COMMENT: Living in the San Francisco Bay Area, one becomes familiar with the back wash of the so-called “counter culture” of the 1960’s. The residua are everywhere, including more than a few people who have gone absolutely off the deep end, either from drugs or too much intellectual and cultural relativism.
It is also impossible to live in the Bay Area and not be aware of the Burning Man Arts Festival. When it first took off, we thought it was some sort of weird-ass Nazi/Occultist rite, with people camping out in the desert, taking lots of drugs and observing a giant form of a man being burned in effigy.
One could not exaggerate the amount of heavy-duty drug taking that takes place there. It is drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs–LSD, Ecstasy and God knows what else.
After it became the phenomenon that it has become, we concluded that it was an intelligence operation of some kind, probably like the LSD/drug culture of 1960’s. (For more on this subject, check out AFA #28, the description for which follows the article excerpt.)
Mainstream GOP Values?
Taking place on government land, way out in the desert, it struck us as an ideal place to experiment on people.
Now comes a story from The Washington Post informing us that the event epitomizes “mainstream” GOP values and that people associated with the event are lobbying Congress.
In this context, we also note that part of the back wash from the ’60’s mess is a very real form of counter-culture fascism, described at length in FTR #437.
This does indeed sound like “Haight Ashbury II.”
God help us for saying this, but at this distance in time, we’ve come to believe that anybody dumb enough to pay $300.00 to go hang out in a salt desert and take lots of drugs with a bunch of hippies deserves to be used as a human guinea pig.
Far out.
Showing the colors at Burning Man
EXCERPT: There’s not a corporate logo in sight at the countercultural arts festival, and nothing is for sale but ice and coffee. But at its core, Harvey believes that Burning Man hews closely to the true spirit of a free-enterprise democracy: Ingenuity is celebrated, autonomy is affirmed, and self-reliance is expected. “If you’re talking about old-fashioned, Main Street Republicanism, we could be the poster child,” says Harvey, who hastens to add that the festival is non-ideological — and doesn’t anticipate being in GOP campaign ads anytime soon.
For more than two decades, the festival has funded itself entirely through donations and ticket sales — which now go up to $300 a pop — and it’s almost never gone in the red. And on the dry, barren plains of the Nevada desert where Burning Man materializes for a week each summer, you’re judged by what you do — your art, costumes and participation in a community that expects everyone to contribute in some form and frowns upon those who’ve come simply to gawk or mooch off others.
That’s part of the message that Harvey and his colleagues have brought to Washington this week, in his meetings with congressional staffers and the Interior Department to discuss the future of Burning Man. In fact, the festival is already a known quantity on the Hill: Harvey and his colleagues have been coming to Washington for years to explain the festival to policymakers, in least part because Burning Man takes place on public land that’s managed by the Interior Department. . . .
AFA #28: The CIA and LSD
Beginning with the CIA’s research into LSD as part of its investigation of mind control techniques, this broadcast highlights the profound role of the intelligence community in the dissemination of hallucinogens and the development of the recreational culture attached to their use.
The CIA and military experimented with the drug (LSD) in a variety of clinical and social environments. In addition to producing psychotic and (in some cases) lethal results, this experimentation also served to infiltrate the drug into intellectual and popular culture. Writers Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg were introduced to the drug (directly or indirectly) through the national security establishment’s LSD experimentation programs.
Timothy Leary’s early research into LSD was subsidized, to some extent, by the CIA. Later, Leary’s LSD proselytization was greatly aided by William Mellon Hitchcock, a member of the powerful Mellon family. The financing of the Mellon-Leary collaboration was effected through the Castle Bank, a Caribbean operation that was deeply involved in the laundering of CIA drug money.
After moving to the West Coast, Leary hooked up with a group of ex-surfers, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. This group became the largest LSD synthesizing and distributing organization in the world. Their “chief chemist” was a curious individual named Ronald Hadley Stark. An enigmatic, multi-lingual and well-traveled individual, Stark worked for the CIA, and appears to have been with the agency when he was making the Brotherhood’s acid. The quality of his product projected the Brotherhood of Eternal Love into its leadership role in the LSD trade. Stark also operated in conjunction with the Italian intelligence/fascist milieu described in AFA #‘s 17–21.
The broadcast underscores the possibility that LSD and other hallucinogens may have been disseminated, in part, in order to diffuse the progressive political activism of the 1960’s.
