Aired February 16-17, 2016. Joe Atwill and Jan Irvin discuss Jan's trip to Woodstock NY, to investigate the origins of the counterculture and Woodstock music festival.
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You know, guys, this is the most forced argument to date for an all encompassing dark social debasement conspiracy. Not to say the fringe doesn’t try, but it’s the mainstream of society that’s walking around in a state of emptiness and fear, but for reasons having little to do with the myriad attempts to ‘debase’. The early gnostics surmised debasement a very long time ago that’s fundamental to this very existence.
There’s no doubt substance to the social engineering intent to the Tavistock ilk and the CIA’s attempt to counter culture control. But you both sound more like salesman missionaries than ‘researchers’ at this juncture with nearly hysterical and forced interpretation of intent by supposed massive conspiracy spanning more than a century. Coincidence that Jan’s in New England at the release of ‘Witch’?
Just the way that you characterize the original Woodstock as some writhing mass of sex crazed drugged addicts romping naked and glazed praising satan or something the like is extreme exaggeration at best and utter fabrication at worst. It is consistent with some other comparable arguments suggesting an absolute control that simply didn’t exist. Does suggestibility exist? It certainly seems so listening to this episode.
The central characters of the actual CIA conspiracy like the Huxley’s, Wasson, Leary, etc., were marginally influential among a minority ‘counter-culture’ whose influence wasn’t anywhere approaching the scope that you insist it was. I lived through this era as a teen on both coasts and, despite your continual litany of accusation and generational indictment, the supposition and aggrandizing of these CIA players, the force of their true influence was overwhelmingly within the mainstream who bought the whole load supporting industrial global war, failed institutional religion and usurpation of public education by an elite banking cabal that enriches these same elites to this day. You can’t blame the war in Syria on hippies, but you deftly ignore it.
It’s sadly distorting and diverting and despite your graphic guilt by ill-defined association as depicted in the ‘Brain’ charting, slotting of people according to goals within a subjective crusade agenda does not constitute absolutes as you so seem intended to imply. Are you starting a new religion here? Church of the Holy, yet only thinly backed, deflecting and marginally relevant Innuendo?
Debasement suggests descent from a societal reality that serves creative and healthy growth. But citing extreme examples on the fringes of culture as indicative of an overall epidemic of decline within a given society makes your conclusions suspect at best despite the fascinating details of the efforts made by these conspiring would-be social engineers.
Leary was a joke to me when I was 18. Watts was marginally entertaining. It was Uncle Sam that wanted me as fodder if I wasn’t well connected, affluent or fleet of foot.
Do you think that we all just followed Jerry Rubin around or joined the SLA? Should we rather just have submitted to killing commie gooks like we were instructed by our elders?
Everything cultural has weaponization potential. From MIT to BYU there’s cultural agendas at work. But this frantic abuse of what should guide towards rational reassessment seems rather to lead you into hysterics of your own self serving creation. I’ve got to tell you that it’s hugely disappointing and serves to discredit even the Trivium method of critical examination and hypothesis.
It’s ultimately ironic that you advocate logic and then violate it by extrapolating your own useful fantasy. Talk about hyper suggestibility, you guys, despite your apparent intelligence are on a real, self-serving disinfo tear.
Too bad, really. But a good example of otherwise well informed and arrogant self delusion. Wise up, guys!
Excellent post Ralph Davis, very well said. I fully concur with your assessment.
Thanks for your response, Darren. I take no pleasure in this criticism because I do have appreciation for what Jan has created here and what he’s contributed to historical context and clarification of previously murky relationships between shady individuals, government initiatives and institutions.
I also think that Jan’s intent and perseverance are wholly admirable as well what he’s demonstrated in organizing and publishing an amazing complex of information. It’s exactly that standard, ironically, that fuels my frustration at what now seems degenerately contrasting and pointless harping on aspects of cultural nuance that are of dubious significance to what’s currently being inflicted by the malignant spawn of Tavistock and lethally and aggressively toxic Rockefeller legacy.
