Ice and organic chemicals found on an asteroid back the theory that asteroids provided the Earth with the bare necessities of life

Astronomers have detected a coating of ice and organic chemicals on one of the largest asteroids in the solar system.

From the Guardian

The space rock, called 24 Themis, is roughly the size of Sicily and orbits the sun in the main belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, more than 300 million kilometres from Earth.

Asteroid 24 Themis and two small fragments resulting from an impact more than 1bn years ago. Scientists were surprised to find ice and organic chemicals on the asteroid’s surface. Artist’s impression: Gabriel Pérez/Servicio MultiMedia

The discovery supports the idea that asteroids may have brought plentiful supplies of water and organic material to Earth in the distant past and so set the stage for the emergence of life.

Two independent groups confirmed the composition of the asteroid’s surface after observing the 200km-wide rock using Nasa’s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) which sits on the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Analysis of infrared light glinting off the surface of the asteroid revealed that some wavelengths were being absorbed by water molecules. Further investigation suggested complex organic molecules were also present. The findings are reported in two papers in the journal Nature.

“The organics we detected appear to be complex, long-chained molecules,” said Josh Emery, a planetary scientist at the University of Tennessee and lead author on one of the studies. “Raining down on a barren Earth in meteorites, these could have given a big kickstart to the development of life.”

The discovery of frozen water on the asteroid has surprised some scientists because the sun warms the surface enough for ice to melt. One possible explanation is that ice in the core of the asteroid is heated into water vapour, which seeps through pores in the rock and freezes temporarily when it reaches the surface.

In the second study, a team led by Humberto Campins at the University of Central Florida timed its observations to take account of the asteroid’s rotation every eight hours and produce a crude map of the surface. It shows that the entire surface of the asteroid is coated with a layer of frost no more than one ten-thousandth of a millimetre thick.

In an accompanying article, Henry Hsieh, a planetary scientist at Queens University in Belfast, likened the ice to a “living fossil”: a remnant of the solar system that many considered long gone.

“This is a thin layer of ice. It’s not like going outside on a snowy day,” he told the Guardian. “But we didn’t really think water would survive in the asteroid belt, and certainly not on the surface of an asteroid.”

The discovery is intriguing because it may finally explain how two thirds of the Earth came to be submerged in water, turning a parched rock into a haven for life.

The Earth formed close to the sun as a dry boulder 4.5bn years ago, but asteroids from cooler regions of space would have slammed into the surface for millennia, releasing any water they contained on impact. At the time, asteroids were more numerous and may have carried far more water than has been found on 24 Themis.

Some scientists believe asteroids may have delivered water to every planet in the solar system, but Earth’s rocky surface, size and orbit ensured water condensed and remained on the ground, ultimately forming vast seas and oceans.

“Each asteroid might not have carried a lot of water, but if you strike a planet with a few thousand or million of them, it would gradually build up,” Hsieh said.

The finding of frozen water as far out as the main asteroid belt suggests water might also be spread throughout alien solar systems. “The building blocks of life – water and organics – may be more common near each star’s habitable zone,” said Emery. “The coming years will be truly exciting as astronomers search to discover whether these building blocks of life have worked their magic there as well.”

Inside City Hall in Oakland, Calif., Jim Wilcox explained his plan for a commercial marijuana farm. “My idea was a Silicon Valley of cannabis,” he told the city council recently. “An office park for pot.” The council has approved the creation, licensing and taxing of four such medical marijuana farms inside Oakland city limits.

Four hundred miles to the south in Los Angeles, it’s a completely different story. After four years running the Pure Life Alternative Wellness Center, Yami Bolanos fears her medical marijuana dispensary will be shut down. “The patients are the ones that are getting screwed royally by the city council.”

Los Angeles is cracking down hard on the number of “collectives”, which have grown like weeds in the last few years. By some estimates, there were 700 medical marijuana dispensaries a few months ago, more pot outlets than Starbucks in LA. A new law will reduce that number to 182. “The sale of marijuana has never been approved by voters,” says Los Angeles Assistant Attorney Asha Greenberg. “Cities have the ability to restrict the numbers of collectives.”

This tale of two cities reflects a divergence of opinion in California over the future of what may be its largest cash crop. Voters will decide in November whether to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes.

The State Board of Equalization estimates that pot in California is worth $15 billion a year. Taxing it could bring in $1.5 billion in much-needed revenues. But that’s based on current prices. A Rand study suggests that if the November ballot measure passes, prices could drop 90 percent to $38 an ounce, while consumption could increase as much as 100 percent.

Jane Wells
CNBC Reporter

The November initiative, called Proposition 19, would allow California residents 21 years or older to grow marijuana at home for personal use, in an area no larger than 25 square feet. It would also allow adults 21 and older to possess and transport up to an ounce. Finally, it would allow local governments to license, regulate, and tax commercial growers and sellers. Like alcohol, sales to anyone under 21 would be banned.

“Look at all the people that are being killed in Mexico every day, as well as the home invasion robberies and other things that come from the inflated price that’s caused by prohibition,” says Richard Lee, who authored Prop 19. Lee runs Oaksterdam University in Oakland, a school which teaches people how to grow medical marijuana and run a dispensary.

Lee says the benefits of legalization go beyond sales tax revenues, and include “ancillary benefits such a tourism, jobs, and hotel rooms and transportation and food that would go along with the cannabis industry.”

“They will probably two, three, four to one outraise us financially,” says Covina police chief Kim Raney, leading the No on Prop 19 campaign, “but I think our message will be clear. I think our message will be the truth, and I think the voters in the state will understand that.”

What is clear is that Prop 19 will again put California’s marijuana laws in direct opposition to the feds. Because of that, the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office says it’s impossible to know how much money the state might bring in.

The LAO says savings to correctional facilities “could reach several tens of millions of dollars annually,” and a new jobs-creating industry could let the state “eventually collect hundreds of millions of dollars annually in additional revenues.” But with the federal government poised at any moment to snuff out any legalized pot business, “the revenue and expenditure impacts of this measure are subject to significant uncertainty.”

Public opinion polls have delivered conflicting results on the initiative’s chances for success. “I think in November, (voters) will realize the consequences and devastation that this act will have on their communities, and I think the voters will turn it down,” says Chief Raney.

Richard Lee’s pro-Prop 19 group has hired an Internet fundraising company used during the Obama campaign, and its Facebook page has well over 130,000 fans. The political battle will be fierce, and opposition may come from unexpected sources. “Two groups that have come out against (Prop 19) are growers who don’t want to pay taxes,” he says, “and the cops who want to keep getting the forfeiture money and seizure money, and job security from it.”

It has long been a fascinating puzzle to scientists: Why did our apelike ancestors come down from the trees and develop brains many times larger than they actually needed? Many theories have been discussed, most of which revolve around social cooperation; big brains would have helped our ancestors develop language, make better tools, plan hunting strategies, and pass on complex culture to the next generation.