Program Highlights Include: CIA director Allen Dulles’ promotion of psychological research by the Agency; the work of CIA physician Dr. Sidney Gottlieb for the Agency’s Technical Services Division; connections between Stark and the kidnapping and assassination of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro; Stark’s mysterious death in prison while awaiting trial; Leary’s connections to the milieu of the “left” CIA and the role those connections appear to have played in Leary’s flight from incarceration; the CIA’s intense interest in (and involvement with) the Haight-Ashbury scene of the 1960s. (Recorded on 4/26/87.)
The Political Implications of the UFO Phenomenon and the "ET" Myth
John Perry Barlow, Dick Cheney’s campaign manager and Grateful Dead associate, is active in BM.
Two quick things:
1-LSD has been a creation of Albert Hoffmann working at Sandoz, a subsidiairy of the I.G. Farben cartel, according to your own research.
2– Leary’s escape was handled by the Weathermen, who became later the Weather Underground, featuring Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayers. These two have been close to Barack Obama for years. We have come full circle. For those of you who would like to check my article about the links between Obama and this kind of “Left” connected to the intelligence commnunity, here it is:
http://lys-dor.com/2012/03/14/ayers-and-dohrn-barack-obama-the-death-of-andrew-breitbart-and-the-rise-of-third-position-fascism/
@Claude: Admittedly an interesting article but I do find certain things hard to believe. And I don’t see any legitimate evidence collaborating your claim that the movement around Barack Obama is a form of 3rd Position fascism.
Honestly, I hate to sound confrontational, Claude, but you do seriously need to re-research and look over some things, it seems(but try not to assume I’m attacking you here because I’ve made the same mistake on a few occasions).
@Steven:
The idea of this article was to regroup all connections surrounding Barack Obama and expose the network it constitutes. If your think again about it, you will see that around Barack Obama you find Islamists, Palestinians, Extreme-Leftists, Black activists, and others who showed sometimes racism toward whites or Jews, anti-Israelis, ex-Weathermen, etc. It doesn’t mean that everybody is connected with everybody else nor that it means that there is a deliberate attempt to have everybody work on the same plan.
The best way to describe it: The Chicago School. The term “Chicago School” was used to describe a certain university trend in Humanities and Social Sciences. Quite frankly, it is not a coincidence if the city of Chicago breeds that kind of activists after all. Up to now, it has produced all the nice individuals that are presented in the article. It is a “soup”, the same way Wikileaks is a soup, like Dave described it to us in a few of his last year shows.
To make a long story short, because Islam, the so-called “Left” and elements inimical to Jews or Israel meet around Barack Obama, I think I am entitled to call it an exemple of a milieu where we can see the rise of third position fascism.
Dave did a similar work exposing the connections between the far-right and Islamists in the GOP. The Rove/Norquist/Talat Othman connection within the Bush Administration is another type of the same third position fascism but from the other side of the coin.
the trouble with these people at the burning man is that they just don’t think. as mark twain once said, “they only think they think.”
@Claude–
I very much appreciate your contributions to this website, but in this case, I’m afraid Steven is right.
Obama is not Third Position. There are many aspects of contemporary political culture that I find repugnant and Obama has been tangential to more than a few.
There is a lecture I did in the summer of 2008, which is included on a flash drive that will be available soon, as a premium available to contributors to the stations that carry this program.
In that lecture, I highlight indications that Obama is a second generation U.S. intelligence officer, perhaps some element of CIA, or State Department intelligence.
The American political landscape is all pay for play. In 2000, no one had ever heard of Obama, by 2004, he was the next big thing.
Obama’s association with ex-Weathermen is probably derivative of his intelligence connections.
The Weathermen gave every indication of being an agents-provacateurs operation.
I believe that he was maneuvered into place. In the Third World, the U.S. having a black President has given this country far more gravitas than most Americans will ever grasp.
I have referred to him as “Lee Harvey Obama” because of my belief that the Karl Rove/Talat Othman/Operation Green Quest milieu is setting him up for a huge fall, probably having known that he was a sure to be elected, once the market collapsed.
I have reiterated this in my long series of programs about the “Arab Spring.”
Obama has had a number of seriously threatening things directed at him, from aircraft being allowed to penetrate air space around Camp David, to “hostiles” being allowed to get far closer to the White House than one would believe possible.
This did not happen to Dubya, it did happen to Clinton.
A classified manual for maintaining Obama’s security was found lying in a gutter in Australia. That could only have been a warning.
You are a supporter of Israel, as am I, although my support is political in nature and derivative of my lifelong active opposition to fascism.
I consider “religious Zionism”, to coin a term, to be a dangerous fantasy that may well lead to the annihilation of Israel, and a war that will do untold damage to the U.S. as well.
I do not think that “God” gave any land to anyone. That is a notion of Supreme Being as real estate broker.
