What happened to High Times?

Once upon a time there lived a young dragon who loved to protect the weak and he became so popular, people built a temple in his honor to celebrate peace culture, and invited him to live inside. Donations flowed in from all over the empire because most people desire peace on earth, especially the ones who have tasted war. The nice dragon moved into the temple and kept guard on the treasure inside.

Another dragon lived nearby and was devoted to conflict and war. He was not popular. He was greedy. He liked to play people by pretending to be a nice dragon. But he was not nice and had blood on his fangs. But when it was useful, he pretended to support peace, which is how he infiltrated the temple and poisoned the peace dragon. The treasure was soon sold to buy a waterfront house in the Yale enclave in the Hamptons, a waterfront mansion in Palm Beach, a horse farm in Ireland, and an apartment on Billionaires Row in Manhattan overlooking Central Park. The temple transformed into a nest of thieves.

There’s also a labyrinth, race horses with 5-pound ticks, and another savage murder in this story, and it’s not a fairy tale but the real story of what happened to High Times, and how the company was stolen by the secret leader of the terrorist Weather Underground and then run into the ground.

Since I filmed most everything I did while at High Times, and since I have the rights to exploit that footage, I’ve made a feature about a meeting that transpired after the art director got into a pissing war with the son of Tom Forcade’s sister.

At the time, the magazine was the envy of the industry, with the highest sell-through rate and highest paid advertising of any magazine in its class. We had 100,000 paid readers and 55 pages of paid advertising. (When I’d arrived, the magazine had under 20,000 readers.) The advertising, by the way, was the sleaziest stuff possible: Fake pill ads and then fake bud ads. But those rip-off ads brought in a half million a year so the bad dragon loved them.

The magazine was gutted by the bad dragon, but finding out what really happened was a voyage of discovery through the labyrinth.

Fortunately, I filmed the bad dragon in action, including a visit from his co-conspirator, a former military intelligence operative who came to the office to deliver a two-day magic show intended to persuade the impoverished and naive staff that blue skies were ahead.

Check out my 20-part series “The Strategic Meeting.” It plays just like a Christopher Guest mockumentary, but it’s all hilariously true.

Just keep in mind, bad dragons have no empathy and never display any real feelings, just backhanded compliments amid layers of sarcasm. If you look close you might catch the sneers.

Holy Knight Defenders of the True Story of the Grail

Everyone knows the nation has been swamped by a crisis in violence, although nobody seems to know how to fix the problem. Much trauma today can be traced to the insane war on drugs that continued for decades and we have casualties on both sides. It never should have happened. Cannabis is the world’s greatest medicine and there was no need to destroy lives over a healing plant that grows everywhere.

My current mission is to build Dizzyhippieland (working title), a dogma-free ceremony site for helping those with PTSD. I will start by erecting a memorial to the victims of the war on drugs, including law enforcement officers killed and injured, as well as growers and users of marijuana.

The plan is to recruit 12 of the coolest people in the world. These volunteers will build and occupy their own hobbit homes around a lake or riverbank. There will be bike trails through the forest lit by LED lights that one can ride day and night. (My primary vehicle is a solar-powered trike called the Elf. I already have a fleet of them ready to move to the site, as well as a fleet of pedal boats.) These are the rides at Hippiedizzyland. No cars or combustion engines allowed inside and everything will be solar powered. The volunteers will be allowed to rent out their homes and/or use them to vend arts and crafts.

In April, I’ll unveil my new 420 ritual. Although I never got credit for spearheading 420, I was the first person to create 420 ceremonies outside Marin County. My new 420 ritual is based on Peter Schumann’s puppet theater and you can find an elaborate script on my Facebook page.

I was 16 when I founded my first counterculture publication in Urbana, Illinois. Ours was a fascinating town stuffed with colorful characters. Johnny Roselli was a frequent visitor as the 20-something who inherited the local TV station and newspaper was his favorite mistress. Chicago “men of honor” came down often to shoot quail in the cornfields.

More important to me, the town was a seething hotbed of revolutionary thought. This energy got focussed at the Unitarian Church on campus. A beatnik coffeeshop called The Red Herring opened in the basement.

My tribe created garage rock. I went from a shy wallflower with no friends to having supreme confidence with my new trajectory in life. The power and glory of music should not be underestimated. Music, math and spirituality ride together.

I witnessed the full illumination of the biggest local rock star Jim Cole. He transformed quick after his first public performance on the sidewalk of Green Street. Watching the footage of early Elvis on his toes, his entire body charged with electric energy, reminded me of Jim. He reached an illuminated state while his life became performance art.

Where did this power come from? Every super hottie in the twin cities wanted to eat Jim alive and they squealed with delight during his performances. Jim wasn’t the only one in the band soaking up those juices. The 15-year-old guitar player Mark Warwick wrote “Only Me,” one of the first psychedelic rock songs. The next year, I created The Tin Whistle.

After I moved to NYC, I got into punk, because I understood the connection between punk and garage rock. I founded the Soul Assassins and began creating psychopunkadelia.

Then I landed at the dying High Times, which I quickly turned into the magazine success story of the 1990s. Everything I did while at High Times was recorded on video and I hold the only copies of the footage. I kept notes, letters, audio and video tape, photos, and original art from 1964 until the present. It represents the world’s most valuable counterculture archive and is income-producing. The archive will be moving to the Church of the Holy Grail at Dizzyhippieland.

Most of the so-called cannabis churches today are hoodwinks working out-dated dogmas. I gag when I see people calling themselves “reverend this or that” or “Weed Jesus.”

I provide something different: real enlightenment. I have ransacked the history of religion and magic and distilled the ancient wisdom down to its ultimate essence. First, let your mind be free of all dogma. There is only one rule: don’t hurt anybody. Once you strip away the fake dogma, you can follow your heart, where the real Bible is already written.

My revival movement involves spreading peace culture. My ceremonies are always free to attend. I hand out hymnals and do singalongs of my spirituals, which are dogma-free.