Instead, Jan’s witch hunting ghosts of Woodstock and arty New England eccentrics presumably to establish extremities of social occultism. But he’s beating all four horses of the apocalypse to death in the process, or so it seems. His video narrative is reminiscent of shlock horror as we visit the crime scene where 400k souls descended to hell in a hand basket woven by Wavy Gravy. Just too f’n much.
We’re sliding towards a bottomless chasm promising a real horror show spectacle and Jan’s obsessing over a half century old adolescent fascination with rebellion, sensuality and the elusive sense of spiritual freedom from threats of cultural inanity, conscription to war and long lingering nuclear annihilation.
What about what the lying sacks of excrement are inflicting in now, in this century, on this day, at this minute and what are our prospects of surviving those threats if we don’t penetrate that matrix of lies.
Carlos Castaneda, rest his lying, tortured soul, is a ghost. Woodstock may have been a high profile psy-op in a continuum of psy-ops. We’re clear on that. What we need to clarify are the new-gen weapons that offer instantaneous behavior controls or worse by their technically cloaked operators over the foundering victim masses about to be disposed of.
Let’s cut to the chase, Jan. There’s no time for bullshit distractions, so please get serious with your talents and insight. Unless this, too, is merely a diversionary psy-op watchtower, there’s no time to lose because..
‘ ..outside in the cold distance, a wildcat did growl, ..three riders we’re approaching and the wind began to howl..’ 😉
Seriously? How about Yan investigates whatever he wants. If you want more investigative work done in other areas. Go investigate them yourself…..or donate to someone who does. I’ll bet you haven’t even donated to Gnostic media and yet still demand he focus his work in the areas you deem important. Sigh I’m sorry i couldn’t let this long winded BS go unanswered.
No need to be sorry, js, this is a discussion forum, after all. But if you think that my relevancy argument has no merit why not just specifically articulate reasons as to why you think that. Surely you have that expressive ability just as well, eh?
So, why would you rather attack me, as you do, with innuendo and supposition about something you could not possibly know? No integrity in that, is there? Isn’t noncompliance with both trivium method and good manners more disrespectful to Jan in disregarding his own admonition to always use both discernment and civility in making your arguments?
Jan does exactly as he pleases irrespective of who does or doesn’t agree with him, as he should. I dare say that if he felt the need to defend himself here he would do exactly that. As for what I have to say or the length of time it takes me to say it; it is what it is and there are others who have expressed a contrary viewpoint to yours. As it should be, too, where ideas and differing perspective coexist.
Seriously, think about it, and keep that spirit up!
Was reading a recent interview with Abel Ferrara, where he said this :
When I was growing up there was this glamor of Woodstock. But Woodstock put more people on the road to destruction and addiction than any other event in the world, right? “The Summer of Love.” I remember when coke was called “The Wonder Drug” on the cover of Time magazine. They said it wasn’t addictive—but we know now that was all bullshit. It didn’t get you hung over. Right? Can you imagine that? Pretty sad when you think cocaine was called the wonder drug.
Dope is strictly a one-way deal. You’re either going to end up in jail where you can’t use, or dead where you can’t use. That’s it. Once you start it, the drug is demonic. You have no idea where it’s taking you.
I think the same can be said about most addictions, be they sex, porn, food, I love his vampire-themed “The Addiction”. Touches on truths that most won’t go near and I find that what Jan and Joe are talking about is a rational and scholarly distant point of view of what Ferrara was denouncing.
They exploit our passions with vice. Then we are slaves. Saint Augustin said that a man has as many masters as he has vices.
You do know, Nordølum, that the vast amount of drug addiction and death occur as result of the prescription of commercial pharmaceuticals pushed by the corporate controlled practitioner matrix of what’s perversely referred to as modern medicine?
Even over 100k die from nosocomial infection contagion in the US every year by just simply entering a hospital. Far more than street addict casualties. So, while all addictions have lethal and ruinous potentials, for sure, treatment institutions are statistically far more deadly, not to mention as bankrupting.
