Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

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Re: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

Postby American Dream » Thu May 24, 2012 10:33 am

Leading members of the entheogenic community abound- especially in the first half::


Testimony of Gordon Todd Skinner at Trial

Feb 5, 2003


http://www.neurosoup.com/pickardtrialtr ... I-edit.pdf
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Re: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

Postby American Dream » Thu May 24, 2012 7:21 pm

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Re: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

Postby American Dream » Fri May 25, 2012 12:44 pm

The Brotherhood of Eternal Love

Stewart Tendler and Davaid May

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

British passport number 348489A was issued in the spring of 1973. The holder was Mr Terrence W. Abbott, a salesman born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, in 1942. The passport photograph shows the face of a man who could be anything from Mexican to Middle Eastern: thick nostrils and a Zapata moustache below smooth, dark hair. He was much travelled, as the stamps in the visa section show. Part of the time he was in the Middle East, flitting in and out of Lebanon. There were also trips to Holland and Sweden. But the stamps stop early in 1975.

Acting on a tip, Italian police arrested Mr Abbott at the Grand Hotel Baglioni in Bologna with his family, in connection with drug trafficking. Their preliminary search after the arrest uncovered a strange coincidence: an American passport in the name of Mr Abbott issued from the American Embassy in London in the late 1960s. To give the puzzle a further international twist, there was also an international driving licence issued in Paris. Telexes and telegrams flowed between Bologna, London and Washington. The man was identified as the long-lost Ronald Stark.

On the face of it, the Italians were dealing with a straightforward smuggling team. Stark was involved with a group of Sicilians in a variation of the now dated methods used by the Brothers. Good-quality cars were stolen abroad and imported into Italy through Palermo with hidden Moroccan and Lebanese hash. Other loads came into Europe through Amsterdam. Stark also negotiated for the use of a yacht to sail cargoes from the Middle East into Italian ports.

But the picture of Stark's activities began to broaden with the discovery of a vial of liquid and a cache of papers kept in a Rome bank deposit box. The vial was sent for forensic examination. The scientists reported back that they could not precisely identify the drug it contained. At best, they put it close to LSD. Perhaps it was the synthetic THC Stark had dreamt of creating; the papers included formulae for the synthesis. There were also plans for the bulk purchase of hemp seeds and calculations for shipments, investments and plant installation. Some of the papers went back to the Brotherhood days but they gave no details of his LSD operations after the Belgian episode. They did show that his range of interests in the drug world had expanded to include narcotics. There were details of the synthesis of cocaine.

Outside Italy, much of Stark's activities lay in the Middle East, as the passport showed. That area was the source for the cargoes moved into Europe, and Stark cultivated contacts in the Lebanon in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. It was widely believed in California that he kept a supply of ergotamine hidden in Lebanon which in those days was the great Bourse of the Arab world. He also had plans for an experimental laboratory to make a substitute for LSD. He became a fixer for at least one of the royal Arab families. Other connections were less aristocratic. Stark travelled widely in the Baalbek region of the country, where the Brothers had bought hash. Among Stark's contacts was Imam Musa Sadr, who apparently possessed semi-feudal control over a section of the Shi-ite branch of the Moslem faith and boasted a personal army of 1,000 men. The area controlled by the Imam was said to include training camps used by the Palestine Liberation Organization. Bordering on Syria, the region offered some safety from the harassment of punitive Israeli raids. The PLO and the Imam were said to live together amicably.

In Italy, Stark often lived in the luxury hotels of Milan, Bologna and other cities. His permanent companion was now an American girl, who had borne him a daughter. Stark's evening haunts, however, belong to another world: dressed in faded jeans and a dirty sweater, he would disappear to the clubs and bars used by young leftwing groups. How this might link with his interests in drugs and his contacts in the Middle East only began to emerge months after his arrest.

Few people outside Italy have heard of Renato Curcio, but very few can fail to have heard of his creation—the Red Brigade. A radical terrorist group on the lines of West Germany's Baader-Meinhof organization, the Red Brigade first appeared in 1972. Within a few years, it had established itself in the industrial cities of northern Italy with a string of attacks including kidnapping, wounding, murder and arson. In 1974, Curcio was caught, then freed by his organization a few months later, and caught again. In the spring of 1976, he was being held in Don Bosco prison in Pisa, awaiting trial. There he made the acquaintance of Ronald Stark, who was also awaiting trial.

In prison Stark was working for the prison barber, to earn pin money. Often a member of prisoners' groups demanding extra rights or comforts, his knowledge of languages had also given him status as an unofficial translator. Despite the strong security measures surrounding Curcio, Stark managed to introduce himself and persuade the terrorist leader to confide in him. Stark must have been able to use the knowledge and names he had gleaned in the backstreet clubs, but there is no clear reason why Curcio should have trusted him, although one man arrested with him claimed that Stark was involved in the escape of two PLO men after an attack on an El Al aircraft in Rome. Yet trust him he did, and so apparently did other Red Brigade members who gave Stark messages to pass on.

A few months before Stark was due to face trial, he asked the prison guards to put him in touch with a lawyer. He was taken to see Pisa's chief attorney. Curcio had told him, Stark claimed, that the chief attorney of Genoa was to be killed by the Red Brigade. There was also a long-term plan to kidnap an important politician who was known to live in Rome.

Whatever their thoughts about Stark's information, the authorities took no chances and moved him to another prison. In June 1976, the chief attorney was indeed killed as a means to halt the trial of Curcio and fifty-two others. A month later, Stark was given fourteen years' imprisonment and a $60,000 fine. No one seems to have taken much notice of his second piece of information. Eighteen months later, Signor Aldo Moro, five times Italian premier, was kidnapped from his Rome home and eventually killed.

Stark's role as informer does not seem to have got back to the Red Brigade. In prison he received postcards from several leading radicals who were living in Paris.

If his connections with the Red Brigade were curious, his performance at his appeal against sentence was equally difficult to fathom. At his trial, Stark had refused to recognize the court. Now he claimed not only that he was not Terence Abbott but that he was not Ronald Stark either. He told his lawyer and the court he was 'Khouri Ali', a Palestinian. The appeal was turned down.

It was just as well because the secret police and the security forces were finally taking a closer look at Stark. What prompted them was the capture of a terrorist who had a hand-drawn map of a guerilla terrorist camp near Baalbek. The map, the man told the police, had come from Stark, and he produced a note in Arabic which was supposed to be a coded introduction. It translated as: 'I would like to see the father of Layla'. Layla was the name of Stark's daughter.

A fresh police investigation was opened and, in October 1978, Stark was charged with 'armed banditry'. Despite a charge bordering on terrorism, seven months later he was a free man, released on parole and living in Florence. The magistrate who gave him parole said: 'Many circumstances suggest that from 1960 onwards Stark belonged to the American secret services.' Stark's own lawyer was less certain but had no real idea who his client was. The prosecutor for the drugs charge felt the whole espionage link was nothing more than the work of a smart confidence trickster who played both sides to his own advantage.

A few weeks after his release, the man who could provide the answers vanished again. Stark simply failed to report to the local police in Florence where he had chosen to stay. Nothing more was heard from him until a letter arrived at the American consul in the city with a note from Stark, returning money he had borrowed. Then silence again.

Which of the Italian lawyers was right? Was Stark, during his years in the drug world, in reality an American agent? Was he feeding back intelligence on the counter culture which the federal agencies were desperate to infiltrate in the late 1960s and early 1970s? Or could he have been a banker investing and transporting money destined for 'black' operations beyond the drug world?

On more than one occasion Stark let slip hints of connections with the espionage world. There was the story about working for the Defense Department, and another that he closed down the French operation through a CIA tip. He began work with the Brothers at just the time when they were involved with the Weathermen in the United States. Equally timely, he was in Paris during the May 1968 riots and haunted the radical fringes of London in the early 1970s, when there was yet another curious example of his interest in radicalism/terrorism.

Two American journalists were working on a feature for Frendz magazine, an anarchistic offshoot of Rolling Stone, on Belfast violence. A rising Provisional IRA man, James McCann, obliged them with copy by trying to firebomb part of Queens University in the town. McCann and the journalists were arrested. The latter were eventually released -but not before a surprising intervention by Stark, who took their London lawyer to lunch at the Oxford and Cambridge Club to discuss their Plight, offering to pay their fees and bail.

