By Joshua Stanton and Sung-Yoon Lee
December 7, 2013 -- Updated 1836 GMT (0236 HKT)

Editor's note: Joshua Stanton, an attorney in Washington, D.C., has advised the House Foreign Affairs Committee on North Korea-related legislation and blogs at OneFreeKorea. Sung-Yoon Lee is Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies and Assistant Professor at the Fletcher School, Tufts University.

(CNN) -- The deliberate policies of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his late father, Kim Jong Il, may have killed millions of North Koreans, either by starving them to death or sending them to die in a system of political prisoner concentration camps unlike any since the regimes of Hitler and Stalin.

For years, the world has been so fixated on the North's nuclear weapons that it has lost sight of reports of such systematic crimes. Yet they are the very reason we should care that North Korea could develop an effective nuclear arsenal. Indeed one of the very sites of this alleged brutality — Camp 16 -- lies right next to North Korea's nuclear test site.

With the publication of its newest report, Amnesty International confronts us with more evidence of the Kim Jong Un regime's disregard for the lives of its own people and, by extension, our own.

We've long known that these camps were places of horror. Kang Chol Hwan, one of few survivors, published his memoir of Camp 15 more than a dozen years ago. One of us published the first satellite imagery of Camp 16 in 2007, finding what appeared to be its distinctive fence lines and guard posts right where defectors said they would be. But even in 2012, when this detailed imagery analysis of Camp 16 was published, there were still no eyewitness accounts. It was a place prisoners never left, dead or alive.

Still, we have accounts of what went on in the other camps. Witnesses had told about the building in Camp 22 where two parents breathed air into the lungs of their dying children before they perished together in the camp's experimental gas chamber, and about the two children who drowned when a guard kicked them into a waste pond. We have heard of the guest house at Camp 18 where, according to witness accounts, women prisoners were raped before the guards murdered them, and of the former athlete who was killed by a guard at Camp 14 after hunger drove him to eat part of the guard's leather whip. We read how guards at Camp 15 would allegedly make starving prisoners race along the side of a cliff for corn cakes, and laugh each time one fell to his death...

Foes of illegal immigration accused House Speaker John Boehner of signaling his willingness to consider an "amnesty" bill after his office hired a longtime policy aide who has advocated legalizing undocumented immigrants. 

The speaker's office announced Tuesday that it had hired Rebecca Tallent as a point person for immigration issues. Tallent previously was director of immigration policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center -- but before that, worked for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and played a role in the drafting of the 2006 and 2007 immigration reform bills, which provided a pathway to legal status for some illegal immigrants. 

The Federation for American Immigration Reform and other groups claimed the hiring was a sign that the House would consider an "amnesty" bill, despite pledges by Boehner that the House and Senate would not try to reconcile the differences between their bills through a process known as "conference." Foes of illegal immigration had been concerned that this process would allow a select group of negotiators to include a pathway to legal status for illegal immigrants even if the House previously opposed it. 

"President Obama and Senate leaders have already said that they do not care what bill serves as the vehicle to get them to their desired objective of amnesty and massive immigration increases, just as long as they get there," FAIR said in an email blast Tuesday. "It is clear, as a result of Tuesday's announcement by Boehner, that the legislative vehicle will be different, but the destination will be the same." 

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel defended the hire, telling The Washington Times that Tallent is a "well-known expert in this field of public policy" and a "great addition to our team and that effort."...

He reiterated that Boehner wants "step-by-step, common-sense immigration reforms."

By Reuters Reporter

PUBLISHED: 02:32 GMT, 1 December 2013 | UPDATED: 01:17 GMT, 2 December 2013

In September 1953, a group of anti-communist guerrillas presented U.S. serviceman Merrill Edward Newman with a gold ring.

For Newman, 85, the ring became a proud symbol of the role he played as an adviser to a group of battle-hardened partisans who fought deep behind enemy lines in a war that pitted the China- and Soviet-backed North against the U.S.-backed South.

Now, six decades on, the pensioner, who lives in a retirement community in California, has become one of the last prisoners of that war.

Visiting old friends: Merrill Newman with former Kuwol Guerrilla Unit members, who he was an adviser to in the Korean War. Newman, 85, was arrested last month by the North Koreans for his role in the war

Wartime: Merrill Newman (bottom row, 2nd from left) with the guerrillas he trained during the Korean War, in this picture provided by Kim Kwoang-in, son of the captain of the Kuwol Guerrilla Unit

He returned to North Korea last month as an American tourist and was snatched by authorities from his plane moments before it was due to depart for Beijing.