But who’s taking issue with that bit of deadly contradiction so readily apparent and treatable? The addiction peddling ‘physicians, institutional administrators, governmental regulators, police or National Guard have no such concerned direction from their masters, ..but why? 100k is a lot of relatively easily preventable, indiscriminate annual dead, eh?
So, while we focus elsewhere, bullshit insinuates undue blame on victims of all manner of proactive deception and purposeful misinformation. Addicts are equated and jailed as causative to social ills while the true pushers relax in gated communities and exclusive clubs with their purified and distilled drugs of choice. War on drugs? What amazing self-evident bullshit! Addiction? Our addiction to passivity through diversion from all manner of existential truth is epidemic. Aren’t we all here seeking self treatment?
Please note as well that entertainment by vampire is clearly a prescription addiction, too. Anyone persuaded to wasting precious conscious existence therein is yet another sad-willing-victim-addict to pusher-media-man. We badly need a just war on addiction to diversion and distortion. Vices, indeed.
‘I dreamed I saw St. Augustine
Alive with fiery breath
And I dreamed I was amongst the ones
That put him out to death
Oh, I awoke in anger
So alone and terrified
I put my fingers against the glass
And bowed my head and cried’
– Bob Dylan
Yes, okay. I know that pharmceuticals account for much of the desturction, if not the lion’s share. I was making a comment about addition in general. For me, when the vampire in the film says : “Now look me in the face, and tell me to go. Look sin in the face, and tell it to go.” and, usually out of fear, or maybe some latent weakness, they are unable to tell it to go, then the addiction gets them and while it satisfies their craving, it also dulls their senses to not even realize or question how ill they really are.
I look at all these guys masturbating to porn and not being able to ejaculate during normal sex or other sexual problems. And people are just recently talking about these negative effects porn addiction. To take the Catholic metaphore “look SIN in the face, and tell it to go” you’ve got to have a certain strength and sound reasoning capacities to look it in the face, and tell it to get lost. To just say no, as the vulgar 80s anti-drug campaigne said to kids, while they push ritalin, because that is not a drug, according to the campaigne but a “medication”.
If you recognize evil/sin/deceit and are strong enough toe tell it to go away, so much the better. They know that people are weak in this way and this must be why we are surrounded by sex, drugs and rock and roll in popular culture, to the point where people think this mass pop culture is real culture and hence, THEIR culture. Like Jan’s always saying ,the sad old hippies who say “this is MY music” when talking about the rock idols.
For those who just can’t accept a Catholic metaphor about sin, how can the idea of “look sin in the face and tell it to go” be restated ?
Good, even strong, general points, Nordølum, on the insidious nature of addiction and how poised entire institutions are to exploit weakness to satisfy their own agendas.
Your final reference to Catholic metaphor does rub since that particular institution perhaps best represents hypocrisy to an ostensibly sanctified linkage as intermediator to the creator thereby pushing its own self-serving yet self indicting brand of dichotomous dogmatic drug addiction.
There’s always problems with generalization and implied guilt by vagaries of and in individual association within levels of psyops. Institutions are comprised of; them that know, as it were; and gradations of willing idiot functionaries; and the unaware, as Jan has pointed out innumerable times. Yet, he makes short work of distinguishing nuances when it comes to driving his mischaracterization agenda.
As such, Woodstock event phenomenon is painted exclusively in darker shades of formalistic Dionysian ritual level of conscious participation by both performers and audience with extreme breadth of brush. The same for the entirety of rock music, which is demonstrably arguable as generational extension to a long continuing legacy of global folk musics.
The mere fact that Tavistock planners found its usurpation as medium useful for its own ends, which may indeed have included an accompanying operation of drug addiction promotion as indicated by the Laurel Canyon /CIA/DIA exposé, the wholesale indictment of rock music is no more valid than including every other musical form that supported or expressed any subculture everywhere. Just once I’d like to hear Jan refer to the principle of unintended consequences.
There’s many examples of the fusion aspects at various stages of musical evolution. As any tradition defines itself basically as repetition of behavior, it shares an element also basic to addiction. That isn’t to say that all cultural traditions are addictive, and neither should it be assumed to be so by extension with musical forms.
