwide fax/email/phone blitz calling for an end to spraying and full accountability of this program,
see: www.carnicom.com

Other chemtrail website:
www.islandent.com/wilco
www.contrailsconnection.com
www.members.tripod.com
www.strangehaze.com
www.clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/chemtrailtrackingusa


Copyright by William Thomas, 1999. All rights reserved.
For additional information, corroborating documentation and permission to reproduce this material, contact
William Thomas at wilco@islandnet.com.

Back to Contrail

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Chemtrails - US Military Continues
To Spray Chemical-Laden Skytrails
By William Thomas
willthomas@telus.net
© 2001 William Thomas
10-20-1

Covert Climate Control? Under the banner of some top-secret scientific agenda, the US military continues to weave chemical-laden contrails in the skies, causing health problems for unprotected people on the ground.


For nearly three years, chemtrail observers have hoped an official would step forward to explain the origin and purpose of broad white plumes criss-crossing the skies above a dozen allied nations. Their wait is over...

It was nearly noon when S.T. Brendt awoke and entered the kitchen of her country home in Parsonsfield, Maine. As she poured her first cup of coffee, the late night reporter for WMWV Radio could not have guessed that her life was minutes away from drastic change. Her partner Lou Aubuchont was already up, puzzling over what he had seen in the sky a half-hour before. The fat puffy plumes arching up over the horizon were unlike any contrail he had ever seen, even during his hitch in the Navy.

Like breath exhaled on a winter's day, the contrails he was used to seeing would flare briefly in the stratosphere as hot moist engine exhaust flash-freezes into a stream of ice-crystals. These pencil-thin condensation trails are pretty to watch but short-lived, subliming into invisibility as exhaust gases cool quickly to the surrounding air temperature.

But in late 1997, Aubuchont started observing thicker 'trails extending >from horizon to horizon. Hanging in the sky long after their creators had flown from view, these expanding white ribbons would invariably be interwoven by more thick lines left by unmarked jets, Air Force white or silver in colour.

On this March 12th morning in 2001, Lou did not mention his sighting as S.T. indulged in caffeine. Sipping gratefully, she glanced out the window. It looked like another gorgeous, cloudless day. But not quite. Brendt baulked at several chalk marks scrawled across the crystalline blue sky. "Contrails or chemtrails?" she jokingly remarked. Lou got up and looked. What kind of clouds run exactly side by side in a straight line? he wondered. It's just too perfect to happen naturally. When he said he wasn't sure, S.T. stopped smiling and went outside.

Looking up towards the southeast over West Pond, she spotted the first jet. A second jet was laying billowing white banners to the north. Both aircraft appeared to be at over 30,000 feet. Turning her gaze due west, Brendt saw two more lines extending over the horizon. She called Lou. Within 45 minutes the couple counted 30 jets. This isn't right, S.T. thought. We just don't have that kind of air traffic here. While Lou kept counting, she went inside and started calling airports. One official she reached was guarded but friendly. He had relatives in West Pond.

The Air Traffic Control manager told Brendt her sighting was "unusual". His radars showed nine commercial jets during the same 45-minute span. From her location, he said, she should have been able to see one plane.

And the other twenty-nine? The FAA official confided off the record that he had been ordered "by higher civil authority" to re-route inbound European airliners away from a "military exercise" in the area. "Of course, they wouldn't give me any of the particulars and I don't ask," he explained. "I just do my job."

Excited and puzzled by this information, S.T. and Lou got into their car and headed down Route 160. Looking in any direction they could see five or six jets flying at over 30,000 feet. Never in the dozen years they'd lived in rural Maine had they seen so much aerial activity.

A former US Navy Intelligence courier, Aubuchont was used to large-scale military exercises. But he told S.T. he had never seen anything this big. "It looked like an invasion," he later recounted.

Another driver almost went off the road as he leaned over his dashboard trying to look up. As they passed, he acknowledged them with a nod.

As far as they could see stretched line after line. Two giant grids were especially blatant. Instead of dissipating like normal contrails, these sky trails grew wider and wider and began to merge. Looking towards the Sun, Aubuchont saw what appeared like "an oil and water mixture" reflecting a prismatic band of colours. He couldn't call it a rainbow. Rainbows aren't sinister.

As Lou and S.T. completed their errands, the jets kept them company, leaving lines and even circles that resembled smoke rings. Even living near Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark jetports, Aubuchont had never seen so many big jets performing identical manoeuvres in the same sky. When they returned to Parsonsfield around four, the lines were starting to merge into a dingy haze.

Richard Dean called back. After receiving S.T.'s message, the assistant WMWV news director had gone outside with other news staff and counted 370 lines in skies usually devoid of aerial activity.

Brendt put in another call to the FAA official. He had never heard of chemtrails. In their first face-to-face interview, the chain-smoking controller responsible for air traffic over the northeastern seaboard repeated his earlier statements on tape. Similar military activities were ongoing in other regions, he added. On his 'scopes he could track the tankers flying north into Canadian airspace.

Speaking before witnesses at WMWV on condition of strict anonymity, our "Deep Sky" source answered a series of yes/no questions I helped Brendt prepare when she contacted me.

After nearly three years on this case, I wanted to corroborate extremely high levels of aluminum [aluminium] powder found in samples of rainwater falling through thick sky plumes over Espanola, Ontario, in the spring of 1998.

The Espanola lab tests were conducted after residents began complaining to the provincial environment ministry. Severe headaches, chronic joint pain, dizziness, sudden extreme fatigue, acute asthma attacks and feverless "flu-like" symptoms over a 50-square-mile area coincided with what they termed "months of 'spraying'" by photo-identified US Air Force tanker planes.

The USAF denied the intrusions. But former Ontario Provincial Police Officer and Supreme Court expert witness Ted Simola reported lingering Xs and numerous white trails, some of which "just ended" as if they had been shut off but remained in the sky.

Another Espanola resident told me that mental confusion and short-term memory loss were so prevalent that forgetting where their cars were parked had become "a standing joke" in the tiny town.

On November 18, 1998, the people of Espanola petitioned Parliament. Addressing the Canadian government on their behalf, defence critic Gordon Earle explained:

"Over 500 residents of the Espanola area have signed a petition raising concern over possible government involvement in what appears to be aircraft emitting visible aerosols. They have found high traces of aluminum and quartz in particulate and rainwater samples.

"These concerns combined with associated respiratory ailments have led these Canadians to take action and seek clear answers from this government. The petitioners call upon Parliament to repeal any law that would permit the dispersal of military chaff or of any cloud-seeding substance whatsoever by domestic or foreign military aircraft without the informed consent of the citizens of Canada thus affected."

The Ministry of Defence eventually replied: "It's not us."

Which was true. While the US Air Force counts 650 four-engine KC-135 Stratotankers and 50 KC-10 Extenders in its active inventory, Canadian Forces do not fly armadas of tankers. But they do operate the biggest radar installation in Canada at CFB Comox on Vancouver Island, easily capable of tracking the American formations coming up from the south.

"Was the classified operation a radar experiment?" we asked Deep Sky.

"That wasn't what I was told."

Were ATC radars "enhanced or degraded", we wanted to know. The barium spread in exercises conducted out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base acts as an electrolyte, enhancing conductivity of radar and radio waves. "Wright Pat" has also long been deeply engaged in HAARP's electromagnetic warfare program.

A SKY SHIELD TO COMBAT GLOBAL WARMING?

The puzzle pieces fell into place with Deep Sky's revelation that ATC radars were being "degraded" by tanker-released particles showing up as a "haze" on their screens. This radar characteristic matched the high concentrations of aluminum powder found along with a preponderance of quartz particles in Espanola's chemtrail-contaminated rainwater.

The tankers' aluminum powder emissions also matched the Welsbach patent. Issued in 1994 to the Hughes aerospace giant "for Reduction of Global Warming", the sky shield blueprint calls for dispensing microscopic particles of aluminum oxide and other reflective materials into the upper atmosphere to reflect one or two per cent of incoming sunlight. Computer simulations by Ken Caldeira at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory calculated that this would be enough to stop warming over 85 per cent of the planet, despite an anticipated doubling of carbon in the atmosphere within the next 50 years.

Lawrence Livermore priced the aerial spray program at US$1 billion dollars a year--a cheap fix to maintain massive petroleum profits in the face of Kyoto's internationally agreed carbon cutbacks.

Livermore's founder, Edward Teller, lobbied hard for another chance to play with planetary processes. At the 1998 International Seminar on Planetary Emergencies, the Father of the H-bomb presented his Next Big Idea. Having earlier pressed for detonating nuclear bombs to carve new harbours out of American coastlines, Teller now called for reflective chemicals to be spread like mirror-shades over the Earth. Or at least over allies who could agree in secret for this unprecedented geoengineering experiment to be carried out over their unsuspecting constituents.

In a draft report leaked to me soon after it appeared for peer review in May 2000, an expert panel chosen among 3,000 atmospheric scientists looked at Caldeira's computer simulations and agreed that Teller's scheme might work. But the IPCC warned against unpredictable upsets of the atmosphere, as well as against angry populaces reacting to "the associated whitening of the visual appearance of the sky".

Caldeira was so concerned he went public, warning that deflecting sunlight would further cool the stratosphere, concentrating icy clouds of ozone-gobbling CFCs that could destroy Earth's solar radiation shield.

Was the sky shield experiment already underway? Deep Sky hinted that it was.

Were the tankers involved in weather modification? Our FAA source hesitated before responding. "That approximates what I was told."

For the third interview we rephrased our key question. Were the tankers repeatedly observed on ATC radars involved in climate modification? I caught my breath as Deep Sky confirmed that this is what he was told was the object of the missions.

Here at last was our "smoking nuke" admission. After years of "airliner" double-speak, we could now corroborate Deep Sky's report of military aircraft dispensing reflective materials with an earlier report by a Canadian aviation official.

On December 8, 2000, Terry Stewart, the Manager for Planning and Environment at the Victoria International Airport, had broken this story wide open when he responded to a caller's complaint the previous day of Xs, circles and grids being woven over the British Columbia capitol. Leaving a message on an answering machine tape, later heard by more than 15 million radio listeners, the public servant explained: "It's a military exercise, US and Canadian Air Force exercise that's going on. They wouldn't give me any specifics on it."

Stewart added that he found the incident--one of hundreds reported over Canada's west coast since the fall of 1998--"very odd".

Tasked with defending Canadian airspace in the region, CFB Comox chose instead to defend a classified collaboration. "No military operation is taking place," the base information officer tersely told me when I called for details. But Stewart later told the Vancouver Courier that his information had come directly from CFB Comox.

CONTRAILS vs CHEMTRAILS

Across the strait from the island air base, a concerned mother of three children was noticing that people in Gibsons were coming down with ailments that coincided with constant chemtrail activity. Suzanne Smart's husband contracted asthma; their children were always sniffling and coughing. Smart ended up in the small coastal town's Emergency unit with a sore throat, "super-stiff" neck, pounding headache and ears "ringing like crazy". Even her teeth hurt.

It was all very nerve-wracking. Smart contacted a Transport Canada investigator who had noticed the jet trails too and was convinced it was normal contrail activity. Why he took special notice of normal contrails was not explained. But the TC official told Smart he hoped the Canadian equivalent of the FAA would be notified of any military exercises taking place.

On June 17, 2001, after photographing massive plumes over Gibsons, Smart checked with aviation authorities and found that no airline flight plans had been filed for that airspace at that time. Official weather data showed that when her photos of multiple white plumes were taken, the 30 per cent humidity at 30,000 and 35,000 feet was less than half that needed for contrails to form.

As NOAA meteorologist Thomas Schlatter explains, for even short-lived condensation trails to form, "we're talking temperatures lower than about minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit, and humidity at jet altitudes of 70 per cent or more".

Smart sent her findings to Transport Canada with a request for an explanation of how contrails could form when they couldn't. "It is my understanding," she wrote, "that the only way to form jet trails at yesterday's low humidity is to introduce very fine particulates into the atmosphere."

Smart's homework hit like hardball. According to the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, the only way to form artificial clouds in warm dry air is to introduce enough particulates into the atmosphere to attract and accrete all available moisture into visible vapour. If repeated often enough, the resulting rainless haze can lead to drought.

Following standard procedure to ignore all evidence contradicting the official line, Transport Canada's Randy Phillips responded by advising Smart to check out the "urban legends" website ridiculing chemtrails.

Col. Walter Washbaugh, Chief of the Congressional Inquiry Division for the Secretary of the Air Force in Washington, DC, also calls chemtrails "a hoax". In an April 20, 2001, letter to a US senator, Washbaugh blamed the increased number of contrails on "significant civil aviation growth in the past decade".

He was right. A National Science Foundation study has found that, in certain heavy traffic corridors, artificial cloud cover has increased by as much as 20 per cent since the jet age took off. Dr Patrick Minnis, a CERES atmospheric researcher and ardent chemtrails critic at NASA's Langley Research Center, reports that cirrus cloud cover over the United States is up five per cent overall because particulates in engine exhaust are acting as cloud-forming nuclei. As the number of flights currently exceeds 15 million annually worldwide, the NSF, NASA and EPA predict artificial clouds will intensify as air travel continues climbing sharply.

What about chemtrails? Colonel Washbaugh ascribed widely reported grid patterns to overlapping aircraft flying north-south, east-west airways. The only thing wrong with this explanation, an air traffic controller told me in Texas, is that US airways do not run north-south.

The biggest laugh came when the colonel told the senator: "The Air Force is not conducting any weather modification and has no plans to do so in the future."

In fact, attempts to steer hurricanes by spraying heat-robbing chemicals in their paths began in the 1950s. The recipe for creating "cirrus shields" was outlined in an unusually arrogant US Air Force study. Subtitled "Owning the Weather by 2025", the 1996 report explained how "weather force specialists" were dispersing chemicals behind high-flying tanker aircraft in a process the air force calls "aerial obscuration".

Official denials reached new altitudes of absurdity when another colonel claimed: "The US Air Force does not conduct spraying operations over populated areas." USAF spokeswoman Margaret Gidding told a Spokane newspaper: "The Air Force doesn't do anything that emits anything other than a normal contrail, which is vapor."

So were their replies. Apparently Anderson and Gidding had forgotten how US Air Force spray planes crippled a country and a culture by dispensing over Vietnam thousands of tons of "Agent Orange" defoliants containing dioxin toxins as hazardous as plutonium.

SEEING IS BELIEVING?

In the end, it has proved impossible to continue skywriting giant billboards advertising government duplicity, while insisting they are not there. By the summer of 2001, the controversy entered a new phase. Pictures of contrails were being distributed to newspapers by the Associated Press, and "chemtrails" could be overheard in coffee shop conversations across an entire continent.

When it comes to chemtrails, seeing is disbelieving official disinformation. As public awareness grows, people like war veteran David Oglesby are looking up. The 11 fat plumes fanning out over his Coarsegold, California, home did it for Oglesby last June.

"The trails formed a grid pattern," he told WorldNetDaily News. "Some stretched from horizon to horizon. Some began abruptly, and others ended abruptly. They hung in the air for an extended period of time and gradually widened into wispy clouds resembling spider webs."

A retired US Air Force radar tech named Shimera called a colonel responsible for all military operations in central California. "What would you say if I said there are three aircraft up there right now?" Shimera asked. "Are they there?"

"No," the colonel replied. "They are not there."

The Houston study is not so easily dismissed. Mark Steadham was looking for contrails when he started observing the skies over this busy Texas hub last winter. Using FAA tracking software called Flight Explorer to identify each aircraft, Steadham clocked contrails trailing from Boeing, McDonnell-Douglas and Airbus airliners. All but two of these condensation trails sublimed into invisibility within five to 20 seconds; the only exceptions persisted for two and 25 minutes.

Flight Explorer does not show altitudes for military jets, but, according to the FAA, tankers and transports usually transit continental airspace at around 30,000 feet to ensure safe separation from airliners flying between 35,000 and 39,000 feet. Military "heavies" flying below 30,000 feet should not leave contrails at all. Major-General Gregory Barlow confirms that Air Force tankers do not perform refuelling missions at contrail-forming altitudes.

But Steadham found just the opposite in his study. While observing air traffic for 63 days, the Houston skywatcher found that thick white plumes laid by similar-sized military aircraft--at the same time, in the same airspace as 20-second airliner contrails--lingered for four to eight hours.

GLOBAL CHEMTRAIL REPORTS

Sightings of oddly lingering plumes sometimes resembling rocket trails are not confined to North American skies.

While on leave in Italy in the summer of 1999, the US Navy's Kitty Chastain sat on her hotel balcony and watched aerial grids being laid all day just offshore over the Bay of Naples. "People were coughing all over Naples," she wrote. On the bus ride in from the base, Chastain explained chemtrails to many sailors with hacking coughs.

On October 12 that same year, a Paris correspondent reported "...heavy activity from all directions, X upon X. The pilots here seem to like to play chicken; they fly right at each other and then one will swerve, their trails forming pitchforks and Xs." No contrails were being left by "normal planes" in the same skies. But the next day, planes flying over Paris "from all directions" obscured the sky with more Xs that continued into the evening.