When he returned to the isolated state, he was taking a risk, said former guerrillas who knew Newman.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2516282/He-bad-guy-American-prisoner-North-Korea-charge-secret-force-training-guerrillas-fought-enemy-lines-Korean-War.html#ixzz2mQ4ZQvvq

(Reuters) - British and U.S. intelligence officials say they are worried about a "doomsday" cache of highly classified, heavily encrypted material they believe former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has stored on a data cloud.

The cache contains documents generated by the NSA and other agencies and includes names of U.S. and allied intelligence personnel, seven current and former U.S. officials and other sources briefed on the matter said.

The data is protected with sophisticated encryption, and multiple passwords are needed to open it, said two of the sources, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters...

By Colum Lynch
Foreign Policy
Wednesday, November 20, 2013

The United States and its key intelligence allies are quietly working behind the scenes to kneecap a mounting movement in the United Nations to promote a universal human right to online privacy, according to diplomatic sources and an internal American government document obtained by The Cable.

The diplomatic battle is playing out in an obscure U.N. General Assembly committee that is considering a proposal by Brazil and Germany to place constraints on unchecked internet surveillance by the National Security Agency and other foreign intelligence services. American representatives have made it clear that they won't tolerate such checks on their global surveillance network. The stakes are high, particularly in Washington -- which is seeking to contain an international backlash against NSA spying -- and in Brasilia, where Brazilian President Dilma Roussef is personally involved in monitoring the U.N. negotiations.

The Brazilian and German initiative seeks to apply the right to privacy, which is enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to online communications. Their proposal, first revealed by The Cable, affirms a "right to privacy that is not to be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with their privacy, family, home, or correspondence." It notes that while public safety may "justify the gathering and protection of certain sensitive information," nations "must ensure full compliance" with international human rights laws. A final version the text is scheduled to be presented to U.N. members on Wednesday evening and the resolution is expected to be adopted next week.

A draft of the resolution, which was obtained by The Cable, calls on states to "to respect and protect the right to privacy," asserting that the "same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, including the right to privacy." It also requests the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, present the U.N. General Assembly next year with a report on the protection and promotion of the right to privacy, a provision that will ensure the issue remains on the front burner.

Publicly, U.S. representatives say they're open to an affirmation of privacy rights. "The United States takes very seriously our international legal obligations, including those under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," Kurtis Cooper, a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said in an email. "We have been actively and constructively negotiating to ensure that the resolution promotes human rights and is consistent with those obligations."

But privately, American diplomats are pushing hard to kill a provision of the Brazilian and German draft which states that "extraterritorial surveillance" and mass interception of communications, personal information, and metadata may constitute a violation of human rights. The United States and its allies, according to diplomats, outside observers, and documents, contend that the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not apply to foreign espionage.

In recent days, the United States circulated to its allies a confidential paper highlighting American objectives in the negotiations, "Right to Privacy in the Digital Age -- U.S. Redlines." It calls for changing the Brazilian and German text so "that references to privacy rights are referring explicitly to States' obligations under ICCPR and remove suggestion that such obligations apply extraterritorially." In other words: America wants to make sure it preserves the right to spy overseas...

englishnews@chosun.com / Nov. 22, 2013 09:15 KST

Merrill Newman

An American who was arrested in North Korea on Oct. 26 has been identified as Merrill Newman, an 85-year-old Korean War veteran from Palo Alto, California.

Newman was about to leave North Korea when he was asked by a North Korean officer to step off the plane.

"He's always wanted to go to North Korea; it's been a lifelong thing," his son, Jeffrey Newman, told the San Jose Mercury News on Wednesday. "My dad got off, walked out with the stewardess, and that's the last he was seen."

Merrill Newman went to the North last month with friend Bob Hamdla for a package tour arranged by a Beijing-based travel agency.

After studying zoology at the University of California at Berkeley, Newman joined the Army in 1950 and served as an infantry officer during the Korean War. He obtained a master's degree in education from Stanford University after the war and worked as an accountant for tech companies.

On retiring in 1984, he moved to Palo Alto with his wife, the paper said.

