The Cosmic Serpant
Understanding the physics of God,
His Indivisible Nature,
Makes every universe and atom confess:
I am just a helpless puppet that cannot dance
Without the movement of His hand.
Dear ones,
This curriculum tonight is for the advanced
And will
Get all the blame straight,
End the mental
Lawsuits
That
Clog
The
Brain -
H
a
l
l
e
l
u
j
a
h
Baby!
With his permission, I have mirrored Wolf Devoon's Freeman's Constitution at billstclair.com/organic-law/.
Jeremy Narby at Noetic Sciences Review - The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge - most interesting. Not enough to convince me to try hallucinogens again, but most interesting. [grabbe]
The first time an Ashaninca man told me that he had learned the medicinal properties of plants by drinking a hallucinogenic brew, I thought he was joking. We were in the forest squatting next to a bush whose leaves, he claimed, could cure the bite of a deadly snake. "One learns these things by drinking ayahuasca," he said. But he was not smiling.
...
So here are people without electron microscopes who choose, among some 80,000 Amazonian plant species, the leaves of a bush containing a hallucinogenic brain hormone, which they combine with a vine containing substances that inactivate an enzyme of the digestive tract, which would otherwise block the hallucinogenic effect. And they do this to modify their consciousness.
It is as if they knew about the molecular properties of plants and the art of combining them, and when one asks them how they know these things, they say their knowledge comes directly from hallucinogenic plants.
...
My investigation had led me to formulate the following working hypothesis: In their visions, shamans take their consciousness down to the molecular level and gain access to information related to DNA, which they call "animate essences" or "spirits." This is where they see double helixes, twisted ladders, and chromosome shapes. This is how shamanic cultures have known for millennia that the vital principle is the same for all living beings and is shaped like two entwined serpents (or a vine, a rope, a ladder ... ). DNA is the source of their astonishing botanical and medicinal knowledge, which can be attained only in defocalized and "nonrational" states of consciousness, though its results are empirically verifiable. The myths of these cultures are filled with biological imagery. And the shamans' metaphoric explanations correspond quite precisely to the descriptions that biologists are starting to provide.
Julian Heicklen - Demonstrations at Penn State Football Games--2001 - The Libertarian Party of Centre County is sponsoring a series of four demonstrations to "protest the war on drugs, the loss of the Bill of Rights, the high prison population, and high taxes". The first one will begin at 5:00pm on September 1, 2001.
Denis Kelleher at The Irish Times - Confusion over copyright and free speech - a good review of issues surrounding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and similar legislation in Europe. [newsforge]
An odd feature of these new laws is that they may protect copyright protection systems more strictly than they protect copyright works themselves. If you copy a CD once, that is a violation of copyright and you could be sued for damages by the record company, which would be the cost of one CD or around £15. However, if in order to carry out that reproduction you remove what the Irish Copyright Act 2000 terms "rights management information", then, if convicted, you could be sentenced to a 5-year term of imprisonment and a fine of up to £100,000. The difference is that by removing the rights management information, you may permit others to create thousands or millions of copies.
The John Birch Society - Civilian Disarmament: The United Nations Global Gun Grab - Mr. William Grigg will be delivering a speech with this title in October and November in many cities. He'll be in Albany, NY on October 22 at 8:00pm at the Marriott Hotel at 189 Wolf Road, phone: 518-766-3041, 518-767-0852, email: jbsactivity@hotmail.com, $5.00 in advance, $7.00 at the door. For details of other speech locations, Contact the Speakers Bureau.
Agence France-Presse via Nando Times - Internet banned in Afghanistan - The Taliban has closed one more tiny conduit of real information to its slaves. [newsforge]
Only a tiny fraction of Afghanistan's 21 million population has access to telephones so the ban announced Saturday will make no difference to most people.
Ross Dunn at the Sydney Morning Herald -
'All hell will break loose' pledge after leader assassinated 
-
Israel killed Abu Ali Mustafa, the leader of the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, while he was sitting in his office. Grabbe's
comment: "Hopefully, Sharon is next." It's dangerous to assassinate
your enemy's leaders. They tend to return the favor. [grabbe]
