Decline of Amsterdam Coffeeshop culture.

One of Amsterdam’s most popular coffeeshops ceased trading yesterday, as the crackdown on the red-light district continues. Gavin Haines reports.

As well as a thick cloud of smoke, there’s a sense of foreboding hanging in the air in Baba today. One of the city’s most popular coffeeshops, this institution will close its doors for the final time tonight: its misty history snuffed out like a spliff in the night.
Most punters have no idea they are smoking in a coffeeshop that has hours to live. The group of Scottish lads sucking a bong are blissfully unaware that they’re part of Baba’s final act; the awkward young couple standing at the timeworn wooden counter are equally oblivious as they question the difference between Amnesia and Silver Haze.
There are no posters announcing Baba’s closure, no banners pleading for it to be spared; just a short, digital message rolling across the bottom of a television screen like breaking news.
Unlike British pubs, which are closing as they struggle to draw in punters, Amsterdam’s coffeeshops, particularly this one, seem to be doing a roaring trade. So what gives?
“They want to turn this street into a fancy street,” explains a female employee at Baba, who asks to remain anonymous. “And we’re not fancy enough for them.”
She’s talking about Warmoesstraat, one of the oldest streets in Amsterdam, which wends its way through the city’s notorious red-light district. Lined with sex shops, raucous bars and coffeeshops, it’s a place where you can legally indulge in psychedelics or check out the latest line in pneumatic dildos. Hookers of various shapes and sizes ply their trade just around the corner.
But for how much longer? Amsterdam is renowned for its liberal values and vice, but authorities in the city are continuing their quest to “clean up” the red-light district as part of a 10-year plan called Project 1012. The initiative began in 2007 and it aims to close 200 of the district’s 480 window brothels and 26 of its 76 coffeeshops by 2017.
“A lot of the coffeeshops along this street have closed,” explains the anonymous Baba employee, her eyes heavy with weed. “Stones, which is opposite, is also closing soon, which means there will be no coffeeshops on this street anymore.”
New businesses are ready to jump into these old premises. Florists, delis and homeware shops have all opened in the neighbourhood recently, so it’s out with the dildos and in with the dishcloths.
Baba plans to open in a new location, but its association with Warmoesstraat has almost certainly come to an end. Perhaps the building will become a restaurant or a wine bar: something to attract a “better class” of tourist.
“It’s sad,” says the girl in Baba, hopelessly. “It’s a shame for the people, it’s a shame for the tourists and it’s a shame for us because now we have no job.”

http://www.worldtravelguide.net/holidays/editorial-feature/feature/smoke-postcard-amsterdam

Amsterdam Panorama

Oude Leliestraat by night.

Homegrown Fantasy Coffeeshop Closure Ceremony

Christian Doper's Dualism Crusade: Singing matter, shouting matter, dancing matter.

Christian Doper's Dualism Crusade: Singing matter, shouting matter, dancing matter.

By Fly Agaric 23.

It was 1957. I was very interested in jazz at that time, and I told a black friend about some of Korzybski's exercises to get to the non-verbal level, and he said, "Oh, I do that every time I smoke pot." I got interested. I said, "Could I buy one of these marijuana cigarettes from you?" He said, "Oh hell, I'll give it to you free." And so I smoked it. I found myself looking at a quarter I found in my pocket and realizing I hadn't looked at a quarter in twenty years or so, the way a child looks at a quarter. So I decided marijuana was doing pretty much the same thing Korzybski was trying to do with his training devices. Then shortly after that I heard a lecture by Alan Watts, and I realized that Zen, marijuana and Korzybski were all relating the same transformations of consciousness. That was the beginning.--Robert Anton Wilson, Interview, Positive Atheisim.

Once again, thinking about the Dutch Coffeeshop politics and double-crossed language and policy involved with the operations on all sides, i return back to the language. The language of Christian Parties and Conservative politicians has a lot in common at a base level, i notice that a general monotheistic mind set often leads to generally Aristotelian language and logic, severely limited and dogmatic when based upon two valued logic, or duality.