In fact the meeting did not lead to anything, but Stark had taken a great interest in Frendz, which was deeply involved in revolutionary politics and was something of a clearing house at the junction between drugs and the other sides of the underground. Stark's interest in McCann certainly contributed to an interest in the American himself by MI5. When Lee began searching for Stark, he found the secret service had been there before him. For McCann, having escaped from jail, set up as a cannabis dealer in Holland to supply the IRA with money for guns. One of the men sent by the British to find out more about him was a former Oxford student called Howard Marks. Perhaps it is only coincidence, but Marks, who set up in his own right as a cannabis dealer, was eventually arrested after dealing with the remnants of the Brotherhood in California.

Stark is one of the figures in the story of the Brotherhood whose origins do not link directly or tenuously back to Millbrook. When the DEA were putting together a case against Stark in 1972, they had great difficulty in pinning down his personal details and were never able to get his FBI file from New York. Their reports in California and the details passed on to Europe only showed what Stark was not, not what he actually was.

The silence was finally ended late in 1982. Stark was arrested in Holland on a charge involving 16 kilos of hashish. In the summer of 1983, he was released from custody and thrown out of Holland where he had claimed to be a Lebanese bound for New York. He was arrested on arrival in the United States on a passport violation and DEA agents began to reconstruct the original San Francisco LSD case against him. They found it impossible to do so after such a long time and Stark was released.

http://www.druglibrary.net/schaffer/lsd/books/bel6.htm
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Re: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

Postby American Dream » Tue May 29, 2012 1:15 am

The Esalen Institution is a metaphysical 'human potential' center based out of Big Sur noted for its mineral baths and rotating staff of noted philosophers, artists, psychologists and gurus. It has also attracted any number of fringe elements and potential intelligence assets over the years. Manson was one of the first, who made his way there on August 3rd, 1969, mere days before the Tate killings. Ed Sanders notes:

"Manson had brought his guitar to the Esalen Institute, and later, during his murder trial, told one of the defense attorneys he had been 'rejected' in some way at the Institute. The Esalene had been 'rejected' in some way at the Institute. The Esalen Institute had been founded back in 1962 on the grounds of the old Big Sur Hot Springs, well known to readers of Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac. By 1968 and 1969 it had become popular among middle-class seekers for its seminars and encounter sessions, and feature articles had been written on Esalen in Life and the New York Times Sunday magazine section. Abigail Folger had attended seminars at Esalen, and someone at the house on Cielo Drive had phoned Esalen on the afternoon of July 30, 1969. There was never any indication that anyone from the house of Sharon Tate was at Esalen the weekend that Manson was there."
(The Family, pg. 191)

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The 'house on Cielo Drive' is where the Tate murders occurred while Abigail Folger, a member of the coffee dynasty, was one of the victims at that site, for those unaware. Further, there was much more going on at the Esalen Institute than Sanders lets on. Adam Gorightly goes a few steps further, stating:

"... Folger attended Esalen Institute seminars. Process founder Robert DeGrimston lectured at Esalen, and Manson made at least one appearance there, crooning groovy tunes with his guitar to a less than receptive audience... Esalen -like many another human potential center -was co-opted by the intelligence community, to one degree or another, just as Stanford and other universities -funded by the CIA -were using street shamans and anybody else they could get their hands on for experimental purposes, dispensing to them LSD and other drugs under clinical conditions at their research facilities.

"At such human potential centers as Esalen, group 'dissonance' or stress was introduced to destroy an individual's previous beliefs, and to replace the destroyed personality with a new-group oriented personality. These so called 'group encounters' and 'sensitivity programs' were used in much the same way that Manson programmed his flock, systematically breaking down an individual's personality to be reconstructed along the lines of the group-mind. The enigmatic Ronald Stark -big-time LSD entrepreneur and possible MK-ULTRA operative -was an Esalen financial supporter. Keep in mind that many people involved in the human potential movement -who were often bankrolled by CIA front organizations like the Human Ecology Fund -brought good intentions into their endeavors, although there can be no argument that the intelligence community were using the likes of Tim Leary and others of his ilk as test subjects in behavior modification experiments."

(The Shadow Over Santa Susana, pg. 164)

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This puts the Esalen Institute in contact with three of the more notorious cults of the late 60s, one obviously being Manson. Another would be the Process Church of Final Judgement, an off-shoot of Scientology, of which Robert DeGrimston was the co-founder of. For the sake of brevity I will not go into the Process Church to much, but will state that they've had links to numerous serial killers over the years, that also included Son of Sam in addition to Manson. Researchers such as Ed Sanders in the original version of The Family and Maury Terry in The Ultimate Evil have speculated that the Process controlled a national crime syndicate that included drug trafficking, kidnapping, and smut films. Others see them as a giant red herring. Either way, Process members rubbed shoulders with their fair share of notorious figures in the 60s and 70s.

Image



The other late 60s cultic group I was referring to in association with Esalen was the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Timothy Leary, who lectured at Esalen for a time, was their resident guru and was eventually sprung from prison with the Brotherhood's aid. Then there's Ronald Stark, who became the Brotherhood's chief financial backer on his way to becoming one of the largest drug dealers in the world. Then in 1980 he was arrested in Italy, then released by a judge who ruled that he had been under the employment of 'the American secret services' since at least 1960. As previously noted, much more information is available on Stark and the Brotherhood in this article and these two YouTube videos available here and here.

This would hardly be the Esalen Institute's last run-in with convicted murderers, intelligence assets and the bizarre. For instance, it became involved with the phenomenon of 'the Nine' in 1970s. 'The Nine', of which I've written a great length here, were extraterrestrial beings claiming to be the gods of ancient Egypt channelled by a series of individuals such as Andrija Puharich with close ties to the intelligence community. Through Esalen this clique would find itself involved in nothing less than the fall of the Soviet Union, apparently:

"...the Nine, channelled by Jenny O'Connor, were listed as members of staff. According to Einhorn, 'she took over running Esalen through the Nine', and such was the influence of the Nine that they ordered the sacking of its chief financial officer and reorganized the entire management structure. In the late 1970s the Esalen Soviet Exchange program was developed, initially to share parapsychological research, in which rising Soviet stars of academia and politics were invited to the United States. This was to have enormous, far-reaching influence on world politics, as many of the Soviets who went to Esalen in the 1980s were to become instrumental in the shake-up that would end the Cold War and bring about the fall of communism. It is reasonable to assume that an organization whose members made regular trips to Moscow in the days of the Cold War must have been made use of by US intelligence, or at least been monitored. Almost incredibly, several Soviet officials who would later rise to high office in the Gorbachev regime attended Jenny O'Connor's Nine seminars, together with psi enthusiasts Congressman Charlie Rose and Ira Einhorn."
(The Stargate Conspiracy, Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, pg. 234)


http://visupview.blogspot.com/2010/12/m ... art-i.html
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Re: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

Postby American Dream » Tue May 29, 2012 3:11 pm

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20120 ... ?viewAll=y

In Philly, keeping tabs on LSD

By Jason Nark
Daily News Staff Writer

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IT TOOK A POLICE battering ram to bust down the door of the West Philadelphia apartment. Once inside, police discovered a colorful cache of psychedelic drugs — enough LSD to open thousands of "doors of perception" for six to eight hours at a time.

The Jan. 31 raid appeared to be a true flashback to a bygone era, with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration calling the 9,500 hits of LSD on tie-dyed images of Homer Simpson and Jerry Garcia an "anomaly" in Philadelphia. And since two of the five suspects arrested were Drexel students, the raid became known as the "Drexel LSD bust" in the media, with reporters interviewing students and getting statements from university officials.

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams cautioned the public from equating Drexel with Haight-Ashbury.

"It is sad that this was taking place on a campus of higher learning, but I hope that the actions of a few do not tarnish the image of educational excellence that we associate with Drexel University," Williams said in a statement the day after the raid.

That small apartment on Florence Avenue was much closer to the University of Pennsylvania than Drexel, though. And Williams likely didn’t know that institutions of higher learning across the country are delving into psychedelics. Meanwhile, Penn professors, students and curious residents are trying to wipe away psychedelics’ tarnished images.

"People who 10 years ago would never be caught dead talking about psychedelics in a serious way are having conversations about it," said Nese Lisa Senol, a Penn doctoral student studying "visionary and mystical poetry."

They’re talking about a "psychedelic renaissance" in Philly reading groups and yoga shops, in classrooms, and at gatherings "for the expansion of your horizon" throughout the city. Come September, researchers, authors and artists will gather at Penn to discuss psychedelics en masse at Psychedemia, an academic conference on "visionary art and psychedelic culture."

"It seems irresponsible not to ... have an academic discussion of it," said Rebecca Lee, a 22-year-old writer/poet who attends the Theorizing Psychedelics reading group with Senol at the Chapterhouse Cafe, in Washington Square West.