Das ewig weibliche zieht uns hinan.

The eternally feminine leads us forward.

– Goethe

He who binds himself to a joy does the winged life destroy,
But he who kisses the joy as it flies lives in Eternity’s sunrise.

– William Blake

Only connect.

– E. M. Forster

I‘m finally ready to declare myself. I am a ladies’ man. A womanizer. A libertine. A rake. A rogue. A roué. A goddamn running loose dog. I’d admit to being a lecher, but that word implies a solipsistic predation that I hope never applies to any of my relations with the mysterious sex.This

is about something more sacred than anything a drooling wanker could appreciate.

This is about worship. From the time the testosterone kicked in, I have knelt at the altar of that
which is female in this world. I love women. What I love in them is something that moves and must be free to do so. I love their smells, their textures,

their complexities, the inexhaustible variety of their psychic weather patterns. I love to flirt with them, dance with them, and to discourse with them endlessly on the differences between men and women. I love to make love.

The sexual fires have always burned bright in my brainstem. Priapically preoccupied, I’ve written poetry by the ream, stormed police lines, ridden broncs, thrown punches and generally embarrassed myself on countless occasions. (Actually, I suspect that history consists largely of foolish things men have done to show off for women.)

There are probably twenty-five or thirty women — I certainly don’t count them — for whom I feel an abiding and deep emotional attachment. They’re scattered all over the planet. They range in age from less than half to almost twice my own. Most of these relationships are not actively sexual. Some were at one time. More never will be. But most of them feel as if they could become so. I love the feel of that tension, the delicious gravity of possibilities.

I must also admit that for me this gravity generally increases with novelty. The New, the fresh
and unknown expanses of the emotional frontier, hold a fascination for me that I wish they did not. This breeds superficiality and the appearance of a hunger for conquest. But, unfortunately, I love the
voltage, the charged gap between two people that can draw across itself such huge flows of
information from so many parts of us. I love the feel of human bandwidth — intercourse
on all channels — and there is so much more to exchange when nothing is yet known.

Despite many clear and cosmic messages that women (and death) were meant to be the curricula of my life — my dharma — and that practically everything I’ve done has been about trying to understand them, I resisted formal matriculation into this perilous course of study until well past the age when most men have already given up and settled into monogamies as comfortable and unquestioned as their football loyalties.

And now, late in my forties, I doubt I’ll ever be monogamous again. For reasons I’ll explain, I feel strangely exiled into a condition of emotional wandering. I think my heart will travel widely. I want to know as many more women as time and their indulgence will permit me.

Even so, I also want to go on loving the women I love now — and I do love them — for the rest of
my life. These are relationships that have already lasted much longer than most marriages, even though some of them had to endure the hiatus of my own previous monogamies, one imposed by society, the other by what felt like an act of God.

The Road to Hell

I tried monogamy despite feeling from the get-go that being monogamous made as much sense as declaring that I liked, say, mashed potatoes and gravy so darned much that I would resolve to eat nothing else for the rest of my life.

So I got married and stayed that way for seventeen years, attempting with some grim success to impose fidelity on myself. It was, I figured, the price I had to pay in return for a good place to raise kids. And though I loved my ex-wife, and still do, I wasn’t in love with her. Didn’t believe in it, actually. I thought being in love was a myth people had invented to punish themselves for lacking it.

Fidelity always felt like work: an act of will rather than nature. As time passed, nature gradually
gained the upper hand, as she almost always does. I was never quite able to stop flirting — a form of exchange that has always felt holy to me — nor was I able to disguise from my wife my
undiminished appreciation of other women. This led to sexual distance between us, and I started to get hungry. There began to be incidents of what is called, in rock n roll, “offshore drilling.”

Not realizing that women hate deceit even more than they hate infidelity — and they always
know — I turned into a sneak and a liar. I became someone I couldn’t respect, and so I left my
marriage.

Not long after that, I experienced the miracle of voluntary monogamy for one brief and
blissful period, during which, at the age of forty-six, I did fall in love for the first time in my
life. During the year that followed, it was as though there were no other women except in the most abstract sense. I still delighted in the presence of pulchritude, but it was an appreciation as sublime in its detachment as my enjoyment of nature’s other wonders. I didn’t want to do anything about these beauties, any more than I would want do something about sunsets or Bach fugues. Cynthia
was the only woman. But two days before we were to be married, I put her on a plane in Los Angeles
and somewhere between there and New York the virus that had been secretly consuming her stopped her
heart.

The most important consequence of losing Cynthia is that I now believe in the human soul. I had to see it and, once seen, it became obvious to me. No longer did I dismiss it as a biological
artifact, a kind of software that arises in the electrochemical sputterings of the squishyware and
cannot run otherwise. Rather I can feel the soul as an independent though immaterial identity that wears bodies like a costume.

I finally had the answer to a question I’d been asked shortly before I met her. I’d been speaking to a bunch of kids at the New York University film school about Virtual Reality when I got the usual question about virtual sex. This was such a predictable question that I had a mental tape I always ran in response to it that went something like: “I don’t get the fascination with virtual sex. Sex is about bodies, and being in VR is like having had your body amputated. What could be less sexy?”

At this point, a very embodied young woman in the front row raised her beautiful hand. “But don’t you think,” she asked, “that when it comes to sex, the body is just a prosthesis?”

My tape stopped running. “A prosthesis for what?”

“That’s the interesting question, isn’t it.” she smiled, all sphinxy.

Yeah. That was the interesting question alright, and Cynthia, in both the way she inhabited her body and the way she remained after leaving it, answered it for me. There is indeed a hand that moves the hand, there is a kiss that lives inside both sets of lips.

At that point I decided that, whatever the pressures of society or the propensity of most women to
insist on it, I wouldn’t attempt monogamy again unless and until I encountered someone who induced it in me as naturally as she did. And I like to believe that nothing would make me happier than to have that happen. To fall in love. To be singularly devoted again.

(But I have to confess to aspects of my current behavior pattern that are subconsciously designed to prevent this very thing from happening. If just once in your life you’ve put all of your emotional eggs in one basket, only to have that basket smashed almost immediately, it inclines you toward more distributed systems of emotional support.)

There is a central woman in my life, a luminous Swede who lives in San Francisco. She is the person I always call when I feel bad in the middle of the night. She is beautiful and funny, as game on an adventure as Indiana Jones; she is a sexual poet, and I love her.

That she is not the only woman in my life pains her — as will this piece — and I wish to cause her no pain. But I learned from my marriage what suffering can be inflicted by someone who tries unsuccessfully to contain himself in the service of someone else’s feelings.

