The Manson Murders, JFK, 9/11 And The Psychopathy of Power

Kevin Barrett
The Unz Review

“With Alan Scheflin, a forensic psychologist and law professor who’d written a book on MKULTRA, I laid out a circumstantial case linking (CIA mind control guru Jolly) West to Manson. Was it possible, I asked, that the Manson murders were an MKULTRA experiment gone wrong? ‘No,’ he said, ‘an MKULTRA experiment gone right.’” (CHAOS , p. 369) I moved out of Southern California in the summer of 1969. I was ten years old, and my parents were fleeing decadence and depravity in favor of the more wholesome Midwest.

Before our move, a story had circulated about some local (Newport Beach) high schoolers who had "gone on an LSD trip" and gotten caught by police. As I understood it, the teenagers had "taken LSD" and started leaping from rooftop to rooftop, "tripping" all over the neighborhood and waking people up to the sound of thundering hoofbeats overhead. At the time I wondered whether LSD conferred a miraculous leaping or flying ability, since the houses in Lido Sands, though rather tightly clustered, were mostly spaced perhaps eight or ten feet apart, which seemed like a long way to jump.

I vaguely recall this "LSD-fueled teenage midnight horsemen of the apocalypse" story having something to do with my parents' decision to move back to Wisconsin. Southern California circa 1969, a few years after the hippie movement had peaked and turned into a bad trip, didn't seem like a good place to send your kids to high school. (Little did my parents know that the 60s would hit Wisconsin high schools ten years late, putting me and my siblings directly in the path of the psychedelic hurricane.) John Kenn

Years later, as an "experienced" (in the Jimi Hendrix sense) subversive teenage wannabe intellectual, I would read about the Manson murders and notice how convenient they had been for the Establishment. From the moment Charlie Manson's grinning, demonic face started leering from every front page and TV screen in America, the whole hippie-antiwar thing had seemed a whole lot scarier. I read the official version of the Manson myth, Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter, and thought: This is too crazy to be true. None of the Wisconsin hippies I know are even remotely like these characters. Maybe it's something they add to the fluoride in the Southern California water.

By 1975 I had seen Mark Lane's presentation of the Zapruder film and knew that America had experienced an unspeakably evil coup d'état in 1963. In 1979 I read John Marks' The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control and discussed it with William S. Burroughs, who told me he had been aware of such activities for many years before they were publicly revealed by the Church and Rockefeller Commissions: "The thing about these secrets is they're not all that secret."

Well, maybe not, Bill. But if you had proclaimed in 1960 that the CIA's most heavily funded program aimed at turning people into killer zombies, you would have gotten blank stares at best. Rumors whispered in bohemian demimondes, blown up into dystopian parody in books like Naked Lunch, are hardly threats to national security secrecy.

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Dramatic Increase of Mass Shootings in America: The Role of Prescription Psychiatric Drugs?

cchrint.org
Kelly Patricia O’Meara

 “While the data about the ever-increasing random shootings is important, it doesn’t mean spit unless someone in a position of power is willing to seriously question what is causing the violent behavior. A beginning point might be to ask if there is a common denominator among the shooters.”

The U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, recently announced that the rate of mass shootings in the U.S. is increasing. Although the information could hardly come as a surprise to most Americans, what is interesting is that the nation’s top cop provided no clues as to what may be causing this severe increase in deadly violent acts.

As Holder reported, the annual number of mass-shooting incidents in the U.S. has tripled since 2009 and, remarkably, the average number of shootings has increased from 5 per year before 2009 to 15 per year since.

While the data about the ever-increasing random shootings is important, it doesn’t mean spit unless someone in a position of power is willing to seriously question what is causing the violent behavior. A beginning point might be to ask if there is a common denominator among the shooters.

For instance, at the same time that mass-shootings have increased in the U.S., so has the use of prescription psychiatric drugs.  If one considers this list of well-publicized shootings between 1999 and 2013, it is clearly evident that the majority of these shooters were either taking, or strongly suspected of taking, mind-altering psychiatric drugs.
The data that reinforce the psychiatric drugs and violence connection is overwhelming.

• Between 2004 -2012 there have been 14,773 reports to the US FDA’s MedWatch system on psychiatric drugs causing violent side effects including, 1,531 cases of homicidal ideation/homicide, 3,287 cases of mania and 8,219 cases of aggression. The FDA estimates that less than 1% of all serious adverse events are reported.

• A PLOS One study, based on FDA adverse event drug data, authored by Thomas J. Moore, Joseph Glenmullen and Curt D. Furberg, found that “acts of violence towards others are a genuine and serious adverse drug event associated with a relatively small group of drugs.” Verenicline (Chantix) and antidepressants with serotonergic effects were the most strongly and consistently implicated drugs.

• There are 22 international drug regulatory warnings on psychiatric drugs citing effects of mania, hostility, aggression, violence and even homicidal ideation.

• Psychiatrists prescribe antipsychotic drugs to children in one third of all visits, which is three times higher than during the 1990′s, and nearly 90 percent of those prescriptions written between 2005 and 2009 were prescribed for something other than what the Food and Drug Administration approved them for.  Antipsychotics have been described as a chemical lobotomy because of their ability to disable normal brain function.