News of research studies — successful research studies — involving psychedelics at major universities have trickled up through mainstream media. Last month, the New York Times Magazine wrote about a study at Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center, where researchers are using psilocybin, a component that makes some mushrooms magic, to help alleviate the fear of death in cancer patients. Similar studies are being conducted at New York University and Johns Hopkins.

"It was a shame that for so many years there was a halt in scientific study in substances that might have a great benefit," said Steve Beyer Ph.D, a scheduled presenter at Psychdemia who’s written about ayahuasca, a powerful psychedelic brew used by some indigenous people in the upper Amazon.

One Harvard researcher found that LSD has helped alleviate cluster headaches in some groups. The most promising research, one psychotherapist said, is the use of both LSD and MDMA (Ecstasy) in conjunction with treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

"That’s the poster child," said Neal Goldsmith, a Psychedemia presenter who’s hosted similar conferences in New York. "People have been cured from PTSD they’ve had for 25 years. ‘Cured’ is a word I don’t use casually. The data are coming in, and it’s really difficult to put the cat back in the bag."

Professor Jonathan Moreno, who teaches medical ethics and health policy at Penn, said there was promising psychedelic research being done in the 1950s and ’60s before the government began poking around. When Harvard researcher Timothy Leary morphed into the Technicolor Johnny Appleseed of LSD, Richard Nixon called him the "most dangerous man in America." And the doors to psychedelic research, Moreno said, were locked for decades.

"It was extremely destructive. It created a major stigma," Moreno, a Psychedemia presenter, said of Leary’s legacy.

Though Philadelphia is now treating possession of small amounts of marijuana as a lesser summary offense, and New Jersey is thinking about decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana, too, there’s been no such discussion nationwide about psychedelics such as LSD.

Psychedemia, Senol emphasized, isn’t about activism and had no connection to the West Philly LSD ring.

"We’re not trying to legalize anything," she said.


The three alleged "masterminds" in the West Philly LSD ring have a preliminary hearing next week and are looking at a maximum of 10 years in prison. They’re also likely getting a great amount of pressure to give up the source of the difficult-to-make LSD. Police uncovered the ring after two Drexel students became informants.

"Historically, cases involving LSD in this area have involved sources of supply in California; however, that has yet to be determined definitively in this case," said Laura Hendrick, field intelligence manager of the DEA’s Philadelphia division.

One of the defendants, Joshua Dassay, is originally from Washington, where he had a lengthy criminal record. The D.A.’s office said he was wanted in nine states when they found him inside the Florence Avenue apartment with his young child, girlfriend and $10,000 in cash. Neighbors on Florence Avenue had no idea that Dassay, who also goes by the name Barrett Turkington, was allegedly selling LSD. They found it hard to believe that he could have been making big money.

"He just seemed like a dirtbag," said a neighbor who asked not to be identified. "He was a terrible neighbor."

Dassay’s girlfriend declined to comment, and his attorney did not return phone calls for comment. He remains in jail.

West Philly native Raphael Zappala, 33, was not a dirtbag, though he’s also one of the alleged ringleaders, authorities said. Zappala worked at Philadelphia’s Coalition Against Hunger, and both he and his mother, Celeste Zappala, became strong antiwar activists after his brother, Sherwood Baker, was killed in Baghdad while serving with the National Guard in 2004. Zappala, who is out on bail, appeared in court in March in a suit with his long hair trimmed and beard shaved off. He declined to comment after.

The third alleged mastermind was Wesley Crawford, 34, an Ardmore man with a Rastafarian bent who was well known by Philly skateboarders for being one of the founders of FDR skate park, under Interstate 95 in South Philly. Crawford, who was arrested last year at a Phish concert in Virginia, remains in prison.

The D.A.’s office said that the LSD ring was making $5,000 to $15,000 a week selling single doses for up to $30, prices that made some in online-drug and jam-band forums chuckle. Many believe that the West Philly acid was being circulated far and wide, not just among college students at Drexel or Penn, or among the music scene here. The availability of acid in Philly, one source familiar with the scene said, is about the same as it’s always been — if you want it, you can find it.

"This isn’t something like LSD is raining down on Philly," said Kyle McKay, who helps create "visual electronic dream-scapes" at shows and events with the Philly-based Psy-Fi Productions. "It’s not something the average person is looking for."

But Daniel Shankin, a Psychedemia organizer and yoga instructor from Manayunk, wonders if it can turn an average person into something more. No one debates the legacy of Steve Jobs, he said, and the Apple founder said that taking acid was one of the most important things he’d ever done.


"Culture and society clearly benefit," Shankin said, "from people exploring themselves and growing."



Contact Jason Nark at 215-854-5916, narkj@phillynews.com, or on Twitter @JasonNark.
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Re: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

Postby American Dream » Tue May 29, 2012 10:55 pm

Eerie- may be triggering...


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Re: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

Postby American Dream » Fri Jun 01, 2012 2:51 pm

May be triggering for abuse survivors and others...

http://www.lambdaliterary.org/reviews/0 ... ine-stark/

‘Nickels: A Tale of Dissociation’

by Christine Stark


Posted on 28. May, 2012 by Merry Gangemi

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After finishing up a recent interview with Christine Stark, I thought: “Whew, that was uncomfortable.” And it was. Not because talking with Chris Stark was uncomfortable—quite the opposite—she was charming and engaging. It was her book, Nickels: A Tale of Dissociation (Modern History Press). The book is terribly uncomfortable because incest and child sexual abuse are ugly and uncomfortable anytime and all the time—and because the protagonist in Christine Stark’s debut novel starts her life in Hell.

The child, Little Miss So and So, is routinely raped and sodomized by her biological father, who, after he is finished, gives his daughter a nickel, which she must put into a small plastic purse that he bought for her. It is a harrowing talisman.

Mad dad jerks

his thing in my stomach jerks jerks then he sighs sticky on my stomach…my hands on the floor cold…he puts the mattress into the frame mom’s downstairs car drives by hands on cold floor mad dad … drags me to bed puts the purse next to me There Little Miss So and So kisses me on the head You’re Very Pretty You Should Get Something For Being So Pretty n dad mad dad the devil in disguise I see his face through my eyes smiling lips snake lips kiss me on my mouth kiss kiss kiss I want to throw up stop kissing dad unzips the purse holds a shiny nickel says Oops I already paid you for this n puts the nickel in his pocket n hangs the purse pink round my neck long n skinny


Nickels begins in the 1970s, an era when radical second-wave feminism drove incest and sexual abuse out from under the rock it thrived under, and feminist writers were punching holes in patriarchal language structures, opening up vocabularies to revolutionary new meanings and generating different possibilities of experience and breaking binary links that fettered language to patriarchy.

The language of Nickels is chaotic and discombobulated, a river of verbs and nouns overflowing its banks. The book is barely punctuated, and renders a vivid, frenetic, real-time narrative that pulls the reader deep into the intensities of the moments, back and forth through time until we are carried along like flotsam to the epilogues. (Yes, there are two epilogues, one that addresses the mystery of So and So’s missing “Gramma” and the other one I won’t tell you about.) Stark’s sparse use of punctuation expands the emotional possibilities between Miss So and So and the reader, and this opens up spaces for each to respond to what is revealed and what remains hidden. It is a strategy that navigates Miss So and So past the strange, dangerous adults all around her:

Where did you get this the school nurse says with her spider leg finger on the new spot I shrug my shoulders to tell her I don’t know… Do you have any more the school man says I stand up straight like an arrow… pull my pants down

the school nurse and the school man say Oh so I pull my pants up they call in my mom and another school lady and a policeman who takes pictures…. my mom says she doesn’t know anything maybe it was the babysitter….

the policeman and the new school lady take me into custody until matters are resolved I don’t know what matters are and when I ask the school nurse what does matters are resolved mean she says Oh you are just a like a little parrot I don’t ask no more questions….

the next night snake crawls in bed with me to go up my back lay down so I do be quiet so I do hands over your stomach so I do the snake goes inside me up my back I lay with my hands together in a coffin dead the snake breathes hard one two three until my head cracks on the headboard the snake pushes my head into the headboard my board head cracked

Knock knock

Who’s there

the head board

What head board


The home life of Christine Stark’s protagonist is a nightmare that just won’t quit. That’s the bad news. The good news is that Stark’s small heroine is a firebrand with chutzpah and insight, and by the time we leave her, at the age of twenty-six, Miss So and So has excavated her lesbian identity, transformed herself into Rock River Woman, reunited with her lost Gramma, and of course fallen in love. She has grown up, raged through attempts at recovery, and broken through and broken out: “I know my name” she tells the Troll at the end of her narrative, “and you do not frighten me.”