If not for prohibition, I believe we’d have a lot more weed spirituals. You can find my hymns on my Youtube site under The Seeds of Doubt. Check out my anthem, In Search of the Grail. The real secret of the grail saga was not the cup itself but the medicine that went inside, an elixir capable of bringing peace to the kingdom. The grail story is really about the power of cannabis to bring peace.

I’m not interested in chasing money. I am interested in exposing fake gurus and weed religion carpetbaggers who spread Santa Claus stories about everlasting life.

I’m looking for a few dozen acres in the Catskills with a private lake or riverbank where I can erect a phoenix on a commanding site so that when the sun rises on April 20th, it appears between the phoenix’s wings to illuminate a crystal on top of a peace pole.

If you contribute $5 or more to building Dizzyhippieland, your name will be on that memorial (provided you rank among the first 420 donors).

Kudos to Larry Green for being the first to send a donation. Jiffy Schnack was the first volunteer. He was an artist-in-residence at Area when I first met him. Since then, Coke La Rock, Busy Bee, Grandmaster Caz, and Shawn “Ammo” McQuate have saddled for the ride.

Maybe you’d like to ride with us? I am looking for capable artists, musicians, performers, carpenters, mechanics. You’d be allowed to develop your own rockstar compound on the site if accepted onto the crew.

It’s not a full-time gig and there won’t be pay beyond room and board.

There’s nothing plastic about Dizzyhippieland, although everything is constructed cheaply. Tents, tipis, Christmas lights, and non-toxic spray paint create much of the set pieces. There will be numerous stages, saunas and massage tables because they are useful in healing. There will be fireworks and burns at the center of the lake during major ceremonies. The stage faces the lake with the sun behind it, and the lake acts as a sounding board. The music becomes magical from this lake effect.

The growth of the site will depend entirely on how many people come to the ceremonies, the first of which will occur between April 19-21, 2023.

Of course, if any cannabis companies step forward and want to help sponsor such a place, I would welcome them.

And their karma might soar because they did something for peace and not plata.

https://gofund.me/e2ef5a94

Guide to Some Famous Fake Whistleblowers

When intel wants to lead independent researchers into a rabbit hole, they start by manufacturing a lightning rod. A fake whistleblower. Every major crime committed by the CIA is dominated by a fake whistleblower. Mark Lane is a great example.

The Apocalyptic Mike Ruppert

The fake whistleblower will get all the headlines. The fake whistleblower will be attacked through staged confrontations. These flame wars only serve to buttress the fake whistleblower’s position at the top of conspiracy mountain. I am reminded greatly of the feud between Mike Ruppert and Chip Berlet.

Ruppert exposed the war games on 9/11 that shielded the hijackings with fake radar blips blanketing the East Coast and then led his followers into Peak Oil, which was a scheme to double oil prices by falsely claiming we were about to run out. He also dug a 9/11 rabbit hole called “Lt. Vreeland.”

Berlet led the primary attack on 9/11 conspiracy theory, while the “truth” movement was deeply embedded with spooks of all stripes from day one. This should be considered evidence of an inside job.

Chip Berlet invented the word “conspiracism” and promoted the idea that all people who thought 9/11 might have been an inside job belonged in insane asylums. Berlet was briefly made Washington DC correspondent for High Times due to his connections to Michael Kennedy. Both were tutored in intel ops by Leonard Boudin, whose uncle had founded the American Communist Party with John Reed. Of course Louis and Reed were both spooks, as was Leonard as well as anyone connected to his “Committee on Public Safety.” In this case,  protecting “public safety” involved setting off hundreds of bombs and terrorizing America with leftwing violence for over a decade. Shades of 1984 newspeak.

Right after 9/11 the internet was flooded with conspiracy theory. Mostly crackpot info, but the more intellectual element pointed towards the Mossad. The leader of this meme called himself “Sean McBride” and he posted out of the Boston area. He never resorted to the racist language of his acolytes. I spent weeks debating McBride right after the event on a discussion board while getting pounded by haters.

One day, I posted fragments from Chip Berlet and McBride, revealing they were most likely the same person. Berlet was the chief debunker in the media of any Israeli connection to 9/11, a strong defender of Israel and considered an expert on Mossad operations. Berlet was a close associate of both Michael Kennedy and A.J. Weberman. Strangely, McBride went silent for hours. Typically, he was all over my posts. And when he did come back he explained he’d been busy “playing tennis.” Before long, Berlet lost his cushy paycheck from the CIA-connected Ford Foundation. I had to wonder if the two events might have been connected.

Walter Bowart

Walter Bowart was the first fake whistleblower on MK/Ultra. I have a letter or two from him in the archives. Bowart had a connection with Stephenson, indicating an MI6 component to exposing mind control.

The CIA was all over the LSD explosion and were behind much of the manufacture, distribution and profiteering. Their key operative was Ron Stark. Good luck finding anything real about him. The CIA’s alternative counterculture included Kerry Thornley, who put a smokescreen over the Boners involvement in the JFK hit. Thornley was assisted by Robert Anton Wilson in that regard.

Jan Irvin (right) turned Joe Rogan (left) onto DMT. I pay little attention to Rogan’s conspiracy-laden podcasts because he has a history of being played by intel stooges like Irvin.

I did podcast interviews with Jan Irvin and Ed Opperman some time ago after getting dumped by High Times. They sought me out and I was unaware of their Tin Foil Hattery. Irvin was involved in shifting Jack Herer away from cannabis and into amanita muscaria, a well-worn trail blazed initially by Gordon Wasson, a VP at JP Morgan. Irvin was greatly assisted in this mission by a pedophile named James Arthur (aka James Dukovic), who committed suicide after his crimes were exposed. Arthur abused some of Herer’s kids. Since Irvin has spent time in mental institutions, it’s possible he got programmed in the process. He’s a raving lunatic on the order of Mark Passio, and obviously those two support each other. In a nutshell, Irvin promotes the idea an Aleister Crowley sex magic cult run by Jews secretly runs the world. You have to pay Irvin to listen to my interview, but I undoubtedly went after McGowan and his theory that the entire counterculture was a CIA op from day one. McGowan was the one who invented the crisis actors rabbit hole.