I am no linguist, but anybody with a sharp eye and ear for similarities will recognize the linguistic traps set by these people. And anybody who has looked at the war on some people who use some drugs will recognize the language of drug war, the lack of any consistent pluralistic logic, the nihilistic imagery, and the religious overtones of puritanical crusaders.

The solution to a part of the problem, as i view it, in Holland, consists of a more focused linguistic analysis of everything published by the anti-coffeeshop and anti-drug crusaders. If i can detect many meaningless statements, and bare faced lies, surely others who are looking to defend the case for coffeeshops can too? and so what is the strategy for addressing their wrong headed criticism? how do you engage in meaningful debate with the goal of a more scientific approach to processing information, based on a widely distributed array of current data? How to communicate with monotheistic Christian crusaders and their Aristotelian either/or world view of good/evil, god/devil right/left in/out for/against white/black etc.

This is my calling for anybody interested in helping the plight of Dutch coffeeshops, and in particular those in Amsterdam affected by the recent school rule. I implore you to take what you view to be the strongest parts of your opponents argument, and start with those. Begin to provide better versions of that argument, build it up to be as strong as you can make it. Then begin to tear it apart piece by piece, syllable by syllable, and show that there are further arguments against it.

"Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress."--Gandhi

I feel that the exercise of strengthening your opponents arguments will keep you on your toes, and with luck, combined with what i have said above, and what i will link to below, encourage you to obsolete any dualistic argument with a superior, intelligent, and fair (fairer) model of the information, a pluralistic presentation of just some, of the vast array of information on the subject, in this case arguments for and against cannabis coffeeshops in Holland.

Next, when you have terse and meaningful paragraphs that describe the situation as it is, according to your own nervous system, and the information fields you have created--hopefully based on sourced documents including timebinded 'quotes' and other 'exhibits'--start to rewrite those paragraphs.

Rewrite those paragraphs in as many different styles as you can think of. As a comedian, a classical historian, a typically shallow news broadcaster, a scene from your favourite T.V series or movie, a song lyric, a limerick, a Haiku, an entire short story, a mathematical equation, a picture!

If you are still with me, you catch my drift. What we need to do is turn the process of art and poetry and spontaneous creativity into something that can address directly, the terrible ills and trickery at work in our surrounding environment, wherever that may be. Together we can break the spell, and as i said, obsolete the corrupt medieval arguments with superior scientific 21st century solutions.

Singing matter, shouting matter, dancing matter, these are the tale of the tribe. Write, paint, dance, sing, make merry with the knowledge that your research methodology is light years ahead of the opposition, and so anytime spent fighting the opposition is time spent in the past, an important consideration. There are ways to include both history and 'the long poem' together, these are the methods of study i recommend.  Break on through and make it new.

“The Fundamentalist Christians have told me that I am a slave of Satan and should have my demons expelled with an exorcism. The Fundamentalist Materialists inform me that I am a liar, charlatan, fraud and scoundrel. Aside from this minor difference, the letters are astoundingly similar. Both groups share the same crusading zeal and the same lack of humor, charity and common human decency. These intolerable cults have served to confirm me in my agnosticism by presenting further evidence to support my contention that when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases."--Robert Anton Wilson.

--Fly Agaric 23
Damsterhom

The War on some drugs meets Virgin Google U.N and wikileaks

  The War on some drugs meets Virgin Google U.N and wikileaks

I get my pot absolutely free from the Women's Alliance for medical marijuana which doesn't charge, its a cooperative and we do what we can to keep it going, now they have been raided we're gonna have to do more, we're gonna have to decentralize even further, decentralize the production, the making of the tinctures, the cookies, the brownies and whatever forms we wanna take it in that's best for our condition, some people still smoke it, and were gonna have to decentralize the growth and production and distribution.--Robert Anton Wilson, 2002, Santa Cruz CA.

I was about to start a piece about the proposed Dutch changes in laws concerning their famous cannabis coffee shops, due to the fact that today, April 18th 2012, my employers and some representatives from other Dutch Coffee Shops lodged a court injunction against the Dutch Government and their plans to implement the ‘weed pass’ nationwide, not only in the problematic southern (boarder) states.