Nickels has made some waves in the world of queer publishing and it’s no surprise the novel is a Lambda Literary Award finalist this year. Originally conceived as a series of prose poems, Nickels emerged in the wake of Sapphire’s narrative, Push, which was made into the movie, Precious, as much a personal challenge for Stark to write something as good and as meaningful as Push, as it is a testament to the girls and women Stark has known in her years as an advocate for sexual abuse and domestic violence survivors. Stark decided “to write about dissociation in a much more immediate and centrally focused way.” And Stark goes further, foregrounding the dynamics between homophobia and domestic violence, which, Stark points out are often inseparable.

Beginning when So and So is five-years-old, Nickels is structured along a timeline; childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, et cetera, with sub-chapters that not only fill in locations and circumstances, but also give one the sense of reading a memoir rather then a novel—unnerving though it is with its set upon set of devastating triggers and runaway language.

So

my mother says We’re coming Thursday my roommate throws an empty shoe box out of her bedroom it lands near my feet she follows it I sit up on the back of the chair place my feet on the cushion That is so rude she says points to my feet goes back in her room hair flying through the doorway We’ll be there sometime around eleven in the morning Eleven I say my roommate reappears throws a green plastic bag into the living room Your father wants to get back in time for his program at seven I say nothing space out the thought of being back there in that house with him a black duffel bag lands in the middle of the living room Crazy I say under my breath her bedroom door slams What was that my mother says Amy’s on another rampage I say my mother says nothing Get off the phone I hear my father did you hear me he says my roommate is crying in her bedroom Now my father yells I really should get going my mother says panic in her voice All right I hang up my tongue goes down to my stomach I run to the bathroom wet cotton balls in the sink half packed boxes lying on the floor I vomit in the toilet


From early childhood, Miss So and So develops an extraordinary ability to read the voices, gestures, and moods of those around her—seen and unseen. She anticipates behaviors, and scans and infuses the physical space around her with a veritable force field that keeps an escape route open, clear enough to be able to move, run, and get out of the way. Yet I found the emotional landscape of Nickels to be surprisingly limited for me, a resistant to something I can’t quite put my finger on and not necessarily something lacking in the text or the quality of writing—and regardless of whether or not Miss So and So remains circumscribed by her accelerated thought, state of hyper-arousal, and the jagged, disjointed language that propels her cognitive awareness of the world. No matter who she is talking to or engaged with, Miss So and So throws a constant, unrelenting onslaught of words at us, too fast for a full range of emotions to register, and at times this feels more like a narrative trap than an alternative means of articulating experiences. Then again, until she sheds her skin in that final meltdown, Miss So and So is trapped, and we are trapped with her.

Stark’s narrative language is also lyrical; at times haunting and poignant; and there is a natural rhythm and authenticity in her use of pure, isolated sounds, which generate a perversely soothing quality in the flow of the text: the “trip trap, trip, trap” sing-song that harkens back to nursery rhymes; the detached, mechanical “whish whish whish” of the head against the headboard; the flat but sinister “Crack the back the headboard spat”; the mindless chant of “Knock knock who’s there” ; and the implicit terror in waiting for mad dad to get home, wrapped in a thin layer of nursery rhyme:

Big bad wolf

blew the house down mom says do you hear the b’s she says n looks at me big bad blew it’s good to read to children she says I read that somewhere some magazine she looks at the ceiling McCalls I nod listening I think about the wolf big hairy just like trolls scaring the pigs wanting to kill them and my mouth goes dry and I rub my wrists and she stares at the clock tick tock on the new wall in the new house waiting for dad to get home from basketball at the YMCA waiting for big hairy dad to get home tick tock tick tock we all fall down.”


Something else is teased out through the narrative of Nickels, and that is the reader’s willingness to embrace a revised notion of girlhood as a time of growth, empowerment, and continuum of holistic integration of the female self with the world instead of girlhood as a demeaning moniker that labels girls as weak, awkward, silly, and inconsequential. Anyone who reads Nickels will agree Miss So and So is anything but.
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Re: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

Postby American Dream » Tue Jun 05, 2012 12:50 pm

http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/UFOs/Gorightly.htm

John Lilly, Ketamine and The Entities From ECCO

- by Adam Gorightly (exclusive to ConspiracyArchive.com)

Image

In the early 70's, John Lilly was introduced to the drug Ketamine by Dr. Craig Enright in the hopes of alleviating the pain associated with Lilly's chronic migraine headaches, which he had been suffering like clockwork — every 18 hours — for most of his often-adventurous life.

Lilly, at the time, was at Esalen Institute conducting seminars when one of these massive migraines hit him. In situations such as these, Lilly withdrew into privacy, to suffer alone through the many endless hours of severe discomfort. It was at this time that Enright suggested to Lilly that he enter into the Esalen isolation tank and receive an injection of Ketamine, in the prospect that it would in some way cure him of his affliction. Lilly in the past had tried a similar experiment with LSD, but it proved unsuccessful, and the terrible headaches persisted. In the earlier LSD-assisted experiment, Lilly attempted to reprogram his human bio-computer in such a way as to eliminate the faulty circuits that were causing him such distress. The experiment failed, but now once again Lilly the Scientist was searching for an answer and a cure to his malignant malady.

As Lilly floated in the isolation tank fluid, Enright injected him with 35 milligrams of Ketamine (K). Within a few minutes, Lilly could actually visualize the migraine pain moving out of his skull, to a point levitated there in apperceived space, Lilly felt no pain whatsoever for some twenty minutes, until it once again reentered his head. When Lilly began moaning and groaning in his water-filled sanctum of pain, Enright injected him with another 70 milligrams. This time Lilly felt the pain moving farther away, twelve feet this time. Thirty minutes later the migraine lightning bolt of pain came rushing back, lodging itself once again into Dr. Lilly's head. Enright reloaded his syringe and shot the good doctor up with 150 milligrams. This time when the pain vacated Lilly's head it kept on going and didn't come back; clear over the horizon, never to be seen again. An hour later, after the K wore off, Lilly climbed out of the tank, a new man.

A month later, when the regularly occuring migraine failed to rear its aching head, Lilly was amazed. During his psychedelic research of the early Sixty's, Lilly was one of the early pioneers in charting the inner landscapes of the human brain with LSD inside his self-developed isolation tank. Within those dark, still waters of the soul, Lilly ingested heroic doses of acid and delved deep into his mind to imprint and re-program his mental circuits toward enlightenment and self-realization. But where LSD had failed in defeating the migraine problem, Ketamine had now apparently succeeded.

A week later when Doctor's Enright and Lilly met at the Esalen isolation tank, they agreed to join forces and conduct a joint research into the effects of Ketamine as a possible programming agent. The movie Altered States was based on one of their initial experiments. On this memorable occasion, Enright injected himself with a measured dose of K and — with Lilly observing — began a strange odyssey into the primal/archetype regions of his psyche. Unbeknownst to Dr. Lilly, Enright had reprogrammed himself "to return to the prehominid origins of man." Enright, in this programmed "altered state", displayed all the typical features, movements and sounds of an Ape Man; hopping around in a crouching position, grunting, growling, ranting and howling, gesticulating and shaking frantically his arms. While all of this high weirdness was going on, Lilly assumed that Enright was having some sort of seizure. Though in close proximity with each other throughout the entire experience, the separate realities they were experiencing were of entirely different natures. Enright's reality consisted of a confrontation with a leopard, which he drove away with all his arms flailing, grunting and wild gesticulations. Finally Enright climbed up into a tree (that Lilly couldn't see) and stared down at his friend and colleague from the branches above.

From this experiment, Enright and Lilly drew three important conclusions: "First, one's internal reality could differ radically from the external reality in which one was participating, even with regard to prominent features of the physical environment. Second, the person might remain active physically in the external environment, in a manner not responding closely to one's internal experience of this activity. And third, one could remain totally oblivious to this disparity." Given these conditions, Lilly and Enright agreed that it would be a good idea at all times to have a "safety man" monitoring the experiments; to observe the proceedings and insure that those under K's influence could do no physical harm to themselves and others. With both men being trained physicians the obvious choice to fill these roles were themselves, alternately switching positions as "safety man" and "explorer".