And scrupulous honesty, though it requires courage on both sides, is a lot more practical than most men believe it to be. The fact that I don’t lie to her about these other encounters brings us closer rather than separating us. And sin, as Nietzsche said (and I often quote), is that which separates.

A Pariah’s Advantages

While I’ve been honest about all this to my girlfriend and the other objects of my affection, I

haven’t come clean in public until now. It’s an odd omission. I’ve tried to write as candidly as

possible about my other deviations from standard American morality. I’m in the lucky position of being so de-institutionalized that I can

say whatever I like without fear of adverse economic consequences. Indeed, lunatic candor seems to be my primary product these days. Like Hunter S. Thompson, the badder I get, the better I get paid.

A bad reputation can set you free. After all, if you’ve already declared yourself to be a

pot-smoking, acid-addled slut, your opponents are forced to oppose your ideas on their merits,

rather than strategically revealing your hidden depravities. Shame is no weapon against the

shameless.

In fact, part of what motivates this public revelation is a belief that I am behaving morally,

despite following a course that society would generally condemn. My conscience is clear, a fact that

is not simply due to poor memory or an unwillingness to examine it carefully.

These admissions are also related to the fact that I find myself a few gray hair-breadths away from

turning fifty, an age beyond which surreptitious ladies’ men become pathetic in direct proportion to

the uneasiness they feel with their own lascivious impulses.

The phrase “dirty old man” begins to haunt me, especially as I continue to find my pot-bellied old

self attracted to the same youthful feminine specifications that put steel in my poker when I was

twenty-five.

Yet that’s not all there is to it: for me, it is the combination of these two beauties, the inner and the outer, that draws me most
compellingly. There are plenty of perfectly formed surfaces that have no light within them and they
don’t do much for me. At the same time,
there are beautiful souls within bodies that are the female equivalent of my own, and while some of
these are close friends, they lack the sexual spice that really fuels most discourse between the
sexes.

I thus remain convinced that there is something holy about beauty, whether attached to a woman or a waterfall,
and I have the entire history of art — at least until the Twentieth Century — to back me up on
this. I don’t think of beauty as being something that is part of a woman, but rather something like
a mist that gathers around her that becomes more beautiful if illuminated brightly from within. The
real beauty, the part that lasts, is in the soul and not the skin.

Even when one is seeking sex between souls, the “prostheses” they wear are not irrelevant.

King Dick Meets My Inner Lesbian

But ironically enough, a lot of being sexy means getting past the root-level sex drive. One of the great moments in my sexual education came some years back when Dick Cavett was
interviewing Raquel Welch at the height of her va-va-voomishness. “Tell me, Raquel,” he leered,
“what’s your favorite erogenous zone?”

She paused, gave him a level look that completely revised my opinion of her intelligence, and said
crisply, “My mind, Dick.”

The mind, I have since discovered, is just about every woman’s favorite erogenous zone, but it is

mystical terrain and must be explored with care and time. The dick, in its youthful phase, is not
big on care or time. It is the very definition of urgency. It makes non-negotiable demands of its
bearer that are related to the inner
nature of its target only to the extent that some knowledge of her has strategic value in getting
her into bed.

Now my formerly dictatorial appendage is more like an old sidekick. A fellow veteran. It doesn’t
have the same reload rate of old, but there’s no ejaculatio praecox to worry about either.
The old soldier can pace itself. And if it can’t spit five shots in quick succession, it’s no longer
calling my shots as it once did. Into the vacuum of its diminished authority has risen my heretofore
undiscovered inner lesbian.

My inner lesbian is a wonderful accomplice, since she knows a lot about what turns women on, is more
attuned to sensuality than the old in-out, and believes strongly that the journey is the reward.
This doesn’t mean that she is not interested in orgasms, but she knows that one great thing about
being a woman is that if you can come at all — which a lamentably high percentage cannot — you can
usually come a lot and in a variety of ways. She makes it a lot easier to get away from my own
sexual objectives and into the multifarious delights of the joint critter, the one Shakespeare
called “the beast with two backs.”

And creating that larger organism, making the Other into the Self, merging the Self into the Other
is, after all, what sex is ultimately about. And of course, the point is not to have a self at all.
To be Everything.

The Infinity of Love

All said, you’re probably wondering why any woman would want to become emotionally or physically
involved with a man whose promiscuity is so freely confessed. Of course, many of them don’t. I
eliminate a lot of opportunity by wearing my Don Juan warning placard so visibly (even then, the
hesitant don’t leave me entirely bereft).

But most of the resistance to becoming involved with a self-admitted playboy has to do with that
all-important female perception of being special. It is hard to feel that knowing there are

others out there. But there is an answer to this, and finding it has enabled me to feel a deeper sense of connection not only with
women but with all the rest of my species.

The answer is that everyone is special. So also is every relationship. The creature that
forms
between any one person and another is like no other creature in the world. It is theirs and theirs alone.
Furthermore,
while time and
space and attention may be painfully finite, love is not. Love has no quantity to exhaust. It is a
quality, a living thing, that grows stronger the more it is felt. The vigorous practice of love
expands the heart and opens its apertures to the world.

In other words, to love a lot of women, you have to love them, without a trace of bullshit, one
woman at a time. You have to bring each of them with you into the perfectly present, creating there
a private zone of space and time that can be filled with that particular love. You won’t have any of
the comforting (though generally broken) social conventions to assure you that your vulnerability is
safe. There are no assurances at all except for those that come directly from the feeling of
connection you can make together. You are, in effect, beating back the darkness with the light you
generate yourselves.

When I judge myself, there is one question I ask: Would I want my daughters to encounter a man like
me? And because I want them to be brave in their love, because I want their faith to be annealed by
experience on the edge, I hope they find a few of my kind. But I hope they don’t bring too many of
us home.

direction and animation by BLU
blublu.org
production and distribution by ARTSH.it
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BIG BAG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

From the Guardian, by Cian O’Luanaigh

A gene that controls red blood cell production evolved quickly to enable Tibetans to tolerate high altitudes, a study suggests. The finding could lead researchers to new genes controlling oxygen metabolism in the body.

An international team of researchers compared the DNA of 50 Tibetans with that of 40 Han Chinese and found 34 mutations that have become more common in Tibetans in the 2,750 years since the populations split. More than half of these changes are related to oxygen metabolism.

The researchers looked at specific genes responsible for high-altitude adaptation in Tibetans. “By identifying genes with mutations that are very common in Tibetans, but very rare in lowland populations we can identify genes that have been under natural selection in the Tibetan population,” said Professor Nielsen. “We found a list of 20 genes showing evidence for selection in Tibet – but one stood out: EPAS1.”

The gene, which codes for a protein involved in responding to falling oxygen levels and is associated with improved athletic performance in endurance athletes, seems to be the key to Tibetan adaptation to life at high altitude. A mutation in the gene that is thought to affect red blood cell production was present in only 9% of the Han population, but was found in 87% of the Tibetan population.

