On 2005-12-22 09:08:00, jgar wrote:
"Just for the record Art Barker despised Richard Nixon and always blamed Nixon?s plumbers for deliberately trying to shut down the Seed in it's early years. Some government agency (under order?s from the White house) conducted an audit at the Seed because of some public statement Art made endorsing Edwin Musky, during a failed run for the presidency. Because of this and because Art would have to relinquished control of the Seed into government hands I am convinced that Art would have never agreed to any of this.
But he evidently didn't have a problem w/ accepting NIDA funding. Not saying it was Art's intent to play the stoodge for psyops. In fact, knowing him, I'd say he may well have had grand delusions about having it the other way around; where the government would go on handing him money and let him call all the shots.
In spite of what you may think (again I will say that I was not that close to Art during my years at the Seed) Art did believe in what he was doing was right and good.
Yes, I know. I've pretty much always believed that. But then, every human being down through history who ever deemed themselves a leader or a revolutionary thought the same thing. Did Che view himself as a bad guy? How about Capone?
I say this not to negate your opinion but to say only what I observed. I was not present when this audit happened and perhaps someone who was there could shed some more light on this situation.
As per any type of study that might have been done (as has been stated before in this forum) has to be carefully scrutinized before any kind of validity can be given.
Well, here would be not a bad place to start:
In 1971 the United States Senate's Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights under the directorship of Senator Sam Ervin began an investigation of the US government's role in behavior modification. Ervin's 650 page report was published in November 1974 under the title "Individual Rights and the Federal Role in Behavior Modification." Other members of the subcommittee included: Senators John McClellan, Arkansas, Edward Kennedy, Massachusetts, Birch Bayh, Indiana, Robert Byrd, West Virginia, John Tunney, California, Edward Gurney, Florida, Roman Hruska, Nebraska, Hiram Fong, Hawaii, Strom Thurmond, South Carolina, and Lawrence Baskir, Chief Counsel, Dorothy Glancy, Counsel, Joseph Klutz, Research Assistant, Alfred Pollard, Research Assistant, and George Downs, Sr, Chief Printing Clerk, and Anita Kinlaw, a legal intern. The report includes a study of Straight's predecessor program, The Seed, and concludes that The Seed used methods similar to the "brainwashing" methods employed by North Koreans against American servicemen during the Korean War.
http://thestraights.com/reports/us_involvement.htm
As you well know things can be politically motivated and intent might not be true or pure.
Yeah, no shit! Like, for example, official statement as fact of the spurious myth of the Gateway Theory? Or of marijuana addiction? Or check this out:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sout ... 522108.stmA woman dies of kidney failur, having tried GW Pharma's Sativex (which is, essentially, Cannabis tincture) some months prior. And the rabid drug warriors are trying to blame that clinical trial for her death? Never mind the diabetes, advanced age and other, far more likely culprits. No, there's a problem, see. Even the doctors and governments are starting to break ranks on the governments' hysterical position on cannabis. So this is their solution; demonize the competition.
I have read or heard about studies that taken for the face value looked good but than carefully looking into the claims or conclusions the findings are just way off.
Yeah, here's some debunking on that
http://www.ukcia.org/research/nahas.htmAl Robison is still around, still posting. If you'd like to get his take on these issues, you can contact him through Drug Policy Forum of Texas he'd probably answer your email. He became interested in the political aspects of drug war research when he was involved in government funded research to determine the toxicity of THC. His team's research concluded that there isn't any. You simply can't put enough THC into a lab rat to kill the bastard w/o that amount being attributable to overall dilution (in other words, so much that even if you had used water it would delute the blood to the point of overload)
Yes, indeed, figures don't lie but liars sure can figure. So far, the truth has been the first casualty in the Drug War. And, whether Art and Lybbi ever intended it or not, their very own lies have become fodder in that war.
This is why I always state that my opinions are based only through my years and experiences there. This is why I only give importance to opinions stated by the people who actually went thru the program.
Well, that's not the whole story. Sorry, it just isn't. If you want the whole story, you have to look elsewhere. If you don't want the whole story, that's fine too. But don't kid yourself. Closing your eyes doesn't really make the world go away.
I'm glad some people have that faith. I don't have that faith. If there is a God, a caring God, then we have to figure he's done an extraordinary job of making a very cruel world.
--Dave Matthews, South African rock musician
_________________
Drug war POW
Straight, Sarasota
`80 - `82