In Spain on April 27, 2000, American tourist John Hendricks dashed off a quick email from El Café de Internet: "Were we surprised to see that the chemtrails are as bad here as they are anywhere, both in Mallorca and in Barcelona." He and his wife "took plenty of pictures" before noticing a postcard they'd bought captured a perfect chemtrail.

"Add Sweden to the list," a Swedish resident wrote after spotting eight to 10 parallel 'trails and contracting flu for the first time in years. Weather conditions at the time were not conducive to contrail formation. "I know the commercial routes, and we have a bunch of them, but not where these trails were."

Chemtrail activity has been reported in at least 14 allied nations including Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Scotland, Sweden and the United States. Croatian chemtrails began the day after that country joined NATO.

ATMOSPHERIC ORGANISMS

Many chemtrail observers note that chemtrails are often laid down at the leading edge of approaching frontal systems. While rare "sundogs" form ice-crystal circles around the Sun in advance of strong winds, much more common "chemdogs" create prismatic solar halos during stable weather.

More and more observers, like this Vancouver resident, wonder why "on the days of heavy spraying you will notice a rainbow around the Sun". Many more people who have been healthy all their lives wonder why they keep getting desperately sick whenever the chemplanes appear.

Unlike the refined aluminum in cooking utensils that is tenuously linked to Alzheimer's disease, aluminum oxide is as inert as sand and is not considered toxic.

But in a story headlined "Tiny particles can kill", the August 5, 2000, edition of New Scientist reported that "city-dwellers in Europe and the US are dying young because of microscopic particles in the air".

Looking at byproducts of hydrocarbon burning, a Harvard School of Public Health team determined particulates with a diameter less than 10 microns as being a serious threat to public health. (A human hair is about 100 microns across.) In 1987, US environmental regulations limited airborne concentrations of particles less than 10 microns in diameter.

But air pollution has grown worse. On April 21, 2001, the New York Times warned: "These microscopic motes are able to infiltrate the tiniest compartments in the lungs and pass readily into the bloodstream, and have been most strongly tied to illness and early death, particularly in people who are already susceptible to respiratory problems."

David Hawkins, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, speaks for "about a quarter-million Americans who have died prematurely as result of fine-particle exposure".

That number may be boosted sharply by chemtrail spraying. On December 14, 2000, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that inhaling particulate matter of a size 10 microns or smaller leads to "a 5% increased death rate within 24 hours".

Teller's sunscreen calls for spraying 10 million tons of talcum-fine reflective particulates of 10 to 100 micron sizes.

Allergic reactions to airborne fallout do not explain the entire syndrome of chemtrail-related illness. Falling blood temperatures accompanying symptoms of intense yet feverless "flu" is a classic sign of chronic fungal infection. Blamed for a host of auto-immune dysfunction, from chronic fatigue to fibromyalgia and multiple sclerosis, the fungus within us also signals its presence in sharp joint pain, sudden extreme fatigue, sudden dizziness, mental confusion and short-term memory loss.

After nearly three years of intense investigation, I have found no proof that chemtrails constitute a deliberate biological attack. Research for my books on the Gulf biowar and earlier germ warfare experiments (Bringing The War Home; Scorched Earth) show that bio-attacks are conducted at low level and never in daylight, in order to avoid ultraviolet sterilisation of toxins.

The biohazards in chemtrails may be bad LUC. The "Law of Unintended Consequences" states that every human intervention creates unpredictable consequences. Chemtrails can cause drought by soaking up all available moisture, and drooping chemical curtains fall through vast colonies of UV-mutated bacteria, viruses and fungi living in the upper atmosphere. Could these malevolent micro-organisms be piggy-backing on the plumes?

A series of balloon flights made in the US during the 1960s collected startling stratospheric samples swarming with bacteria and fungi as well as viruses bigger than any known at the time.

If viruses fall from the sky, most would land in the sea. Dipping their beakers into coastal seawater, scientists found as many as 10 million large virus-like particles per quart. As one researcher said: "No one knows where they come from or what they do. Their size and shape match the virus-like particles found in the upper atmosphere."

Other life-forms, even tinier than bacteria, are also thriving in our atmosphere. The discoverer of nanobacteria, Dr Robert Folk, describes the most populous organisms on Earth as "dwarf forms of bacteria, about one-tenth the diameter and 1/1000th the volume of ordinary bacteria".

The Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas figures that these ultra-tiny bugs are "possibly an order of magnitude more abundant" than normal bacteria that swarm everywhere.

Since chemtrails are commonly spread over populated areas where temperature differentials are greatest and solar shading most needed, it is probable that particulate-laden plumes are precipitating airborne viruses, bacteria and fungi down into human lungs and respiratory systems unable to recognise or resist the alien invaders.

This possibility was further strengthened when Dr Folk chose a lightweight metal as a matrix to grow bugs too small to be seen by optical microscopes. Folk viewed under electronic magnification entire ecologies of swarming nanobac. The bacteria were feasting on (he called it "metabolising") aluminum.

PUBLIC CONCERN SPREADS

Are we worried yet? An August 2001 WorldNetDaily poll asked Americans: "Do you think 'chemtrails' are anything to worry about?" Forty-three per cent answered "Yes"; another 30 per cent wanted more information on chemtrails--a total 73 per cent of US respondents concerned about chemtrails.

As lawyers across the US discuss filing the "Mother of All Lawsuits" against Boeing, Bush and the US Air Force, their case now appears tight enough to force further disclosures. The last glaring evidential gap--photos of ground-based chemtrail operations--may soon be forthcoming.

What to do?

A British campaigner involved in another bid to reclaim individual sovereignty and local autonomy held out the best hope for change when she told a CBC radio interviewer: "The only way to get government to do anything is if enough people stand up and shout, 'This is ridiculous!'"

Stay tuned. With chemtrails confirmed as a military operation aimed at climate modification, the biggest trial is about to begin--in the court of public opinion.


References

Vancouver Courier chemtrails coverage: www.vancourier.com/0 85101/news/085101nn1.html

WorldNetDaily chemtrails coverage: www.worldn etdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24152

Mark Steadham's Houston contrails study:
www.chemtrailcentral.com/report.shtml

"Tiny Bits of Soot Tied to Illness", New York Times, April 21, 2001,
www.nytimes.com/ 2001/04/21/science/21AIR.html

NOAA meteorologist Thomas Schlatter:
www.weatherwise.org/qr/q ry.chemtrail.html


About the Author:

William Thomas specialises in health and environment issues. His award-winning writing has appeared in more than 50 publications in eight countries. His editorial commentaries have been published in The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Vancouver Sun and Times-Colonist newspapers as well as Earth Island Journal and Ecodecision magazines. He has also appeared on CBC radio and TV, CNN and New Zealand national television. His articles, "Poison from the Sky: the 'Chemtrails' Crisis" and "Probing the 'Chemtrails' Conundrum", were published in NEXUS 6/03 and 7/02 respectively. He can be contacted by email at willthomas@ telus.net, or via his Lifeboat News website, www.lifeboatnews.com.

© 2001 William Thomas Heron Rocks 1-9 Hornby Island, BC Canada V0R 1Z0 www.lifeboatnews.com http://www.nexusmagazine.com /chemtrails.html

Extracted from Nexus Magazine,
Vol 8, No 6 (Oct-Nov 2001)
PO Box 30,
Mapleton Qld 4560 Australia.
editor@nexusmagazine.com
Telephone: +61 (0)7 5442 9280;
Fax: +61 (0)7 5442 9381
From our web page at: www.nexusmagazine.com

I slept really well last night bored with going out into the exciting night life of Okc (not). So I enjoyed the free beer at Mikes from 8-9 and thought that will I have more motivation after a power nap. After laying down on the matress, I thought that it's not worth the effort so I'll just watch this DVD on the "founder" of underground comics, Robert Crumb. He came from a dysfunctional home in the 50's and 60's and started drawing pictures of everyone from his very bizarre perspective on people drawing them with exaggerations of certain features so that their personality will come out. (I'd love to see his caricature of Bush but seeing him dressed in the manger as one of the three wise (?) kings in Madame Tussaud's along with Tony Blair and Samuel Jackson made my evening. Dan Rather had a good chuckle at the end of his broadcast. Bush looked like a real clown with the hat he had on his constipated face.)

I have a little writer's block today so I'm not sure what to write having said everything about Friday's volcanic eruption in the neighborhood. Today is beautiful and sunny enjoying a walk around the expanding hood with houses popping up like the diarrhea of Bubburban sprawl. Nearly every house had a bubbamobile parked by it or in the garage. Now there is very little space left as developers are good at using up every square inch of this square mile. They have finally started developing in the neighboring square mile of Canadian County with high dollar homes calling the subdivion, "Tara".

"Oh Ashley, don't leave me in this redneck state!"

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn about you staying here in this state of ignorance!"

(trying a little humor after all the trauma)

My birthday is coming up and I wish that I was only turning 29 instead of 49!!! That is so depressing. Only 11 years until I'm 60 and wondering when I will finally reach my peak of self actualization. When will this book and Okiementary of an escape from the comfort zone of mundanity have some sort of form to be published? I hope that writing will be also my escape and my source of strength as I come to accept my own mortality realizing that if I live to 98 half of my life is over. There are so many things that I need to do for my own growth. I need to plan more and get a type of daily ritual that will help me get more out of each day. I do have many regrets wishing that I could live life over seeing so many fuckups that have happened and then to be punished by more (i.e. to walk across the street and then be yelled at by an emotionally disturbed adult with threats of weapons of mortal destruction). I will to not be intimidated and make the choices so as to avoid these kinds of situations.

Karl Rove
It's hard to imagine how Karl Rove's appearance could fit his role any more perfectly than it does.
Portly, balding, malicious, simpering, he looks like a cross between Sesame Street's Mr. Hooper and the Third Reich's Heinrich Himmler. And he acts like a cross between Heinrich Himmler and Henry Kissinger. Whom he also looks like. And not in a good way.

Oh yeah, he's a man who compromised national security, putting lives of American agents in danger. Wait, I forgot a word there. What was it? Oh, I remember! Allegedly.

Rove is an old-school political operator who would have been right at home working on Huey Long's campaign. Of course, Long did a lot of good things for his constituents, to offset the sleaze and corruption. Rove's protege, George W Bush, has a ways to go in that regard.

Rove was a "Young Republican" back when being a Young Republican wasn't cool (a historical era ranging from 1959 through the present). As a student at the prestigious University of Utah, Rove (who still had hair at the time) teamed up with a young Lee Atwater to seize control of the College Republicans political club in the early 1970s.

By all accounts, the race for the coveted chairmanship of the meaningless College Republicans organization was a portent of things to come. According to the Washington Post, the two men executed a balls-to-the-wall campaign to put Rove in the catbird's seat, and once there, he wasted no time getting his group involved in dirty tricks on behalf of Richard M Nixon's 1972 campaign. You may remember that campaign, it was the beginning of Watergate.

Oxymoronically, Rove dropped out of college to become executive director of the College Republicans, all the while practicing dirty tricks on behalf of the candidates of his choice. According the Post, these tricks included identity theft, petty larceny and campaign fraud. Rove characterized these felonies and misdemeanors as a "youthful prank."

A political visionary, Rove recognized early on that he had the opportunity to leech onto not one, but two failed, third-rate presidents in the form of what is comically referred to as the "Bush Dynasty." Rove worked as an assistant to George Bush Sr. in the Republican National Committee during what is arguably the lowest point in the history of the Republican Party, the aftermath of the Nixon presidency.

For the next decade or so, Rove kept his nose buried up the ass of the nearest Bush. He helped George Jr. embarrass himself in a 1978 congressional bid, then bailed out of Bush Sr.'s first and failed presidential bid in 1979.

He maintained a close buddyship with the future president Junior, however. In a high point of Time Magazine's history of powerful journalistic coverage, a 2001 report revealed that George W. Bush's pet name for Rove is "Turd Blossom." No, really.

Rove helped Bush Jr. transform himself from rich-dilletante wastrel into rich-dilletante-wastrel-with-power in 1994, acting as his political adviser in Dubya's successful run for Texas governor. According to ABC News, more than half of the campaign's nearly $1 million budget went to Rove. Considering the challenge of making Bush look good, the sum was probably not out of line.

Rove's tactics tend toward making politics more about playing percentages than kissing babies. An early adopter of direct mail and targeted computer lists, Rove is widely credited with making the Texas GOP the cash cow is today. He also specialized in converting conservative Democrats who were already Republicans in every meaningful sense into Republicans in name as well, including arch-conservative and failed presidential candidate Phil Gramm, who suspiciously resembles a much thinner version of Rove himself.

Brought in to shepherd Junior to his rightful place as chief executive of the last superpower, Rove was largely responsible for creating the veneer of "compassionate conservatism" that led George Jr. to his triumphant loss in the 2000 presidential election.

First, Rove and his little buddy had to beat off a surprise primary challenge from charismatic war hero John McCain, whose sacrifices in a military prison camp in Vietnam looked all the more impressive against Bush's no-show National Guard travesty. Rove conducted a whisper-campaign to spread sleaze, pushing ridiculous allegations, such as that McCain was a stoolie while imprisoned in Vietnam. Rove was reputedly the brains behind a sleazy e-mail forward that alleged McCain had fathered an illegitimate black daughter, a lie which was "proven" by actual pictures of McCain with his black daughter, whom he had actually adopted.

Obviously, McCain should have been drinking and snorting coke throughout the '70s, rather than serving his country, enduring torture and adopting children. Bush trampled the challenger handily, and moved on to the general election, where he faced Vice President Al Gore.

Despite running against the stiffest Democratic candidate since Adlai Stevenson, Dubya couldn't quite clear the hurdle in the nationwide popular vote, which he lost by a margin five times larger than Nixon lost to Kennedy in 1960. But the pesky little electoral college thing sank Gore, thanks to Jeb and Florida. As early as Labor Day, Rove was doing the usual political dance and predicting it would be a close race. And how close it was! As mentioned above, Gore won the popular vote by a small but convincing margin. However, the electoral college — which actually dictates who will become president — was right down to the wire. The outcome of the election rode on the election results in Florida, which Gov. Jeb Bush had promised to "deliver" for his brother.

You all remember Florida. We won't beat it to death again here. Karl Rove's role in Florida was "damage control," and there was a lot of damage to control. Rove's basic public strategy consisted of "we won, so leave us alone." Voting irregularities, mandated recounts -- these things were trivia, bureaucracy, Democratic dirty tricks. "We won" was the message of the day.

Privately, of course, the Bush team was far from certain that they had, in fact, won. Jeb Bush promised to stay out of the recount debate, and instead entrusted it to his political appointees, who lived for no other reason than to curry favor. Rove didn't like the looks of this, so he stacked the deck in every conceivable way.

Among the tactics he employed: Loading Republican operatives from Washington, D.C., onto a bus and sending them to Florida, where they played the part of "angry mob" shouting and intimidating the hapless bureaucrats who had been lumped with the unenviable job of evaluating the ballots. Ah, those youthful pranks!

In the end, Bush came out on top, of course, catapulting Rove into a position of power that few Mr. Hooper-lookalikes have ever achieved. Although the White House repeatedly insisted that Rove had no policy-making role, the advice of his "White House Office of Strategic Initiatives" was sought on virtually every major decision that Bush administration faced.

After September 11, Rove found himself feeling cranky, according to investigative reporter Bob Woodward. Rove was pissed off because he wasn't being allowed to sit in on National Security Council and war cabinet meetings. Bush and Dick Cheney were afraid the politico's presence would send the wrong message.

Bear in mind, it wasn't that Rove wasn't being consulted. He was consulted about every single thing that happened in the White House and every decision that emerged from the Oval Office. He just wasn't being allowed to sit at the meetings himself. He had to get his updates after the fact from Bush, Cheney and Condoleezza Rice.

Despite his enormous power, Rove was mostly spared any real scrutiny by the mainstream media, which preferred to write with grudging admiration about his alleged political skills and chuckle over the "Turd Blossom" thing. By the time the Iraq invasion rolled around, Rove was back to sitting in the meetings.

His thoughtful evaluation (told to Woodward) of the ramifications of invading a sovereign country and deposing its leader? "The victor is always right."

Until late 2003, anyway, when an ugly little incident revealed just how dark the dark side of Karl Rove could be, in a burgeoning scandal that could have serious consequences for the Bush White House.

A former U.S. ambassador by the name of Joseph Wilson was one of the biggest political liabilities the White House faced in 2003. Wilson had been dispatched to Niger early in 2002 to investigate whether Iraq was trying to buy uranium there. Turns out, they weren't.

He reported this information back to the White House, which promptly ignored it. Bush cited the uranium story in his 2003 State of the Union address, Cheney cited it repeatedly, and the State Department cited it in several of its endless justifications for why the U.S. just had to invade Iraq.

When the war was "over" and still no Weapons of Mass Destruction had been found, Wilson pointed out to the media that he had TOLD the White House that there was no uranium purchase. He wrote about his fact-finding trip in the New York Times as well.

This did not please the White House. It was bad for politics, bad for poll numbers. And when the poll numbers are threatened, Karl Rove gets cranky. Homicidally cranky, apparently. Did I say apparently? I meant allegedly.

In July 2003, arch-conservative Robert Novak reported that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent, blowing her cover and endangering her life, not to mention national security. (Inexplicably, no one has gone after Novak over this issue.)