The day before he was detained, Newman and a local tour guide talked with a North Korean official about his experience of the Korean War.

Calling Newman's detention "a terrible misunderstanding," his travel companion Hamdla said in a statement, "I hope that the North Koreans see this as a humanitarian matter and allow him to return to his family as soon as possible."

"It's also very unusual for the North Koreans not to acknowledge, particularly after holding the person for weeks, that they have the person... with no apparent Korean ties," said Daniel Sneider, a North Korea expert at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center of Stanford University. "That may indicate that they haven't decided what to do with him yet, and therefore they don't want to admit that they've arrested him."

November 15th, 2013, 08:32 GMT
By Lucian Parfeni

For the past few months, since the Edward Snowden revelations went public, the NSA has been the focus of most reports, along with its British counterpart, the GCHQ. That makes sense, since Snowden worked for the NSA when he decided to gather information to leak and most of the documents he collected were from the GGHQ.

But these aren't the only two spy agencies messing with people's privacy and going beyond what the laws that govern them allow or should allow.

The CIA is collecting all financial transactions processed by the likes of Western Union, including those to and from the US. What this means is that the CIA has on hand a list of all transfers processed by Western Union including those of Americans.

The idea is to track the funding of various terrorist organizations and individuals associated with them or, at least, that's what anonymous officials say the program is for.

The agency would not confirm the program. But it is claimed that the program is legal under the Section 215 of the Patriot Act and is overseen by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. These are the same conditions that make most of NSA's surveillance "legal."

Allegedly, the data on Americans can't be searched by CIA agents, even if it's stored, unless they can be tied to terrorist organizations. The data is also supposed to be deleted after a few years.

Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have reported on the matter, citing sources inside the government.

What's encouraging in all of this is that, for once in the past few months, these revelations don't come from the Edward Snowden documents. Of course, it's bad news that there are many of these types of programs that need to be revealed, but it's a good thing that they are finally unveiled, one way or another.

englishnews@chosun.com / Nov. 14, 2013 11:34 KST

Russian President Vladimir Putin behaved erratically during his visit to Seoul on Wednesday, arriving 30 minutes late for a summit with President Park Geun-hye and making several last-minute changes to his itinerary.

Seoul and Moscow agreed on Nov. 1 that Putin would visit Korea this Tuesday and Wednesday, but Russia informed the Korean government on Nov. 4 that Putin wanted a change in schedule, shortening the trip to a single-day visit.

That means the government had to give invited guests for the official luncheon short notice that it had been moved.

The Russians gave no clear reason for the change in schedule. Putin arrived at Incheon Airport at 2:50 a.m. Wednesday from Vietnam and rested in a hotel in Seoul. He met with Korean and Russian business representatives later in the morning and apparently told them his arrival had been delayed by typhoon Haiyan.

But the Korean Embassy in Vietnam said the typhoon already passed on Monday and should not have impacted Putin's schedule. Instead, the embassy said, Putin had a packed schedule during his one-day visit on Tuesday to the Southeast Asian country, where he met Prime Minister Ngyuen Tan Dung and other officials, which could have delayed his scheduled departure.

President Park Geun-hye and her Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Seoul on Wednesday /Newsis

Putin then arrived about half an hour late for his meeting with Park at Cheong Wa Dae scheduled for 1:30 p.m., a major diplomatic faux paus. The Russian leader was apparently delayed by a welcome by the Korea Sambo Federation. Sambo is a Russian martial art and Putin, who is prone to displays of manly vigor, is honorary chairman of the International Sambo Federation.

He left the Lotte Hotel in downtown Seoul at around 1:10 p.m., around 10 minutes late already, and then insisted on stopping his motorcade as he passed members of the Korea Sambo Federation who were standing on the sidewalk holding a banner welcoming him. He spent around 15 minutes pressing the flesh and having his photo taken with them.

The Korean presidential security team was surprised by the unscheduled stop. Earlier in the day, Putin also made an appearance at the Korea-Russia Business Dialogue at the Lotte Hotel, which was scheduled at the last minute at his request.

As the summit started late, the joint press conference did not take place until 4:05 p.m., an hour and a half later than planned.

That in turn delayed Putin's scheduled appearances at the Korea-Russia Dialogue Forum with Park and the unveiling of a statue of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.

In Incheon on his way to the airport, Putin paid his respects at a monument remembering the Russian battleship Varyag that sank off Incheon in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, and met briefly with Incheon Mayor Song Young-gil before leaving Korea late in the evening.