Ed Opperman

Along these same lines, you’ll find the phony baloney Opperman Report. I think my interview with Ed got scrubbed. I did my best to call out the real intel operators infesting the counterculture movement. They involve lawyers, like Mark Lane, all members of the Communist-created National Lawyers Guild. On the super dark side of this group stood Michael Kennedy whose radical activities begin while stationed at Ft. Knox, KY, before he was relocated to Berkeley after getting mustered out. He was a secret leader of the terrorist Weather Underground.

I only saw Kennedy scared twice. The first was after he discovered New York magazine was investigating him for a potential cover story. I didn’t know it at the time, but Kennedy was connected to the murder of a San Francisco police officer. It was the first of numerous bombs set off by his unit, although they probably weren’t expecting a fatality, which is why they never took credit. During the planning, Kennedy’s wife was meeting with Bernadine Dohrn, as they had the same gynecologist and appointments were timed to coincide. This is spook ops 101.

Lance Taylor (center) changed his name to Afrika Bambaataa and began grooming kids entering Middle School.

Kennedy was terrified this might come out. His trajectory had moved swiftly from jousting with the government in numerous high-profile cases, to living in the Boner enclave in Wainscott and rubbing elbows with billionaires.

Funny thing about Opperman. He hung out with Yippies and Zippies in the early seventies and also knew Lance Taylor, who would later morph into Afrika Bambaataa. Unfortunately, Bambaataa was a pedophile who created a bizarre cult stuffed with Tin Foil Hattery. It’s dangerous to speak out about him because at least one insider who tried to expose the real story ended up getting murdered. Bam was able to get the center of gravity on hip hop for a brief time thanks to Planet Rock, his homage to Kraftwerk. Sadly, I played a crucial role in building up Bam’s reputation.

Towards the end of my Opperman interview, after I realized Ed was a McGowan fan and also supported Alex Jones’ outrageous lies that nobody died at Sandy Hook School….it was all crisis actors…. I cornered and roasted Ed over that issue. I can’t find that interview and it may be behind a paywall or scrubbed. I did make my own copy though. The list of people appearing on the Opperman Report gives a solid map to the Tin Foil Hat Patrol.

This may become my greatest lasting legacy. Far into the future, researchers may untangle intel’s massive campaign to manufacture lightning rods and unmask the network of intel sock puppets supporting ops like Alex Jones.

CODA:

Kennedy had zero experience with divorce litigation and Trump had a bulletproof Roy Cohn pre-nup. Kennedy began by telling Ivana to claim Donald had raped her against her will during their marriage. That was just the first of a long line of absurdities that back-fired. After it was over many months later, Ivana called Kennedy’s office as she had some questions about the bill he’d submitted.

Ivana and Kennedy’s wife seemed to go from best friends to no longer friends, and a rumor spread Ivana was happy with the final settlement, conveniently hidden behind a non-disclosure agreement.

My analysis in a nutshell is a coalition of East Coast old money and European royalty are working on keeping the status quo, which is why so much blather in our media on the Crown and the Pope as those magic shows require constant promotion to keep their hoodwinks going. All royals of the world are watching closely and most of them are related, so status quo is all in the family.

In order to manage the opposition, they must run all reform movements in secret. When you have a centuries old power structure, the secret police come with the territory, and the most effective leader was Adam Weishaupt, an orphan raised by Jesuits. But in my time, I may have clashed with his second coming in Kennedy, also raised by Jesuits from age 4.

Weishaupt ran the fake opposition against the Vatican during the Enlightenment Era, but upon his death, the church was called in, and he was granted full absolution.

How similar Kennedy received a full military funeral with army brass in attendance after running the terrorist Weather Underground and jousting with the CIA and Pentagon in numerous litigations. In other words, the fake opposition against the government. I submit this is evidence Kennedy began his career as a Vietnam war dissident while working secretly for G2.

Origins of Psychedelic Music

Cage staged a “happening” at the Stock Pavilion.

Summer 1966. A Beat symposium is held at the University of Illinois where John Cage is artist in residence.

A local Countess who had a long-running affair with John Roselli is the most powerful person in town not connected to the University. Among other holdings, she owns the local newspaper and TV station, and frequently jet-sets off to Europe, LA, and Palm Beach, when not holding court at the Champaign Country Club.

After the Italian Count she lifted out of poverty (to buy her title through marriage) was caught poking his secretary, she fired him. He fled back to Italy to plot his divorce settlement, but ended up with a bullet in the brain courtesy of Handsome Johnny.

Bill Harvey had been the first assassin she’d approached and declined. Roselli did not, however, and did it for free because the Countess had recently bank-rolled his return from Federal prison. Her empire was supervised by a local lawyer who was also the only known conduit to the Chicago mob.

Local teen Joe Sanderson was backpacking around the world. He would eventually become one of two Americans killed fighting for the Salvadorian revolution. David Foster Wallace had just entered classes at Yankee Ridge elementary, in the newly built suburb for the University of Illinois faculty. He would become one of the most celebrated novelists of his generation.

Spokesperson for the newly forged John Birch society, whose odd name was a palindrome, could be seen slinking around campus in trench coat and fedora, from one conspiratorial meeting to the next. He had recently testified before the Warren Commission. His house on West Ohio Street radiated with spooky vibrations, and children were cautioned to keep clear lest they be subjected to a sermon on the dangers of globalization.

A British noble, Sir Thomas  Willes Chitty 3rd, had recently arrived in town, intent on taking acid and having sex with the hottest super hottie he could find, on or off campus.

Allen Ginsberg informs the leather-coated, long-haired teens attending the Beat conference that his first psychedelic experience was on glue and this leads to a rush to Lincoln Square to buy glue and then to the barn at the Shirley Farm where they hold their secret beer and wine-fueled ceremonies, only this time with glue, and out pops Only Me, an amazing song, written by 15-year-old Mark Warwick, the first psychedelic anthem I ever heard, a song that urged everyone to “let their minds be free.”