“It is the fastest change in the frequency of a mutation described in humans,” said Professor Rasmus Nielsen of the University of California Berkeley, who took part in the study.

There is 40% less oxygen in the air on the 4,000m high Tibetan plateau than at sea level. Under these conditions, people accustomed to living below 2,000m – including most Han Chinese – cannot get enough oxygen to their tissues, and experience altitude sickness. They get headaches, tire easily, and have lower birth rates and higher child mortality than high-altitude populations.

Tibetans have none of these problems, despite having lower oxygen saturation in their tissues and a lower red blood cell count than the Han Chinese.

Around the world, populations have adapted to life at high altitude in different ways. One adaptation involves making more red blood cells, which transport oxygen to the body’s tissues. Indigenous people in the Peruvian Andes have higher red blood cell counts than their countrymen living at sea level, for example.

But Tibetans have evolved a different method. “Tibetans have the highest expression levels for EPAS1 in the world,” said co-author Dr Jian Wang of the Beijing Genomics Institute in Schenzhen, China, a research facility that collected the data. “For Western people, after two to three weeks at altitude, the red blood cell count starts to increase. But Tibetans and Sherpas keep the same levels,” he said.

“I just summitted Everest a few weeks ago,” added Dr Wang. He said the Sherpas and Tibetans were much stronger than the Westerners or lowland Chinese on the climb. “Their tissue oxygen concentration is almost the same as Westerners and Chinese but they are strong,” he said “and their red blood cell count is not that high compared to people in Peru.”

“The remarkable thing about Tibetans is that they can function well in high altitudes without having to produce so much haemoglobin,” said Prof Nielsen. “The entire mechanism is not well-understood – but is seems that the gene responsible is EPAS1.”

Nielsen said the gene is involved in regulating anaerobic and anaerobic metabolism in the body (cell respiration with and without oxygen). “It may be that the [mutated gene] helps balance anaerobic versus aerobic metabolism in a way that is more optimal for the low-oxygen environment of the Tibetan plateau,” he said.

Writing in Science, where the results are published today, the authors say: “EPAS1 may therefore represent the strongest instance of natural selection documented in a human population, and variation at this gene appears to have had important consequences for human survival and/or reproduction in the Tibetan region.”

Dr Wang said future research will focus on comparing the levels of EPAS1 expression in the placentas of Tibetan and Han Chinese women.

MINDSET
I was born in Washington State on the edge of Western exploration in the New World in
the summer of 1971. I came of age in and around the communal rooms of AA, NA, ACA,
Alanon and Alateen throughout the Pacific and Mountain West. My father is 33 years
sober. His father died 14 years sober in 1982.

I too wrestled my psychospiritual demons through alcohol and Cannabis which gratefully
led me to the rooms of AA and NA where, at the age of 14, I declared myself an
alcoholic and an addict. I delved headlong into the 12 Steps and promptly saw that I had
wrapped myself in a shame-bound identity (‘ism’ – internalised shame manifested). Upon
recognising this, I had the promised spiritual awakening of the twelfth step. I then sought,
via being of service to other addicts and alcoholics, to maintain this awareness.

Eventually, I came to a point where I just didn’t feel I belonged in AA. I felt that what I
had come to learn had been learned. I was no longer afraid to be alive nor was I willing to
hide. I had recovered from my shame-bound self. In short, I got tired of pretending that
there was something wrong with me, I had become a spiritualized being living a
predominantly joyous and fulfilling life.

So, on October 31st 1993, on the eve of my 8th AA birthday, I ended my inflexible ‘once
and always’ identification with alcoholism and drug addiction. This came about in an
“All Hallows Eve” ritual which had a ‘spiced wine’ component. I had requested of my
partner that my wine be heated to remove the alcohol. This was done.

As we journeyed through the ritual, I pondered the rigid way in which I had insisted on
having the alcohol removed from my ‘sacrament’. I had recalled seeing a heart-rate
monitor flat-line. Life had pulse, it had cycles, and a flat-line meant only one thing:
death.

In a flash, I realized the most important insight: Life is transformation. Life is a cycle of
death and rebirth, renewing itself each day. Upon recognising this, I declared to my
companions in a choked up teary-eyed expression, “I am recovered.” My future
uncertain, my world of illusion shattered, I ventured forth into unfamiliar territory. The
ritual had worked.

2
About three weeks later, a friend of mine, John, was coming to visit me in Idaho. He and
I had met in Yosemite Valley, California, at an AA meeting. We had been sober and
travelled together for six years; he had ended his tour of AA with much the same
realization as I had. We chose to celebrate his arrival by drinking our first beer together.
Absolutely nothing happened, we didn’t foam at the mouth or go into fits of obsessive
compulsive behaviour, nothing.

Another three weeks passed and John and I rented the video, The Making of ‘A Brief
History of Time’ by Stephen Hawking (Hawking, 1992). As it started John said, “Oh hey,
did I mention to you all, I have some Liquid LSD that ‘the Lorax’ made.” I knew ‘the
Lorax’ was a mad, old-school chemist and I trusted and respected him. I had also heard a
few stories of peoples’ spiritual adventures with LSD, peyote cacti and ‘magic’
mushrooms; not least of which were told by many ‘Deadheads’ I had known whilst being
a ‘clean and sober Wharf Rat’ on Grateful Dead tour. I also knew that Bill Wilson, the
co-founder of AA, had consumed LSD with spiritual intent (Wilson, 1984). With all this,
I was curious.

SETTING
On a cold night in December of 1993, I ingested approximately 250 micrograms of LSD.
Although, I was borne into a global ‘War on (some people who use some) Drugs’, I was
unaware that I had just ingested the forbidden fruit, or at least the modern-day variant.

I ‘tuned in’ somewhere in the midst with Stephen Hawking philosophizing about the
origins of the universe. About an hour or so in, I wanted to go outside. After discovering
that I could still don my foul weather gear, tie my shoelaces and otherwise perform with
dexterous ease, I stepped out for a snowy night-time walk through the woods to the
lakeshore; damn, the world was breathlessly bright and I awoke into a childlike wonder!

INSIGHT
Several hours later, whilst it lightly snowed on my face where I lay buried in the pea-
gravel of the lakeshore, I recognised ‘I’ was still and yet my experience was vast:
complete absorption; self had vanished. This was my first glimpse of a possible ‘Land
without Evil’.

Two hundred years earlier William Blake wrote, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
(1793), “I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses
discover’d the infinite in everything”. Transformed by my ineffable LSD experience, I
knew what he meant; there was no going back.