Wilson and his wife didn't take this lying down. They came out swinging. Wilson accused Rove of being the source for the leak that endangered his wife's life and destroyed her career.

"Rove is someone who at a minimum would have condoned it and certainly did nothing to knock it down for over a week after the article appeared. The outing of my wife was obviously a political or communications move. The head of the political operation is Karl Rove," Wilson told reporters.

In late September, the Justice Department launched a full criminal investigation into the leak, which is an aggravated felony punishable by up to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine (which actually seems a little low for treasonous activity and political intimidation designed to silence political opposition and whistleblowing).

The White House has refused to speculate on the source of the leak. Not only has it refused it speculate, it's actually refused to care. Despite widespread outrage, the White House declined to launch an internal investigation of the leak, with a Bush flak saying that it was "ridiculous" to suggest Rove was involved, and that "there has been absolutely nothing brought to our attention to suggest any White House involvement." I guess they don't get CNN on the cable system there.

Needless to say, the prospect of the Bush Justice Department investigating a Bush political operative doesn't thrill Democrats, who have already called for an independent counsel investigation.

Fortunately for Republicans, the party leadership cleverly disabused the nation about the worth of special prosecutors and impeachment proceedings a few years ago, when they hounded Bill Clinton into a constitutional crisis over blow jobs.

Considering the mounting list of actual scandals the Bushies are racking up, that strategy is proving to be prescient. Most Americans are about as thrilled at the prospect of a special prosecutor as they are at the prospect of a root canal.

In the meantime, just remember: don't cross Karl Rove. Whoops! We just did... dammit!




timeline
25 Dec 1950 Karl Rove born, Denver CO.
1970 Karl Rove sneaks into the campaign office of Illinois Democrat Alan Dixon and steals some letterhead. He then prints up 1,000 party invitations promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing," which he then distributes to homeless shelters.
1971 Drops out, University of Utah.
1980 First person hired by the George HW Bush presidential campaign.
1981 Starts political consulting firm Karl Rove & Co.
1993 John Ashcroft campaign pays Karl Rove & Co. over $300,000 to help with his senate race. New York Times.
1999 The George W Bush campaign effort pays Karl Rove & Co. $2.5M for July through December. According to Rove, "About 30 percent of that is postage."
1999 Sells Karl Rove & Co..
Dec 2000 Signs a campaign disclosure form, but neglects to mention he is still President of Karl Rove & Co.
Mar 2001 White House political adviser Karl Rove meets with executives from Intel, seeking approval for a merger between a Dutch company and an Intel supplier. The government rubberstamps the deal, and Rove's $100,000 in Intel stock surges.
Apr 2001 Arnold Schwarzenegger meets with Bush political advisers to discuss whether the actor should run for Governor of California in 2002. Karl Rove says "That would be really nice. That would be really, really nice."
Jun 2001 White House political adviser Karl Rove meets with two pharmaceutical industry lobbyists. At the time, Rove holds almost $250,000 in drug industry stocks.
Jun 2001 White House political adviser Karl Rove meets with a group of Muslim activists including Sami Al-Arian.
12 Mar 2000 George W Bush and his wife Laura are photographed with Karl Rove, during a campaign stop at the Florida Strawberry Festival.
30 Jun 2001 White House political adviser Karl Rove divests his stocks in 23 companies, which included more than $100,000 in each Enron, Boeing, General Electric, and Pfizer.
30 Jun 2001 The White House admits that political adviser Karl Rove was involved in administration energy policy meetings, while at the same time holding stock in energy companies including Enron.
10 Apr 2003 Arnold Schwarzenegger meets with White House political adviser Karl Rove to discuss anything other than whether the actor should run for Governor of California in 2006.
14 May 2003 During a meeting with South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun, President George W Bush brings only two officials: National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and political adviser Karl Rove.
29 Aug 2003 Retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson names Karl Rove as the White House insider who leaked his wife's identity as a CIA operative to the press.
28 Mar 2004 Several hundred supporters of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act pile out of school busses in front of Karl Rove's house in Washington D.C., swarming onto his front lawn and shouting for him to support the act. Rove appears briefly to order the mob off his property, at which point they rush his house, banging on the windows and doors. He finally agrees to talk to two representatives if the mob disperses; they do, and after a couple minutes of discussion he shuts the door on them midsentence.



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Hippy Timeline
Here are some of the more important events of the 1960s-1970s. They include the antecedents and descendants of the hippy movement, the civil rights, anti-war, women's and environmental movements. The psychedelic and the protest movements were greatly enhanced by the revolution in music, so we've included some influential music milestones.

For more on this subject visit:
Famous Hippy Quotes
Music with a Message
Hippyland's 60's Page
Hippiedom Page
Flashback Forum
Hippy Forum

For Great Hippy Music, check out Hipplanet's Music Store!
To Buy books about Hippies go to Hipplanet's Bookstore!

If you have any comments or additions to this page just e-mail us!

All content copyright 1999, Hip Inc. May not be used without permission.



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1960
January - Bob Dylan, age 19 plays at the Wha in Greenwich Village and visits Woody Guthrie in the Hospital
Jan - Civil rights demonstrations in Atlanta
Feb 13 - France becomes the fourth nuclear power
Mar 15 - Lunch-counter sit-ins spread to 15 cities in 5 southern states
May 6 - Civil Rights Act of 1960 signed by Eisenhower
July - Sidney Cohen's survey of 5,000 individuals who had taken LSD 25,000 times concludes it is safe
Aug 9 - Timothy Leary, 39, tries psilocybin mushrooms in Cuernavaca
Aug 10 - Antarctic Treaty creates peaceful scientific preserve
Nov - JFK elected president.
Nov - Eisenhower warns the nation about the "Military-Industrial Complex" and its power.
Nov 9 - Brian Epstein first sees the Beatles.
Dec - Birth Control Pills go on sale in the US.
1961
Jan 17 - Eisenhower warns of increasing power of "military-industrial complex"
Feb 1 - Four black students arrested at whites only lunch counter in Greensboro S. Carolina
Feb 18 - Bertrand Russell, 89, leads march of 20,000 & sit-down of 5,000 anti-nuke outside U.K. Defense Ministry and is jailed for 7 days
Mar - Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) takes psilocybin as part of the Harvard Project
Mar 1 - John Kennedy initiates 17 billion dollar nuclear missile program, increases military aid to Indochina & announces creation of the Peace Corps
Apr 11 - Bob Dylan's first billed performance at Gerde's Folk City
Apr 12 - Yuri Gagarin of the USSR is the first man in space
Apr 25 - Bay of Pigs, Cuba U.S. planned invasion is defeated by Castro
May 4 - Freedom Riders leave DC for a southern tour to test integration in bus stations
May 28 - Amnesty International Founded
July - Ban The Bomb Demonstrations start worldwide
July 19 - First Telstar Satellite Live TV Transmission across the Atlantic
Aug 13 - East German border guards begin construction of Berlin Wall
Sept 15 - U.S. starts underground nuclear testing
Oct 6 - President Kennedy advises Americans to build fallout shelters

1962
Feb 16 - Boston SANE & fledgling SDS hold first anti-nuclear march on Washington with 4000-8000 protesters
Apr 25 - U.S. resumes atmospheric nuclear testing after 3 year moratorium
Sept - Timothy Leary founds International Foundation for Internal Freedom (IFIF) to promote LSD research & publish The Psychedelic Review.
Oct 22 - Cuban Missile Crisis - Soviet missile bases in Cuba, Kennedy orders naval blockade.

1963
Jan - Alabama Gov. Wallace's "Segregation Forever" speech at inauguration
Apr 3 - SCLC & volunteers stage sit-in in Birmingham, Alabama
Apr 12 - Martin Luther King & Ralph Abernathy go to jail in Birmingham
Jun 11 - JFK Proposes the Civil Rights Bill
Jun 12 - Civil rights leader Medgar Evers assassinated.
July - Timothy Leary hosts Freedom House groups in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, Dominica & then Antigua
July - Newport Folk Festival July 26-28, includes Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs and Pete Seeger
Aug 5 - First Nuclear Test Ban Treaty signed
Aug 28 - Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech, Wash DC Civil Rights March 1963, 200,000 attend
Aug 30 - U.S. -Soviet Hotline installed
Sept - Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and other Harvard alumni LSD researchers move to the Hitchcock's estate in Millbrook, New York.
Sept 24 - Nuclear Test Ban Treaty ratified by Senate
Oct 10 - Nuclear Test Ban Treaty takes effect
Oct 13 - Beatles on TV at London Palladium. 15 million get to see them perform "She Loves You" and "Twist and Shout".
Nov 22 - JFK Assassinated in Dallas, Texas, LBJ sworn in
Nov 22 - Aldous Huxley dies while tripping on LSD (intentionally!)
Nov 24 - LBJ escalates the Vietnam War
Nov 29 - Beatles "I Want to Hold Your Hand" Released

1964
Jan 8 - LBJ declares "War on Poverty" in State of the Union address
Jan 11 - U.S. Surgeon General declares cigarettes cause lung disease
Jan 30 - New military junta takes over in South Vietnam
Feb 7 - Beatles arrive in New York to 10,000 screaming fans
Feb 9 - Beatles first appear on Ed Sullivan Show, 74 million people watch, the largest audience in the history of television.
Apr 23 - Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl
May - Bob Dylan's first visit to England, meets The Beatles & Rolling Stones; turns The Beatles on to marijuana.
July - Millbrook LSD sessions with Timothy Leary
July - Ken Kesey's First Magic Bus Trip to NY
July 2 - LBJ signs US Civil Rights Act: public facilities opened to all
July 18 - Race riot in Harlem, NY
July 23 - Senate passes $947 million antipoverty bill
Aug - Ken Kesey & his Merry Pranksters visit Timothy Leary & Richard Alpert at Millbrook.
Aug - Beatles first U.S. tour: 25 North American cities.
Aug 4 - Three missing civil rights workers found dead in Mississippi
Aug 11 - Beatles' A Hard Day's Night movie released
Aug 20 - LBJ signs anti-poverty program
Aug 23 - Beatles Hollywood Bowl concert
Aug 28 - Race riots in Philadelphia
Aug 31 - LBJ signs food stamp bill
Oct 14 - Martin Luther King Jr. wins Nobel Peace Prize
Dec 10 - Martin Luther King awarded Nobel Peace Prize


1965
Time Mag calls young people "generation of conformists"
Jan 4 - President Johnson outlines "Great Society"
Feb - Martin Luther King Jr. and 770 other protesters arrested in Selma, Alabama for picketing county courthouse to end discrim voting rights
Feb 8 - U.S. starts bombing North Vietnam
Feb 18 - Sect. of Defense Robert McNamara calls for nationwide network of bomb shelters
Feb 21 - Malcolm X shot and killed
Mar 3 - Owsley starts LSD factory, making large quantities of acid available for the first time
Mar 6 - First American soldier officially sets foot on Vietnam battlefields
Mar 7 - Alabama state troopers attack 525 civil rights workers as they prepare to march
Mar 8 - 3,500 Marines land to protect Da Nang air base
Mar 16 - Quaker Alice Herz, 82, immolates self in Detroit in protest of the Vietnam war
Mar 16 - Police break-up demonstration of 600 in Montgomery, Alabama
Mar 17 - 1,600 people demonstrate at Montgomery, Alabama courthouse
Mar 21 - Martin Luther King Jr. leads march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama joined by 25,000 marchers
Mar 24 - SDS organizes first Vietnam War teach-in at Univ. of Michigan
3000 show up
Mar 25 - Civil rights worker shot and killed by KKK in Alabama
Mar 28 - Martin Luther King calls for boycott of Alabama on TV
Apr - 25,000 U.S. troops stationed in Vietnam
Apr 2 - Ken Kesey busted for marijuana first time
Apr 17 - SDS leads first anti-Vietwar march in Washington. 25,000 attend including Phil Ochs, Joan Baez and Judy Collins
Jun 11 - Beatles awarded the MBE by the Queen
July 8 - Chicago school integration protests
July 10 - Rolling Stones' I Can't Get No Satisfaction #1
July 24 - Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone enters charts
July 25 - Dylan goes Rock at Newport Folk Festival
July 30 - LBJ signs Medicare bill
Aug - Ken Kesey meets Hunter Thompson who introduces the Hells Angels to the Merry Pranksters; Alan Ginsberg & Richard Alpert are at the party.
Aug 11 - Major race riot (6 days) in Watts, leaves 35 dead
Aug 13 - Nat'l Guard enters Watts riots in L.A.
Aug 14 - Sonny and Cher release "I Got You Babe"
Aug 23 - Premiere of Beatles' Help!
Aug 31 - Burning draft cards becomes illegal
Sept 5 - San Francisco writer Michael Fallon applies the term "hippie" to the SF counterculture in an article about the Blue Unicorn coffeehouse where LEMAR (Legalize Marijuana) & the Sexual Freedom League meet, & hippie houses.
Sept 25 - “Eve of Destruction”, sang by Barry McGuire top of the charts
Oct 1 - Anti-pollution bill sets emission standards for cars
Oct 16 - 100,000 anti-war protesters nationwide in 80 cities
Nov - "Unsafe at Any Speed" about the automobile industry's disregard for safety, published by Ralph Nader.
Nov 22 - Bob Dylan marries Sarah Lowndes & moves to Woodstock, N.Y.
Dec 25 - Timothy Leary busted for pot at the Mexican border


1966
Jan 3 - The Psychedelic Shop head shop opens on Haight Street, S.F.
Jan 14 - March on Atlanta to protest ouster of Julian Bond
Jan 17 - B52 collides, drops 4 10-megaton H bombs on Spain, none explode, cover-up follows
Jan 20 - Ken Kesey busted again with Mountain Girl on the roof.
Jan 21 - First light show, Grateful Dead, 10,000 people in S.F.
Feb 19 - Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin perform at the Fillmore
Mar 3 - GI Bill grants veterans rights to education, housing, health and jobs
Mar 11 - Timothy Leary sentenced in Texas to 30 years for trying to cross into Mexico with a small amount of marijuana
Mar 25 - Anti-Vietnam war protests in NY bring out 25,000 on 5th Ave. Other protests in 7 US cities and 7 foreign cities.
Apr - FBI releases file on LSD, drug gets bad press
Apr - 30 Mississippi blacks build tent city under President Johnson's window to protest housing conditions in their state
Apr - Discotheques are the rage in NY and LA. Andy Warhol puts on light shows
Apr 7 - Sandoz stops supplying LSD to researchers
Apr 12 - NY Stock Exchange hit with anti-war leaflets
Apr 16 - Timothy Leary busted at Millbrook by G. Gordon Liddy & FBI for possession of marijuana
May 15 - Antiwar demonstration in D.C., 10,000 attend
July 29 - Bob Dylan's motorcycle accident
Aug 5 - Lennon says Beatles more popular than Jesus
Aug 18 - Red Guard begins to wipe out western influence in China
Sept - George Harrison goes to India for 6 weeks to study sitar with Ravi Shankar.
Sept - Timothy Leary holds press conference at NY Advertising Club announcing formation of a psychedelic religion - League for Spiritual Discovery ("Turn on, tune in, drop out") & starts nightly presentations at the Village Theater.
Nov 5 - Walk for Love and Peace and Freedom: 10,000 + in New York City
Dec - Cream's first album: Fresh Cream released. Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker.