The word “psychedelic” was coined in the mid-fifties in a letter from Humphry Osmond to Aldous Huxley. Osmond gave mescaline to Huxley in LA and Huxley soon wrote The Doors of Perception. Both men began looking for a word to describe their experiences with altered states. The book’s title came from England’s greatest visionary poet.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

Huxley suggested “phanerothyme,” from the Greek words for “to show” and “spirit.” 

“To make this mundane world sublime, take half a gram of phanerothyme.”

But Osmond chose “psyche” (for mind or soul) and deloun (for show). 

“To fathom Hell or soar angelic, just take a pinch of psychedelic.” 

Huxley on his first mescaline trip courtesy of British Intelligence.

Osmond announced the new word at the New York Academy of Sciences meeting in 1957. That same year, R. Gordon Wasson, a vice president at JP Morgan, published a photo essay in Life magazine detailing a trip to Mexico to imbibe mushrooms with a Mazatec shaman.

Wasson would go on to publish a ridiculous book claiming Soma of the Rig Veda was a mushroom. This rabbit hole concealed the real identity of Soma, which was cannabis mixed with milk and spices, something known as bhang in India. At the time, Wasson was in close contact with intelligence agent Dr. Andrija Puharich who would soon be arranging seances with the rich and famous. Puharich had been a frequent visitor to Fort Detrick, where the CIA’s MK/Ultra project had originated. He would later become the biggest booster of fake Israeli psychic Uri Geller.

For those teens seeking a mind-altering experience in the early 1960s, Huxley’s book was often the first step. The rock band The Doors took their name from the book. Jim Morrison’s talents were staggering and their psychedelic jams were among the best of the era for evoking a mystical experience. All fueled by the band’s extensive tripping together. When I think of Morrison in the late sixties, I also think of Jean Michel Basquiat in the late eighties. They both died young, but left a massive body of work.

But in 1964, Timothy Leary had captured the center of gravity by publishing The Psychedelic Experience. Sadly the book was a complete mess of no use to anyone and inscrutable to the average teen as Finnegan’s Wake. Really it was just a money grab. Leary lifted ancient material from Tibet, so there wasn’t much original writing to do. The book led people into a rabbit hole and did zero to enhance enlightenment.

Leary’s book was nothing like Huxley’s poetic account of the spiritual effects of mescaline or Osmond’s descriptions of Native American peyote ceremonies, or Wasson’s description of the shamanistic use of magic mushrooms.

Instead Leary guided the youth (including the Beatles) to look east for enlightenment. It’s the same basic hoodwink laid down in The Razor’s Edge by British secret agent Somerset Maugham, who, like Osmond, worked for MI6. One thing about the early history of psychedelic studies is that most of the major players turned out to be secretly working for MI6, the CIA, or both.

The cliche of the bearded yogi living in a cave in the mountains who meditates until he reaches some satori moment and is transported to a permanent state of bliss is total jive. The religions of east and west are equally corrupt, run by oligarchies, and exist mostly to make money and ensnare acolytes. The Buddhists are perhaps the least corrupted (although there are good and bad in all cultures), but all talk of eternal life is complete bunk. Nothing lasts forever. There is no soul, no nirvana. But if you want to get popular fast, tell the people what they want to hear. If you are looking for enlightenment, take Zoroaster’s advice and just be as kind and empathetic in thought, word and deed as you possibly can. But also realize no state of bliss can last forever, and there is no bliss without an opposite: so everyone is vulnerable to spurts of paranoia, rage and jealousy and other states of mind from the dark side.

Westerners are used to looking east for enlightenment because eastern traditions are older and thought to be wiser. The Zoroastrians invented the word “magic,” and were among the first to learn the secrets of higher math, something learned through a study of harmony. They were also the most advanced astronomers and chemists of their time.

During the enlightenment era, secret societies based on eastern mysticism were all the rage and many fraudulent books were conceived purporting to reveal the true secrets of the universe. All these efforts were hoodwinks and money grabs.

Just as the emergence of psychedelics was carefully stage-managed by intelligence agencies, so was the evolution of these occult societies. Aleister Crowley was one of the first to declare himself an advanced yogi with magic powers out of The Razor’s Edge. In fact, it was Maugham who made Crowley famous through a novel titled The Magician. They were both secret agents plying dialectical games to advance secret agendas.

Groupies try to get close to the Beatles in LA.

Meanwhile, after Harrison laid down a raga in “She, Said” garage rockers across America began tinkering with eastern scales.

The 13th Floor Elevators were the first to use the word “psychedelic” in an album title in 1966 and had a minor hit with their first single, but never really fully penetrated outside Texas until Lenny Kaye released Nuggets. The Texas bands of the time had a distinctive sound with a lot of fast picking on the fat strings. The cowboy guitarist had been an icon for generations. Texas rock and surf rock shared similarities, but there were no eastern scales in Texas at the time. The first song to reference LSD was released by in 1960 by surf rockers, The Gamblers.

Mark Warwick’s song Only Me is a better example of psychedelic rock than Your Gonna Miss Me. Both songs were written in 1966.

Other songs in this vein also released in 1966 would include East West by Paul Butterfield Blues Band, a jam devised by Mike Bloomfield after his first gig in San Francisco, where he could have bumped into a slew of bands working on defining an emerging genre; and, of course Section 43 by Country Joe and the Fish, ranks high on the list of early psychedelia. The appearance of cheap, portable organs from England and Italy played a major role in crafting a psychedelic ambience, and most of the original psychedelic bands made use of either the Vox or the less expensive Farfisa.

In November of 1966, Bronx-based band Blues Magoos released the album Psychedelic Lollypop, which included the hit song We Ain’t Got Nothing Yet, which rose to #5 on the charts, far higher than anything by the 13th Floor Elevators. Ralph Scala on Vox and lead vocals.

