Shifting Footprints and Messianic Missions: Staying In Iraq 'Till Kingdom Come

Maureen Farrell nails it. I've been meaning to do an article that pulls together all the evidence for the planned permanent occupation of Iraq, but Maureen beat me to it.

Please read this in its entirety, and do everything you can to make part of the national discussion. It's the 800 pound gorilla in the room, and until policymakers notice it, it's gonna keep smashing the furniture to bits.

Happy Bicycle Day

On April 19th, 1943, Swiss research chemist, Dr. Albert Hofmann, conducted a self-experiment with a then unknown compound, "LSD-25," a product of his chemical research. The extraordinary transformation of consciousness was utterly beyond his expectation. He experienced the first LSD "trip." Uncertain what was happening to him, he left the laboratory by bicycle. . . and an epic journey of scientific investigation and social change began. April 19th, 2006 is the 63rd anniversary of this great discovery.

THE BICYCLE RIDE - An animated short by David Normal

More on St. Albert at Erowid.

And don't miss the classic "Flashback" animation (with music by Shpongle).

Bunker Buster Blues

A terrifying animation of bunker buster nukes from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

A Poetics of Conspiracy

From the brilliant Hakim Bey, father of the "Temporary Autonomous Zone" and author of the seminal Poetic Terrorism:

Rather than speak of conspiracy theory we might instead try to construct a poetics of conspiracy. A conspiracy would be treated like an aesthetic construct, or a language-construct, and could be analyzed like a text. Robert Anton Wilson has done this with his vast and playful "Illuminati" fantasy. We can also use conspiracy theory as a weapon of agit-prop. Conspiracies of "power" make use of sheer disinformation; the least we can do in retaliation is to trace it to its source. Indeed we should avoid the mystique of conspiracy theory, the fantasy that conspiracy is all-powerful. Conspiracies can be blown. They can even be defeated. But I fear they cannot simply be ignored. The refusal to admit any validity to conspiracy theory is itself a form of spectacular delusion-blind belief in the liberal, rational, daylight world in which we all have "rights", in which "the system works", in which "democratic values will prevail in the long run" because Nature has so decreed it.

History is a big mess. Maybe conspiracies don't work. But we have to act as if they do work. In fact the non-authoritarian movement not only needs its own conspiracy theory, it needs its own conspiracies. Whether they "work" or not. Either we all breath together or we each suffocate on our own. "They " are conspiring, never doubt it, those sinister clowns. Not only should we arm ourselves with conspiracy theory, we should have our own conspiracies-our TAZ's-our ontological guerilla commando hit-squads-our Poetic Terrorists- our chaos cabals-our secret societies. Proudhor said so. Bakunin said so. Malatesta said so. It's anarchist tradition.

Bloggone... Where the Hell is Professor Pan?

Ai yi yi...

No, I haven't been kidnapped by agents of the PTB. I'm not locked in a cell beneath Langley with my eyeballs propped open while being forced to watch American Idol 24/7 with electrodes attached to my dirty bits, nor am I en route to a black-op rendition prison in an undisclosed Eastern Europrean country.

It's much simpler than that.

I've been putting the finishing touches on my novel, Cabal. And beginning the lengthy, laborious, toner-cartridge consuming hunt for a hot, go-go literary agent to represent the book.

So my apologies, once again, for letting the blog get so dusty and cobweb-strewn.

I promise more insightful nuggets of parapolitical goodness soon. And once the novel is published, I can promise all my faithful readers that you will enjoy seeing some of the themes chronicled on this blog wrapped in a very scary, very dark story. But you wouldn't expect anything else, would you?

Of course, if you're a regular here and a hot, up-and-coming literary agent, please do drop me a line, will you?