1967
Jan 14 - Gathering of the Tribes, First Human Be-In, 20,000, S.F.
Jan 27 - US, USSR, UK sign treaty banning nuclear weapons in space
Feb - 25,000 US troops sent to Cambodian border
Feb - Beatles release Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane, Michelle, Yesterday
Mar - Scientist report LSD causes chromosome damage (never validated).
Mar - The Berkeley Barb starts the smokable banana rumor (based upon Donovan's song "Mellow Yellow")
Mar 3 - Alice B. Toklas dies
Mar 18 - First U.S. supertanker wreck. Torrey Canyon spills 90,000 tons of oil onto English shores
Mar 26 - Be-In at Central Park in NY. 10,000 attend
Apr 5 - Grayline starts hippie tours of Haight/Ashbury
Apr 10 - Vietnam Week starts. Draft card burnings and anti-draft demonstrations
Apr 15 - Anti-Vietnam War protest. 400,000 march from Central Park to UN. Speeches by Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and Dr. Benjamin Spock
May - Paul McCartney announces that all the Beatles have "dropped acid."
May 19 - First U.S. air strike on Hanoi
May 20 - Flower Power Day in NYC 1967
Jun 2 - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album by the Beatles released.
Jun 16 - Monterey Pop Festival
Jun 21 - Summer Solstice Party in Golden Gate Park
Jun 25 - Beatles sing "All You Need Is Love" on TV 1967
Jun 30 - 448,400 US troops now in Vietnam
July - The Summer of Love in San Francisco
July - Summer of Rioting in the US. Blacks take to the streets in Chicago, Brooklyn, Cleveland and Baltimore
July 1 - Sgt. Pepper hits #1
July 11 - Newark riots start long hot summer
July 24 - 43 Die in Detroit rioting, worst in U.S. history
July 26 - H. Rap Brown arrested for inciting a riot in Maryland
July 29 - Door's Light My Fire and Procol Harem's Whiter Shade of Pale vie for #1
Aug 26 - Jimi Hendrix's "Are You Experienced" hits the charts
Aug 27 - Beatles in India with Maharishi informed of Brian Epstein's death
Sept - Richard Alpert meets Bhagwan Dass at the Blue Tibetan in Katmandu, stays in India & follows him until he meets his guru.
Sept 15 - Donovan performs at the Hollywood Bowl
Oct 3 - Woody Guthrie dies
Oct 8 - Che Guevarra killed in Bolivia by US-trained troops
Oct 12 - Big Brother and the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills with Janis Joplin at top of LP charts.
Oct 20 - Seven KKK members convicted of conspiracy in 1964 murders of three civil rights worker
Oct 21-22 - Anti-war protesters storm the Pentagon
Oct 21 - "Diggers" exorcise the Pentagon. 35,000 Demonstrate, 647 arrested
Oct 26 - Draft deferments eliminated for those who violate draft laws or interfere with recruitment
Nov 14 - Air Quality Act provides $428 million to fight air pollution
Nov 20 - National Commission on Product Safety established
Dec - Beatles release "Magical Mystery Tour"
Dec - 486,000 American troops in Vietnam, of the 15,000 killed to date, 60% died in 1967.
Dec - "Stop the Draft" movement organized by 40 antiwar groups, nationwide protests ensue.
Dec 5 - 1000 antiwar protesters try to close NYC induction center. 585 arrested including Allen Ginsberg and Dr. Benjamin Spock
Dec 5 - Beatles open Apple Shop in London
Dec 8 - Otis Redding records "Dock of the Bay"
Dec 10 - Otis Redding dies in plane crash
Dec 22 - Owsley busted, stops making acid
Dec 31 - Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Paul Krassner, Dick Gregory, & friends pronounce themselves "Yippies"


1968
Jan 16 - Youth International Party (Yippies) founded
Jan 18 - Eartha Kitt visiting LBJ at White House speaks out against the war
Jan 22 - B-52 carrying H-bomb crashes in Greenland
Jan 23 - USS Pueblo seized by Korea
Jan 31 - Viet Cong launch Tet Offensive
Feb - Timothy Leary evicted from Millbrook house
Feb - Beatles go to India to visit Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at Rishikesh on the Ganges river. Mia Farrow, Donovan follow.
Feb 8 - George Wallace announce candidacy for President on law and order platform
Mar 12 - Eugene McCarthy wins 42% of New Hampshire vote in presidential primary
Mar 16 - My Lai massacre 200 - 500 Vietnamese villagers killed
Mar 16 - Robert F. Kennedy announces candidacy for President
Mar 31 - LBJ announces decision not to run again and offers partial Vietnam bombing halt
Apr 4 - Martin Luther King shot and killed in Memphis
Apr - The week following Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder sees black uprisings in 125 cities across the U.S.
Apr 6 - Oakland Police ambush Black Panthers. Eldridge Cleaver arrested with a bullet-shattered leg. Bobby Hutton shot and killed.
Apr 8 - Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs established (DEA)
Apr 11 - LBJ signs civil rights bill banning housing discrimination
Apr 11 - Major call-up of reserves for duty in Vietnam
Apr 14 - Love-in at Malibu Canyon, Calif.
Apr 15 - Start of Spring Mobilization against the Vietnam war
Apr 23 - SDS lead students take over 5 buildings at Colombia Univ for a week. 700 arrested
Apr 24 - 300 Black students occupy admin. building at Boston Univ. demanding black studies and financial aid
Apr 25 - Paul Horn records in the Taj Mahal
Apr 29 - The rock musical HAIR opened on Broadway at the Biltmore Theater
May 10 - Vietnam peace talks begin in Paris
Jun 3 - Andy Warhol shot by woman
Jun 5 - Bobby Kennedy assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan moments after winning California primary.
Jun 14 - Dr. Benjamin Spock convicted of conspiracy to abet draft evasion
July 1 - Nuclear nonproliferation treaty signed by 61 nations
Aug 1 - 541,000 U.S. Troops in Vietnam
Aug 8 - Nixon and Agnew nominated during Miami riots
Aug 20 - Soviets invade Czechoslovakia
August 25-29 - Democratic Convention in Chicago demonstrations & police riot 10,000 +/- demonstrators vs. 11,000 Chicago police; 6,000 National Guard; 7,500 U.S. army troops; and 1,000 FBI, CIA & other services agents (Humphrey nominated on platform supporting the war)
Aug 28 - Humphrey and Muskie nominated amid violent antiwar protests in Chicago. Bystanders and press also beaten by police
Oct 18 - John & Yoko Busted
Nov - First "Whole Earth Catalog" published by Stewart Brand.
Nov 5 - Nixon elected President, Spiro T. Agnew, VP
Nov 6 - Student Strike at SF State




1969
Jan 28 - Santa Barbara, Ca. oil well blowout
Feb - Massive strike at U.C. Berkeley for ethnic studies
Feb 11 - 200 students smash computers with axes & set computer center on fire during sit-in protesting prof's racism at St. George Williams College, Montreal
Feb 13 - 33 students arrested at admin bldg sit-in at Univ of Mass.
Feb 18 - Students seize building and boycott started at Howard University
Feb 24 - Students occupy Admin bldg at Penn State
Feb 27 - Police charge student picket lines, club and arrest two Chicano leaders at U.C. Berkeley
Feb 27 - Thousands rampage thru nine buildings at U of Wisconsin, Madison over black enrollments
Mar 12 - Paul McCartney marries Linda Eastman
Mar 20 - John & Yoko fly to Gibraltar, get married then fly to Amsterdam for one week "lie-in" for peace
Mar 20 - James Earl Ray sentenced to 99 years for murder of Martin Luther King Jr.
Apr - 543,000 US troops now in Vietnam
Apr 4 - Smothers Brothers tv show canceled because it is too controversial
Apr 9 - 300 Harvard students led by SDS seize Univ Hall and evict eight deans
Apr 10 - Police called into Harvard, 37 injured, 200 arrested
Apr 11 - Start of 3 day student strike at Harvard
Apr 22 - Harvard faculty votes to create black studies program &
give students vote in selection of its faculty
Apr 22 - City College of NY closed after black & Puerto Rican students lock selves inside asking higher minority enrollment
Apr 23 - Sirhan Sirhan sentenced to death for murder of Bobby Kennedy
Apr 24 - U.S. B-52s launch biggest attack on North Vietnam. Protests in 40 cities
May 15 - Hippies in People's Park in Berkeley attacked by police and Nat'l Guard
July - Stephen Gaskin starts The Farm commune in Tennessee.
July 3 - Brian Jones of Rolling Stones dies
July 14 - Easy Rider premieres
July 20 - Men walk on the Moon
July 27 - Police raid on gay bar in Greenwich Village, NYC results in Stonewall Uprising. 2000 protesters battle 400 police, start of Gay Liberation Movement
Aug - Blind Faith forms, with Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker from Cream and Steve Winwood from Traffic.
Aug 9 - Sharon Tate & LaBiancas found murdered by Charles Manson & Crew
August 15 - 17 WOODSTOCK Festival 500,000 people gathered for three days of music and peace that changed the world
Aug 24 - Movie 'Alice's Restaurant released with Arlo Guthrie
Aug 26 - FBI reports 98% increase in marijuana arrests from 1966 - 1968
Sept 3 - Ho Chi Min, leader of North Vietnam, dies
Sept 24 - Chicago Eight trial begins. Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin et. al charged with conspiracy to incite riots
Oct - Is Paul dead? Beatles controversy
Oct 8-11 - The Weatherman "Days of Rage"
Oct 15 - Peace Day. 500,000 protesters nationwide. First Vietnam Moratorium
Oct 21 - Jack Kerouac, beat author of "On the Road" dies.
Oct 30 - Supreme Court orders desegregation nationwide
Nov 15 - 500,000 + march in Wash. DC for peace. Largest antiwar rally in U.S. history. Speakers: McCarthy, McGovern, Coretta King, Dick Gregory, Leonard Bernstein. Singers: Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul, & Mary, John Denver, Mitch Miller, touring cast of Hair
1969
Nov 17 - First round of SALT talks in Helsinki
Nov 20 - 78 American Indians seize Alcatraz Island and demand its return
Nov 20 - DDT use banned in residential areas
Nov 24 - Lt. William Calley charged with murdering 102 So. Vietnamese civilians at My Lai
Nov 25 - President Nixon orders all US germ warfare stockpiles destroyed
Dec - Over 100,000 US troops dead or injured in Vietnam.
Dec 1 - First draft lottery since W.W.II held in NYC
Dec 8 - Raid on Black Panther headquarters in LA - four hour shoot-out
Dec 24 - Rolling Stones "Altamont" concert erupts in violence, one spectator killed



1970
January 1 - Nixon signs National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
Feb - Timothy Leary sentenced to 10 years for Texas/Mex marijuana bust
Feb 4 - Riot in Isla Vista, Calif. protesting Chicago verdicts
Feb 4 - President Nixon proposes environmental cleanup - EPA
Feb 18 - Chicago Seven acquitted of conspiracy charges
Feb 19 - Chicago Seven Trial verdict: Dellinger, Davis, Hayden, Hoffman, & Rubin found guilty of crossing state lines to incite riot
Feb 19 - Explosions in 3 office buildings in NY; and in Calif; Wash; Maryland; Mich, possibly done by the Weathermen
Feb 25 - Isla Vista, Santa Barbara Bank of America bombed
Feb 26 - U.S. Army discontinues surveillance of civilian demonstrations and files of demonstrators
Mar 6 - Three Weathermen blow themselves up in Greenwich Village, NY
Apr 1 - Cigarette advertising banned on radio and TV
Apr 7 - Referring to student unrest, Ronald Reagan, Gov. of Calif: "If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with."
Apr 10 - Paul McCartney announces breakup of Beatles
Apr 22 - First Earth Day. Millions participate
Apr 30 - Nixon sends troops into Cambodia
May 4 - Four College Students Killed by National Guard at Kent State University, Ohio
May 5 - Nuclear nonproliferation treaty takes effect
May 8 - Construction workers attack antiwar demonstrators, Wall St., NY
May 9 - 100,000 attend antiwar rally, Wash. D.C.
May 14 - Police kill two at Jackson State during violent student demonstrations
Jun 15 - Supreme Court OKs conscientious objector status on moral grounds
Jun 18 - U.S. voting age lowered to 18, now old enough to kill and vote. (see Mar 23, 1971?)
June 11 - Daniel Berrigan arrested by FBI for kidnapping/bombing conspiracy
Sept 12 - Timothy Leary escapes prison (San Luis Obispo) with help from the Weather Underground, joins Eldridge Cleaver in Algiers.
Sept 18 - Jimi Hendrix dead at age 27
Oct 4 - Janis Joplin dies
Oct 13 - Angela Davis arrested on kidnapping, murder and conspiracy charges
Dec - Paul McCartney sues to dissolve Beatles.
Dec 2 - Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) activated


1971
Jan 7 - DDT use outlawed by U.S. Court of Appeals
Jan 12 - Rev. Philip Berrigan and 5 others indicted for conspiracy to kidnap Henry Kissinger and bomb federal buildings
Jan 12 - Ralph Nader forms Earth Act group
Jan 25 - Charles Manson and followers found guilty of murder
Jan 25 - Supreme Court makes first decision against sexual discrimination in hiring
Mar 1 - Bomb explodes in Capitol men's room. Weather Underground claims responsibility "in retaliation for the Laos decision"
Mar 1 - U.S. stops licensing commercial whale hunters
Mar 8 - Supreme Court rules that objection to a particular war is not sufficient grounds for conscientious objection
Mar 23 - Congress votes to lower voting age to 18
Mar 29 - Lt. Calley convicted for My Lai massacre
Mar 29 - Charles Manson, et al sentenced to death after longest trial in Calif. history
Apr 19 - Over 1000 Veterans demonstrate against the Vietnam war in Wash D.C., throwing their medals over the Capitol fence
Apr 20 - School busing upheld to end segregation by Supreme Court
Apr 23 - Vietnam veterans return medals and ribbons in antiwar protest
Apr 24 - Over 350,000 Veterans march in Wash D.C. and SF to protest war in Vietnam
Apr 26 - 50,000 demonstrators in Washington D.C. set up "Algonquin Peace City"
May 3 - May Day antiwar protest, Wash. D.C.
May 11 - Indian occupation of Alcatraz ends after 19 months
Jun 13 - Pentagon Papers appear in NY Times
July 3 - Jim Morrison of The Doors dies in Paris
Nov - Nixon starts withdrawing troops from Vietnam.
Dec. - Greenpeace founded in Vancouver, Canada


1972
Jan 25 - Shirley Chisholm first black woman to run for President
Feb - Life Magazine states: "Today's high school generation is interested security, stability, & comfort."
Feb 24 - After 16 months in prison, Angela Davis is released
Mar - Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) passes Congress
Mar 22 - 13-member National Commission on Marijuana & Drug Abuse recommends legalization of marijuana
Mar 22 - Equal Rights Amendment prohibiting sex discrimination passes Senate
Mar 30 - North Vietnamese launch massive attack. Troops go south through the DMZ into South Vietnam, U.S. resumes bombing
Apr 10 - Biological Warfare Treaty signed by U.S. and 120 nations
Apr 15 - President Nixon & Canada P.M. Pierre Trudeau sign pact to clean up Great Lakes
May 2 - FBI director J. Edgar Hoover Dies
May 9 - President Nixon orders mining of N. Vietnam's ports
May 15 - Gov. George Wallace shot during primary campaign in Maryland
May 18 - Margaret Kuhn start Gray Panthers to protest discrimination against elderly
May 22 - Nixon makes first U.S. presidential trip to Moscow
May 26 - U.S. and USSR freeze nuclear weapons at current level
Jun 14 - EPA bans DDT in the USA
Jun 17 - Watergate Break-In
Jun 29 - Supreme Court rules state death penalties unconstitutional - cruel and unusual punishment
July - First Rainbow Gathering in Colorado
July 1 - Gloria Steinem launches feminist magazine, Ms.
July 10 - Democratic Convention nominates George McGovern for president of the United States
Aug 11 - Last U.S. military unit in Vietnam withdrawn
Aug 18 - Water Pollution Control Act passed by Congress over Nixon's veto
Aug 21 - Republican National Convention nominates Nixon and Agnew again
Aug 23 - 1100 antiwar protest arrested outside Republican Nat'l Convention
Aug 28 - Consumer Product Safety Commision established
Sept 5 - Arabs kill Israeli athletes at Munich Olympics
Nov 13 - U.S. and 90 countries sign Int'l Oceanic Pollution pact
Dec 18 - Full scale bombing of N. Vietnam resumes

1973
Jan 27 - Vietnam ceasefire agreement signed after 58,000 US casualties, U.S. military draft ends
Jan 30 - McCord and Liddy found guilty of Watergate burglary & wiretap attempt
Feb 28 - 250 American Indians (AIM) occupy Wounded Knee
Mar 29 - Last American troops withdrawn from Vietnam
Apr 16 - US bombs Laos
Apr 30 - Nixon accepts resignation of H.R. Haldeman & John Ehrlichman & fires John Dean. Nixon denies knowledge of break-in or cover-up
July 20 - Senate subpoenas Watergate tapes
Aug 8 - Nixon Resigns amid Watergate scandal
Oct 10 - Spiro Agnew resigns
Oct 16 - Kissinger awarded Nobel Peace Prize
Oct 23 - Nixon Impeachment begins (note Aug 8!)
Nov - Congress passes "Freedom of Information" act.
Nov 7 - War Powers Act passed over Nixon's veto - requires Congressional approval for military actions over 60 days
Nov 9 - Six Watergate defendants sentenced


1974
Feb 4 - Patty Hearst, 19, kidnapped by the SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army)
Feb 12 - SLA demands that Randolph Hearst begin food distribution to poor
Apr 1 - Jane Fonda arrives in Vietnam on second visit
Apr 15 - Patricia Hearst participates in bank robbery with SLA members
May 17 - SLA shoot-out in LA
July 30 - Two articles of impeachment voted against President Nixon
Sept 4 - Nixon pardoned by President Ford
Sept 7 - CIA operation against Chile's Marxist Govt. disclosed
Sept 16 - President Ford announces conditional pardon for draft evaders and deserters
Nov 21 - Freedom of Information Act passed over President Ford's veto
Dec 21 - NY Times reports on CIA illegal domestic activities during Vietnam War

1975
Apr 17 - Khmer Rouge takes over Cambodia
Apr 30 - Fall of Saigon North Vietnamese troops enter Saigon
Sept 18 - Patty Hearst caputured in SF
Nov 20 - CIA and FBI charged with illegal surveillance of US Citizens and plotting to assassinate foreign leaders

1976
Feb 12 - Production of Red Dye No. 2 banned

1977
May 2 - 2000 members of Clamshell alliance occupy site of nuclear reactor in Seabrook, NH, 1400 arrested
Jun 6 - Washington Post reports U.S. developing neutron bomb

1978
Jun 15 - Tellico Dam project in Tennessee halted by snail darter per Endangered Species Act
July 18 - American Indian Movement (AIM) leads march from Alcatraz to Wash D.C. to protest legislation depriving Indian land rights

1979
Feb 1 - Patty Hearst released from jail
Mar 28 - Three Mile Island Radiation Accident
Sept 23 - 200,000 in NYC for nuclear weapons protest

1980
Dec 8 - John Lennon murdered outside his apartment entrance in NYC.

1981
May 11 - Death of Bob Marley from brain cancer.

1986
Apr 26 - Chernobyl Nuclear accident in Soviet Union.

1995
Aug 9 - Jerry Garcia RIP 1995 @ 53

1996
May 31 - Timothy Leary's Dead or so it seems...

1997
Apr 5 - Allen Ginsberg dies

1998
Jan 5 - Sonny Bono dies in ski accident

I'm excited about the video "Sherman's March" coming in about this man's historical documentary "evolving into an improbable search for love". I need to see if I can show it to Muffy as she would she the similarity between this man and me. It is so amazing that I have been thinking about how this website could evolve into a movie also. There have been so many funny things happening in this story. I like to think of these types of coincidences as signs from above. I feel that the spirits that are wanting to guide me are telling me to do this. Muffy badly wants me to get a laptop so that I can easily download pictures and film from the camcorder that I'm investing in. I have not smoked anything yet today, so I am completely sober in this vision.