One of the first novels to contain a description of having sex on LSD, it was written by a visiting Baron from England and set entirely in Champaign-Urbana, IL. The longhaired, leather-jacketed teens who pioneered the local garage rock scene make a brief appearance guarding the beer stash in the fridge at a student-faculty party.

The following year, Strawberry Alarm Clock and West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band would form in LA, and H.P. Lovecraft in Chicago, while the Finchley Boys (Warwick’s band) would travel to San Francisco and become adopted by the Cockettes as “the next big thing,” only soon to break apart.

But it was the Cockettes themselves who became the next big thing as they launched glitter rock in a trip to New York City in 1971. Had the Finchleys hung around and gone on that voyage, they might have been as big as the New York Dolls. Glitter would eventually usurp psychedelia as the next big thing, and by the time punk rock appeared, the mystical excesses of acid rock were soundly rejected in favor of a return to more primitive garage rock.

After Peter Fonda gave Lennon and Harrison some Sandoz in LA in 1965, out popped She Said, She Said.

Roger McGuinn and David Crosby of the Byrds were also there tripping. McCartney did not imbibe and left the later session when they were recording the song in a huff, refusing to contribute. In the week that followed their first trip, Lennon and Harrison could not relate to the other two because acid had changed them so profoundly. Although McCartney was the last to drop acid, he was the first to inform the public, which annoyed Lennon and Harrison.

Guy Maynard was the leader of the Seeds of Doubt, the principle rival to the Finchley Boys. In 2010, he wrote one of the best descriptions of an LSD trip in a book set in 1969 in Boston with flashbacks to 1966 in Champaign-Urbana.

She Said, She Said is an amazing tune that shifts from 4/4 to 3/4 while deploying a sitar scale. The seeds of acid rock were planted in Rubber Soul with a brief sitar solo, used only for its distinctive tone.  It was David Crosby who showed Harrison how to play raga scales on an acoustic guitar. He also suggested Harrison check out a dude named Ravi Shankar.

They kicked Fonda out of the party for talking incessantly about his gunshot wound in the stomach and how he was momentarily dead on the operating table from blood loss. Lennon was horrified and when Fonda showed the bullet wound, he said, “You make me feel like I’ve never been born.” Fonda’s talk of death while Lennon was tripping is reminiscent of Leary’s use of the Tibetan Book of the Dead as a tripping manual, something that undoubtedly led to some seriously bad trips. Pushing that sort of dogma on western teens was the equivalent of distributing The Book of Revelation to teens in India as a true road to enlightenment.

Compare the intro to Eight Miles High to the opening moments of Coltrane’s Africa/Brass album, released in 1961. Some critics believe The Byrds wrote the first real psychedelic song. It counterpoints some Texas-style fast picking with an open D played on a 12-string. That chiming D would soon appear over and over in songs like Hey, Joe by the Leaves and Going All the Way by the Squires. Many attributed the sound to Bob Dylan, but Dylan claims it was all the Byrds covering his songs, and he had nothing to do with spreading the chiming D chord.

Southern California is where LSD landed because the film business has long had deep connections to military intelligence. Fonda starred in the first LSD film, The Trip, but there were others in Hollywood getting a supply of LSD-25 from Sandoz chemists who secretly worked under CIA supervision. The real acid guru in California was John Griggs, founder of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, and he got the acid by stealing it from the fridge of an LA film producer. Griggs would soon turn up dead and his group swiftly usurped by intel operative Ron Stark.

If tyranny is to prevail, first, kill the peacemakers

KGB and CIA counterintelligence styles were vastly different because America is an open society while Soviet is closed.

KGB had an immense pool of people to pull from. They would seek out the right personality types for covert ops. Super hottie and bisexual candidates of both sexes that could kill on command without raising their blood pressure were the most highly prized recruits.

CIA agents were defectors or White Russians. It was much harder for them to pass as authentic. They relied mostly on hypnosis. Agents would be conditioned to resist breaking cover. 

KGB expected a long, protracted struggle and embedded hundreds of sleeper agents who were supposed to become Americans, raise children, even attend churches, and then maybe 20 years down the road, might get activated for a mission. CIA didn’t have that sort of patience.

Tai Chi was central to KGB philosophy, which meant directing energy not engaging it head-on. The first major maneuver was into the Civil Rights movement. And also recruiting lawyers, who were deemed essential to the cause.

The Communist lawyers, most of whom could have been true-believers, created the National Lawyers Guild, which positioned itself as the Knights in Shining Armor for the fight for equal rights in America. A large number of double agents were placed into the NLG, and that list would include Mark Lane, Michael Kennedy, Bill Kunstler, Bernadine Dohrn. In fact, these are the most famous members of the group.

Bernadine Dohn. CIA super hottie

In fact, Jane Fonda, Gloria Steinem, and Dohrn were the CIA’s most highly prized super hotties. Rumors swirled around Fonda’s sexuality for decades. Dohrn, on the other hand, forced bisexuality on all her cadres during her crackpot “Smash Monogamy!” movement.

Fred Hampton was trying to turn the Panthers non-violent while Kennedy and Dohrn were supplying them with assault rifles and C4 and telling them to “kill cops.”

When Fred began denouncing the Weather Underground as lunatics, Chicago police connected with the CIA murdered him, and Dohrn arrived first on the scene to lead press and use his murder as her fulcrum to fame. You can’t imagine a more dishonorable act than trying to exploit Hampton’s death to provoke violence.

It’s the same thing as what happened when Ghetto Brother Black Benji was murdered on the streets of the Bronx. The Ghetto Brothers wanted a war with the gang that killed him, and came to promise blood revenge to Benji’s mother, who said, “My son was all about peace.” Instead of a gang war, the Ghetto Brothers organized the Hoe Ave. Peace Conference that ended gang violence and allowed for the rise of Hip Hop. Hampton had done the same thing in Chicago, ending the war between the Latin Kings, Blackstone Rangers, Gaylords and Vice Lords.

Watch The Americans series about KGB sleepers on Amazon and then imagine its Dorhn and Ayers posing as sane, normal people by day while plotting cop killings at night. The woman on the left plays the Michael Kennedy role (protector of the agents in the field).