A Foreign Ministry official said officials here had no choice but to go along with Putin's schedule changes.

:: Far Gone Travels ::

by Bill Rounds

I hated having to check the mail. When I did receive mail in my mailbox, it was mostly ads, bulk mail and mass mailers that were a complete waste of my time and a waste of trees. Before I had figured out how to stop junk mail, I still had to go through that pile of junk in order to not miss the occasional important piece of mail that I got. I found a way to stop receiving mail and don’t receive regular mail anymore. You don’t have to either.  I will show you one way to stop receiving mail.

Problems Sending Mail From Home

Sending mail from the curbside mailbox in front of your own home can be dangerous, especially if you are paying bills through the mail. You should never leave a piece of mail with a personal check in your curbside mailbox. These problems sending mail are related to the problems receiving mail at home.  By receiving mail at your home, you disclose the identity of the people who live there to anyone who might be curious. Not only might your mail contain your name on the outside, there may be sensitive information on the inside. You may receive checks, credit card offers or other pieces of mail that sit unattended near the street. This kind of information can be gold to private investigators and identity thieves. Receiving mail at an address that is not your permanent home might also expose you to income tax in a state that is not the state with which you have the strongest connection.

To Stop Junk Mail, Start Online

There are ways to stop receiving mail that you don’t want by contacting many of the mass mailing marketing agencies that keep track of you and send junk mail to you.  I may cover that in another post, but my purpose here is to show you how to stop receiving mail altogether to stop junk mail.  It is actually possible to stop receiving mail at your curb side mailbox, even if you have received mail at that address before. First, it is helpful to eliminate all important mail, like bank statements, credit card bills, etc. Check those kinds of important accounts online if possible. Online security protocol should be followed of course.

To Stop Junk Mail, Use A New Address

You still may have items or accounts that do not allow for electronic monitoring, or you may not want to risk the potential insecurity of online activity. For these items you can use a PO box or private mail receiving agency, like Earth Class Mail, to receive your mail. Another option is to receive mail at an office or location that has more security than a curb side mail box. All of these options will prevent someone from snooping through your mail, possibly taking important items or even stealing your identity. Earth Class Mail is also a good way to easily dispose of unwanted junk mail easily.

Once you no longer depend on the mail for service, you can take steps to stop mail delivery to your home. The post office allows requests from customers to hold delivery of their mail for up to 30 days. I am unaware if there are any limits to how often you can do this, or if you can extend this request for longer than 30 days.

Stop Receiving Mail By Not Checking Mail

You can rely on another postal regulation to cease mail delivery to your house completely. I don’t think the USPS likes people doing this, but it is within the regulations of the post office. If your mail accumulates in your mailbox and more mail cannot be reasonably delivered, the mailman will take all of your mail and hold it at the post office. Oreo will double stuff their cookies, the post office will not.  He will not deliver more mail to your house until you pick your mail up at the post office. You will be notified with a short note left in your mailbox where your pile of useless junk mail once sat. Once you have read the note, you should leave it in the mailbox for good so that the mailman is not aware that you have ever seen the note. They will only hold your mail for a few weeks, so anything older than a few weeks will be returned to sender.

This is easier to do if you can avoid the mailman. It might make for uncomfortable conversation if you regularly do yoga on your front lawn whenever your mailman comes by or if you see him at parties. If your house appears to be a vacation home, this technique will also be more effective.

Conclusion

I do not think the post office intends for people to stop checking their mail so they can stop receiving their mail.  That is the unintended result of their policy.  This is just one of many of the strategies discussed in the book How To Vanish that are legal but that the authorities don’t really want you to know about.  Do not let your private information sit unattended at the curb every day.  If possible use a reputable CMRA such as Earth Class Mail as this will both protect your privacy, increase peace of mind and save you time. It will also help you when you are traveling outside of tax free states so that you don’t expose yourself to unjust tax liability.  Fight the urge to check your mail just for a while and you will never have to check it again.

Editor’s note: With a resurgence of interest in psychedelics for medical and therapeutic use, and a shift in attitudes concerning the “War On [Some] Drugs,” Todd Brendan Fahey’s Wisdom’s Maw: The Acid Novel is now considered an underground classic. The book sheds light on the origins of the US government’s interest in LSD and its key role in the coming counterculture. It “factionalizes” events surrounding the CIA’s LSD experiments of the 1950s/60s, known as Project MK-Ultra, and their influence on the subsequent counterculture. It was released in October, 2013, via Amazon/Kindle.