I woke up to another beautiful gorgeous day just begging for me to go outside and enjoy it. I can feel love and hope in the atmosphere on a crystal clear warm day in December. I feel that there is hope for humanity and that I have a purpose to let others see the meaning of schwagstock.
I was reading from theschwag.com message board about what Zen Ken had to say about the meaning of Schwagstock, "so many people are looking for a truth that does not often demonstrate in mainstream America." This is a beautiful place where we just park our cars and walk everywhere. We leave behind the worries of civilization and listen to the music of nature. Everyone is smiling and helping each other out. It is such a pleasant change from being around the killing machines that we call automobiles. There are many communities sprinkled throughout the world that coexist in a peaceful nature. Folks are not angry and yelling at each other. They are filled with love.
They are not caught up in the rat race and the rampant commercialism as most Americans are slaves to keeping up with the Joneses. They don't determine a person's place on the pecking order buy how much money they make or can throw around at bars. They are free to talk about anything without fear of someone intimidating them with violent words or physical harm. We realize at Schagstock that peace. love and especially understanding are far more important for the evolution of mankind and it's survival than material things that we cannot take with us when our souls leave the confines of our shells.

I am excited about this movement that was blossoming at the height of the Vietnam War and seemed to be disappearing is coming back. Most young folks that I talk to feel this same way. They are looking for a rebirth in this feeling. I would like to make a documentary about this peaceful revolution that will only grow stronger as we eagerly look for a peaceful resolution for another crazy war with no meaning other than more cause for more hatred and violence for generations. There are many that want to find a peaceful place to live away from the restrictions of want the greedy capitalists are forcing us to do. We can find another place where there is no warfare. We can let the violent religious fundamentalist fight amongst themselves until they realize that killing is not the way to get to heaven and reach that higher level. Maybe we can find places that are far away from all this religious hypocrisy and the nuclear bombs that might be dropped on the small confines of this planet. In the meantime, the peaceful people can find other places that do not buy into war, violence, materialism and wasteful pollution.

I hope that this website and documentary will be able to record this movement that will be a peaceful counter revolution to what is happening to this very angry bipolarized nation.

"
To me, Schwagstock has become much more than a music festival. It is the place where people come to be with others of like, kind heart and mind. For many who come there, it will be the closest they will ever come to experiencing what it was like living in the Sixties. And what was it like growing up then? Everyday there was news of how the youth movement was making positive changes and touching people in all walks of life. It was the first time in history that the adults had lost touch with what was real and it was the young people who had the moral high ground. It was we who demanded more freedom, more equality, more fairness in society for all people and for a time it felt like we were winning. It was a sparkling time when young people all over the world were seeking the answers to how to become the best person they knew how to be. We were all actively trying to become righteous without knowing were to look for answers. Much of what we learned came from the music of the time. There were life lessons hidden in lyrics our parents did not understand. But we did, we listened and we put those lessons to work in our lives. That is what it meant to be a hippie.
Today, so many people are looking for a truth that does not often demonstrate itself in mainstream America. That is why I feel it is vitally important that those of us who remember, work to keep Schwagstock as pure and honest and as real as we know how. It is important that we actively strive to be patient and kind to each other as people did in the Sixties and therein is the secret, the key to why the Sixties are still spoken of and looked upon as a golden time. It was the vibe that was created by a whole generation that announced that materialism is not what matters in the world. Material things will just rot, wear out, and fall apart. What really matters and what will sustain you are Peace, Love, and Understanding. It is all of us coming together in peace and appreciation that makes Schwagstock almost what it was like to live in the aformentioned, golden time. Anyone who does not acknowledge the spiritual component at work when thousands of people come together in this way is missing the whole Schwagstock experience. That is why Jimmy keeps reminding us to focus on the music. In those lyrics are the life lessons we can all learn and recreate, if only for the short time that we are together, the vibe perpetuated by the Grateful Dead. In this way we keep the Music and the Dream alive.
So what does Schwagstock mean to you . . . ?

Edited by Zen Ken - Aug 26 2003, 11:58 AM "

Disgruntled Troops Complain to Rumsfeld
By ROBERT BURNS, AP

CAMP BUEHRING, Kuwait (Dec. 8) - In a rare public airing of grievances, disgruntled soldiers complained to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday about long deployments and a lack of armored vehicles and other equipment.



AP
Rumsfeld speaks to soldiers at Camp Udairi in Kuwait.


"You go to war with the Army you have," Rumsfeld replied, "not the Army you might want or wish to have."

Spc. Thomas Wilson had asked the defense secretary, "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?" Shouts of approval and applause arose from the estimated 2,300 soldiers who had assembled to see Rumsfeld.

The defense secretary hesitated and asked Wilson to repeat his question.

"We do not have proper armored vehicles to carry with us north," Wilson concluded after asking again.


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Wilson, whose unit, the 278th Regimental Combat Team of the Tennessee Army National Guard, is about to drive north into Iraq for a one-year tour of duty, put his finger on a problem that has bedeviled the Pentagon for more than a year. Rarely, though, is it put so bluntly in a public forum.

Rumsfeld said the Army was sparing no expense or effort to acquire as many Humvees and other vehicles with extra armor as it can. What's more, he said, armor is not the savior some think it is.

"You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can (still) be blown up," he said. The same applies to the much smaller Humvee utility vehicles that, without extra armor, are highly vulnerable to the insurgents' weapon of choice in Iraq, the improvised explosive device that is a roadside threat to Army convoys and patrols.

U.S. soldiers and Marines in Iraq are killed or maimed by roadside bombs almost daily. Adding armor protection to Humvees and other vehicles that normally are not used in direct combat has been a priority for the Army, but manufacturers have not been able to keep up with the demand.

Rumsfeld dropped in to Camp Buehring - named for Lt. Col. Chris Buehring, who was killed in a rocket attack on a downtown Baghdad hotel while Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying there in November 2003 - to thank the troops for their service and to give them a pep talk. Later he flew to New Delhi for meetings Thursday with Indian government officials.

In his prepared remarks in Kuwait, Rumsfeld urged the troops - mostly National Guard and Reserve soldiers - to discount critics of the war and to help "win the test of wills" with the insurgents.


More on This Story


· Bomb Injures Two U.S. Soldiers in Baghdad
· Gunmen Attack Samarra Police Headquarters
· Iraqi Official Rips Neighbor Countries
· Bush Urges Support for Troops

Wilson and others, however, had criticisms of their own - not of the war itself but of how it is being fought.

During the question-and-answer session, another soldier complained that active-duty Army units seem to get priority over National Guard and Reserve units for the best equipment used in Iraq.

"There's no way I can prove it, but I am told the Army is breaking its neck to see that there is not" discrimination of that kind, Rumsfeld said.

Yet another soldier asked, without putting it to Rumsfeld as a direct criticism, how much longer the Army will continue using its "stop loss" power to prevent soldiers from leaving the service who are otherwise eligible to retire or return to civilian life at the end of their enlistment.

Rumsfeld said this condition was simply a fact of life for soldiers in times of war. Critics, including some in Congress, say it's proof the Army has been stretched too thin by war.

"It's basically a sound principle, it's nothing new, it's been well understood" by soldiers, he said. "My guess is it will continue to be used as little as possible, but that it will continue to be used."

On a lighter note, an Army chaplain said he had been persuaded by his unit to ask the defense secretary if he would "put us on your aircraft and take us to Disneyland."

"The answer is, 'Sorry, we've got more important things for you to do,"' Rumsfeld replied with a grin.

Asked later about Wilson's complaint, the deputy commanding general of U.S. forces in Kuwait, Maj. Gen. Gary Speer, said in an interview at Camp Buehring that as far as he knows, every vehicle deploying to Iraq from Kuwait has at least "Level 3" armor protection. That means it has locally fabricated armor for its side panels, but not bulletproof windows or reinforced floorboards.

Speer said he was unaware that soldiers were searching landfills for scrap metal and discarded glass.

In his opening remarks, Rumsfeld stressed that soldiers heading to Iraq should not believe those who say the insurgents cannot be defeated or who otherwise doubt the will of the U.S. military.

"They say we can't prevail. I see that violence and say we must win," Rumsfeld said.


12/08/04 13:45 EST

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

The Japanese invaded our Hawaiian shores over 60 years ago. The world was a much different place with Mom and Dad deeply in love and Dad about to go off to war as Captain of intelligence in the Australian Army. He looks good in his uniform from our home movies. We were all scared of war but when our countries were attaced we had to defend them. I agreed with this war and maybe we should have gone in much sooner when Britain was invaded by the Nazis. Looking at the home movies, the world looked so much cleaner, fresher, younger and so enthusiatic about the times.

Today was the most enjoyable in a long while since Schwagatopia and our collective hope of only 4 more weeks of the current tyrant! Charles and I had a great walk of at least a mile and then we were rewarded with me buying lunch at the Chinese Buffet. I have been encouraging Charles to take walks and pushing him for the exercise. His knees are feeling a lot better.


It is like a gift when it is the first warm sunny day after so many melancholic repuklican cloudy days.

It is now the next day in the library listening to a crying baby while wondering about writing some erotic poetry for the erotic arts festival. Its another beautiful day getting out and enjoying about a 2 mile walk to Council Road and back. Afterwards we drank a couple Tecates and spoke "with the Gods". He was worried about finding his way across the street without the social chairman bothering him but he at least shows Charles a little respect. I just want to avoid this nosy neighbors that leave notes about my lights bothering them at night or stay up watching to see if you take a piss in your own yard so they can build a case for public indecency. (nothing like a big fat stomach being exposed throughout the neighborhood with this loud booming grating anger of an emotionally disturbed violent adult). They read this every other day, so I had to a little editing and sure enough the social chairman feels he has the right to bully me about some thing that is stuck up his end of his intestine and wants to blame me for it.

(How would you feel if you were burglarized by your neighbor and would have to start a watergate investigation to prove it)? He was out doing his busy work also enjoying the day but wanting to keep an eye on his neighbors. The chairman is always good on keeping informed about what's going on with the neighbors' lives. Charles and I laughed how we could make this into a show, "Desperate middle aged neighbors". It would be kind of a combination of grumpy old men mixed in with some desperate house wives with a few tasty schwagmaidens thrown in for flavoring!

I am enjoying developing a good friendship with a neighbor that I have known for 20 years and we are afternoon "walkabout" companions! We talk about everything from religion to relationships. It's cool to invite a friend to your place after you've cleaned it up and it no longer looks like a "mini Oklahoma" as Muffy referred to all the accumulated pack rat shit over 10 months in my apartment in KC. We sat outside in the patio drinking the beers and relaxing among the shelter of the cedars. The day was sunny but very windy with over 20 mile an hour gusts.

This idea for an Okie-mentary evolving into a tour to "Down under" materializing in our minds .

I think what could I do a couple of years later to enhance this love letter to my many friends and lovers??

I miss so much when I can't get to chat with you almost like I miss you like a long lost soulmate. Is that a good analogy? I was writing this last night thinking the libraries in OKC were still open till 9 on Friday. No, libraries sure could have more hours conducive to weekend readers!

So here it is while I still have time to type (20 minutes):

So what will he do with his day waking up at 11 with the sun peaking through his cedar "forest" in his back yard...
sometimes it gives him a feeling of magic pretending it to be his own magical elfen woods
he was out till 2 am before hearing the angry message on his cell phone
of his distant companion in this leg of life's very short journey.

So he approaches another sunset,
another day accelerating ever faster making truth to Einstein's theory of our own perspective on time...
where will the "happenstance" or twists of fate take him tonight.??

Louie's has a panoramic view of the sunset that he just missed (of course)
almost like the vision of his future home will have this same view of a real ocean instead of looking at a Faux light house looking over Lake Hefner...
a small lake with an image that man wants it to have...
it is not real ....
it is a dam serving as the over chlorinated very hard water that serves as our "drinking" water...

Will he make this his place of grog and gruel for the evening tasting an appetizer that some call a Reuben Sandwich....
but he needs to lose weight and the broccoli salad is also small but tasty...

So he starts writing in his read spiral notebook about what will it take for him to get outside of his own comfort zone knowing that all it takes is the confidence ....
the mindset that he can visualize what he wants and it will happen....
talking to the powers that be that might watching over him...

He has worries of a downward spiral but he's beginning to see signs that it all can be accomplished..
He just has to ask..
paint the picture in his mind and then let the processes happen...
take the steps ....
learn to enjoy each moment as if it his last...
taking in all the world and all the knowledge...
the heavens seem to speaking to him sometimes
and he is learning to tune into that magical radio station to see what fate has available for him...
but he knows that the future can be changed...
and maybe there truly is a heaven when he feels it seeing the gorgeous sun shining on him and his friend for their life circulating walk>>

TO BE CONTINUED!

It's amazing when you finally get out of bed and are really excited about life, despite the depressing feeling of impending death whether its tomorrow or at 100, hopefully the latter. I talked for a long while with a lady that had 3 death experiences where she was actually flat lining and saved by her boyfriend when she was helping him try to escape "Jesus Land" to another country from the law. He had to be put in a bath tub filled with ice and he kept pounding on her chest until she arrived back to this side with no visions of a light, just a black hole, but she was confident that she would live.

I thought wouldn't it be great, if I made all these interviews and connections could made into documentary. (she rolls her eyes at another one of his delusions!) He was visualizing all of this and his website be connected to his own long video of his travels throughout JesusLand, the U.S. of Canada, Australia, New Zealand (where men are men and sheep are afraid !) and the rest of the world almost ala (1 "L"?, Muffy?) Then while taking our now daily walk with,(we started this week), Charles mentioned this documentary made in 86 about this author wanting to write a book about Sherman and his infamous tour of mass destruction (kinda' like what we've been doing to Fallujah) through the South at the end of the civil war. He gets sidetracked by all these young (I think some of them even in their lower 20's) attractive southern belles swimming and sunbathing nude. You realize that he's developing relationships with all these women while he wonders almost depressed if he will ever find his true soulmate. WOW. I was telling Charles that maybe God was speaking to us! (r.h,eyes) Charles had wanted to mention this so much when were going for a walk because the gentleman reminded him of me and my own journal on my site. He was wanting today to write down my site for when he gets a computer! He wanted to also volunteer to be on the site and film.

Then this morning especially after a tiny lick of the time released addaboy beads, it all seemed so conceivable and doable as far as turning this Okiementary into an actual book. It was evolving write there this morning in my mind while I was chatting with him on the phone before our walk at noon. Dad had all the home movies since the late 30's. He even was trying to be an old time silent movie maker when he did some serious editing on some of his earlier stories with brothers horsing around on the beach! My favorite Uncle Toby cavorting on the beach pretending the dog that was angrily barking (like the neighbor's angry neutered bitch barked at moi) at the camera, was transformed into Toby. They were all young teenagers frolicking on the beach and surf before the WW2 broke out. It kinda reminded me now of the mates in the movie, Galipoli, having fun before the big mindless battle of war being pawns for the thoughtless British generals that did not care about the live of Australian soldiers just as the current "SUBMINISTRATION" doesn't give a fecal drop for the lives of the "expendable" Iraqi troops ordered to kill their own people of their country!(OOh! I know that I'll get some hate mail for that statement but only from folks like Niles that are courageous enough to register themselves before they make their comments. Mr "Blow Me" can even register with any name he wants to call himself!) But getting back to the film, I decided that while researching our own history dating back to two brothers in Scotland, one going to Australia and the other going off to fight against slavery. My greatgrandfather died was shot in the back while trying to escape from a rebel prison in the south like "Andersonvile".There is a movie about the way folks were treated in these place . New prisoners were called fresh fish and often the guard would just take shots for the fun of it almost like it was a game, just like boys sometimes think that war will be just like the video games that they now can play it. The only time is that when you are dead , you are really dead! I see it all happening tracing back to when some of by gene pool swimming ancestors were picts fighting guerilla warfare successfully against the Romans and then the English. I would love with the creative license of filmmakers and go back in time as our ancestors gradually left Africa for the beaches of Spain, France, Scotland and Norway and then into the hinterland to survive from Man's desire to conquer or be the conqueror of grasses greener on the other side!