No sale.
I mention this because I have found supporters of Israel to be, frankly, phobic of Obama.
For Jews or supporters of Israel to align with the far right is suicidal.
Your belief that Andrew Breitbart was murdered by Obama is a dog that won’t hunt.
Orson Bean, Breitbart’s father-in-law, said that Breitbart had a history of heart trouble.
I am twenty years older than Breitbart and look years younger, in person. Breitbart had a weight problem, which may have led to his coronary problems.
Andrew Breitbart was an hysterical, ultra-right wing propagandist. When he died, it was the only good thing he ever did, and he was 43 years late on that.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Blaming Breitbart’s death on Obama strikes me as being in the same vein as the “Bill/Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster” b.s. that circulated during the 1990’s.
As a supporter of Israel, you should feel deep concern over Netanyahu’s alliance with the GOP right and Romney.
My own support of Israel is all but eroded. Watching Netanyahu actively court John Boehner and the GOP “Austerreich” made me sick and furious.
The friend of my enemy is my enemy.
Netanyahu is the heir to the fascist element in the Zionist movment. As I have noted in a FTR program, the Likud sent a representative to the congress of the Alleanza Nationale, the Italian Fascist party.
The Israeli right wing continues to network with European fascists, as I have noted in several Food For Thought posts.
That is madness.
I would also note that there is a quasi-fascist overtone to Netanyahu’s insistence that the Arabs/Palestinians must verbally acknowledge Israel as a “Jewish state.”
He explicitly said as much. The fact of the matter is that Israel is NOT a “Jewish state”–it is a primarily Jewish state with several million Muslim Arabs as minority citizens.
If I were one of those Israeli Arabs–who enjoy a better situation than most in the Arab world–I would resent that.
It strikes me as being in the same vein as the Born-Agains insisting that the U.S. is a Christian nation.
No Sale.
I know this is a rambling comment, but I will close by noting that Obama himself said people seem to have projected their own hopes onto him. Certainly, his campaign actively mined those projections, but, hey THAT IS ELECTORAL POLITICS!
I would note that Robert Wilson who, like yourself, has made many excellent and much-welcomed contributions to this site drew may wrath weeks ago for his contention that Obama was simply a continuation of Bush/Cheney.
From the stimulus (too small but effective in halting the meltdown) to his Supreme Court appointments to his tepid health care reform (still a big improvement over what had existed) to his environmental policy, Obama is fundamentally different, though not as different as many hoped.
Obama’s National Security policy he has pursued maintains a vigorous counter-terror profile.
He would not have been able to do anything else.
I will conclude by noting that even his Justice Department under the less-than-optimum Eric Holder undertook something profound.
In a Food For Thought post, I covered the Obama administration’s active interdiction of an international money laundering operation DATING TO 1953!!
Now, JUST WHAT do think that operation might have been, hmmmmm? Again, dating to 1953!!! That is terribly, terribly important and significant.
You sure as Hell would not have gotten that from Dubya, McCain or Romney.
Thanks ever so much for your participation on this website,
Dave Emory
@Dave:
Thanks for these remarks. I will clarify a few points just to be sure we agree on my positions concerning Obama and the rest. Maybe the writing of my article could be improved to reflect that.
First, I have never said that OBAMA killed Breitbart or that he wanted to kill him. He nevertheless signed, if I am not mistaken, an Executive Order that legalizes targetted assassinations of American citizens. Somebody else could have done it. Maybe.
Second, I have never said that Obama was third position. It is rather the crowd surrounding him and with whom he evolved that gives me that impression. For me, the Chicago milieu is bad and breeds radicals. But the right is not any better, of course.
Third, I agree, the Weathermen were probably agent provocateurs.
Fourth, concerning Israel, religious Zionism is probably wrong as you say, but we must not forget that Israelis face annihilation not only since 1922, year of the Balfour Declaration, but since the beginnings of Christianity. John Loftus’s The Secret War Against the Jews remains, for me, the best tool to understand the situation. When the fate of the Jews is secured, the state of Israel is secured, we will have plenty of time to criticize Zionism and Netanyahu or any other politician in place. I don’t like Netanyahu courting right-wingers, but there is not much of a choice. Obama is not favorable toward Israel and the U.S. has only two parties...
Fifth, yes, Obama is very different from Bush. Idealy, if we could combine the best of the two in just one candidate, that would be great. But unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that it seems.
I kept it brief and I hope it clarifies things.
[...] Before I let you read the article, here are a couple of points that I posted on SpitfireList.com on May 20th 2012 as a response to some criticism about the article from the website host. These [...]