One determining factor in Lilly's decision to continue experimenting with K was its measurability. Unlike other programming agents he had used in the past, K's effects were extremely predictable, in that you could determine exacting levels of dosage to correspond with the desired effect one wished to experience; whereas other mind expansion agents such as LSD and psilocybin are often more unpredictable in regards to the facilitation of desired preprogramming. This brings to mind a possible correlation between Ketamine and DMT, where each of these drugs — administered at certain exacting dosages — apparently summon forth, to the percipient involved, extraterrestrial or other-dimensional entities. High doses of psilocybin have effected this response in some users — Terrance McKenna, among others — who have communicated telepathically with alien intelligences under the mushroom's otherworldly aegis. But psilocybin's effects are quirky. Perhaps this is why the measurability — and predictability — of K so appealed to Dr. Lilly. In this manner the scientific method could be followed to achieve the desired mind-bending results.

In later experiments, Lilly failed to heed his own advice, becoming so enraptured in his Ketamine exploration that he would forego the earlier agreed upon "safety man" and started working "without a net." This led to an almost fatal consequence when one sunny day, under the influence of K, Lilly climbed into his hot tube. When he realized the temperature was too hot, Lilly futilely attempted to climb out, but in so doing his muscles lost their strength and he collapsed into bubbling currents. Lilly was totally conscious at this point, but due to the effects of K, he was unaware of the external reality of his drowning body. He was conscious only of his internal world. As fate would have it, a friend of Lilly's, Phil Halecki — who found himself driven by a sudden sense of urgency — decided at this time to phone Dr. Lilly. Lilly's wife Toni fielded the phone call and, at Halecki's insistence, went to summon John, only to find him lying face down in the water, breathless and blue. Fortunately, Toni was able to revive her husband using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, a technique she had learned only a few days earlier from an article in The National Enquirer.

Nonetheless, this close brush with the grim reaper's scythe didn't deter Lilly from further solo flights on K; it only reaffirmed his deeply held conviction that his life was being watched over by higher powers of an extraterrestrial origin. Lilly referred to this network of sublime entities as ECCO, an acronym for "Earth Coincidence Control Office." Lilly was positive that all of these fortuitous coincidences in his life (such as Halecki's life-saving phone call) had been arranged by higher forces; and that whatever unfortunate folly fell into his path along the road to knowledge, ECCO would be there to guide him safely through the tunnel to the light.

But ECCO was not there only to guide Lilly unfettered through his mind-bending research; these extraterrestrial benefactors were also there to test Lilly, to help him overcome his deepest darkest fears with psychic-shock therapy. One evening after a kick-ass shot of K, Lilly sat watching TV when an alien representative of ECCO appeared and — with some advanced form of psychic surgery — bloodlessly removed John's penis, nonchalantly handing it over to him. "They've cut off my penis," Dr. Lilly exclaimed. His wife Toni came to the rescue and pointed out to John that his penis was still intact. Upon closer examination of his male member, Lilly saw that the ET's had replaced his normal human penis with a mechanical version that could become voluntary erect when he wanted it to. An hour later, after the effects of the K wore off, John Lilly found his normal human penis in place of the mechanical one, exactly where it had always been.

Later on, as the frequency of his use on K increased, Dr. Lilly began having contact with another alien intelligence agency, which he called (SSI), short for Solid State Intelligence. SSI was a supercomputer-like entity, much in the same techno-mystical vein as Philip K. Dick's VALIS. But unlike VALIS, SSI was of a malevolent nature, at odds with ECCO. SSI's apparent goal was to conquer and dominate all biological life forms on Earth. To combat SSI, ECCO enlisted Lilly in this archetypal battle of good against evil, charging him with the mission of alerting the world at large to these solid state beings of evil intent. To further confirm the dual existences of these two opposing alien intelligence networks, Lilly was given a sign, and message, in the autumn of 1974. Flying into Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Dr. Lilly saw the comet Kahoutek out of the southern sky. Momentarily the comet grew brighter. At this point a message was laser-beamed into Lilly's mind, which said: "We are Solid State Intelligence and we are going to demonstrate our power by shutting down all solid state equipment to LAX."

Dr. Lilly shared his foreboding message with his wife Toni, who was seated next to him. A few minutes later, the pilot instructed the passengers that they were being diverted to Burbank due to a plane that had crash-landed near the runway and had knocked down power lines, causing a power failure at the airport.

As his haphazard use of K intensified, so did the warnings of imminent dangers regarding the survival of mankind, provided by ECCO via 3D Technicolor images beamed into Lilly's mind. These visions were of an apocalyptic nature; scenes of nuclear annihilation seen from an alien's eye view in outer space. The world powers needed to be alerted of this impending tragedy immediately to enable them to avert widespread global devastation, ECCO instructed, or it would be too late. I find it interesting that ECCO's message to Dr. Lilly was much the same as those delivered to the early saucer contactees: our planet was on a collision course toward destruction; all atomic weapons must be dismantled if our planet was ever going to have a chance of surviving in the future. The only difference was that the enemy was us, not "them." Nevertheless, rampant technological progress was to blame for the sorry state of the planet, regardless if it was being facilitated by alien intelligences, or humans.

After three weeks of hourly K injections, Lilly decided that he would travel to the east coast to warn political leaders and members of the media of the threat posed by SSI. In New York, he phoned the White House to warn then President Gerald Ford about "a danger to the human race involving atomic energy and computers." A White House aide fielded the call and, although quite aware, of Dr. Lilly's impressive credentials, was not convinced of the urgency of the matter, and informed him that the President was unavailable.

A young intern who had been assigned to Lilly during this time figured the good doctor had finally flipped his high intelligent lid and attempted to have Lilly committed to a psychiatric hospital. Once again ECCO intervened. Lilly had friends in many high places one of which was the director of this hospital, who saw to it that his old friend was released in short order. When the intrepid intern attempted to commit Lilly to another psychiatric hospital, the same scenario unfolded, and Lilly was once again released. The young intern could only shake his frustrated head in disbelief.

Still following the lead of ECCO, Dr. Lilly continued his ever-escalating injections of K in order to remain in contact with the "space brothers". Soon, though, his sources started to dry up due to concerns by his connections that Lilly had gone too far of the deep end. Consequently this led Lilly in search of other long acting chemicals that would provide him with the same effects as K, but for a greater duration of time. During the experimental trial of another drug of similar nature to K, Dr. Lilly received a phone call from his wife Toni requesting that he bring her spare set of car keys, because she had locked her others in her car. Since she was simply down the road a bit, John jumped on his ten-speed and proceeded to peddle down the road to make the delivery.

When Dr. Lilly decided to ride his ten-speed bike down the road to meet his wife, the drug had not yet taken full effect. But midway through his trip, Lilly was zapped by its intoxicating magic and instantly felt quite wonderful with the wind blowing deliciously through his hair; it was as if he'd taken a trip down memory lane to the days of his free wheeling youth. Unfortunately, this flashbackfull sense of euphoria came screeching to a disastrous halt when the bike chain suddenly jammed, and he was catapulted onto the harsh reality of the concrete pavement, puncturing a lung, breaking several ribs, and suffering cranial contusions. This bicycle crash resulted in several days of hospitalization, where Dr. Lilly was once again visited by the otherworldly representatives from ECCO, who told him he had a choice: He could go away with them "for good" or remain on the planet, mend his body and concentrate on more worldly affairs. The good doctor wisely chose the latter. With this decision came a turning point in his life, and a conscious effort to focus his remaining years not only on more earthly matters — as opposed to the whims and wishes of ECCO — but to dedicate the rest of his life to his wife, Toni, and their soul mate journey together through physical time and space.

Many paranormal parallels can be drawn from the experience of John Lilly, one such being the so-called Near Death Experience (NDE), where Guides, as he called them (the two representatives from ECCO) appeared to Lilly much as figurative angels bathed in light do to others who have experienced NDE. Often, as the seemingly near dead hover before this subjective light, they are offered a choice much similar to the one given Dr. Lilly by his otherworldly benefactors from Earth Coincidence Control Center. Should I stay or should I go?

Not long after this second brush with death Dr. Lilly's close friend and Ketamine research partner, Graig Enright, was involved in a head on collision in the fog on coast Highway One. As Enright lay upon his death bed, he was visited by Dr. Lilly, who took Enrights hand in his, and made the following statement: "It's not so bad to die, Craig. I've been to the brink myself a few times, and I've seen over the edge. The Beings have told me on several occasions that I was free to go with them, but I decided to stay here and continue my work in this vehicle that everyone calls John Lilly; they showed me that I am one of them. 'You are one of us'. I know that you know this because we've been there together. Whatever you do, Craig, I love you." On the very next morning, Dr. Graig Enright shed his mortal coil.