In less than eight hours I had been shown a rare glimpse of the power of the human mind
to shape reality. I saw that my limited neurotypical consciousness was only one plane,
level or aspect and that there were infinite new things to discover. I found new
perspectives on birth, death, and the nature of mind and consciousness as the field of
creation. The experience of the oneness of all things replaced the myth of separation.
Perennial wisdom dawned and my heart burst forth in praise, gratitude and love, rooted in
a mindset of compassion for self and other.
3
INTEGRATION
In absorptive reverie, I began to integrate these insights whilst a deep desire welled up
within me to study consciousness and its intersection with mysticism, the creation of
religious belief systems and man’s place in this great biosphere. Some hours later, I was
roused by the bells ringing out at the local community college a mile across the water; I
had never noticed them before. It was time to go to school!

Later that morning, still reeling from the profound transformations of the previous 13
hours, innocent, humbled and hungry for wisdom, I went down to the local community
college and, in tears, I begged them to let me in. I was 22, I had not graduated high
school and I was determined to do what ever it took to understand what had just
happened to me, to validate my experience and to find others who had tasted these
forbidden fruits.

At school I refused to hide. I boldly declared to anyone who would listen that I was intent
on studying psychedelics, psychoactivity, consciousness and its interconnection with
religious belief systems. Several professors, friends and family attempted to steer me
from my path concerned that I would end up in prison. They were right but I was willing
to pay the piper if the monkey showed up with the cup; indeed, Martin Luther King Jr.
had said (King, 1963):

“[A]n individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly
accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community
over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”

Here, those in power had drawn a line in the sand on the shores of a Rubicon which I had
already crossed; so, I knew and accepted my possible futures and pasts. Hell, after
promising certain death, all God could think to do was throw Adam and Eve out of the
Garden for eating the forbidden fruit. If that is the worse that can happen, so be it.

In school I learned that not only has mankind been intentionally consuming psychoactive
substances to alter mental functioning for a proverbial eon or two, we also consume
plants rich in alkaloids as an important source of nutrition and energy for survival,
particularly in stressful environmental conditions. This suggests an evolutionary purpose
for ‘drug’ taking and illustrates our symbiotic relationship with plants evident in our
shared chemical communicants.

I also learned that in the last twelve thousand years or so there has evolved a priest-class
hell-bent on maintaining control of these substances as a way of enforcing the artificial
divide between orthodox and heretical experience (Council on Spiritual Practices, 1997).

I recognised this artificial divide as the crux of the ‘War on (some) Drugs’ that continued
an ancient ‘pharmacratic inquisition’ which had begun sixteen hundred years earlier
when Alaric’s Goths sacked the sanctuary at Eleusis ending a two thousand year old
Mystery religion which centred on the ingestion of a sacred potion, the kykeon; where
individuals permitted to imbibe saw ‘ta hiera’, ‘the holy’ (Ott 1993, 1995). It has been
4
suggested that the kykeon is derived from the Ergot fungus, Claviceps, which grows on
many cereal grains, synthesises the biochemical precursor of Lysergic Acid
Diethylamide, LSD, and, is the source of Ergotism also known as ‘St. Anthony’s Fire’
(Ruck, Wasson & Hofmann, 1978; Schultes, Hofmann & Rätsch, 1979, 2001).

COMMITMENT
On learning this, I made a commitment to myself that I would synthesise Albert
Hofmann’s ‘Problem Child’, LSD (Hofmann, 1979). I had completed the requisite
undergraduate chemistry courses, so, I knew I was capable of synthesising most
psychedelic-type drugs, but I was not yet ready; I was experiencing the adage “when the
student is ready the master will appear”. So, after some pedagogical meandering and
whilst continuing to experiment with various psychedelic compounds, I fixed on
biochemistry and medical anthropology as the paradigmatic backdrop upon which I
would unite my conscious studies and psychospiritual development.

ACTION
Central to therapeutic efficacy, as described by an interdisciplinary Medical
Anthropology, is the power of declaration either made by the sufferer or the healer that is
listened by the sufferer with credibility or faith (Csordas & Kleinman, 1996); this
especially holds in the magico-religious context outside of Western Biomedicine and
married nicely to my insights from AA’s 12 Steps, the use of psychedelics, meditation
and the personal empowerment paradigm I had engaged in as a participant of Landmark
Education. Crucially, I was able to apply this to myself.

As I matured and my insights began to consistently manifest in new ways of being which
produced measurable results, I engaged in lively philosophical transactions within the
scholastic community and followed my intellectual curiosity until, after 11 semesters, the
public funding ran out.

Conveniently, during my last school semester, I managed to talk the Anthropology
department Head into giving me a grant and credit to attend the spring 2000
Entheobotany Seminar in Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. All I had to do was present a slide
show, talk and a paper when I got back.

Entheobotany is the study of plant entheogens. The neologism entheogen derives from an
obsolete Greek word meaning “realizing the divine within” – the term used by the ancient
Greeks to describe states of poetic or prophetic inspiration – and now used to describe the
entheogenic state which can be induced by sacred plant-drugs. (Ott, 1993, 1995)

In Palenque, I was in an indefatigably good mood as I had found validation of my path
and true community with which to resonate. I was no longer a lone psychonaut. I had
arrived and just in the nick of time. Suddenly, I was immersed in a diverse community of
those who were on the path of the entheogenically inclined. I was ecstatic to say the least.
I took notes and photographed the main speakers for my slideshow. I tried to absorb as
much of the proceedings as I could whilst I sampled a veritable variety of other
entheogenic entities, i.e. psychedelic-type drugs. In so doing, I noticed a number of
5
individual conference participants had subjectively bioassayed 2C-T-7, an entheogenic
phenethylamine substantially similar to the mescaline found naturally in peyote cacti
(Shulgin & Shulgin, 1991).

Recognizing this as an opportunity to further the understanding of 2C-T-7 through
anecdotal experiential accounts and to lend credibility to the scientific methodology of
the subjective bioassay, I transformed insight into action, prepared and administered a
written survey and, with gratuitous grace, the Multidisciplinary Association of
Psychedelic Studies agreed to publish the results in their forthcoming summer 2000
Bulletin, 10 (2).

Upon returning to the States, I knew my life was never going to be the same. I presented
my slideshow to about 50 people from the University, about half of whom where
professors. I received the credit, a serious cheer, and respect. What a confirmation of my
path.

OPENINGS
I wrote up the 2C-T-7 article whilst under the influence of 2C-T-7 and to this day no one
has noticed that I classically forgot to count myself and ‘K-dog’ in the 48 bioassays.
Shortly thereafter an individual who had just renewed his subscription to the MAPS
Bulletin, which had lapsed for some years, got his first new issue.

I received a cryptic letter from him. He told me he had studied for 20+ years the
phenethylamine and tryptamine families of psychedelic-type drugs until the 1986 US
Controlled Substances Analogue Act came into force. He said he had seen my article in
the MAPS Bulletin and thought I might want to communicate; mysteriously, I ignored his
letter.