Some don't like all these extra pastes from unknown authors, but I have a theory or maybe others do that the government doesn't want us to be free thinkers or they will start questioning the government. The brainwashed masses think it's unpatriotic especially when we're at war (watch "Iraq Uncovered" on DVD). I never used to smoke much, but when I do have just a couple of hits, it's amazing how we think about things in a totally different way. We realize that we do not have to be sheep ready to be slaughtered by the rich and the powers that be.



Marijuana, Musical Creativity, and the Collective Unconscious
By "Russell Ambrose"


Russell Ambrose (a pseudonym) is a musician: aged 47, composer, jazzer, conductor, teacher.


For generations, turned-on musicians have been arguing with straight musicians about the relationship of drug use to musical creativity. Do drugs make you more creative, or do you just think you are being more creative when you are stoned because you have reduced powers of judgment? Does music really sound better and make more sense when we are stoned, or are our poor little fried brains merely thankful for anything that can cut through the fog? Could all those great artists known historically to have used drugs (such as Hector Berlioz, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lewis Carroll, Charlie Parker, and Miles Davis, to name a few) have accomplished as much without pharmaceutical reinforcement? This article explores some of the positive impact that my drug of choice, marijuana, has on musical creativity; in particular, it focuses on how marijuana leads us to states of consciousness which enhance our sense of collective identity as human beings.


One thing that all musicians must learn is how to overstep the very literal-minded modes of thought which determine so-called "normal" behavior; it is one thing to carry on a rational conversation about material things with a waitress or an Automatic-Teller, but it is quite another to carry that conversation to a land of archetypal symbols and abstract horizons. In order to derive meaning from music, one must learn to associate musical materials (the tunes, the rhythms, the forms) with super-personal realities - realities for which there are no literally articulated referents. In short, the "normal" terms with which we define ourselves are too restrictive to accommodate the musical state of mind; music requires the literal sense of self to become diffused so that non-definable entities may enter consciousness and register their subtle influence on the intricate interplay of ideas and feelings as they flow beneath the surface of musical events. Everybody likes to climb out of their own skin once in awhile and wander through the shadowy corridors of self; we like to do this because we know that a significant part of our multi-dimensional self lives in those dark hallways as much as in the sun of rational consciousness. The guru says that drugs can take you to God but you cannot stay there; with this we must agree, but in the heyday of 20th century madness the fact that marijuana promotes a paranormal fluidity of ego-definition without years of disciplined meditation seems like a pretty good deal.


Most of us are aware that our sense of self changes in accordance with our moods, and most of us who smoke marijuana know that marijuana allows us to choose from an expanded palette of moods as our attention drifts through various levels of consciousness. The question is: how is music related to these various levels, and what does marijuana offer us, when we create or listen to music, that is not available to us when we are in the more normal, fixed ego state?


As a creative artist, I have written an enormous amount of music stoned, and an enormous amount of music not stoned. I feel that, in terms of quality, these two creative modes are basically the same - one type of music is equally as good, well-made, expressive, as the other. However, there can be no doubt that, comparatively, the two modes focus on very different subject matter: I have found that my straight music tends to confine itself to specific stylistic domains, exploring the literal connections between original musical materials, and developing a high level of integral relationship between the parts; my stoned music more readily accepts as viable musical materials and expressions borrowed from a wider variety of musical idioms, expanding the stylistic boundaries of the music to encompass a broader range of possibilities within a single context. In other words, my stoned music accesses more of my total musical memory to solve musical problems, while my straight music is content to search for answers within a more restricted jurisdiction.


It is important to remember that it takes all kinds to make a world. I am not proposing that music composers and music listeners should be stoned all the time, any more than I would suggest that people go about their daily business in a transcendental consciousness state. There is a place in the vast cosmic scheme for the kind of tidy self-involved musical expressions which emanate from a fixed ego-definition just as there is a place for alarm clocks; this is not necessarily a question of good vs. better. I do want to emphasize, however, that the universe is very large and the more accepting we are of different phases of reality the more we will get out of life.


To get more into it, let us look at some of the specific ways marijuana affects the way we listen to music:


(1) One of the effects of marijuana on musical perception has to do with how our time sense is altered: in general, when we are stoned, we experience time as slowed down. I'm not sure, but I think this means that our thinking is sped up, perhaps because the diffused ego, becoming one with the corporate mind of the collective unconscious, is freed from the physical limitations of the individual's physical brain. With our sense of time slowed down during a stoned audition, musical events seem to pass by at a much more leisurely rate, giving us a chance to notice all sorts of details which we missed during a straight audition. There is also a higher level of integration of these details into an holistic musical identity which resonates with deeper human significance. Many times I will write something in straight mode which I cannot really understand until I hear it stoned; somehow the stoned mind state can take in material that can barely scratch the surface of literal consciousness. All the physical senses are aroused by marijuana such that the experience of all the sensual aspects of music is enhanced - the formal or rhythmic sensation, neuro-motor responses, and, particularly, the sensitivity to sound quality.


(2) Of course, it goes without saying that the collective artifacts in a piece of music are imbued with an archetypal resonance; but during the drug experience, especially since time is decelerated, the subject is allowed to respond on a deeper level to the archetypes, and, furthermore, to make literal connections between the symbols and abstract philosophical or religious issues. The drug experience of music, therefore, may potentially reveal the primal mysteries, hidden in the music, to the listener's regressed mind.


(3) One of marijuana's main attractions is its ability to intensify sensual experiences; things taste better, sound better, sex is great, and so on. Don't forget, however, that the collective consciousness has a profoundly physical corollary, maybe not in the mind state itself, but certainly in the way the collective symbols resonate in the body. The hypnotic, tribal throb of music deep down in our guts communicates something to our bodies that is preliterate but highly significant, human, and very real.


(4) Speaking of tribal consciousness, consider the phenomenon of the so-called "contact high." Most of us smokers have had the experience of walking into a room full of stoned people and sharing in their high even without actually imbibing. Perhaps the mind state induced by marijuana actually has the ability to cross personal boundaries and evoke sympathetic mental vibrations in receptive subjects. Those of us old-timers may remember L.A.'s Fox Theater in its heyday, when we could go to movies and find somebody in every row who was passing around a joint. Even if you didn't get any (which was pretty impossible unless you were wearing a gas mask) those were great movies! Does this effect of marijuana on groups of people tell us anything about the function of audiences in the contemplation of collective artifacts?


(5) Of course, another way of saying "fluid ego-definition" is "reduced inhibition." The main reason people become addicted to any drug (especially alcohol) is that it helps them free themselves from habitual personal inhibitions they can't shake without a little help from their friends. These inhibitions can take the form of socialized behavior, the release from which often results in anti-social behavior; but an inhibition can also take the form of a conventionalized mode of thought. It was from these thought conventions that people like Ken Kesey's Pranksters and Timothy Leary sought to liberate themselves in the 60's. Perhaps the way marijuana makes memories available, which the personality usually keeps locked away, is the most obvious advantage of the regressed mind state. Certainly that strain of perfectionism, which is so often a characteristic of the artistic temperament, is seriously compromised by marijuana use, and the flood of disassociated memories which flood the stoner's mind represent a wealth of significant psychic material. The problem is that short-term memory is so impaired it is easy to immediately forget what you just remembered unless you pay close attention.

Important questions to ask are: how much is drug use a crutch? How much does the quick fix atrophy our internal powers of will? Does the use of a drug to induce a psychological state turn into a self-limiting barrier between the self and even higher mental states?


It may be true, as the doctors and the gurus say, that the drug experience tends to become less and less potent after awhile, as it takes more and more to get the mind to the same regressed state (this is why all these politicians say that marijuana leads to harder drugs). I, however, have smoked marijuana on and off for twenty-five years, and I can still get the benefits I want from it. As a religious person, I know the chance I am taking using a short-cut to God, but I feel that the drug experience can be thought of as a first step toward an experience which my will-power can bolster and push on to higher mental states when necessary, but which can remain a mere recreational experience when such is required.


Every crutch you use may weaken the will, if the will is allowed to atrophy. However, in our present scurrilous age, when the ego must constantly bolster itself with new forms of hyper-rigidity in order to withstand the onslaughts of technocratized socialization, it is a welcome relief to have a tool like marijuana which can ease us back to a more natural mind state which invites wholesome creative impulses and feelings of belonging to a larger world.




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Copyright © 2004 Marijuana-Uses.com

The Coincidence of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder and Creativity

Bonnie Cramond, Ph.D., The University of Georgia, March 1995

This document has been reproduced with the permission of The National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented. The Center is federally funded under the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Act, United States Department of Education.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Introduction

Robert daydreamed so much that he was put out of school. Frank went into such trancelike dreams that one had to shout at him to bring him back. Equally problematic were Sam's restlessness and verbal diatribes. Virginia, too, demonstrated a tendency to talk on and on. Thomas experienced school problems, in part because of his high energy. Nick's tendency to act without thinking caused him to have several scrapes with death and near-tragedies, such as plunging to the earth from the roof of a barn, clutching an umbrella. In these examples we can see how the concentration, high energy, and unique ways of thinking and behaving that were exemplified by Robert Frost, Frank Lloyd Wright, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla resulted in school problems, dark diagnoses, or worse. These are examples of creative individuals whose behavior could also be interpreted as the inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

The stories of creative individuals are replete with instances of childhood problems in school (Piirto, 1992; Thompson, 1971; West, 1991). Although it has been argued that many creative individuals have suffered from mood disorders and other clinically significant psychological problems (Hershman & Lieb, 1988; Jamison, 1993), there are others whose behavior, although irregular, may be more indicative of their creativity than of any disorders. In the case of Janet Frame, New Zealand's poet and novelist, her "difference" resulted in a diagnosis of schizophrenia, confinement to a mental institution, and the scheduling of a lobotomy that was only canceled when her first novel gained widespread distinction (Frame, 1984, pp. 110-111). In some cases the very qualities that cause creative individuals to have problems are the same ones that may facilitate in their creative accomplishments. Edison's energy, the vivid imagery in the daydreams of Frost and Wright, and Einstein's alternative mode of thinking created problems for them in school, but were undoubtedly invaluable in their creative endeavors.

Schools and families can best prevent misinterpretation of a child's behaviors by becoming aware of those indicative of high creativity and attempting to sort out the disabling from enabling ones. This is no small task because many creative behaviors look like those that can result in a negative diagnosis. This is particularly problematic for children because the creative potential may not yet be manifest and only the aberrant behaviors are apparent. As in the case of Janet Frame, only after one has been recognized as creative will some of the characteristics be viewed as eccentric rather than problematic.

The issue of the relationship of creativity to psychopathology is a mare's-nest of cases and attributions. It is not the purpose of this work to attempt to resolve these issues. Rather, it is to look at the particular problems that can beset creative children in today's schools when their behaviors are mistaken for one of the most frequently diagnosed psychoeducational conditions, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

This is not only possible, but likely, because ADHD has been listed as the most common reason for referral and diagnosis in children seen in psychological clinics (Frick & Lahey, 1991). Yet, few schools, psychologists, or pediatricians test or diagnose creativity in children who are having problems in school, in spite of the fact that Wallach and Kogan (1965) found that highly creative children engage in "disruptive, attention-seeking behavior" in the classroom (p. 294-295). Similarly, Getzels and Jackson (1962) found that they are not valued by their teachers as much as more conforming, less creative students.

Of course, not all creative individuals exhibit impulsivity, motor hyperactivity, and inattention. By the same token, not all children who manifest ADHD behaviors will be highly creative. The specific concern here is for creative children whose behaviors may be seen as maladaptive in school and who are incorrectly diagnosed as suffering from ADHD, the reverse situation could also occur, i.e., children with ADHD incorrectly labeled as creative, it is unlikely because creativity is infrequently identified. On the other hand, ADHD has been listed as the most common reason for referral and diagnosis in children seen in psychological clinics (Frick & Lahey, 1991). Furthermore, the consequences of incorrectly labeling a child as creative are not as severe as those for incorrectly labeling someone as ADHD.


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Conceptualization and Brief History of ADHD

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Possible Common Etiologies

Brain Structure

There is a possibility that structural differences in the brain are related to the differences in cognitive functioning that appear as ADHD or creativity. Neurobiological anomalies are reported in both the literature on ADHD (Hynd, Hern, Voeller, & Marchall, 1991) and the literature on creativity (Herrmann, 1981; Torrance, 1984). Geschwind (1984), though emphasizing that creativity could not be attributed solely to the right hemisphere, expounded upon the remarkable talents associated with individuals who exhibit anomalous or mixed brain dominance. Geschwind and Galaburda (1987) also noted the predominance of the right hemisphere in spatial orientation, emotional expression, and attention (p.44-45). The importance of effective communication between the hemispheres for creative productivity was noted by Restak (1993) who also described instances of brain damage that enhance creativity.

The possibility of structural differences in the brain being a link between ADHD and creativity was strengthened by some empirical evidence provided by Shaw (1992). She found that a group of bright, ADHD children exhibited greater crossed eye-hand dominance and left laterality than a group of normal children matched by age, sex, and IQ. The ADHD group also had higher figural creativity and more use of imagery in problem solving.

Bachtold (1980) suggested that observed brain differences cause diverse ideation. She has claimed that intelligent individuals who are bombarded by ideas seek to make sense of them by organizing them into new perceptual relationships. Thus the creative, original idea is born.

Cognitive Processing

The cognitive processing that results in ideation and demands on attention was noted in studies with ADHD students. In two studies, Shaw (Shaw, 1992; Shaw & Giambra, 1993) found that ADHD students reported a greater abundance of spontaneous thoughts during a problem-solving exercise. In one experiment the peripheral information was used to solve the problems (Shaw, 1992), and in the other it was seen as unrelated to the vigilance task (Shaw & Giambra, 1993). Shaw and Giambra interpreted this as an indication that ADHD students have more internal distractions from fleeting sensory input and less command over their thought processes than do others, especially during boring tasks. On the other hand, Shaw (1992) speculated that such spontaneous and diverse ideation may be part of the process that fosters more creative responses on a test of divergent thinking.

Temperament and Mood

Sensation Seeking: Another possibility is that there are certain temperament traits that predispose individuals to exhibit behaviors that are characteristic of both ADHD and creativity. For example, the in-born temperament trait of sensation seeking has been linked to both ADHD (Zuckerman, 1983) and creativity (Barron, 1988; Farley, 1981; Torrance, 1968). Shaw and Giambra (1993) also noted the link provided by the trait of sensation seeking in both creative and ADHD populations.

Zuckerman (1983) reported that sensation seeking is greater in ADHD children than in normal children. This may be understood in light of the hypothesis that ADHD children seek stimulation as a result of underarousal in the reticular activating system and cortex (Klove, 1989). According to Zentall and Zentall (1983), there is an optimal level of stimulation necessary to maintain the engagement of attention disordered children. This may explain the situational variability that has been observed in the manifestation of ADHD characteristics (Frick & Lahey, 1991). Douglas (1983) proposed that ADHD children are usually either underaroused by dull, repetitive tasks or hyperaroused by interesting ones.

Farley (1981) has proposed that the same is true of creative individuals. In fact, Farley has proposed a biologically based model of creativity that explains stimulation seeking as related to low innate arousability (Farley, 1981; 1985). From his body of research examining the relatedness of creativity to arousability, Farley has concluded that:

The search for variety and intensity of stimulation of the low arousal individual will lead to the openness to experience, the flexibility, risk taking, high energy level, preference for complexity, playfulness, receptivity to new and novel ideas and experiences, and so on that are held to be characteristic of the creative person, as well as the flexibility of performance, generation of performance variety, novelty, complexity, and so on that are often held to be important attributes of creative performance. Thus, the personality attributes of the creative individual, as well as the characteristics of creative performance, are seen as in part deriving from or serving the sensation-seeking motive. (pp.24-25)

Most pertinent, Farley (1981) concluded that the implications of stimulation seeking are of great importance for the childhood disorder of hyperactivity, which he described as a disorder characterized by stimulation seeking. Therefore, he advised that children so diagnosed should be treated with adaptive education rather than adaptive medication. Specifically, he proposed that such children "...be exposed to arousing education, perhaps open-space classrooms, more unstructured conditions, discussion and discovery instructional modes, divergent creativity experiences, arousing, extroverted teachers, and so on" (p.22). In short, nurture their creativity.

Sensitivity to Stimulation: Another temperament connection may be provided by Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration (1964). According to Dabrowski, individuals may manifest extreme sensitivity to stimulation, or psychic overexcitabilities, in any of five areas: intellectual, psychomotor, imaginational, emotional, or sensual. Individuals who have an innate tendency to experience and express themselves in certain combinations of these areas have the potential for a higher level of development. Of the five, emotional, intellectual, and imaginational overexcitabilities have been theorized to be most indicative of developmental potential (Piechowski & Colangelo, 1984). Viewed as promising by Dabrowski, emotional overexcitability in childhood may be viewed as the emotional liability of ADHD; psychomotor overexcitability may be viewed as hyperactivity. The overexcitabilities in combination may produce an intensity that has often been used to describe creative individuals (Getzels & Csikszentmihalyi, 1976). Using similar language, Bachtold (1980) described the creative individual as a person with a low sensory threshold and strong reactions to sensory stimuli.