They were in direct communication with Soviet, Cuban, and Chinese agents, all of whom advised them not to kill cops, or even use bombs. Of course, they didn’t follow that advice and kept up their terror campaign until it had zero traction left, so they came out of the cold and got university jobs with pensions. KGB sleepers don’t get that treatment, much less cop killers with three dead bodies to explain.

The author of the series says the CIA inadvertently gave him the idea for a series about spies, explaining, “While I was taking the polygraph exam to get in, they asked the question, ‘Are you joining the CIA in order to gain experience about the intelligence community so that you can write about it later’—which had never occurred to me. I was totally joining the CIA because I wanted to be a spy. The job at CIA, which he later described as a mistake, helped him develop several storylines in the series, basing some plot lines on real-life stories, and integrating tactics and methods he learned in his training, such as dead drops and communication protocols.

Beat Street, What Went Wrong?

Hip Hop Family Tree panel by Ed Piskor.

After I signed the contract handing rights over my script to Harry Belafonte, he slyly grabbed a copy of all my interviews by asking me to provide copies to the Schomberg Library in Harlem. I didn’t realize the library would advertise that fact and lead a parade of researchers, including Jeff Chang, to the treasure trove of early hip hop history. Many decades later, I realized searching my name on the internet mostly turned up links to the Schomberg Library.

I emailed them recently and asked for the return of my transcripts as they hadn’t even given me credit for donating them.  After admitting a problem, their lawyer switched gears and claimed they didn’t have my transcripts and from then on, just kept gaslighting me. The day I signed that contract and turned over the transcripts was the day my name and presence disappeared entirely from Beat Street. I got zero recognition upon release and retain little to this day. I got the Morris Levy/Frankie Lymon treatment from Harry Belafonte.

Phase came downtown for my 33rd birthday party at Lucky Strike in the East Village.

Henry Chalfant was a super cool dude, one of the first photographers to document NYC graffiti. Manny Kirchheimer was the first filmmaker, and his film Stations of the Elevated is online. While I was working on Beat Street, Henry was just completing Style Wars, which was largely the work of Tony Silver. Tony I didn’t like so much. It was Tony’s idea to build Style Wars around Cap.

Belafonte and his crew already had my script, a realistic portrayal of a budding rap group trying to make a record. Slice of life and It also had a Romeo-Juliet style story concerning a South Bronx rapper hooking up with a girl from a privileged background.

Cap deserved respect for his throw-ups.

But when Belafonte got a sneak preview of Style Wars, everything changed and my script was tossed and they began writing a new one using my characters names, and it was all about Cap, who they renamed Spit.

Cap was never mentioned in my book or my script. But when I asked Phase 2 who were the current kings, Cap was the first name he mentioned. “You have to give him props, because he’s so up,” said Phase.

Graffiti was divided into crews and crews had conflicts that sometimes included dissing each other’s work. Sometimes it involved tag rights, like the conflict between Snake and Snake-1. Snake 1 began adding “king of all snakes” to his tag.

The graf created by the Hollywood artists did not capture the essence of New York street art.

Cap was not the loner they portrayed him as. He was in the Morris Park Crew, some of whom were dust heads. Instead of asking Phase or Tracy about Cap and his crew, Silver focussed on the younger writers in opposing crews building Cap up as the evil villain of graf, dissing the most sacred rules. Some of those kids were scared to death of Cap in real life, but in the film they talked big shit about how somebody was going to cap Cap. I imagine some of that drama could have been coached and encouraged by Tony.

Eventually, Cap was run out of the crew so demonized was he by Style Wars and Beat Street.

Beat Street should have started with the murder of Black Benji and the Ghetto Brothers Peace council.

The opening song should have been “Just Begun” by Jimmy Castor. The sound track should mostly been based on the real street hits, Apache, Mexican, Give it Up or Turnit Loose.

All art and graffiti should have been supervised by Phase and other greats and featured Dondi, Lee, Futura, Zeph, and given cameos to Haring and Samo.

The actors should have been real South Bronx or capable of walking, talking like a real South Bronx teen.

The interiors should have looked like real South Bronx homes, which means the black rappers were more middle class with nice couches covered in plastic, while the Latins more often were under the poverty line with mattresses on the floor.

As a result of these blunders, the film was not very successful. Really it flopped. Christmas theme in July? What happened is it got massive video rental sales. Which was nice as it got me a lot of royalties through the years, although nothing close to what Harry captured.

The Schomberg Library threw a party with Belafonte to celebrate the anniversary one year. I wasn’t invited. That was before I asked for my transcripts back and got snowballed.

Get a copy of “Hip Hop: the Complete Archives” and read the original script that springs right out of the era, one originally being fueled largely by cannabis, and later, by cocaine. Crack, on the other hand, only produced casualties. I’d like to stage a reading of the original script with some of the OGs playing themselves.

Blame it on Bones

Skull and Bones has developed a reputation with some as having a membership that is heavily tilted towards the “Power Elite.” Regarding qualifications for membership, Lanny Davis, writing in the 1968 Yale yearbook, wrote: If the society had a good year, this is what the “ideal” group will consist of:

“A football captain; chairman of the Yale Daily News; a conspicuous radical; a Whiffenpoof (Yale choir); a swimming captain; a notorious drunk with a 94 average; a film-maker; a political columnist; a religious group leader; a chairman of the Lit; a foreigner; a ladies’ man with two motorcycles; an ex-service man; a black, and, if there are enough to go around; a guy nobody else in the group had heard of, ever …”

For much of its history Skull and Bones membership was almost exclusively limited to white Protestant males. Catholics had some success attaining memberships; Jews less so.

Sports was the means by which excluded groups eventually entered Skull and Bones, through its practice of tapping standout athletes. Some star football players were the first Jew (Al Hessberg, class of 1938), and African-American (Levi Jackson, class of 1950, who turned down the invitation).