There was as many differing perspectives to Woodstock participation as there were people in attendance. The same can be said for the music itself and its performers irrespective of how the possible covert organizers wished or intended abuse through usurpation. That is the hallmark of these cointel parasites. They prey on human imagination and dynamics to turn it negative, low vibration ala the classical gnostic identification typical of archon predation.
I’m generational witness to attitudes and events as they prevailed and argue that today’s media standard of overt ‘satanic’ pop influence is being haphazardly applied here in overlay to the vast menu of music and attitudes in which it was interpreted received and enjoyed by a diverse audience of youth attempting to find harmony amid the 60’s of engineered strife and violence. The vast majority of music was inspired and themed by love and brother/sisterhood. The ‘Stones’ ego-rock and early metal bands were a small minority entirely absent at Woodstock.
Sha-na-na ‘at the hop’. The whole idea was fun in peace & love with rock’n roll and it’s why all 400k showed up.
So, Woodstock, for all of its faults and environmental challenges, was NOT an Altamont by the wildest stretch, even if there was an unprecedented conspiracy of the worst CIA sorcery attempted. I wish Jan seemed as concerned by our cultural addiction to violence. The recent program on gun rights was a start.
A mere bit of digression, Nordølum, ..but hands-up, don’t shoot.:)
Awesome work Jan and Joe, I agree that it’s important for us all to be cognizant of how we have been manipulated in the past so that we can be inoculated against it in the present and future.
The anti-war movement was already growing before hippies hit the scene and, even then, may have been at least somewhat guided by the same groups who were instigating and profiting off the war. Was it Stalin who said, “The best way to control the opposition is to be the opposition.” ?
Anyhow, that being said, because of the power of human spirit positive things can grow out of even movements initiated by those of ill intent and methods, more-so even if the manipulated become aware of the manipulation.
Thanks for your work.
By the way, one of the above posters was crying because you don’t talk about the stuff going on in Syria etc.
One place to learn about operations like that would be ‘Global Research’ or even ‘wrongkindofgreen.org’…
http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2012/04/27/cia-asset-gloria-steinems-women-under-siege-joins-syrian-propaganda-campaign/
(QUOTE:)
Ironically, faux-feminist Gloria Steinem’s “Women Under Siege’s” latest campaign to demonize the Syrian government in tandem with the US State Department and its vast stable of media and intelligence assets, stands to set the stage for extremist ideologues to overrun Syria, ending its secular society and entirely stripping away the “women’s rights” Steinem claims to have spent a lifetime fighting for.
(unquote)
Hi Ron,
As the the unnamed ‘one of’ posters citing Syria, just to clarify as it seems you may misconstrue why; it simply represents the geographical focus in state sponsored terror created by successors to the exact cabal that Jan’s spent so much laborious research time tracking and identifying.
So, Syria seems to be apt as example, however if you prefer CIA engineered chaos in Ukraine, the utterly fictional false flag ops in the US, mayhem in Africa, or pick another of your choice.
The point, since it passively aggressively appears to have escaped you, is that Syria is a culmination of policies posing potential existential threat to the globe. Therefore an appropriate place of timely concern for us all.
While Jan’s in New England why not breeze by Sandy Hook and take some long absent crime scene photos and make a few inquiries. Boston’s just up the road, too. Nice little psy-op there needs some attention, too.
What’s the point of any of this if it isn’t contextual to our current, oppressive dystopian reality, eh?
Plenty of other people are doing good work in the areas that you are pointing to , Ralph.
Jan and Joe, on the other hand are engaged in an important and unique line of research, I appreciate their focus.
I wish that I could agree that there’s ‘plenty’ of others exposing these current mind control ops, but that’s obviously not the case. Were it so there would be hell to pay by the bastards running the show. It’s just not happening, quite to the contrary. An epidemic of cognitive dissonance requires overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence as broadly articulated and disseminated as possible.
The presumable point of this alt-media realm of investigation lies completely in contemporary manifestations of these programs distorting reality and justifying real-time murder, genocide and entrenchment by the psychopaths. It’s astonishing to me that Jan would venture to Bethel when Sandy Hook looms nearby. I mean, please.