Depression: Finally, there is the observation that ADHD-like behavior can result from depression (Silver, 1992; Weinberg & Emslie, 1990). Weinberg and Emslie (1987, 1990) noted that many children who are diagnosed with ADHD also suffer from depression or bipolar disorder (depression alternating with manic states). They also observed that both depression and mania appear to have biological bases in brain anomalies. In the case of depression, the right cerebral hemisphere is implicated as malfunctioning (Weinberg & Emslie, 1990, p.8).

Likewise, depression and bipolar disorder have been noted in the lives of creative people (Hershman & Lieb, 1988; Jamison, 1993; Leonard, 1989; Pickering, 1974; Richards, 1981, 1990; Richards & Kinney, 1990), especially among writers (Andraeson & Glick, 1988; Piirto, 1992; Restak, 1993). The mechanism for the relationship between creativity and depression is unclear. Because depression and bipolar disorder run in families, there is an indication of a heritable factor (Jamison, 1993), either in some structural or biochemical differences in the brain. On the other hand, the sensitivity and intensity that facilitates creative expression may also make highly creative people more susceptible to depression (Piirto, 1992). The belief in the latter is what causes many creative people to refuse drug treatments to lessen the ravages of mood disorders; they believe that the drugs lessen their creativity (Restak, 1993, p.73). The consensus among researchers working on the relationship between creativity and mood disorders seems to be that some depression and mania may enable creative production, but if the disorder becomes too severe it is disabling (Andraeson & Glick, 1988; Jamison, 1993; Richards, 1981, 1990; Richards & Kinney, 1990).


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Characteristics of Creativity and ADHD Compared

Although the primary symptoms of ADHD are inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity (Frick & Lahey, 1991). A review of the literature on ADHD and creativity, respectively, revealed several identical or similar characteristics. The characteristics were grouped for the following discussion according to conceptual similarity, although in some cases the working indicates a more positive or negative connotation of a behavior.

Inattention

As is apparent in the changed conceptualization, inattention is one of the areas that has received the most interest in recent years and is considered a defining characteristic of ADHD. Lahey and colleagues (1988) described the ADHD child as one who is easily distracted, often fails to finish things, and frequently shifts activities. Yet, creative people are described as having a broad range of interests and showing a tendency to play with ideas, sometimes losing interest in one to take up another. A famous example of this is Leonardo da Vinci. Although known for his painting, there are only 17 paintings that can be attributed to his 67 years as an artist, and some of these are incomplete. His tendency to leave projects unfinished reportedly resulted in Pope Leo X/s exasperated exclamation, "This man will never accomplish anything! He thinks of the end before the beginning" (Wallace, 1966, p.150). Even Freud was fascinated with Leonardo's tendency to abandon projects claiming it was because the artist had been abandoned by his father (Freud, 1910). However, most pertinent for this discussion may be Leonardo's explanation for his failure to finish his projects: his interests were so many and so diverse (Wallace, 1966, p.169).

According to Cheney (1981), Tesla also pursued so many ideas that he "...often did not follow-up on his intuitions, theories, and preliminary experiments to the point of verification" (p.147). This became a problem because others were then free to complete the invention and get credit for it as Tesla claimed Marconi did with the telegraph. Tesla was driven to action at one point when his bookkeeper reminded him that money was running out and his inventions were not being completed (p. 127).

According to Werry, Reeves, and Elkind (1987), the lack of attention or concentration indicative of ADHD is also exemplified by daydreaming and not seeming to listen. However, this observation could also be made of a person who is paying very close attention to internal thoughts and visualizations. It is possible that the creative person is preoccupied, as such individuals are wont to be according to Barron (1976). Nikola Tesla has such strong visualization abilities that he would imagine the workings of his inventions to great details without putting anything on paper or conducting any experiments until all of the problems were worked out (Cheney, 1981). Frank Lloyd Wright reported that his reveries were so intense that his uncle would have to shout at him to get him back (Piirto, 1992, p.310). Torrance noted that, "Robert Frost was dropped from school for what we call daydreaming; during some of his lapses from attention he was probably revolving a poem in his mind. Other eminent creative writers, scientists, and inventors have had similar experiences" (Torrance, 1963, p.49).

Hyperactivity

A key question here is how to differentiate hyperactivity from a high level of normal activity (Rutter, 1989), or to discriminate between restlessness that prevents one from completing tasks and restlessness that drives one to be productive. According to the DSM-IV (McBurnett, Lahey, & Pfiffner, 1993), hyperactivity is observed as excessive fidgeting, difficulty staying seated, excessive running and climbing, and difficulty playing quietly, although in adolescents and adults it may be manifested as internal feelings of restlessness. For example, the workers in the laboratory with Edison and Tesla were amazed at the high energy of these two men; they were said to work without sleep for two to three days when necessary (Cheney, 1981, p.31). Such high energy served them well in their adult years; however, there are indications that it got Tesla into hot water, or rather milk, in childhood. According to Cheney (1981) Tesla was quite an active child,

"...he was almost drowned on numerous occasions, was nearly boiled alive in a vat of hot milk, just missed being cremated, and was once entombed (overnight in an old shrine). Hair raising flights from mad dogs, enraged flocks of crows, and sharp tusked hogs spiced this catalogue of near-catastrophes." (p.8)

Whatever it is called, lists of characteristics of creative individuals often describe them as radiating vitality (Ochse, 1990) and having a high energy level (Davis, 1986). Adding another term to the group, Dabrowski described psychomotor overexcitability as one of the five areas of heightened sensitivity, along with intellectual, imaginational, emotional, or sensual, that individuals with the potential for higher development may possess (Piechowski & Colangelo, 1984). Defined as a surplus of energy (Piechowski, 1986), psychomotor overexcitability is manifested as physical activity and expression of emotional tension, e.g., rapid speech, restlessness, fast games and sports, marked enthusiasm, delinquent behavior, impulsive actions, and nervous habits (Piechowski, 1979).

In testing whether the overexcitabilities could distinguish between gifted and nonidentified students, Ackerman (1993) found that Psychomotor, along with Emotional, and Intellectual Overexcitabilities as measured by the Overexcitabilities Questionnaire (OEQ, Piechowski & Cunningham, 1985), differentiated between the two groups. When comparing a more and less creative group, Gallagher (1986) discovered that students who scored in the top third on a figural test of creativity had significantly higher Psychomotor Overexcitability scores than those who scored in the bottom third on the creativity test. Calic's research (1994) compared a group selected for creativity and academic ability to one selected for academic ability alone on their responses to the OEQ. The more creative group (visual and performing artists) had higher Psychomotor, Imaginational, and Sensual Overexcitability scores than did the comparison group. Of course, not all creative individuals manifest such energy. Perhaps, as Piechowski and Cunningham (1985) conjectured, the pattern and interaction of heightened sensitivities may differentiate types of creative personalities as well as separate creative from intellectually gifted individuals.

Impulsivity

According to the DSM-IV, diagnostic criteria for impulsivity include observations that the individual frequently calls out in class, and has difficulty awaiting a turn (McBurnett, Lahey, & Pfiffner, 1993). The DSM-III-R also included the criterion of acting without thinking, often by engaging in dangerous activities without considering the outcome, although we were cautioned that this does not apply to thrill seeking behavior (American Psychiatric Association, 1987). Some problems may be noted immediately with the overlap of this criterion with the previous on of hyperactivity. Using Piechowski's (1986) description of Psychomotor Overexcitability, both high levels of activity and impulsivity would be included. Another problem is with the caveat that the impulsive behavior should be exclusive of thrill seeking. How would an observer differentiate? Perhaps that is why this descriptor has been dropped from the DSM-IV list.

One of the key descriptors of creative individuals is risk taking, sensation seeking, or thrill seeking (Barron, 1988; Farley, 1981; Torrance, 1968). Described earlier as an innate temperamental trait of sensation seeking, perhaps it was this tendency that Ghiselin (1952) referred to as a need to transcend the established order into disorder and chaos motivated by a restlessness, or "less psychic inertia than average man" (pp.14-18).

Other Behavioral Similarities

Although the primary symptoms of ADHD are listed as inattention, impulsivity, and motor hyperactivity (Frick & Lahey, 1991), other characteristics include difficult temperament, deficient social skills, and academic underachievement (Werry, Reeves, & Elkind, 1987). These symptoms do not sufficiently differentiate the creative from the child with ADHD either.

Difficult Temperament and Deficient Social Skills: The stories of creative individuals with what are considered difficult temperaments are so abundant that the characteristic has become a stereotype. According to Dabrowski (Piechowski & Colangelo, 1984), the emotional volatility that is a key to this perception would be expected in a creative person because of the heightened sensitivity and reactivity to emotions.

Individuals who exhibit unconventional behavior, as many creative people do (Sternberg, 1988), may be seen as lacking in social skills. Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi (1976) described the personalities of the artists that they studied as aloof and nonconforming to conventional standards of behavior

Kerr (1985) proposed that some antisocial behavior that creative people exhibit may be a defense against others' reactions to their differentness. Shee described eminent women with personality types of thorn or shells. The thorns are exemplified by Gertrude Stein, Georgia O'Keefe, and Margaret Mead whose behavior was often caustic; Marie Curie retreated into the shell of shyness that Eleanor Roosevelt and Maya Angelou fought to leave (p.71).

Deficient social skills may also be inferred from, or related to, a preference for solitude. Maslow (1971) made a case for privacy and detachment from others as essential to the creative process, and Piirto (1992) called solitude "the core of the creative process" (pp. 48-50). Ochse (1990) explained the need for solitude both as part of the creative personality and process.

Academic Underachievement: Even academic underachievement is not a clear distinction between those who suffer from an impairing condition that requires treatment and those whose interests and talents do not coincide with school requirements. The stories of academic underachievement, or irregular school achievement, of famous creative individuals such as Einstein and Edison are legend. Goertzel, Goertzel, and Goertzel (1978), in their chronicle of 300 eminent people, reported that the artists in the group were not typically considered to be good students in school. Just as Rutter (1989) speculates about the difficulty of differentiating between inattention and diverted attention, so too, is it difficult to differentiate between underachievement and diverted achievement in children.


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The Nature of the Creativity-ADHD Relationship

The exact nature of the relationship between creativity and ADHD is not known at this time, in large part because creativity and ADHD are themselves such complex and puzzling constructs. However, there are several possible relationships.

The first, perhaps most obvious, is that there is not relationship. The purpose of this paper is to refute this belief by illustrating the many similarities in the behaviors that are indicative of both creativity and ADHD. Another possibility is that creativity and ADHD are two names for the same syndrome. This is also unlikely because of the many recorded cases of creative people who do not exhibit any characteristics of ADHD and vice-versa.

What we are left with is some overlap of creativity and ADHD. Most people who are knowledgeable about both creativity and ADHD would probably agree with this, but it is the nature of the overlap that spurs disagreement. There seems to be sufficient evidence that there could be physiological, cognitive, and/or temperament bases underlying both conditions. Certainly, there may be some people who are both highly creative and suffer from ADHD; however, it would seem that by definition such people could not be highly productive because a diagnosis of ADHD requires clinically significant impairment (DSM-IV, American Psychiatric Association, 1994). For children, whose creative potential rather than productivity is identified, this may be more likely. However, there is also the concern that creativity may be mistaken for ADHD in some cases.

Although a thorough diagnosis will seek to exclude developmental disorders, mood disorders, and the like (DSM-IV, American Psychiatric Association, 1994), many diagnoses are not thorough. According to Dr. Mark Stein, who runs a University of Chicago clinic for children and adults with ADHD, comprehensive evaluations are rarely done ("Attention Disorder," 1994). Also, there is no similar caveat for clinicians to look for creativity. As Webb (1993) noted, few professionals evaluating a child for ADHD have had any training in recognizing the characteristics of the gifted and creative children.

It is the intent here to look at similarities between behaviors indicative of ADHD and creativity in order to question whether some children who exhibit such behaviors are doing so because they are creative and do not have a disorder. As Richters and Cicchetti (1993) argued, there is reason to question the usefulness of a behavioral diagnosis as an assumption of an underlying mental disorder. Such questions remind us to look at issues in light of new information and that "there are no fixed, immutable answers to questions concerning the boundaries between disorder and nondisorder" (p.6).

Perhaps what differentiates individuals who use their rapid ideation to create versus those who are disruptive and unproductive is the talent and opportunity to express their energies and ideas in some creative mode. Some indication of this may be found in Barron's (1976) description of the findings of a series of studies of creative individuals in various fields carried out by the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research (IPAR) at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s. Using personality inventories, the researchers found the creative groups to have more evidence of psychopathology, but also greater ego strength than less creative comparison groups in the same professions. The conclusion about the creative groups was that "...they are much more troubled psychologically, but they also have far greater resources with which to deal with their troubles" (p.197). Richards (1981) described the advantages of rapid ideation, heightened emotional awareness, and energy to creativity, but warned that there must be some balance of a strength to fully use these abilities so that they do not degenerate into psychopathology. Calic (1994) found that the creative adults in her study described how they used their energy, emotionality, sensuality, and rapid ideation to create.

Because IPAR's, Richards', and Calic's findings were based on studies of adults, it may be that understanding and control of ADHD-like behaviors is developmental. If such is the case, then perhaps it would be most helpful to assist children in finding creative outlets and tapping into their restlessness to produce something creative. The role of the parent and teacher would be to help the child find a mode of expression and learn to use that to get the ideas, emotions, and energy out productively.


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ADHD and Giftedness

Although it has been the primary purpose of this paper to relate the similarity of behaviors indicative of ADHD and creativity, it is important to note that many intellectually gifted children also exhibit behaviors that are associated with a diagnosis of ADHD. Although it is possible for children to be both gifted and ADHD, there are dangers of misdiagnosis for gifted children when the evaluation is not thorough (Webb & Latimer, 1993).

Observed as inattentive, the gifted child may be bored. Described as hyperactive, the gifted child may be displaying a high energy level. Regarded as difficult and obstreperous, the gifted child may be questioning authority and creating a personal, complex rule system (Webb & Latimer, 1993).

Michael Kearney, the youngest college graduate in the world, was diagnosed as a toddler with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin. However, his parents declined drug treatment and decided to nurture Michael's genius with education instead. He started school at age three, entered junior college at six, and graduated from he University of South Alabama at ten (Patureau, 1994). His father, Kevin Kearney, refused the notion that Michael's inattention is due to a lack of attention: "In fact, children like Michael have an attention surplus. He's so much faster than we are. In two seconds he's figured out what you're going to say. He's toyed with a few answers and now he's looking around waiting for you to finish. It looks like he's not paying attention and it drives teachers crazy. (Kearney quoted in Patureau, 1994, p.M4).

According to Webb and Latimer (1993, the most important distinctions between the gifted child and the child with ADHD are the situationality of the behavior and the variability of task performance. They have contended that the "activities of children with ADHD tend to be both continual and random; the gifted child's activity usually is episodic and directed to specific goals" (p.2). Also, they have observed that children with ADHD exhibit inconsistency of performance and effort in almost all tasks and in all settings, except television or computer games, although the extent of the behaviors and the degree to which they are perceived as troublesome may vary; gifted children will usually do well in classes that are enjoyable and appropriately challenging. However, some researchers have not seen situational variability as a reason to rule out a diagnosis of ADHD (Barkely, 1990; Schaughency & Rothlind, 1991). To clarify this, the newest DSM-IV guidelines for the diagnosis of ADHD recommend that the symptoms be observed in two or more situations and that the "disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, academic, or occupational functioning" (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p.E:9).


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Summary Statement

Because Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a psychological classification that has undergone numbers changes in conceptualization and diagnosis over time (Meents, 1989) and place (Levine & Melmed, 1982), and because extant treatments for this disorder have shown limited and questionable long-term results (Meents, 1989; Silver, 1992; Swanson et al., 1993), it is important for educators to look carefully at the behaviors that may warrant such a diagnosis and label for a child. This is of special concern to the field of gifted/creative education because the very behaviors that may induce a diagnosis of ADHD have also been shown to have correlates in the literature on creative behavior (Cramond, 1994b).

Parents and teachers are cautioned to look carefully at behaviors exhibited by children for what may be potentialities instead of deficiencies. Specific recommendations in this regard give guidance when a problem is suspected, when the child is recommended for psychological screening, and after a diagnosis of ADHD is made.


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Recommendations for Teachers and Parents

When Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is suspected

Recommendation 1: Be open-minded to the possibility that difficult behaviors may be indicative of special abilities, such as creativity, as well as problems. Research basis: There are many similarities in the behavioral manifestations of creativity and ADHD that may cause errors in attribution (Cramond, 1994b). Farley (1981) and Shaw (1992) have speculated it is the very qualities that are involved in the ADHD diagnosis that enable creative responses.