Later that fall he wrote again. This time more direct and to the point. He was serious. He
wanted to give me his lab and years of research notes. He wanted someone to pick up his
torch. Was the student ready? Had the master appeared? Knowing from direct experience
the profound impact of these molecules to facilitate healing and shatter epistemological
paradigms, I wanted to be of service and thus I was more than willing. So in spring 2001
I picked up his torch and began the slow process of assembling the materials for a
sufficient laboratory.

I recognised my bench practice was limited but I had worked in the biology and
chemistry labs throughout university. I cold-called Sigma Aldrich Chemical Co., danced
through their questions, ordered the chemicals and purchased, via the Web, more used
glassware.

I began by making mistake after mistake until I succeeded finally in making a viable,
purified molecule: 2C-D, another psychedelic phenethylamine. I chose 2C-D because I
had a fantastic recipe and the precursors and reagents to start four steps back thereby
improving my skill and avoiding detection. 2C-D has a very gentle dose-response curve
6
with a fantastically large range. 2C-D is what some have called a ‘pharmacological tofu’
(Shulgin & Shulgin, 1991).

Imbibing my first home-made entheogen was a serious triumph. Even better was sharing
the gift with my friends and family. The results were immediate and over the years many
people have expressed their appreciation of my facilitations of their psychospiritual
transformations. I would thank them for ingesting, remind them that they had done the
work and ask that if they could do but one thing, they could integrate their insights and
transform them into concrete actions which make a difference for humanity.

Unexpectedly, whilst at play in the fields of the Lords, opportunities abounded and my
services were in high demand. I was travelling the world from one conference to another,
stopping off in foreign lands to learn of their people’s drugs of choice; and I saw
intimately how today’s diversion of immense resources away from the everyday needs of
humanity to combat a ‘War on (some) Drugs’ leaves people thirsty, hungry and destitute,
and so they turn with evolutionary predictability to the very drugs the West is purportedly
seeking to suppress.

In December 2001 I attended the ‘Ibogaine Conference’ in London on the eboga plant,
Tabernanthe iboga and its alkaloids. Eboga is an African rainforest shrub of the Gabon
region traditionally used by indigenous peoples of western Africa in low doses to combat
fatigue, hunger and thirst, and in higher doses as a sacrament in spiritual initiation
ceremonies.

Ibogaine is a naturally-occurring psychoactive indole derived from the roots of
Tabernanthe iboga whose pharmacological properties have been researched for over 100
years. In fact, ibogaine was marketed in France until 1970 as Lambarene to promote a
sense of well being. In 1962, Howard Lotsof discovered the efficacy of ibogaine for
treatment of drug dependence and, in 1985, “he was awarded a series of use patents
related to ibogaine’s apparent ability to ‘interrupt’ a wide range of substance abuse
disorders, including those associated with opiates (heroin), opioids (methadone),
stimulants (cocaine & amphetamine), as well as alcohol, nicotine and poly-substance
abuse” (Anonymous, 2003).

At the conference in London I was offered the opportunity and funding to set up and run
a sub-pilot Tabernanthe extraction laboratory in order to isolate ibogaine. I accepted the
offer and immediately began acquiring the necessary materials to conduct laboratory
work. By June 2002 my lab was up and running and I was fulfilling my obligations with a
traditional organic laboratory, including all necessary reagents, enabling me to follow
almost any common organic synthesis or phytochemical research and development path I
so chose. As capital and experience was reinvested, my capabilities and competencies
expanded.

I chose to synthesise the phenethylamine 2C-B for my own psychospiritual explorations.
2C-B had been invented in 1974 by Alexander Shulgin. He introduced it to
psychotherapists around the world, many of whom found it of value in creating a warm,
7
empathetic bond between patient and healer, as its pharmacological action helps dissolve
one’s ego-defences, enabling an individual to contact suppressed emotions and repressed
memories, helping to resolve psychospiritual trauma (Shulgin & Shulgin, 1991; Stolaroff,
1994). In time, my efforts went towards facilitating a reliable pure source of 2C-B for
psychotherapists.

FULFILMENT
Late 2002, I was approached with the express intent of synthesising LSD for a group. It
was my first chance at LSD synthesis and I took the opportunity though in my heart I had
no desire to continue working with this group after completion of the agreement. I was
successful.

Then, in early 2003, I created the opportunity to research the ergot fungus, Claviceps,
first hand. Ergot is possibly the single most important medicinal genus on the planet, as
evidenced by the volume of literature on ergot as well as the current use of over 400
prescription compounds (Kr!n & Cvak, 1999). In fact, it was medicinal ergot research
which facilitated the 1943 discovery of LSD and other lysergamides by Albert Hofmann,
a chemist working for Sandoz Pharmaceutical in Basel, Switzerland whilst looking for a
blood stimulant. Prior to it being controlled by international agreement in the 1971 UN
Convention on Psychotropic Substances, LSD underwent thousands of hours of clinical,
laboratory and psychotherapeutic research with many promising results (Erowid, 2005).

Notably, LSD is substantially similar to the psychoactive Lysergic Acid Amide found in
the sacred Convolvulaceae Morning Glory, Ololiuqui, which, until 1955, Mazatec
curanderas of the Oaxaca highlands of Mexico utilized undisturbed for more than three
millennia alongside teonánacatl, the ‘sacred mushroom’ of the Aztecs, Psilocybe
mexicana and Psilocybe cubensis, in healing and divination ritual (Wasson, 1957;
Hofmann, 1971).

I began my research into ergot by learning saprophytic culture techniques for the fungus
but culturing was slow and deliberate work and by May 2003, whilst attempting to
extract the alkaloids from the culture broth, I failed knowing I had neither adequate
facilities nor knowledge for the sterile growth and extraction of ergot; I experienced once
again the adage ‘when the student is ready the master will appear’. I trusted the
‘mutterkorn’ alkaloid.

Having kept the faith, in late 2003 another opportunity to work with Ergot alkaloids
arose. I was given a mass of dark resinous material purported to be ergotamine tartrate
(ET) which had undergone a botched conversion to lysergic acid (LA) an intermediate in
the production of ergot alkaloids as well as other lysergamides. I was entrusted with the
goal of sorting out what had gone wrong and hopefully recovering enough LA to cover
the costs of the original starting materials.

I struggled for several months trying to unwind what was possibly a futile effort. I
utilized all spare monies I had and even began borrowing capital to help the project
possibly bear fruit. I was confounded by not having adequate qualitative analytical
8
equipment and reference standards for the LA and ET as they are available only with a
Home Office licence or purchased from the black market. I had neither connection.

Eventually, I was able to confirm that the original material indeed had ET in it but I was
unsure if it had been adulterated as the individual who handed me the black resin had
acquired the original material without a certificate of analysis. So, using every extraction
technique I could dream up, my only way of knowing if I had actually extracted LA was
to attempt to synthesise LSD with it and then test the final product via the usual method
of the subjective bioassay.