It was a scary time in my life–when, deep in the bowels of my phone line began emergence of a sonar blip to which I could set my watch and which prompted my then-literary agent [William F. Stankey, whose representation I shared with Hunter S. Thompson] to laugh: “God damn, your phone is fucking lousy! They’ve got you bugged from here to gone!” [And according to persons I trust and who have intimate familiarity with such, yes, "they" did/had; and is why I fled Los Angeles in the middle of the night, back in 1991, and have been discrete with mine address thereafter.]

I had been, since 1989, researching the story of “Captain” Alfred M. Hubbard — the former OSS spook who turned Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary onto LSD for the first time. How a 24-year old could gain access to such a list of persons is still unknown to me. I’d served as aide to two U.S. military Generals, a U.S. Congressman and the Governor of Arizona … but that didn’t merit me any sort of inclusion into the Acid Club.

Todd Brendan Fahey
wrote this article for Toke Signals

Here’s how it went: I was enrolled in the Master’s degree Program in Professional Writing at University of Southern California (USC), and one of my professors was a man named Paul Gillette. Paul had written Play Misty For Me, which became a Clint Eastwood film, and was a Pulitzer nominee for a later novel. He was a heavy drinker, as was I, and we enjoyed countless nights downstairs at Traditions — the bar at USC. (One night, Dr. Gillette and I watched Nolan Ryan’s seventh no-hitter, live, on the big screen at Traditions, and got drunker than I think I’ve ever been in my life; he winced, at my next class, near unto an apologia, and asked if I’d “made it home OK?”)

Paul Gillette had hosted a CBS television interview program for a couple of years in the 1970s, and among his guests was one Dr. Humphry Osmond — the man who turned Aldous Huxley on to mescaline, inspiring the legendary The Doors of Perception. Gillette knew I was an acid head, and he wanted to help; he also knew that my writing was … very different and apart from anything he’d seen prior.

Dr. Humphry Osmond
His phone list included Timothy Leary, Myron Stolaroff, Dr. Abram Hoffer, and the wives of both the late Al Hubbard and Aldous Huxley

I was given Dr. Humphry Osmond’s telephone number in Alabama. [Osmond passed from this sphere in 2004, and, when I phoned him, was still Director of Psychiatry at Bryce Hospital, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.] Osmond was told by one of his staff that there was a guy on the line wishing to speak of Al Hubbard. Dr. Osmond interrupted his schedule and proceeded to speak with me for the next two hours.

I continued to phone Osmond — this time, at his home — and each time, he would answer the phone with warm greetings. To-date, I have about six hours of audiotape of my conversations with Humphry Osmond, on the topic of Al Hubbard.

Dr. Osmond then — knowing that I was deeply and sincerely interested in both psychedelics and the life of Al Hubbard — gave to me a mind-bending array of phone numbers, addresses and contacts, of everyone he could think of who might have known Al Hubbard. I count myself as being one of the luckiest sonsofbitches on the planet.

Among those on Dr. Osmond’s phone list were none other than Timothy Leary; Myron Stolaroff [a former Ampex executive-turned-LSD pioneer]; Dr. Abram Hoffer, a Canadian psychiatrist with long and deep ties to “Captain” Al Hubbard, the so-called “Johnny Appleseed of LSD”; and, to my shock, none other than the wives of both the late Al Hubbard and Aldous Huxley, whom Hubbard had first turned on to LSD, in the sessions that became Huxley’s seminal tome Heaven and Hell, the follow-up to The Doors of Perception, which was inspired by mescaline and introduced to Huxley by, indeed, Dr. Humphry Osmond.

Al Hubbard
“The Original Captain Trips”

I was sitting on the Who’s Who of phone numbers for the entire late-1950s/very early-60s contingent of connoisseurs of this strange new drug, which was then being manufactured by Switzerland’s Sandoz Laboratories and disbursed world-wide via Al Hubbard’s mysterious network.

