Of Drugs and War
Charles Shaw
On Saturday, October 18th, Yoga Now Studios in Chicago will launch their new lecture and workshop series with a reprise of my M.A.P.S/Entheon Village DreamRise presentation from this year's Burning Man festival, "The Secret History of the War on Drugs." In case you missed all the hub bub, this talk I gave was the one piece of "politics" out of the whole festival that the Wall Street Journal chose to "report" on for their review of this year's theme, "The American Dream."
"The Secret History of the War on Drugs" began as a section of Exile Nation, the book I have been writing over the course of the last year that chronicles my experiences in the drug war as both a recovering addict and activist working to raise awareness and reform drug policy, and the time I spent in prison on a non-violent drug possession charge.
"Secret History" cobbles together the fascinating and utterly shocking true history of American drug policy, where nothing is as it appears. My working thesis, as I explained to the WSJ, is that the American government has created many of the drug problems it claims the War on Drugs is supposedly designed to address. As you can probably imagine, I'm just a tad bit more candid about my conclusions.
Naturally, and expectedly, and in spite of quite a bit of source material I provided, the Journal called it a "preposterous conspiracy theory." It becomes even less surprising when you learn that the writer, Travis Kavulla, is an evangelical christian and journalism fellow for the ultra-conservative Phillips Foundation. If nothing else, the article was a paen to the utter lack of seriousness and comprehension the mainstream establishment tosses in our direction. But consider what incredible strength exists when you can quietly subvert right out in the open just by doin' your thing, because the power structure doesn't recognize you as a threat.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. - Gandhi
The drug war is one of those topics that is always met with fierce resistance for a number of reasons involving class and race and cultural identity. But more than that, it is one of those archetypal issues that is in conflict with the American mythology that we are goverened by the rule of law, and the morality of righteousness.
One of the great new stories we need to learn is the true story of US involvement in the global drug trade and its integral role in the American economic and political systems.
In case you can't make it to Chicago, both M.A.P.S. and Healing the Nations posted recordings of the series (you can find Daniel, and the Shulgins, and Rick Doblin's talks there as well)
This lecture is being presented in collaboration with Entheon Village and the Chicago Consciousness Cafe.
Saturday, October 18th, 2008, 1-4pm
Yoga Now Gold Coast
742 N. LaSalle St.
Chicago, IL
$10 suggested donation, no obligation, no one turned away.
Future Yoga Now series presentations include author/mystic Andrew Harvey and the Resonance Project in December, and the Pachamama Alliance in January.
Above photo: The crowd gathered for my talk at Entheon Village, Thursday August 28, 2008.
Photo Credit: Rick Kim Photography
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Holy cow this sounds like a
Black Light in the Attic Podcast w/Serpicody & Sancho
http://blacklightattic.podomatic.com
i have to pipe in here
The "drug war" is the war, we are all drugged one way or the other, no wonder we are constantly bombed with propaganda and religion, which if truth be told, are, one is the biggest drug of all and the other perpetuates the deal, war is a drug, God is a drug, the greed of the corporations is all about drugging us, through commodity fetishism. How does all this translate to the common street pusher or the teeny bopper pot smoker?Well we know how and why marijuana was made illegal, no conspiracy there on the part of the people that are made into criminals by this.As a teenager i just naturally began experimenting with the forbidden weed, and then psychedelics.Any self respecting teenager would want to try the forbidden plants.Right?
How absurd of some lacky institution of propaganda journalist to say "it's a conspiracy theory" Obviously " The Secret History of the War on Drugs" just opens up the whole can of worms of this sick sick sick society we all are stuck in.Oppression and suppression takes on many shapes and forms.Addiction is the norm, even if it is just television and stupidity, coffee and cigarettes, people are addicted to shock jocks and foaming at the mouth pyschopaths that addict you to hate and end of the world for Jesus.
Yeah i could write a friggin book about this, damn straight, in fact i did write an experimental novel about what my teenage experiences were like in the late 60's.It's got that Hunter Thompsonesque vibe except i was just a teen when the psychedelic wave crashed through my scene.I don't know how many times i have mentioned that on RS but it just comes up, really! Heck when i was a teenager i was arrested in drug related incidents, i was charged with..."leading a idle, lewd, immoral, and desolate life" because they could not find any other thing to charge me with.Because of that i became a natural writer.Ha!
Yeah i met all kinds of drug addicts, some of them are not alive now, i read Naked Lunch when i was 18, between William Burroughs, Alan Watts, and Tim Leary, i had a lot to think about.As i plunged into the subterranean world, like some serpentine roller coaster ride through the Dizzyland funhouse maze, my trail of bird crums was the scralls i made with my trusty pushbutton pen.Sometimes i woke up naked and bloody with nothin but my friend the pen.
Until we live in a sane world, we will be made into little pop out drug addicts, brain dead joe six six six packs that are too addled to know that the ho of babylon is not fit to run a car wash let alone a country,we are addicted to the drug war on life itself, on people that will either suffer on the cross of addiction, or be addicted to a dozen pharmacuticals and or sent off to the drug war to kill kill kill in the thrill of computer simulated wars on our imagination.The Drug War Military Media Bank Complex.
Oh i am mad, mad as the knowledge of good and evil can make me. But i am sane, as sane as the sobering site of how low the drug wars can go.
Stop the Merida Initiative