Recommendation 2: Become knowledgeable about the behavioral manifestations of creativity and ADHD throughout the life span. Research Basis: Although more recent evidence indicates that ADHD is a lifelong condition (Teeter, 1991), the very behaviors that cause difficulties for children in school situations may be helpful in adult careers for which high energy, risk-taking, flexibility in ideation, and ambition may be assets (Hartmann, 1993; Levine & Melmed, 1982; Winslow & Solomon, 1987). Also, children with creative potential may not manifest consistent creative productivity, especially in certain fields, until they mature (Bloom, 1985).

Recommendation 3: Observe and record under what conditions the key behaviors are intensified or reduced. Research Basis: Because ADHD-type behaviors may be exacerbated when the child is required to engage in unstimulating, highly structured, repetitive tasks (Frick & Lahey, 1991), noting under what conditions the child is most likely to exhibit the behaviors may be instructive. According to Farley (1981), sensation seeking behavior is increased in unstimulating environments.

Recommendation 4: Ask the child what s/he is thinking about right after a period of daydreaming. Research Basis: Because it is difficult to differentiate between inattention and diverted attention (Rutter, 1989), it may be informative to discover whether the daydreaming child is not attending or is attending to alternative stimuli, plans, or ideas that are focused.

If the child is referred for psychological screening

Recommendation 5: Whenever possible, choose a psychologist who is knowledgeable about giftedness and creativity as well as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or willing to learn. Research Basis: Because there is no definitive test for ADHD, the diagnosis of this disorder is made through the use of behavioral checklists. Such a diagnosis is susceptible to the interpretations of various observers as to the frequency and severity of the behavior, and correlations of behaviors between parent and teacher reports have been low (Biederman, Keenan, & Faraone, 1990; Schaughency & Rothlind, 1991). Webb (1993) observed that few psychologists have had any training in recognizing characteristics of gifted and creative children. Therefore, a psychologist who is willing to learn about the similarity of characteristics, perhaps by reading a paper such as this, would be preferred.

Recommendation 6: Be sure that a creativity test or checklist is complete in addition to the ADHD checklist. Research Basis: Once the behaviors have been interpreted as deficiencies, it is unlikely that related proficiencies will be seen. In a recent study (Cramond, 1994a), it was determined that half of the ADHD diagnosed group scored above the 70th percentile on a test of creativity, yet only seven of the 34 (21%) children had been screen for the gifted program. Eleven of these children, 32% of the ADHD group, scored above the 90th percentile, and only six had been screened for the gifted program. None had any indications of observed creativity in their records, although several and indications of other problems such as learning disabilities and emotional handicaps.

If the child is diagnosed as having ADHD

Recommendation 7: Get a second opinion. Research Basis: Even in a clinical setting with diagnoses based on interviews and judgement of symptoms indicative of the DSM-III, reliability of diagnoses were very low (Werry, Methven, Fitzpatrick, & Dixon, 1983). The definitions and criteria for diagnosis of ADHD have changed so often that even those who research ADHD are in conflict over its causes and defining behaviors (Meents, 1989). Children diagnosed under one version of the DSM criteria would not be diagnosed under another (Schaughency & Rothlind, 1991). Thus, whether a child is diagnosed with ADHD may depend to a large extent upon when (Meents, 1989) and where (Levine & Melmed, 1982) the referral is made.

Recommendation 8: Be cautious about recommendations for the use of methylphenidates or other drugs. Research Basis: There is reason to be concerned that the increase in attention and left hemisphere enhancement come at a price to cognitive functioning in other areas (Malone, Kershner, & Siegel, 1988), although some studies have indicated that groups on medication perform as well or better on tests of creativity while they are on medication (Funk, Chessare, Weaver, & Exley, 1993; Solanto & Wender, 1989). Other complicating factors associated with the use of methylphenidates, of which Ritalin is the most commonly prescribed for ADHD, include the worsening or inducement of depression (Weinberg & Emslie, 1990) as well as appetite reduction, insomnia, increased irritability, headaches, stomachaches, motor and/or vocal tics, and suppression of height and weight gain (DuPaul, Barley, & McMurray, 1991). However, for most children side-effects are mild and associated with higher dosages (DuPaul et al., 1991). Of equal concern in assessing the costs and benefits of medication treatment is the lack of evidence of any long term benefits of the medication (DuPaul et al., 1991; Meents, 1989). In their review of the literature on the effect of stimulant medication on children with ADHD, Swanson and is colleagues (1993) concluded that with medication one should expect temporary management of diagnostic symptoms and improvement of associated features, but should not expect predictability of response, absence of side effects, or improvements in long-term adjustment in terms of academic achievement or reduction of antisocial behavior (p.159).

Recommendation 9: Be cautious about recommendations for an unstimulating curriculum with lessons broken into small parts. Research Basis: Although such recommendations are common, the limited effectiveness of interventions on the long-term achievement of children diagnosed with ADHD (Silver, 1992) cast doubt on their broad, continued usage. Zentall and Lieb (1985) found that a structured prescribed-response condition reduced the activity levels of both hyperactive children and controls, suggesting that structure is useful in decreasing activity level. However, Farley's (1981) research connecting both hyperactivity and creativity to sensation-seeking lead his colleagues and him to a series of studies to investigate the aptitude-treatment interaction of level of sensation seeking and crossed with educational environment, traditional, and structured versus unstructured and open. He concluded that hyperkinetic children need arousing, unstructured, creative teaching to perform best, exhibit fewer hyperkinetic symptoms, and report greater satisfaction with school. It is clear that given the heterogeneity of the group of children who are diagnosed under the umbrella designation of ADHD, the needs of the individual child should be considered in designing a modification in the curriculum (Silver, 1992). Gifted, creative children who exhibit behaviors typical of ADHD still have the needs for complex, stimulating curriculum that other gifted, creative children require.

Recommendation 10: Provide opportunities both inside and outside of school to enhance creativity and build self-esteem. Research Basis: The emphasis in research and intervention with ADHD is on identifying deficiencies (c.f. Frick & Lahey, 1991; McBurnett, Lahey, & Pfiffner, 1993) and remediating them (c.f. Burcham, Carlson, & Milich, 1993). Although good school-practices for ADHD children should focus on strengths as well as weaknesses (Burcham it al., 1993), it is often up to the parents to provide opportunities for expression of creative strengths outside of school. A negative label may affect not only the way a child is perceived by teachers, but also the child's self esteem (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). If medication is prescribed, there may be psychological effects on attribution for behavior (Swanson et al., 1993), in that the child gives up responsibility for his behavior and charges his good or bad behavior to the medication. Therefore, it is important to bolster the self esteem and nurture strengths as much as possible within school and without. Parents and teachers should work together to help the child find a mode of expression and learn to use that to get the ideas, emotions, and energy out productively.


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About the Author...

Dr. Bonnie Cramond is an Associate Professor of Education Psychology at the University of Georgia and an affiliate for the Torrance Center for Creative Studies. Her teaching and research interests are in the areas of giftedness and creativity about which she has written several articles and chapters. As a teacher, researcher, and parent she has addressed audiences of teachers, researchers, and parents at the local, regional, and international levels interested in theoretical and practical information about gifted and creative individuals.


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References

[Web site author's note: There are about 90 references cited in the original publication, which is available through the University of Connecticut (ordering instructions follow). I've reprinted a few select references which may be of interest. If you would like to explore some of the other work referred to in this document, you can either order the original publication, or email me with specific inquiries.]

Bachtold, L.M. (1982). Divergent thinking and temperamental traits. Psychological Reports, 51, 419-422.

Burcham, B., Carlson, L., & Milich, R. (1993). Promising school-based practices for students with attention deficit disorder. Exceptional Children, 60, 174-180.

Funk, J.B., Chessare, J.B., Weaver, M.T., & Exley, A.R. (1993). Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, creativity, and the effects of methylphenidate. Pediatrics, 91, 816-819.

Gallagher, S.A. (1986). A comparison of the concept of overexcitabilites with measures of creativity and school achievement in sixth-grade students. Roeper Review, 8, 115-119.

Goertzel, V., Goertzel, M.G., & Goertzel, T. (1978). Three hundred eminent personalities: A psychosocial analysis of the famous. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Pickering, G. (1974). Creative malady. New York: Dell.

Piechowski, M.M., & Cunningham, K. (1985). Patterns of overexcitability in a group of artists. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 19, 153-174.

Restak, R. (1993). The creative brain. In J. Brockman (Ed.), Creativity (pp. 164-175). New York: Touchstone.

Richards, R.L., & Kinney, D.K. (1990). Mood Swings and creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 3, 202-217.

Shaw, G.A. (1992). Hyperactivity and creativity: The tacit dimension. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 30, 152-160.

West, T.G. (1991). In the mind's eye: Visual thinkers, gifted people with learning difficulties, computer images, and the ironies of creativity. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.


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When you buy a membership for $20.00 and then are allowed in for weekend bands for 1/2 price and you get a t-shirt too! The beer is great and seems much stronger than the supposed limit of 3.2 % alcohol in the state of Oklahoma. So I believe that a big guy like me (220 lbs) would be allowed only 2 before he might be at the legal limit of .05 (one experience spending the night in Hotel Oklahoma with only 1 toilet for about 60 drunks lying all over the floor and limited benches in a cell less than 800 sq. ft. If you get up, they would lie down in a comatose state and wouldn't budge if you came back to it! I'm glad my bowels were not active so I wouldn't have to use the one commode in front of everyone and ask someone that's using the toilet paper as a head rest if I could borrow their pillow. GROSS! They have wierd phones with no actual phone. You have to put your ear right against the speaker in the wall and then they charge you about 15$ for 3 minutes and the calls can only be collect so there was no one around to accept charges!
Then God (if there is one and not the Republican one) must have been talking to me because I see one of my ex students from several years ago at Jackson Middle School. I had the charges dropped because my blood was .06 but I was parked. I'll tell you more about it later but not now when the bubanons get enough courage to register a pseudonym before they can leave their
chicken poop comments from the tinted windows of their glass trucks, houses or hovels.)

Ok, back to the meal of catfish that I ordered with corn on the cob and cole slaw. They give you free chips and homemade salsa for happy hour 4-7. So I used the salsa for flavoring forthe delicious fried Cajun catfish. MMMM. The corn on the cob was the best and the IPA has become my favorite beverage over the wheat!

I was telling Amy who is one of the few bartenders that does not have an attitude like some of the angry folks that develop this attitude that the customer is supposed to kiss their ass before they get a smile and wonder why they only get a quarter for a tip. She deserves her 15% or more for the tip as she always smiles and is friendly no matter how busy it gets. A few years ago, I was kicked out of the place by Lorna and she gave me no reason. I found out a year later by an unfriendly waitress telling me that when I left a spiral notebook, most of the female staff read it. When it became new ownership and Lorna was no longer there I came back and bought the 20$ VIP membership! I know, why does "the wierd guy at the bar" get kicked out of so many places. He's a threat to all the rednecks that are intimidated by an intelligent man that can have an intelligent conversation with a woman instead of neanderthal grunts to show off their testosterone when they are insecure about the size of their untensils.

I feel so much better after eating a meal and then a good beer to get rid of the headache from only having one Guiness Stout the night before at Galileo's weekly poetry night last night. A plump girl kept yelling bullshit during my reading of "Dear Monica". The crowd sort of enjoyed it but I did not do near as well when i was with a fresh crowd at the Satellite Barrista. Maybe she didn't like the part of
smoking several packs of cigarettes in a bar after working at a mundane job. When she read, she yelled at a heckler. I thought these kind were only at redneck places but they even inhabit intellectual havens such as Galileo's. I then read a little of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" until my 6 minutes was up. One bloke came up to me and said how the piece really was speaking to him. That is often the way I feel about my writing. If it can just reach one person, then it is worthwhile. We often feel that if we can reach one student like the gentleman who was hoping to help a particular student who was slower. He was a substitute teacher but he is already burned out but that is, I believe, because he's only been doing work in the OKC school district that has a reverse type of prejudice if you are white. (oooh! Does that sound like me being the liberal that the rednecks claim me to be). I'll go into all of these schools and what is wrong with them whenever I've been offered an advance for these ramblings. I just saw that a lady's blog was used as a book for Random House. I'll have to check into that and see if I can send her a letter on what steps she made to getting it published!

I love the sun, just sitting outside with the little roof of so the sun far down on the midday horizon can still shine on my scalp. I felt all the Vitamin D being absorbed and all the melancholic spider webs from my brain as me and my bud reached a higher level before Cici's Pizza buffet. They make a delicious pizza just for you if you desire. So I visit the place a couple times a week and ask for ham,onions,sliced tomatoes, mushrooms, pineapples, green peppers, and a third of it have anchovies (for our much need Omega 3 fatty acids) and splurge with a coke (I know, Muff, all the sugar and chemicals). I do have sinful things but then I want to have a lot of good foods too such as filling up first with salad, and baby carrots. My blood sugar is stabilized for the next few hours and I'm not prone to the hypoglycemic low that is unfortunately sometimes accentuated with cannabis on an empty stomach.

Now these days sometimes flow right together and the depression is sometimes brought on by the inactivity and fear of growing old without accomplishing what I might have really wanted to do and possibly have the talent for. I know that I am good with kids up to middle school but somehow have been stuck with the hardest age in middle school. I occasionally worry about what some folks will say even though I have some very good references from other schools that I have taught. The principal in KC was an insecure power hungry administrator that would have any chance to undermine your authority if she knew that were not going to kiss her gluteus maximus as many insecure bullying leaders like to do. They want to piss in each corner of the territory and will go to what ever means to accomplish their evil desires.

WOW. Sometimes, I get off on a tangent but if we understand humanoid behavior for what it is, we will learn how to survive better as a human race or we will just destroy ourselves. The humanoids that prefer to hide their souls behind the their tinted windows of their huge bubbamobiles or ranch houses, become very nervous when the someone can look in on their sanctimonious lives to see their whiskey and cocaine (George W's) hidden in their proverbial
closets. They want the world to see someone else's skeletons but intimidate the press or anyone that questions or looks into their own minds and lives.

That's my sermon for today. May the universal energy bless you all and may the force be with you, Luke!

Top Stories - Reuters


Supreme Court Considers Medical Marijuana Case

Mon Nov 29, 2:37 PM ET Top Stories - Reuters


By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Several U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) justices expressed reservations Monday about allowing medical marijuana for sick patients whose doctors have recommended they smoke it for pain.


Reuters Photo


AP Photo
Slideshow: Medical Marijuana Issues

Justices Hesitant to Endorse Medical Marijuana
(AP Video)



The justices appeared sympathetic to the federal government's argument that it has the power to prosecute or take other action against patients who use home-grown marijuana in states with laws allowing medical use.


The justices are deciding whether a federal law outlawing marijuana applies to two seriously ill California women whose doctors recommended cannabis for their pain. California is one of 10 states allowing medical use of marijuana, experts said.


At issue is whether the federal law, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, amounts to an unconstitutional use of the U.S. Congress' power to regulate commerce among the states and does not apply to medical marijuana.


The case is seen as critical to the medical marijuana movement. The Supreme Court last ruled on the issue in 2001 when it said California cannabis clubs may not distribute marijuana as a "medical necessity" for seriously ill patients.


The Bush administration appealed to the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court in California ruled that marijuana used for medical purposes was different from drug trafficking.


The appeals court said states could adopt medical marijuana laws as long as the marijuana was not sold, transported across state lines or used for nonmedicinal purposes.


The lawsuit was brought in 2002 by Angel Raich, who has an inoperable brain tumor and other medical problems, and Diane Monson, who suffers from severe back pain. Their doctors recommended marijuana for their pain.


Monson cultivates her own marijuana while two of Raich's caregivers grow the marijuana and provide it to her free of charge. In 2002, Drug Enforcement Administration agents destroyed six cannabis plants seized from Monson's home.


Randy Barnett, a law professor at Boston University who argued on behalf of the two women, said medical use of marijuana was a noneconomic activity that falls outside the power of Congress to regulate trade among the states.


SCALIA ASKS ABOUT OTHER LAWS


Justice Antonin Scalia (news - web sites) said Congress also has adopted endangered species laws making it unlawful to possess items such as eagle feathers or ivory. "Are those laws likewise unconstitutional?" he asked.


Justice David Souter (news - web sites) asked Barnett about the government's estimate that as many as 100,000 people could use marijuana for medical purposes if the court rules for the two women. Barnett disputed the 100,000 number.


But Souter said there could easily be 100,000 cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy in California. He said that would undercut Barnett's argument that the amount of marijuana used for medical purposes would have a "trivial impact" on the market nationwide and on prices.


Justice Stephen Breyer (news - web sites) said the two women could have gone to U.S. regulators and asked them to allow the use of medical marijuana. If denied, they then could have sued.


"That seems to me the obvious way to get what they want," Breyer said. "Medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum." The California law was adopted in a voter referendum in 1996.


Acting Solicitor General Paul Clement, arguing for the government, cited the health dangers from smoking marijuana. "Smoking is harmful," he said. "It's true of tobacco, but it's also true of marijuana."





He said it would be "very hard" for the government to enforce the nation's drug laws if an exception was made for medical marijuana.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (news - web sites), however, told Clement that two recent Supreme Court's rulings limiting the reach of Congress's power to regulate commerce among the states "dictate some concern."

Plus, the California law involving home-grown marijuana concerned an "area traditionally regulated by the states," she said.

A ruling in the case is due by the end of June.