Only one person on Dr. Osmond’s list refused to talk with me in any meaningful detail: Beverly Hills psychiatrist Dr. Oscar Janiger — who is credited for “turning on” actors Jack Nicholson, Cary Grant, David Niven, Stanley Kubrick, novelist Anais Nin and countless others. Upon finally reaching Dr. Janiger at his private practice, and letting him know of the particulars of my interest in the good “Captain,” Janiger responded:

“Nothing of substance has been written of Al Hubbard; and probably nothing ever should” — after which, he hung up the phone.

The others were surprisingly easy to reach and to enlist in the, what would become a 5-page High Times magazine centerfold, titled: “The Original Captain Trips” [November 1991]; and, even later, the novel that has moved me and plagued me for lo these many years.

Laura Huxley
was none too fond of spotting me on her front lawn

Reaching Laura Huxley was a matter of logistics. Despite her fairly advanced age, she led a demanding speaking and salon-type schedule. I phoned her maybe three times over a period of two weeks, at the Hollywood Hills home that she and Aldous had shared before his death of tongue cancer in 1963, and could never seem to find an apt time to sit down together.

One day it worked out, and I found myself scaling Mulholland Drive, and then up an even steeper incline, to the top of a certain roost and so close to the famed “Hollywood” mountainside sign, I could almost reach out and taste it. An old money community, and Mrs. Huxley’s house was probably the oldest (looking) place on the street.

I parked my orange Ford Fiesta rag-top convertible on the street, so as not to obstruct the driveway, and walked up to a three-storey structure, the base of which had not been mowed for at least two months; a 40-year old coat of white paint flaking off like psoriasis onto the unkempt lawn, and up the driveway to a garage literally full of bats, hanging from the rafters and doing their near-sundown twitch.

I was glad that I hadn’t arrived with a headful of acid, or it would have been a quick trip.

[Far Gone Books]

Mrs. Huxley took quite awhile in arriving, and so I moseyed around the driveway area and amongst the tall tree-line, trying to envision the place back “in the day,” with the usual suspects meandering through the modest mansion, LSD and related psychedelics still being legal — and without paranoia or [knowing] scrutiny.

Madame Archera-Huxley, skin translucent and in dark shawl and hat, pulled up of her own accord and, exiting the driver’s door of possibly a high-class Buick, was none too fond of spotting me on her front lawn (I wanted to gaze at the home and suck up its vibes; I stayed in the front yard). Of an “if I must,” I was brought inside and was motioned to a cushioned chair at the end of a fine coffee table; having asked, “May I record this conversation, which will ensure accuracy of transcription?” — noting agreements with Leary, Dr. Humphry Osmond, Dr. Abram Hoffer and a man to whom I spoke on the recommendation of Mrs. Al Hubbard — the grand dame adjusted her shawl and came forth of an, “I prefer you didn’t; notes must suffice.”

Aldous and Laura Huxley
[LauraHuxley.com]

Such is as friendly as it got, for this writer, in the Huxley residence. There was offered nothing in the way of new information, and only confirmation of the “carbogen tank and Hubbard inhaling its contents in the bathroom”-story: “he came out very rejuvenated and spoke of a vision he had seen of the Virgin Mary,” is her remembrance, coated in amusement and bemusement; she knew well her husband’s appreciation of the man, but the interactions she shared, and in the company of her husband, was always more social than clinical or clandestine. Al Hubbard held different relationships with different persons of varying levels of trust and assistance, and Laura Huxley met Hubbard only a handful of times, mostly on social occasions.

The evening lasted possibly an hour, as she would answer the phone several times; while she did, I took in the high vaulted ceiling of the estate; two storeys and, from its appearance outdoors, possibly with functional attic. The home bore a tasteful placing of carpets, old wood, white paint of new ministration come inside. There was no tour and none anticipated; knowing I was three minutes from being back in my car, she took me out to the balcony and motioned to the H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D sign, and I breathed a vapor that is generated only in the foothills of Los Angeles…

* * *

The published article, “The Original Captain Trips,” gained attention of Hunter S. Thompson’s publicist, William Stankey, who would represent Fahey for nearly five years and to no avail. Nearly every major publisher in New York had read the manuscript of Wisdom’s Maw by end-1995 and all deemed it “subversive, untouchable and potentially libelous,” as major characters — names changed but still living — spanned, among others: Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Sidney Gottlieb (director of the CIA’s Project MK-Ultra, the LSD and mind control experiments upon which this novel is based).