Thus ends another chapter in Dr. Lilly's often adventurous life.
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Re: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

Postby American Dream » Tue Jun 05, 2012 6:51 pm

Jackie Gleason on LSD ; skidoo


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Re: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

Postby Simulist » Tue Jun 05, 2012 7:47 pm

John Lilly was both brilliant and brave. A few of his drug-induced "delusions" might even have served as something of an antidote to the dangerous and frighteningly common delusions that beset us all — IF our entire culture weren't comprised of such a high percentage of cowardly boors who come by their delusions — not as intrepid explorers, but — through an altogether banal process of absorption from the surrounding Petri dish.
"The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego."
    — Alan Watts
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Re: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

Postby American Dream » Tue Jun 05, 2012 8:01 pm

Simulist wrote:John Lilly was both brilliant and brave. A few of his drug-induced "delusions" might even have served as something of an antidote to the dangerous and frighteningly common delusions that beset us all — IF our entire culture weren't comprised of such a high percentage of cowardly boors who come by their delusions — not as intrepid explorers, but — through an altogether banal process of absorption from the surrounding Petri dish.

Lilly was a real psychonaut and he really did do research that helped ARTICHOKE/MKULTRA, alongside Maitland Baldwin at NIH.

Such are the mysteries of life...
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Re: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

Postby Simulist » Tue Jun 05, 2012 8:10 pm

There were a lot of varied sub-projects to MK-ULTRA. Though you've not suggested it, everyone involved in them was not a monster — nor did everyone have full awareness regarding the entirety of what they were involved in. I think that's an important point to make in discussing those matters.
"The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego."
    — Alan Watts
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Re: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

Postby American Dream » Tue Jun 05, 2012 10:39 pm

http://boingboing.net/2012/06/05/mind-b ... imbos.html

Mind Blowing Movies: Bimbo's Initiation (1931), by Jim Woodring




I might have come to grips with the overwhelming mystery of life in a rational, organic manner if it weren't for a cartoon I saw on my family's old black and white TV in the mid '50s when I was three or four years old. This cartoon rang a bell so loud that I can still feel its reverberations.

It was "Bimbo's Initiation," produced by the Fleischer Brother Studios in 1931. I won't attempt to describe it; you can see it online. It's an ingenious piece of work, made by men who I now realize were well aware of its metaphysical content, as evidenced in part by the use of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld in the soundtrack. Perhaps its creators were trying to amuse themselves by making a cartoon that combined madcap whimsy with philosophical depth. Or maybe they were just high. Whatever their motivation and intent, "Bimbo's Initiation" became my prime symbolic interpreter, the foundation of my life's path and endlessly exploding bomb at the core of my creative output.

The reason that cartoon affected me as strongly as it did was that I thought it was real, that it depicted events that were happening in my neighborhood. I set out to find those rooms, those implements, that bicycle, that pool. I got a reputation as the little boy who looked into everything. Whenever I went into someone else's home the first thing I would do, if I could, was look behind their drapes.

Consequently I missed a lot of things that were actually going on, which caused me a lot of grief, one way and another. The pleasurable intensity of the delusion was well worth any trouble that resulted from it, though... and as I say, it gave me a livelihood.
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Re: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

Postby American Dream » Thu Jun 07, 2012 8:19 am

American Dream wrote:Leading members of the entheogenic community abound- especially in the first half::

Testimony of Gordon Todd Skinner at Trial

Feb 5, 2003

http://www.neurosoup.com/pickardtrialtr ... I-edit.pdf


From http://www.freeleonardpickard.org/new.html

Government informant Gordon Todd Skinner, along with his wife Krystle Ann Cole Skinner and William Ernest Hauck, an Oklahoma truck driver, have been charged with kidnapping, conspiracy to kindnap, torture of a teenager, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and drug trafficking. Allegedly the trio kidnapped a Broken Arrow 18 year old from a Tulsa hotel on or about July 4th. The teenager was a former companion of Ms. Skinner while she and her husband Gordon Todd Skinner were separated. The teen was held captive for 6 days in Oklahoma and Texas, beaten and injected with drugs as an act of revenge...


Teen tells of six days of drugged torment MATT ELLIOTT World Staff Writer, 09/14/2003 Tulsa World (Final Home Edition), Page A19 of News
Three have been charged in his alleged abduction and assault in July.
The 18-year-old awoke in a pasture after six days of alleged torture.
Vomiting, disoriented, bloodied and insect-bitten, he tried to make sense of his surroundings.
He had spent the night wrapped in a blanket...

Suspect in kidnapping case surrenders MATT ELLIOTT World Staff Writer, 09/20/2003
Tulsa World (Final Home Edition), Page A17 of News
A man charged in a Tulsa kidnapping and torture case surrendered to police on Friday.
William Ernest Hauck was booked in to Tulsa jail at 11:19 a.m. in connection with kidnapping and conspiracy charges. Bond was set at $100,000 for each of the two charges.

Abduction case figure surrenders Staff Reports, 09/24/2003
Tulsa World (Final Home Edition), Page A15 of News
A woman who is charged in a kidnapping and torture case surrendered to police Tuesday.
Krystle Ann Cole Skinner, 22, was booked into the Tulsa Jail on kidnapping and conspiracy charges about 4:45 p.m. Tuesday after reportedly turning herself in, jail records show.



http://www.freeleonardpickard.org/tulsaworldskinner.pdf

or

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=ca ... U09g&pli=1
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Re: Tantra-Induced Delusional Syndrome ("TIDS")

Postby American Dream » Thu Jun 07, 2012 1:44 pm

Not a perfect account by any means but does tells much of this story...

http://www.american-buddha.com/aciddreams.10bitter.htm

ACID DREAMS, THE COMPLETE SOCIAL HISTORY OF LSD: THE CIA, THE SIXTIES, AND BEYOND

A Bitter Pill


Tim and Rosemary arrived in Algiers with great expectations. "Panthers are the hope of the world," he wrote to Allen Ginsberg. "How perfect that we were received here and protected by young Blacks. Algeria is perfect. Great political satori! Socialism works here.... Eldridge is a genial genius. Brilliant! Turned on too!" The Panthers were also enthusiastic. At a "solidarity" press conference, they announced that "Dr. Leary is part of our movement," having previously been active "among the sons and daughters of those imperialist bandit pigs."

The alliance between Cleaver and Leary was hot news, and Algiers was suddenly crawling with media. But the much-publicized meeting of the minds quickly degenerated into a battle of egos. Leary didn't like Cleaver's heavy-handed security measures. All visitors were frisked -- even Leary's friends -- and drugs were banned from Panther headquarters except on rare occasions when Cleaver said it was okay to get high. In his discussions with Cleaver, Leary emphasized that "you've got to free yourself internally before you attempt to free yourself behaviorally." The Panthers, however, were not receptive to Leary's "spiritual" politics. Nor were they keen on his idea of inviting draft resisters, antiwar activists, hippies, rock stars, Weatherpeople, and other dissident groups to broadcast a "Radio Free America" program throughout Europe. Cleaver had no intention of providing a forum for a multitude of voices on the left. He was quick to brand nearly everyone else "revisionist," heaping ridicule on Stokely Carmichael, Martin Luther King, James Baldwin, LeRoi Jones, and white radicals such as Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Soon would come the split with Panther leader Huey Newton, fomented in part by FBI subterfuge.

The FBI was also responsible for stirring up tensions between Leary and his hosts. An undercover operative who had infiltrated the New York chapter of the Black Panther party sent a poison pen letter to Cleaver urging him to discipline Leary for his cavalier, individualistic behavior. Tim and Rosemary were busted at gunpoint at Panther headquarters while black CIA agents who had penetrated Cleaver's entourage monitored the situation. A CIA document dated February 12, 1971, reported that "Panther activities have recently taken some interesting turns. Eldridge Cleaver and his Algiers contingent have apparently become disenchanted with the antics of Tim Leary.... Electing to call their action protective custody, Cleaver and company, on their own authority, have put Tim and Rosemary under house arrest due most probably to Leary's continued use of hallucinogenic drugs."

Leary had smuggled twenty thousand hits of LSD into Algiers and was planning to turn on all of Africa. This scheme didn't impress Cleaver, who was fed up with Leary's stoned gasconades. "Something's wrong with Leary's brain," the Panther chief declared in a communique to the underground press. "We want people to gather their wits, sober up and get down to the serious business of destroying the Babylonian empire." As far as Cleaver was concerned, the psychedelic counterculture would henceforth be considered quasi-political, if not downright dangerous. When he spoke of LSD, he invoked the specter of drug-induced totalitarianism. "To all those of you who look to Dr. Leary for inspiration and leadership," Cleaver concluded, "we want to say to you that your god is dead because his mind has been blown by acid."