I failed repeatedly in my attempts at extraction and synthesis and had to find a method
that was not extremely sensitive to water, light or other resinous materials. By January
2004, I felt that I had synthetic process enabling me to proceed. Eventually, the first week
of February 2004, I succeeded. In ordinary circumstances, I might have been awarded a
novel synthesis patent; instead, I was-awarded a twenty-year prison sentence.

CLOSURE
So, why did I do it? There is no single pat answer. The simplest: my love of learning. The
veiled: for my ego, for the attention, to feel special, to be loved, etc. The flippant:
because I could. With hindsight: civil disobedience, academic and religious freedom in
the study of the mind, and an expression of equal rights. The most accurate: my desire to
share entheogenesis with others, to wake humanity up from the penumbral dream-world
of materialist delusion, to help end the blatant injustice and rape of human dignity that
occurs within the context of a “War on (some) Drugs”, to seize the world stage and help
create a forum for the cooperative and conscious stewardship of Mother Earth and all her
relations.

REFERENCES
Anonymous (2003) Ibogaine: Treatment Outcomes and Observations. Bulletin of the
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 13 (2), 16-21. www.maps.org

Boire R G (1999) On Cognitive Liberty, Journal of Cognitive Liberties, 1(1), 7-13.
Davis, CA: Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics. www.cognitiveliberty.org

Council on Spiritual Practices (1997) Entheogens and the Future of Religion. R Forte
(Ed.). SF, CA: Council on Spiritual Practices. www.csp.org

Csordas T J & Kleinman A (1996) The Therapeutic Process. In: Medical Anthropology:
Contemporary Theory and Method, Rev. Ed. C F Sargent & T M Johnson (Eds.).
Connecticut: Praeger Publishers.

Erowid (2005) LSD Timeline.
Available at www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_timeline.php

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Hardison C (2000) An Amateur Qualitative Study of 48 2C-T-7 Subjective Bioassays.
Bulletin of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 10 (2), 11-13.
www.maps.org

Hawking S (1992) The Making of ‘A Brief History of Time’. Paramount Home
Entertainment.

Hofmann A (1971) Teonanacatl and Ololiuqui, two ancient magic drugs of Mexico.
Bulletin on Narcotics, Issue 1, 1971: 3-14.
See: www.unodc.org/unodc/en/bulletin/bulletin_1971-01-01_1_page003.html

Hofmann A (1979) LSD My Problem Child: Reflections on Sacred Drugs, Mysticism,
and Science. Publisher: J.P. Tarcher, Inc.

King Jr M L (1963) Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963. Open Source.

Kr!n V & Cvak L (1999) Ergot: the Genus Claviceps. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic
Publishers.

Ott J (1993, 1996) Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic drugs, their plant sources, and history.
Occidental, CA: Natural Products Co.

Ott J (1995) The Age of Entheogens & The Angel’s Dictionary. Occidental, CA: Natural
Products Co.

Ruck C A P, Wasson R G & Hofmann A (1978, 1998) The Road to Eleusis. William
Daly
Rare Books.

Schultes R E, Hofmann A & Rätsch C (1979, 2001) Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred,
Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers. Vermont: Inner Traditions Publishing.

Shulgin A & Shulgin A (1991) PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story. Berkeley: Transform
Press.

Stolaroff M J (1994) Thanatos to Eros: 35 years of Psychedelic Exploration. Berlin:
GAM-Media GmBH.

Wasson R G (1957) Seeking the Magic Mushroom. Life, 42 (19), 100 et seq.

Wilson B (1984) ‘Pass it on’: the story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message
reached the world. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc.

Frequently dismissed as cranks, their fussy eating habits tend to make them unpopular with dinner party hosts and guests alike.

But now it seems they may have the last laugh, with research showing vegetarians are more intelligent than their meat-eating friends.

A study of thousands of men and women revealed that those who stick to a vegetarian diet have IQs that are around five points higher than those who regularly eat meat.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, the researchers say it isn’t clear why veggies are brainier – but admit the fruit and veg-rich vegetarian diet could somehow boost brain power.

The researchers, from the University of Southampton, tracked the fortunes of more than 8,000 volunteers for 20 years.

At the age of ten, the boys and girls sat a series of tests designed to determine their IQ.

When they reached the age of 30, they were asked whether they were vegetarian and their answers compared to their childhood IQ score.

Around four and a half per cent of the adults were vegetarian – a figure that is broadly in line with that found in the general population.

However, further analysis of the results showed those who were brainiest as children were more likely to have become vegetarian as adults, shunning both meat and fish.

The typical adult veggie had a childhood IQ of around 105 – around five points higher than those who continued to eat meat as they grew up.

The vegetarians were also more likely to have gained degrees and hold down high-powered jobs.

There was no difference in IQ between strict vegetarians and those who classed themselves as veggie but still ate fish or chicken.

However, vegans – vegetarians who also avoid dairy products – scored significantly lower, averaging an IQ score of 95 at the age of 10.

Researcher Dr Catharine Gale said there could be several explanations for the findings, including intelligent people being more likely to consider both animal welfare issues and the possible health benefits of a vegetarian diet.

Previous work has shown that vegetarians tend to have lower blood pressure and lower cholesterol, cutting their risk of heart attacks. They are also less likely to be obese.

Alternatively, a diet which is rich in fruit, vegetables and wholegrains may somehow boost brain power.

Dr Gale said: ‘Although our results suggest that children who are more intelligent may be more likely to become vegetarian as adolescents or young adults, it does not rule out the possibility that such a diet might have some beneficial effect on subsequent cognitive performance.

‘Might the nature of the vegetarians’ diet have enhanced their apparently superior brain power? Was this the mechanism that helped them achieve the disproportionate nature of degrees?’

High-profile vegetarians include singers Paul McCartney and Morrissey and actress Jenny Seagrove.

Past exponents of a meat-free lifestyle include George Bernard Shaw and Benjamin Franklin.

Promoting the cause, Shaw said, ‘A mind of the calibre of mine cannot drive its nutriment from cows’, while Franklin stated that a vegetarian diet resulted in ‘greater clearness of head and quicker comprehension’.

Liz O’Neill, of the Vegetarian Society, said: ‘We’ve always known that vegetarianism is an intelligent, compassionate choice benefiting animals, people and the environment. Now, we’ve got the scientific evidence to prove it.

‘Maybe that explains why many meat-reducers are keen to call themselves vegetarians when even they must know that vegetarians don’t eat chicken, turkey or fish!’

The United Nations, the European commission and individual states including Britain are flouting international human rights law by funding anti-drug crime measures that are inadvertently leading to the executions of offenders, according to a report seen by the Guardian.