Wisdom’s Maw: The Acid Novel, nearly two decades hence and having been published independently via Far Gone Books in 1996, was reviewed to 5-star acclaim within The Village Voice, High Times and a host of underground magazines, ‘zines and campus newspapers.

The novel’s “back cover blurb” was penned by Ernest J. Gaines (The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman; A Lesson Before Dying), recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Pulitzer Prize nominee and winner of the John Dos Passos Award.

Wisdom’s Maw: The Acid Novel, now considered an underground classic, "factionalizes" the CIA's LSD experiments of the 1950s/60s, known as Project MK-Ultra, and their influence on the counterculture

Wisdom's Maw

Published on 05 November 2013
(WireNews+Co)
New York, NY

Wisdom's Maw: The Acid Novel [Far Gone Books, 1996]--suppressed in the early- to mid-1990s to publishers' concerns of potential libel, as well as of information contained within, which the Intelligence community deemed "not for public consumption"--has been released via Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FSG7NCE

Wisdom's Maw began as an investigative journalistic effort for High Times magazine in 1990, its author Todd Brendan Fahey then earning a Master's degree in Professional Writing at University of Southern California; Fahey had set for himself the goal of opening the lid on one "Captain" Alfred M. Hubbard--a former OSS agent who imported 100% of America's LSD from Sandoz Laboratories in Switzerland in the very early 1950s and would turn on Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary to their first-ever acid trips. Al Hubbard became a real-life Johnny Appleseed of LSD and is a central protagonist within Wisdom's Maw. Fahey's exhaustive journalistic effort found its way into the November 1991 issue of High Times [http://www.fargonebooks.com/high.html] and would soon spawn a novel.

The published article, "The Original Captain Trips," gained attention of Hunter S. Thompson's publicist, William Stankey, who would represent Fahey for nearly five years and to no avail. Nearly every major publisher in New York had read the manuscript of Wisdom's Maw by end-1995 and all deemed it "subversive, untouchable and potentially libelous," as major characters--names changed but still living--spanned, among others: Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Sidney Gottlieb (Director of the CIA's Project MK-Ultra; the LSD and mind control experiments upon which this novel is based).

Wisdom’s Maw: The Acid Novel, nearly two decades hence and having been published independently via Far Gone Books in 1996, is considered now an underground classic. The 1st and only print edition was reviewed to 5-star acclaim within The Village Voice, High Times and a host of underground magazines, 'zines and campus newspapers.

The novel's "back cover blurb" was penned by Ernest J. Gaines (The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman; A Lesson Before Dying), recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant; Pulitzer Prize nominee and winner of the John Dos Passos Award.

For more information:

fargone@fargonebooks.com
Far Gone Books: http://www.fargonebooks.com/wisdomsmaw
YouTube promo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNy2BweCeiE&feature=youtu.be

Far Gone Books published Wisdom's Maw: The Acid Novel (author Todd Brendan Fahey) in 1996, and which was and is considered one of the most controversial American novels of the past 50 years--since William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch.

by Miles Yu
The Washington Times
October 31, 2013

Chinese state-run media revealed for the first time this week that Beijing’s nuclear submarines can attack American cities as a means to counterbalance U.S. nuclear deterrence in the Pacific.

On Monday, leading media outlets including China Central TV, the People’s Daily, the Global Times, the PLA Daily, the China Youth Daily and the Guangmin Daily ran identical, top-headlined reports about the “awesomeness” of the People's Liberation Army navy’s strategic submarine force.

PHOTOS: Take that, China — check out the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarines

“This is the first time in 42 years since the establishment of our navy’s strategic submarine force that we reveal on such a large scale the secrets of our first-generation underwater nuclear force,” the Global Times said in a lengthy article titled “China for the First Time Possesses Effective Underwater Nuclear Deterrence against the United States.”

The article features 30 photos and graphics detailing, among other things, damage projections for Seattle and Los Angeles after being hit by Chinese nuclear warheads and the deadly radiation that would spread all the way to Chicago.