Leary, for his part, felt he had come up against a new kind of chauvinism -- revolutionary chauvinism -- and he wanted out. But not so fast. He could leave -- at a price. Once again the Brotherhood of Eternal Love came to the rescue, chipping in $25,000 to facilitate Leary's release. As they scrambled to get out of Algiers in early 1971, Tim and Rosemary were aware of the gravity of their predicament. They had no legitimate travel papers and additional advance money for Leary's book on his prison escape (Diaries of a Hope Fiend) was not forthcoming. Whoever could help them at this point became an instant ally. A British woman employed as a stringer for Newsweek introduced the Learys to a well-educated Algerian bureaucrat named Ali, who made no bones about his association with the CIA. Ali promised to arrange exit visas for them. Rosemary wondered if they could trust such a man. "He's liberal CIA," Tim assured her, "and that's the best mafia you can deal with in the twentieth century."

The fugitive couple fled to Switzerland, hoping to obtain political asylum. Leary spent the first six weeks in jail while Swiss officials reviewed his case. Life behind bars was relatively pleasant thanks to a mysterious benefactor named Michel-Gustave Hauchard, who provided Leary with fine wine and assorted delicacies during his incarceration. Described by Leary as a tall, silver-haired gunrunner, Hauchard had strong enough lines into the Swiss council to secure Leary's release from prison. He also had the funds to bankroll Leary in the high style to which he had become accustomed. Leary nicknamed him "Goldfinger" and accepted an invitation to stay in Lausanne at his luxury penthouse with an exquisite view of the lake. In return Tim merely had to sign away half the money from his forthcoming book to Hauchard.

While in Switzerland, Leary was treated to gourmet lunches, dinners at expensive restaurants, and weekend parties with wealthy foreigners. Old friends such as Billy Hitchcock dropped by to visit. Leary also contacted Dr. Albert Hofmann, the Sandoz chemist who had discovered LSD nearly thirty years earlier. They met for the first time at a cafe in Lausanne. Hofmann told Leary about his informal "wisdom school" centered around psychedelic sessions with leading European intellectuals, including Ernst Junger, the German novelist and mystic. Leary asked Hofmann about the dangers of LSD, and the elderly scientist insisted there was no evidence of brain damage caused by the drug. The only dangers, he maintained, were psycho- logical and could be avoided by supportive conditions. In the final analysis Dr. Hofmann affirmed the importance of LSD as an "aid to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive reality."

Leary's legal status remained ambiguous during his eighteen-month sojourn in Switzerland. He was without a valid passport, but he had money, which is tantamount to a passport for a man on the run. When Bantam Books came through with his $250,000 advance (half of which went to Hauchard), Leary bought a spiffy yellow Porsche and a state-of-the-art stereo system. He traveled from one Swiss canton to the next, each allowing him to stay for just so long. His insecure and terminally jangled lifestyle was wearing on Rosemary's nerves. For seven years they had been together through high times and the all too frequent cycle of arrests, trials, convictions, jail, escape, and flight. While Tim was convalescing in a hospital after a minor operation, Rosemary had a love affair with an old friend. Leary was high on acid when he found out what had happened, and he told his wife to pack her bags and leave. It was a final break; he would almost never mention her name again.

With Rosemary gone, Leary was no longer moored to any kind of personal stability. He was floating in his own version of a Fellini film, accompanied by a half-desperate circus of wired, burned-out dopers, self-styled revolutionaries, informers, journalists, and starfuckers. Besides the mysterious Hauchard, various smugglers and power peddlers offered him deals that only further confused the issue of who his friends really were. Weary of a life in constant flux, perhaps a little bored at age 50, Leary was ready for a change of scene. Soon a woman would enter his life who could have walked off a page of a Thomas Pynchon novel.

It's not clear why Joanna Harcourt-Smith was so intent on tracking Leary down. Born in Saint Moritz, she was a young globe-trotting adventuress who'd been married twice before she met Leary. Her father was a British aristocrat and her stepfather one of the wealthiest men in Europe; she was also the niece of Simon Harcourt-Smith, a London publisher.

In the fall of 1972, Joanna met Michel Hauchard for drinks in New York. Hauchard, her ex-lover, bragged that he "owned" Timothy Leary, openly waving the check from his book advance. Joanna boarded the next plane to Geneva, and arranged to meet Leary at a nearby cafe. Tim was immediately attracted by her wit and sexy smile. As they drove back to Leary's pad, Joanna reached into her pocket, pulled out two hits of windowpane acid, swallowed one, and said of the other, "Whoever eats this will follow me." Leary gobbled the psychedelic, precipitating an all-night session of lovemaking, speaking in French, and overall grokking. The next morning, Tim told his housemates that he had found his perfect love.

Joanna filled a void in Leary's life created by the chaotic events and uncertainties of two years on the lam. She and Tim became almost a single entity. They tripped together, took long baths in a big tub, living only for the moment. But there were still problems with the Swiss authorities. Leary had been denied asylum three times, and he was tired of pleading his case from one canton to the next. Hauchard told him that it wouldn't be safe to stay in Switzerland much longer.

With some prodding from Joanna they decided to drive off in his yellow Porsche for a "honeymoon," even though they were not officially married. In Austria, they were joined by Dennis Martino, whom Leary had met a few years earlier in Laguna Beach through the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. (Martino's twin brother, David, was married to Leary's daughter, Susan.) Martino had participated in numerous drug smuggling operations for the Brotherhood until he was busted for selling marijuana. After serving six months in prison, he jumped probation and fled to Europe.

By this time a federal task force composed of thirteen agencies -- including the FBI, CIA, BNDD, IRS, Customs, and the State Department -- was gearing up for a major crackdown on the Brotherhood. Operation BEL, as the Brotherhood sting was called, scored its first major victory in August 1972, when narcotics agents arrested forty people in three different states. The predawn raids were ordered on the basis of twenty-nine secret indictments handed down by an Orange County grand jury. They marked the culmination of a year-long investigation that netted a million and a half LSD tablets, two and a half tons of hashish, thirty gallons of hash oil, and $20,000 in cash. Cecil Hicks, the district attorney of Orange County, fingered Leary as "the Godfather" of the largest drug smuggling network in the world and vowed to press for his extradition from Switzerland. "Leary is responsible for destroying more lives than any other human being," Hicks declared.

Leary felt the heat from Operation BEL as he pondered his next move in Europe. Further complications arose when Joanna grew weak and yellow with hepatitis. She refused hospitalization, telling Leary that unless they kept traveling, American agents would catch up with them. The wandering fugitives were short on cash, but Joanna suggested they head east, perhaps to Ceylon, where they could rendezvous with some of her friends and charter a yacht. An idyllic life in the South Seas was envisioned. But first, at Joanna's insistence, they would stop in Afghanistan, a country that had no extradition treaty with the US. Martino was in contact with some hash smugglers there, and Joanna said she knew the royal prince. Certainly he'd help them get to Ceylon.

The decision to fly to Afghanistan proved to be a fatal mistake. Kabul, the capital city, was swarming with American narcotics police who were investigating the hashish smuggling ring associated with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. The three were taken into custody while Terrence Burke, a former CIA agent assigned by the BNDD to work on the Brotherhood conspiracy case, convinced the Afghan authorities to deport Leary.

In an unusual display of largesse Joanna was permitted by US officials to accompany Leary on a flight to Los Angeles at a cost to taxpayers of $1,086 for her one-way first-class ticket. Why this was done, neither the State Department nor the BNDD was willing to say. Perhaps it was Joanna's reward for leading Leary into a trap. Although she had known him for only a month, it was Joanna who persuaded Leary to leave Switzerland and embark on a whirlwind tour that ended with the debacle in Kabul. Tim never suspected that she might have had anything but the purest of motives for seeking him out. A few hours before they landed in the States, he took out pen and paper and scribbled a note that would serve as Joanna's introduction to radical circles in America: "The right to speak for me I hereby lovingly give to Joanna Harcourt-Smith, who is my love, my voice, my wisdom, my words, my output to the world. "

On January 17, 1973, four days after being nabbed in Afghanistan, Timothy Leary stepped off a plane in Los Angeles and looked out at fifty helmeted policemen with riot guns lining the path to the Volkswagen bus that would take him away. When BNDD agent Burke formally placed him under arrest, Leary responded by flashing his trademark ear-to-ear smile to the camera crews. But it was little more than a mask, for the High Priest was actually in quite a fix. In addition to the grand jury indictment alleging his involvement with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, he now had to answer for his prison escape. Leary was in no position to scoff at these charges. With bail set at $5,000,000 (the highest ever for an American citizen), the Justice Department looked forward to Leary's escape trial as a means of getting at one of their prime targets: the Weathermen, whose members topped the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list.