Yale became coeducational in 1969, yet Skull & Bones remained all-male until 1992. An attempt to tap women for membership by the Bones class of 1971 was opposed by Bones alumni, who dubbed them the “bad club.”

“The issue,”as it came to be called by Bonesmen, was debated for decades. The class of 1991 tapped seven female members for membership in the next year’s class, so alumni changed the locks on the Tomb, and the Boners had to meet at the building of Manuscript Society.

A mail-in vote by members decided 368-320 to permit going co-ed, but a group of alumni led by William F. Buckley obtained a temporary restraining order to block the move. Other alumni, such as John Kerry and R. Inslee Clark, Jr., spoke out in favor of admitting women, and the dispute ended up on The New York Times editorial page. A second vote of alumni in October 1991 agreed to accept the Class of 1992, and the lawsuit was dropped.

One member of the 1991 class wrote to alumni, “Being a part of Bones is often an embarrassment, a source of ridicule and occasionally a good way to lose a friend … Very rarely is the Bones still seen as an honor, and never is it seen to represent the mainstream of Yale.”

When fomenting counterintelligence operations, the initial plans do not stop with the essential deed but stretch far into the future. Influencers and rabbit holes must be created. The clash between influencers will be orchestrated. That is done to divide people into one of two groups, both secretly controlled by counterintelligence. The legends created become “fact” over a few decades, while the real whistleblowers are de-toothed and disappeared.

As the first person to publish a national magazine article on how and why the CIA killed JFK, I became an influencer who needed to be de-toothed and disappeared, which is exactly what happened. Many years ago, a writer from Vice in Brooklyn took me to lunch at Cafe Luxembourg. The editor-in-chief was following my research on JFK and Lincoln assassinations and wanted to do a major expose on my research. Two days later, I was informed the story was off, and that editor had been fired.

When I wrote my first article, I was aware of Bones and their role in the event. Specifically, I knew Bonesman Prescott Bush had misdirected a lot of journalists, as well as at least one film crew. He played a major role in controlling the story from behind the curtain.

My article centered on James Jesus Angleton as primary conspirator, although I assumed he was working with the Dulles and Rockefeller brothers.

I don’t know where I picked it up, but supposedly, Angleton did not pledge to Bones. He would have been class of 1940. But when The Good Shepherd came out about his career, the film made it clear he was a Boner. Now there is no evidence of which society he tapped to, if any. If you have any, please put a link to the evidence, or remain silent.

Angelton was really a Brit at heart, raised in England’s posh schools. He was half Mexican and raised a devout Catholic.

Bones class of 1940 included McGeorge Bundy, who was JFK’s National Security Advisor. He played a key role in getting us into the Vietnam War, something JFK wanted to prevent. His advice to JFK was erratic during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Andrew Orrick was also Bones 1940. He went to Hasting College of Law in San Francisco after graduating, the alma mater of Michael John Kennedy. After running Nixon’s campaign for governor of California, Orrick became administer of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Orrick may have been tapped because he hit the longest home run in Yale baseball history, a record that likely no longer stands.

Towson Hoopes, class of 1944, Under Secretary of the Air Force.

Barry Zorthian, class of 1941, was US press officer in Saigon for 4.5 years, all during the early stages of the war.

John Chafee, class of 1947, Secretary of the Navy.

Charles Whitehouse, class of 1947, ambassador to Laos and Thailand and secret CIA agent.

George Bush was class of 1948. He was running the supply depots used for terror ops inside Cuba. Also a secret CIA agent.

William Sloane Coffin, class of 1949, clergyman and leading anti-war, anti-nuclear activist. Also a secret CIA agent.

John Kerry, founder of Vietnam Vets Against the War, went on to lead the coverup of the Iran-Contra-Cocaine scandal, in which Republicans were able to remove Jimmy Carter, who was pushing renewable energy and world peace. Obviously a secret intelligence operative.

This is just a tiny sampling of the power of Bones, and you can’t ignore the fact they were put in strategic positions on both sides of the war. The possible connection between Angleton, Orrick and Communist lawyer Kennedy (who ran the terrorist Weather Underground network before stealing High Times from the employees and running it into the ground while siphoning profits into his bank account) needs to be examined. It might explain why Kennedy began working to get rid of me right after I published that article about the CIA and Bones killing JFK.

Enter the Grail

“If knightly deeds, with shield and lance, can win fame for one’s Earthly self, yet also Paradise for one’s soul, then the chivalric life has been my one desire.” ….You are Parsifal! Your name means: Pierce-through-the-heart!…..Wolfram von Eschenback, 1205

Parzival und Condviramur. Handschrift aus der Werkstatt von Diebold Lauber, 1443

The grail saga first appeared in print In 1190, when Irish poet Chretien wrote Perceval or the Story of the Grail.  Understand, however, the story is much older, and was carried for centuries across Europe by wandering troubadours, the rock stars of their day. Real spirituality moves through music, and troubadours were some of the greatest performers not under Vatican supervison. For centuries, the Vatican claimed a monopoly on musical composition. And what many fail to realize is some of the first secular composers were also cannabis users. Some were involved in a movement called “The Society of Smokers,” whose song lyrics involved lines like “I love my smoke.” History has failed to identify what that smoke was, and it’s often mistaken for a reference to opium when it is obviously cannabis they were crooning about.

As this illustration shows, troubadours were not typically solo acts. The best players always prefer to work with other good players (on different instruments) because spirituality moves through telepathy, and the quality of your combo along with the quality of your audience greatly enhances the quality of your performance.

The Commedia dell’arte style of improvisational theater sprang later on from these troubadours, so it’s likely some were doing jazz in the Middle Ages. Improvisation is a doorway to spirituality, but the mainstream tends to despise its powers, preferring total control, lest more slip off the leash. No doubt that’s why they were so opposed to the Cathars, and also opposed to jazz when it emerged in New Orleans. And it was obvious there was a cannabis connection to Congo Square as well as the Cathars, although that’s been mostly wiped out of history.