The kind of distorted reminiscence that Jan’s engaging here is squander of potentially relevant effort to achieve critical mass awareness absolutely required to rein-in an out of control reign of catastrophic destruction of rule by law and social upheaval and war.
There’s no second chances here, Ron. Why doesn’t Jan respond to answer why, for instance, he’s more compelled to Woodstock given the plethora of conjecture extant of its significance, or for that matter Laurel Canyon, interesting as that aspect of historical CIA/DIA ops is, when he lives but a short hop from San Bernardino where yet another murderously flagrant psy-op sits largely unexamined and unexposed and it’s trailing all sorts of loose ends and contradictions.
If Jan and Joe are serious about these facets of human deception and massively consequential manipulation then we desperately need their investigative talents, determination and courage to focus with relevancy. Historical linkage is one thing of academic interest, but immaterial if the society that allows it now disintegrates into police managed chaos.
One simply can’t sanely rationalize Woodstock or other ancient features of formative dystopia as high priority. We can extract with what’s already historically contextual to what’s urgently necessary to expose and make clear. Are jan and Joe just foolin’ us here with diversion and distraction? It’s a recurrent question with every successive and repetitive reference to Woodstock as some watershed. 9/11 was a watershed. Woodstock was literally child’s play.
We’re in very deep trouble, Ron. It may be that we’re already way beyond proactively conscious and any rationally determined redemption as a species. But indulging in this kind of bizarre pop-history-porn doesn’t cut it as serious and purposeful research, ‘..this ain’t no party, ..this ain’t no disco, ..this ain’t no foolin’ around’, to borrow classic Talking Heads phrasing.
Rock cuts both ways like much of everything else humanity employs in this blind-man’s existential odyssey, eh?
My head is spinning. This is a fascinating work you’re doing Jan and Joe, this is book material, I’ve never heard anybody tackle this through this angle.
And Ralph, you’re spot on man, great post..
When I was a kid in Connecticut, living about an hour from NYC, I was walking home from school (this is 1965 in the spring). Upon approaching the public library, I saw a guy dressed in a Superman outfit sprawled on the steps of the library. He was strumming a guitar.
This was the first hippie I ever saw.
It was highly unusual to see someone dressed like that. In addition, sprawling on the steps so people had a hard time getting by was a breach of manners.
The second hippie I saw was when I turned the corner and crossed the street. That’s when a guy dressed like Abe Lincoln passed me in the crosswalk. He gave the peace sign and shouted “Peace, man!” to Superman. Not very long after that were the first ‘head shops’ where you could buy little tiny mirror squares with op-art designs printed on them, among other things. One kid I knew had some and was showing them off.
Years later I met someone who was about 10 years older and who had been living in Brooklyn at the time. I told her about this and she acknowledged that the original hippies of the 60’s had dressed in costumes like that. She described it as “like a Prince concert”. At the time, Prince fans would come to the shows in odd outfits.
I don’t know who these original 60’s hippies were taking their cues from. Andy Warhol and The Factory was active in NYC at that time, so that may have been an influence. However, they looked more like the festival goers in the old photos than like the California freaks.
“That dirty, stringy haired hippie look with the beads came from California,” she told me.
Jan, I appreciate the history you bring to the Woodstock mystery. I was only 10 when Woodstock happened, and when I was 20 I dated a man who was 20 at the time he was at Woodstock, and he said it was people fornicating in mud. Today Woodstock is glorified.
Communal living is not a new concept. Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose boring-as-hell and terribly-written book, “The Scarlet Letter,” is still required high school reading today (which I don’t get), briefly participated in the “Trancendentalist Utopian” community, “Brook Farm,” started by Unitarian minister, George Ripley, with connections to the Harvard Divinity School. Hawthorne was married to Sophia Peabody, a transcendentalist, and whose sister, Elizabeth Peabody, started the first English-language Kindergarten in the U.S. and translated the first English Buddhist scripture in 1844. I learned from my college days Hawthorne actually hated his time at Brook Farm. The rest of the info I got from wikipedia.