The escape trial began in March, 1973. The jury took less than two hours to return a guilty verdict, and Leary was sentenced to five years in addition to the twenty he was serving when he escaped. This time it would be hard time at Folsom. Undaunted, Joanna predicted that Leary would be out of prison in a few weeks. "We'll simply leave our bodies.... We believe in miracles," she told a reporter. "Timothy Leary is a free man.... He's stronger than ever. He's happy."

Joanna rented an apartment on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco and proceeded to organize a Leary Defense Committee. Fundraising benefits were held in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, but she squandered all the money on cocaine, jewelry from Cartier's, and long-distance calls to her mother in Spain. Joanna's erratic antics and high-rolling lifestyle alienated many of Leary's friends. When Allen Ginsberg, accompanied by Joanna and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, visited Tim in Folsom, he warned that she might be some kind of "double agent." Joanna looked at Tim and sloughed it off. "Oh, you know, he just hates women," she said, apparently in reference to Ginsberg's homosexuality. Leary asked Ginsberg if he would take over the defense committee, but Ginsberg was unable to assume such a heavy responsibility. In exasperation Leary threw up his hands as if to say, "Even if she is an agent, she's all I've got."

In November, 1973, Leary was transferred from Folsom to Vacaville Prison, previously the site of an extensive CIA drug testing program. While in Vacaville, he learned that Dennis Martino had been working as a government informer and that he and Joanna were having a relationship. Martino had struck a deal with the BNDD after they were busted in Kabul. As an undercover narc he was instrumental in arranging the arrests of at least two dozen people, some of whom were old associates from his dope-dealing days with the Brotherhood. His diligent service earned him some brownie points, but Martino's controllers refused to let him off the hook until he persuaded Leary to cooperate with the feds.

For Leary the confirmation that the people closest to him were working with his captors had to be a terrible blow. Joanna privately maintained that she was really a double or triple agent. According to Martino she routinely met US marshals at the door of her Telegraph Hill apartment in the nude, hoping to catch them in compromising situations; Martino hid in an adjacent room and taped the conversations. Joanna later told Ginsberg that she was monitoring the feds so she could blackmail them by threatening to make public the various "deals" they had proposed for Tim's release.

Leary, meanwhile, had begun to wither under the systematic pressure exerted by his most intimate contacts. Little by little Joanna and Martino brought him closer to the break desired by his jailers. The turning point came in April 1974. Leary indicated he was ready to talk. The FBI made it official when they pegged him with the code name of the songbird, "Charlie Thrush."

Leary defended his decision to collaborate with the feds by invoking the spectacle of Watergate. He compared his own situation with that of President Nixon, who would soon face impeachment for obstruction of justice and conduct unbefitting a chief of state. "You've got to tell the truth," said Leary.

I can't condemn Richard Nixon for shutting his mouth because I'm shutting my mouth. I'm not getting paroled until I'm rehabilitated. I'm not getting out behind the lawyers. I've had a chance to analyze, as a psychologist, Nixon's downfall. I've had a chance to see that I'm locked up because of the way I played secrets. I know some people might get hurt. But if I can tell my story and get it all out, karmically, I think I'm free within. And if I'm free within, it will reflect without.... When I look at Socrates, I see that all they wanted him to do was just say he was sorry. He didn't have to drink the hemlock. Maybe if the offer was poison, I'd take that, I don't know. But it is prison. I'm a rat in a maze, staring at the door, looking for another door and there isn't one. Like it or not, when you're in the prison system, you come out through the system, unless you escape, and that didn't work."

Leary was grilled by the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), but most of the information he gave was already common knowledge among law enforcement experts. But the feds had other uses for Leary. They wanted his assistance in setting up the arrest of George Chula, an attorney who had previously defended both Leary and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Leary told a grand jury that Chula had given him a small chunk of hash when they met at the Orange County courthouse the previous year. Joanna also gave damaging testimony, describing an encounter with Chula wherein he allegedly offered her marijuana and cocaine. When asked why she was testifying, Joanna told the grand jury that she found 99% of the drug culture "to be dishonest, lying people [who didn't know] where they were coming from and where they were going." Chula was subsequently convicted of a minor marijuana violation and served forty-five days in jail.

"LEARY WILL SING," declared a Chicago Tribune headline. Soon there were rumors of a massive grand jury circus, with Leary fingering many of his former associates. After all, one of the main reasons the authorities went to such trouble to have Leary inform was to let everyone know about it in order to create fear and distrust among political and cultural activists. Also, it would be a way of trashing their values -- the High Priest would turn out to be a fighter for his own skin just like everybody else. The media had always latched onto Leary as the one figure who personified the psychedelic movement, and by exposing him as a fink the entire subculture was implicitly discredited.

Although he insisted he was innocent on the "karmic" level, those who felt threatened by his actions took a different view. "I'm digesting news of Herr Doktor Leary, the swine," wrote Abbie Hoffman, who went underground after being busted for cocaine possession (which he claimed was a police setup). "It's obvious to me he's talked his fucking demented head off to the Gestapo.... God, Leary is disgusting. It's not just a question of being a squealer but a question of squealing on people who helped you.... The curses crowd my mouth. ... Timothy Leary is a name worse than Benedict Arnold."

Out of anxiety as much as a desire to get the facts, a unique press conference was called at the Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco on September 18, 1974. It was sponsored by a group calling itself People Investigating Leary's Lies, or PILL. A panel of counterculture heroes organized and moderated by journalist Ken Kelley addressed an audience of nearly two hundred. Jerry Rubin spoke first, reciting the facts as he knew them. It was a loose chronology and not much was certain. Rubin wondered what had really happened to Leary. Was he brainwashed in Vacaville -- a prison with a reputation for behavior modification abuse of its inmates? Had only a phantom Leary survived? Or did his finking demonstrate that he never really took his politics seriously? "He may have gotten frightened -- experienced an ego break," Ram Dass suggested, "or he may have lost control under the pressures of prison and developed a direct paranoid state where the ends justify the means."

When it was Allen Ginsberg's turn to speak, he began by chanting OM for a few minutes. He had written something for the conference called "Om Ah Hum: 44 Temporary Questions on Dr. Leary." These questions, ranging from witty to paranoid, brought out all the contradictions Leary's informing posed for the New Left. Ginsberg's open-ended tirade went in all directions, and that was its purpose -- not to defend the informer, but to illustrate that the left versus right conflicts of the 1960s were no longer black and white, if they ever had been, and that the gaps in Leary's recent history made it imperative not to simply denounce him.

"Should we stop trusting our friends like in a Hotel room in Moscow?" Ginsberg asked.

Is he a Russian-model prisoner brought into courtroom news conferences blinking in daylight after years in jails and months incommunicado in solitary cells with nobody to talk to but thought-control police interrogators? ... Is he like Zabbathi Zvi, the False Messiah, accepted by millions of Jews centuries ago, who left Europe for the Holy Land, was captured by Turks on his way, told he'd have his head cut off unless he converted to Islam, and so accepted Allah? Didn't his followers split into sects, some claiming it was a wise decision? ...

Is Leary exaggerating and lying to build such confused cases and conspiracies that the authorities will lose all the trials he witnesses, and he'll be let go in the confusion? ... Is he trying to clean the karmic blackboard by creating a hippie Watergate? ... Is Joanna Harcourt-Smith, his one contact spokes-agent, a sex spy, agent provocateuse, double agent, CIA hysteric, jealous tigress, or what? ... Will citizens be arrested, indicted, taken to jail for Leary's freedom? ... Doesn't the old cry "Free Tim Leary!" apply now urgent as ever?


A can of worms had been opened. Paranoia was rampant among radicals who feared that Leary might be talking about any number of people he'd been in contact with over the years. Some blamed Leary for being a turncoat, others directed their anger at the government and the criminal justice system. The discussion grew increasingly acrimonious as the afternoon wore on. There for all to see were the signs of disintegration -- fear, backstabbing, confusion, resentment, animosity. "The 1960s are finally dead," said Ken Kelley after the conference adjourned. "That was just the funeral."


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