The International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA), a non-governmental organisation that advocates less punitive approaches to drugs policy globally, says it has gathered evidence revealing “strong links” between executions for drugs offences and the funding of specific drug enforcement operations by international agencies.

It says programmes aimed at shoring up local efforts to combat drug trafficking and other offences are being run “without appropriate safeguards” that could prevent serious human rights violations in countries that retain the death penalty.

The report concludes that the UN Office on Drugs and Crime ( “are all actively involved in funding and/or delivering technical assistance, legislative support and financial aid intended to strengthen domestic drug enforcement activities in states that retain the death penalty for drug offences.

“Such funding, training and capacity-building activities – if successful – result in increased convictions of persons on drug charges, and the potential for increased death sentences and executions”.

The report claims there is evidence of “complicity in acts that violate international human rights law”, undermining the Council of Europe’s commitment to abolish the death penalty, the United Nations Charter and UNODC’s stated opposition to the penalty for drugs offences.

The 33-page report lists a series of case studies it says illustrate how efforts to garner convictions for drugs offences across borders have resulted further down the line in executions. International law does not prohibit the death penalty but does limit its use to the “most serious crimes”. The meaning of “serious” is challenged by some states with the death penalty.

Rick Lines, deputy director of the IHRA and co-author of the report, said: “Many people around the world would be shocked to know that their governments are funding programmes that are leading people indirectly to death by hanging and firing squads.” He said agencies and countries were not intentionally funding programmes that led to people facing the death penalty but that it was “a fact” that executions were happening.

The report comes soon after the execution by firing squad of Ronnie Lee Gardner in Utah, America, that once again highlights human rights concerns about capital punishment. However IHRA’s focus on the persistence of capital punishment in other “retentionist” countries for drugs crimes is likely to resonate this week. Saturday is UN International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, organised to highlight that some states, including China, have always executed drugs offenders to make a public example of them.

An IHRA report published last month revealed that of the 58 states that retain the death penalty, 32 permit it for drug-related crimes. Some use it more readily than others. The estimated overall number of executions including those for drugs-related offences in 2009 was 714, according to Amnesty International, although this does not account for potentially thousands more executions that are not disclosed by China.

Commenting on the IHRA report, Rebecca Schleifer, advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, said that while UNODC in particular has recently “taken steps in the right direction” to account for the human rights implications of its programmes, its drug enforcement activities, and those of other organisations and countries, continue to “put them at risk of supporting increased death sentences and executions in some countries”.

Sebastian Saville, director of Release, a British drugs and human rights charity, said there was an urgent need for political leaders in Britain and the US to rethink their “disastrous ‘war on drugs’ policy and tacit support for regimes that continue executing people for relatively minor offences”.

A UNODC spokesman welcomed the report for drawing attention to capital punishment, saying it raised “legitimate concerns” about how actions designed to deal with drugs crimes “may indirectly result in increased convictions and the possible application of the death penalty”. He said UNODC had taken “concrete steps” to implement human rights assessments as part of “all drug enforcement activities”. The IHRA report makes a number of recommendations including that European governments, the European Commission and UNODC urgently leverage their influence with countries that retain the death penalty “to restrict or abolish the death penalty for drug offences.”

More at http://www.ihra.net/news

The following lines are excerpts from Democracy Now´s interview made by Amy Goodman.

AMY GOODMAN: Where do you see American empire in ten, twenty, thirty years?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Prediction in human affairs is very low—has very little success, too many complications. The United States, I think, will come out of the economic crisis, very likely, as the dominant superpower. There’s a lot of talk about China and India, and it’s real, they’re changing, but they’re just not in the same league. I mean, both China and India have enormous internal problems that the West doesn’t face.

You get kind of a picture of this by looking at the Human Development Index of the United Nations. The last time I looked, India was about 125th or something. And I think China was about eightieth. And China would be worse, I think, if it wasn’t such a closed society. In India, you sort of get better data, so you can see what’s happening. China is kind of closed. You don’t see what’s going on in the peasant areas, which are in turmoil, you know. They have environmental problems. They have huge—hundreds of millions of people are kind of like at the edge of starvation.

We don’t have—you know, we have problems, but not those problems. And even the industrial growth, which is there—you know, for part of the population, there’s been improvement. But when you take, say, India, where we know more, in the areas where high-tech industries developed—and it’s pretty impressive. I’ve visited some of the labs in Hyderabad. You know, it’s as good or better than MIT. But right nearby, the rate of peasant suicides is going up, very sharply, in fact. And it’s the same source. It’s the neoliberal policies, which privilege a certain sector of the population and a certain—and let the rest take care of themselves.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, the rise of progressives in Latin America?

NOAM CHOMSKY: That’s important. I mean, Latin America, for the first time in 500 years, is moving towards a degree of independence and a kind of integration, which is a prerequisite for independence, and also at least is beginning to face some of its massive internal problems. I mean, Latin America has probably the worst inequality in the world. There’s a wealthy sector, small wealthy sector, which is extremely rich, but they have—their tradition is that they have no responsibility to the country, so they send their capital to Zurich. You know, they have their second homes in the Riviera, and their children study in Oxford or whatever. This is beginning to be faced in different ways, but it’s sort of happening all over the continent. And they are beginning to integrate. The United States obviously doesn’t like it. In fact, it’s barely reported most of the time.

So there was a very interesting case last September, when President Morales in Bolivia—Bolivia is, in my opinion at least, probably the most democratic country in the world. Nobody says that, but if you look at what happened in the last couple of years, there were huge, popular, mass organizations of the most repressed population in the hemisphere, the indigenous population, which for the first time ever has entered the political arena significantly and were able to elect a president from their own ranks and one who doesn’t give instructions to his army, but who’s following policies that were largely produced by the population. So he’s their representative, in a sense in which democracy is supposed to work.

And they know the issues. It’s not like our elections. They know the issues. They’re serious issues: control over resources, economic justice, cultural rights, and so on. You can say they’re right or wrong, but at least it’s functioning.

Now, the elites that have traditionally ruled the country, of course, don’t like it. And they’re threatening virtual secession. And, of course, the United States is backing them, as the media are. And it got to the point last summer, I suppose, where it led to real violence.

Well, there was a meeting of UNASUR, the Union of South American Republics—that’s all of South America—a meeting in Chile, Santiago, Chile. And it came out with a declaration, important declaration, in which it supported President Morales and opposed the—condemned the violence being led by the quasi-secessionist forces. And Morales responded, thanking them for their gesture of support, but also saying, correctly, that this is the first time in 500 years that South America is beginning to take its affairs in its own hands without the intervention of foreign powers, primarily the US. Well, that was so important that I don’t think it was even reported here. I mean, the meeting was known, so you see vague references to it. But it’s an indication of developments that are taking place in various ways.

See Full interview.