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By Mark Krikorian
NationalReview.com
October 29, 2013 7:22 PM

The Soros-funded National Immigration Forum (NIF) organized today’s “fly-in” of some 600 people to lobby House Republicans to pass the Schumer-Rubio amnesty bill (which Senator Rubio himself has now disavowed). It started with a two-hour teach-in at the U.S Chamber of Commerce, with the usual suspects saying the usual things. (Watch it here.) I couldn’t stomach the whole thing, but there were some amusing bits: Al Cardenas, head of the American Conservative Union, said that we need immigration because our population is declining (in fact, even with zero immigration — zero — our population would continue to increase for generations, beyond which projections are meaningless). Also, Tony Massif, lobbyist for California agribusiness, said that if we we don’t import more stoop labor from abroad, then we’ll have to import more food, meaning our enemies would “control our food supply.” (You know, because all that corn and wheat in the Midwest is being hand-harvested by Guatemalan peasants.) Speakers were also pretending that amnesty and increased immigration were conservative initiatives by claiming that environmentalists and labor unions are responsible for the opposition to the Schumer-Rubio bill when, obviously, they’re among the bill’s chief backers.

Anyway, that’s all boilerplate and hardly worth commenting on, as much as it might irk me. But I got to thinking about the groups hosting this thing and thought it’d be interesting to match up their principals and supporters with the Forbes 400 list. Turns out that “Billionaires for Open Borders” isn’t just a catchy name — it’s the reality. Joining Soros (#19 on the Forbes 400) in backing today’s lobbying effort are a broad collection of his fellow billionaires. One of the co-hosts was Partnership for a New American Economy. Among the group’s co-chairmen: Michael Bloomberg (#10 on the Forbes 400), Steve Ballmer (#21), Rupert Murdoch (#30), Douglas M. Baker Jr. (#161), and Bill Marriott (#296).

Another co-host was Fwd.us, founded by Mark Zuckerberg (#20) and including among its supporters Bill Gates (#1), Eric Schmidt (#49), Reid Hoffman (#103), John Doerr (#184), Stanley Druckenmiller (#184), John Fisher (#193), Barry Diller (#260), Sean Parker (#273), Jim Bryer (#352), Mark Pincus (was #212 in 2011, but fallen off since), Matt Cohler (worth a measly $400 million, but on the Forbes Future 400 list), Fred Wilson (#16 on Forbes Midas List of top tech investors), Ron Conway (#41 on the Midas List), and Richard Kramlich (#73 on the Midas List)...

by SARTRE
October 28, 2013

It may seem that an analysis of the prepper cultural phenomena is a trite endeavor, but if you delve into the philosophical underpinnings of human instincts for survival, a worthy lesson can be the result. Since life is a gift, the conditions upon which it ends or voluntarily forfeited, are not necessarily dependent upon the will of the individual. A calculated act of placing your life at risk is not equivalent with a deliberate suicide. The functions and purpose of the prepper community is in direct conflict with those individuals that languish in hopeless despair and desperation. The response of the prepper to social turmoil is to prepare for contingencies. Yet that defensive posture avoids the essential question, what is the point of surviving if the communal environment is a hopeless wasteland.

Paul Lewis in Washington and Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
theguardian.com, Monday 21 October 2013 23.24 BST

The White House conceded on Monday that revelations about how its intelligence agencies have intercepted enormous amounts of French phone traffic raised "legitimate questions for our friends and allies".

In a statement released after a phone call between Barack Obama and his counterpart, François Hollande, the White House made one of its strongest admissions yet about the diplomatic impact of the disclosures by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The French government had earlier summoned the US ambassador in Paris on Monday to demand an urgent explanation over claims that the National Security Agency had engaged in widespread phone and internet surveillance of French citizens.

The French daily Le Monde published details from the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, suggesting the NSA had been intercepting French phone traffic on what it termed "a massive scale".

"The president and President Hollande discussed recent disclosures in the press – some of which have distorted our activities, and some of which raise legitimate questions for our friends and allies about how these capabilities are employed," the White House said in a statement. 

"The president made clear that the United States has begun to review the way that we gather intelligence, so that we properly balance the legitimate security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share. The two presidents agreed that we should continue to discuss these issues in diplomatic channels."

Le Monde said more than 70m French phone calls had been recorded in one 30-day period late last year. Techniques included the automatic recording of conversations from certain numbers, and sweeping up text messages based on keywords. Le Monde warned that the interceptions were likely to have targeted not just those with suspected terrorist links but also people in business and politics...

By Tim Ross, and David Barrett
The Telegraph (UK)
10:21PM BST 05 Oct 2013

Foreigners will have to prove that they are entitled to be in the country before they are given access to GPs and hospitals, while foreign students will have to make a “contribution” to the health service.