• Emergency Room visits involving nonmedical use of Central Nervous System Stimulants (CNS) among adults aged 18-34 increased from 5,605 in 2005 to 22,949 in 2011.  CNS drugs include prescription ADHD drugs.
• According to IMS Health, there has been a 22% increase in the number of Americans on psychiatric drugs since 2002, with over 77 million people currently taking them—that’s one in four Americans.
• A total of 8.2 million children under 18 are taking psychiatric drugs in the U.S.
• There are over 40 million Americans taking antidepressants – a 15% increase since 2002. Of these, 2 million are children under 18.
• Since 2002, the number of Americans on ADHD drugs has gone up by 94% with over 10 million currently taking them.
• According to the CDC, 11 percent of school-age children have been diagnosed with ADHD and there are now 4.7 million children under 18 in the U.S. taking ADHD drugs, per IMS Health.
• The total number of Americans on antipsychotics has increased by 40% since 2002.
• All antidepressants carry the FDA’s “Black Box” warning, alerting the public that antidepressants may increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children and young adults. A “Black Box” warning is the FDA’s most serious prescription drug warning.
• Finally, the US military has seen an increase in the number of suicides, with a record 349 in 2012, far exceeding the number of American combat deaths.  According to the Military Times, at least one in six service members (17%) is on some form of psychiatric drug.
• According to the Defense Logistics Agency, between 2001 and 2009, the overall use of psychiatric drugs increased by 76%. During the same time, antidepressant use increased 40%.

Of course, these data are just a small sample of the publicly available information that law enforcement, and lawmakers, could utilize in an effort to understand what may be causing the increased number of shootings.

But despite these overwhelming data, to date, there still has been no investigation by state or federal lawmakers, or law enforcement agencies, into the possibility that the increased use of mind-altering psychiatric drugs may be the common thread in the increased violent behavior.

Until this issue is addressed the mass shootings will continue to increase, the carnage will continue and the hypocritical and hollow words of sympathy and condolence will fall from the mouths of those who had the power to make a difference but not the courage to simply ask a question.

Kelly Patricia O’Meara is an award winning former investigative reporter for the Washington Times, Insight Magazine, penning dozens of articles exposing the fraud of psychiatric diagnosis and the dangers of the psychiatric drugs  She is also the author of the highly acclaimed book, Psyched Out: How Psychiatry Sells Mental Illness and Pushes Pills that Kill. Prior to working as an investigative journalist, O’Meara spent sixteen years on Capitol Hill as a congressional staffer to four Members of Congress.

The Hidden Wisdom Within Addiction

awakeninthenow.com/ via serendipity

I’ve had a number of people in my life who have struggled with various forms of substance addiction. I myself have struggled with it at different times in my life. One of the most significant qualities of substance addiction is the obsessive desire to consume the substance of choice and the longing to change one’s state of consciousness. There is a consistent feeling of aversion to the usual state of consciousness which can involve painful emotions the addict has suppressed and is not prepared to deal with, often related to unresolved past trauma. A dissatisfaction with the usual state of consciousness. This is also present in people who choose to take psychoactive substances to alter their consciousness although in non-addicts there is a lesser degree of aversion to the normal state as well as the absence of the compulsive quality. Almost everyone consumes substances to alter their state of mind, consider not only alcohol, marijuana and psychedelics but also coffee, tea, sugar, etc. So there is nothing particularly unusual about this.

There is no question of the destructiveness of addiction in our society. However there is another element within this process that I’ve recently begun to explore. I’m calling this the hidden wisdom within addiction. The unwavering desire to change one’s state of consciousness out of a profound dissatisfaction with the usual state can be seen as a healthy motivation and possibly as a distorted representation of a spiritual drive to realize freedom. If we consider the normal state of consciousness of the average person in our society it becomes easy to understand why people would be dissatisfied with it. Most of us live in a mind state that can be characterized as subdued madness in my view. The baseline collective consciousness is one that is based in separation/isolation, low-level fear/anxiety, low-level depression, a very limited experience of the world based on a tight set of mental filters and most importantly a disconnect from source or spirit. Is it any wonder that so many people feel such a drive to alter their state of consciousness given the limitations and stifling isolation of everyday consciousness? The desire to expand conscious experience can easily be seen as a powerful urge to grow and evolve.

Our society however does not reward or encourage expansion of consciousness and spiritual growth, in fact it often punishes it. As soon as psychedelics began to be seriously researched in the late 50s and early 60s and their potential as a healing tool was realized they were immediately criminalized. The evidence suggested further study and potentially powerful positive effects from careful intentional use in a wide variety of contexts from the treatment of mental health issues to their use as a spiritual tool. We are conditioned into limited perspectives and beliefs about our world and how life should be lived and most of us to some degree buy into these limitations. Psychoactive substances temporarily dissolve these limitations but they are an imperfect solution because their effects cannot be maintained without continuous or repeated consumption. However they provide a window or a glimpse of other states of consciousness and a reminder that our usual state is only one possible perspective. If the desire behind addiction can be channeled into a spiritual path that is uniquely tailored for the individual’s needs and personality that desire will have another outlet besides addictive use of substances or other behaviors. For many this spiritual alternative may include mind altering substances used with a different intention than what we find in an addictive context. The intention of truly achieving personal freedom rather than escaping from unpleasant experience.

The value of seeing this aspect of addiction is not to condone the destructiveness of it, rather it is to see that there can be a positive underlying motivation that is needing expression. This helps to let go of judgment, blame and shame which are the truly enabling aspects of addiction. If we can see the that there is a wisdom that is trying to be expressed through it we can approach it in a creative way that aims to redirect the expression rather than forcefully stop it out of judgment. It is a common aspect of addiction that when people forcefully stop their addictive use of a substance, the addictive behavior is often transferred to another substance or behavior. It cannot be stopped but it can be transformed. Transformation is only possible with acceptance however. With acceptance the inner battle ceases and we have many more options open to us to grow in a creative way. The prevalence of addiction and the use of psychiatric drugs in our society suggests that we as a society are screaming for true paths to freedom and growth. Those path are available if we can open our minds to what is possible and if we have the courage to face our inner demons.