Wolfram von Eschenback was a knight, composer, singer and lyre player in Germany, and also one of the first to put the grail story on paper. Since Wolfram was illiterate, the song had to be dictated. Wolfram was also the Bob Dylan of his era.

One glaring and notable detail in his grail story is the total absence of Jesus Christ. And that’s because the grail story did not start with Christians, but originated much earlier in ancient Scythia. The story was embellished by the Manichaeans, who were virtually extinguished from Europe in the 6th century by an ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Vatican. Although all texts and records of the Manichaeans were disappeared, the culture went underground, and continued on only through the efforts of troubadours like Eschenback.

Scythian culture was immensely savage, and had to be tamed as it evolved through Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism. The tempering was accomplished through the rise of a concept called chivalry. Armored knights had a responsibility to behave in a decent manner, and that was especially true when upholding the rights of the weaker sex. Chivalry ran on love power.

The quest for the grail is the knight’s rite of passage, in which he is transformed into a fully empathetic being, something accomplished by learning the secrets of the grail.

Around 1100, the Cathars appear across Europe, creating cities and villages, mostly in France and Germany. Their name meant “pure ones” in Greek. But when the Pope of Rome realized the Cathars were the dreaded Manichaeans rising from the grave, he launched the first crusade in Catholic history to demolish all their cities and towns while murdering all the occupants. No matter if a few Catholics lived there too, the Pope wanted everyone exposed eliminated. The Inquisition followed to clean up any traces. The only surviving history of any Cathars are edited confessions extracted through torture before death, none of which can be trusted as real. But it’s the same story for anything about Manichaeans. The only documents detailing their history come from persecutors.

One thing you’ll notice about cannabis as it secretly marches through history, the world’s most persecuted plant. Wherever you find cannabis use, you’ll find songs written about it, a line that stretches back through the ages to ancient Scythia and continues through early jazz, rock and hip hop. And that’s because real spirituality moves through music, and not through repressions.

The smoker smokes through smoke,
A smoky speculation.
While others smoke in thought,
The smoker smokes through smoke,
Because smoke pleases him greatly
As he meditates.
The smoker smokes through smoke,
A smoky speculation.

Fumeux fume by Solage, circa 1370

 

 

 

The Real Secret of the Holy Grail

Mani was the greatest avatar of the ancient world and also the greatest portrait painter and calligrapher. He inspired the greatest religious revival of his time, but did not wear expensive robes, nor cultivate toadies. What Mani did was successfully integrate the best of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Buddhism and Christianity.

Mani’s bible equated spiritual energy with light, and considered the light of the sun as Jehovah, and light of the moon as Jesus.

Mani used the Zoroastrian sacrament of mixing hot milk with cannabis flower to heal the blind and lame, serving this elixir in a sacred chalice. The origins of the grail story start in ancient Scythia, long before Mani’s time, and centuries before the arrival of Jesus.

Mani lived several hundred years after the mythical birth of Jesus, but he was the most famous Gnostic of his time, and considered himself one of Christ’s appointed agents on earth, just as many Buddhists in India considered him the living Buddha.

Execution of Mani

Mani was lured back to Persia under false pretense, skinned alive and decapitated for the crime of trying to end war over religion. The gate in Persia where his head was put on a pike still bears his name, although nobody seems to know anything about him. That gate is his only trace.

A holocaust soon followed on Mani’s followers, and it did successfully tamp down his philosophy for centuries, but eventually, all across Europe, a movement very similar to Mani’s appeared. It became known as Catharism. It had no leader. Cathars rejected the crass commercialization of Rome 300 years before Martin Luther came to similar conclusions. They believed in a connection between light and spiritual energy, and worshipped a form of Christianity with a Buddhist flavor, rejecting heaven and hell for reincarnation, just like Manichaeism.

The Pope in Rome at first tried to negotiate with the Cathars in France, around Languedoc. After that failed, he declared the first crusade, the Albigensian Crusade, which could have been an even bigger and more horrific ethnic cleansing than Mani’s. The closest thing I can imagine is the Rape of Nanking. Entire towns were destroyed, women and children raped, and then murdered. It didn’t matter if one was Cathar or Catholic. “Let God sort them out,” said the evil Pope.
 
The last hold-outs were in Montsegur. In 1244, their fort was stormed after a brutal 10-month seige. The 200 inhabitants were thrown on a bonfire.
 
But the night before the siege ended, a small group successfully slipped through enemy lines, carrying their greatest treasure to safety, a green-stained goblet. Perhaps this was an actual artifact from Mani, and if so, would have been the sole surviving possession from the greatest avatar of the ancient world.
 
Monument to the murdered Cathars.

Many decades earlier, Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote Parzival, a search for the grail. His grail castle is called Monsalvat, which is similar to Montségur and has the same meaning: “safe mountain.”

The book Crusade Against the Grail by Otto Rahn in the 1930s revived interest in the connection between Catharism and the Holy Grail, and painted Parzival as a veiled account of the Cathars. That research fascinated Heinrich Himmler, who made Rahn an archaeologist in the SS, which, later, helped inspire Raiders of the Lost Ark.
 
It’s a bit lonely connecting these dots from Scythians to Zoroastrians to Mani to Catharism to Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s been a solo adventure, but I’m hoping others will pick up and follow the trail. This is the true secret of the holy grail. It’s not about the actual chalice but the elixir that went inside.
Eventually the real story has to get out.
Maybe I can fit it into Pot Waco.

Ballad of Rainbow Farm

If you’ll gather ’round me, children,

A story I will tell

‘Bout Rainbow Farm Campground,

Michigan knew it well.

It was in the town of Vandalia,

A Saturday afternoon,

Tom and Rollie did the WHEE! fest

They thought time was opportune.

A  local DA attacked them

In a manner rather rude,

Vulgar words of anger,

And litigation did ensue.

The sheriff grabbed son Robert,

Tom and Rollie grabbed their guns;

In the fight that followed

Tom and Rollie were laid down.

As through your life you travel,

Yes, as through your life you roam,

You won’t never see no pothead

Seize children from their homes.