However, I was interrupted by discovering a short excerpt from a video interview with Wikileaks mastermind Julian Assange in which he speaks about Marijuana, the so called ‘war on drugs’ and cognitive liberty in an intelligent, witty and precise manner. The entire debate, the first of a new series developed by Google called ‘Versus War On Drugs’

It has been a part of my fantasy writings over the last three years since Wikileaks burst onto the global scene, that they might eventually highlight the crooked ‘war on drugs’ along with their long list of unfairly secretive business transactions and government/corporate corruption. After all, the ‘war on some drugs’ spans the globe, wastes Trillions of Dollars and brings terror and torture into the lives of Billions.

Although provoked by the questioner, Assange throws down his libertarian wisdom and sense of individualist anarchism, in my view, all over the ‘war on some drugs’, which leads to a much clearer view of the current Dutch coffee shop debacle, and the sense of discrimination applied further to the neurological realm.

The similarities between the fights for digital freedoms and the fights for cognitive freedoms seem to be converging at an ever increasing, exponential rate. As Douglas Rushkoff has put it ‘program or be programmed’ implying we have the means to program ourselves and our environment if we choose to engage. But engage with what?

Some brave and noble folk are perpetually fighting the digital baddies, or those government think tanks, those lawyers and those entertainment industry cry-babies, by challenging their draconian proposed measures and new laws and terror scenarios with superior information, scientific and balanced feedback, and most importantly a decentralized network philosophy. The EFF, Wikileaks, and boing boing contributors exhibit these positive attributes and almost singlehandedly threaten any proposed ‘new world order’ once again by obsoleting the opposition with superior methodology, intelligence and strategy.

We the cannabis culture, or we the collective of self-owning ones who enjoy cannabis and its many benefits (health, speech, thought, economy) welcome the intelligent decentralized strategies performed by example by these defenders of ‘equalibrium’ and ‘fairness’ with a particular fondness of going after the biggest, baddest sons of bitches out there, the so called ‘intelligence services’ and private ‘spy agencies’, the military industrial complex and surveillance industries, and of course, lets not forget the limp and mostly empty ‘mainstream media’ that apparently could not and today cannot compare with even 5 % of Wikileaks, or Boingboing for that matter, based on information content (based on predictability of story and coverage of events). Try it, go on. Go to BBC website, and then to Wikileaks, then the daily mail, and then boingboing. Now, anything surprise you? I recall the saying "an empty vessel sounds loudest'

May I attempt to further suppose that the key to keeping the ‘coffee-shop’ scene and industry (that I personally work in) alive and kicking is.... surprise or unpredictability in the face of the easily guessed at(that which is low in information) the same old game and the same old tactics which often involve bullying, meaningless statements plus the arts and crafts of ‘disinformation’. Superior experimental intelligence cuts through these centrist authoritarian/totalitarian games like a warm knife through soft hash.

After watching the full Google versus debate I feel like I have ingested a few grams of some psychedelic compound, when listening to the crazy prohibitionists and corporate military propagandists repeat their 'rhetoric' I started having hallucinations that Julian Assange was in the debate, and Russel Brand too, who for me, were the only characters who added any spice and anything approaching a representation of the 'drug culture' but no MUSIC, no ART, no LITERATURE or COMEDY was presented as evidence, no mention of Terence Mckenna, Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Sasha Shulgin, Aldous Huxley, Ken Kessey, no, not a trace.

Whereas, for me, these are the individual thinkers and writers who dedicated their lives to coming to understand the question of 'alchemically mediated consciousness' and so then, by default the major blockage and 'befuddlement' factor: the age old inquisition, the prohibition and the wars against altered states of consciousness, and it's current incarnation: the global war on SOME drugs.

And please, lets not forget the terminology used to disrupt the thinking process, once more, 'the war on drugs' actually functions as a 'war on SOME drugs' and the lack of definitions in this particular area, being that it involves complex chemical neurological and environmental factors, remains a consistant strategy employed by the prohibitionists and inquisitors world wide. Beware of the FNORDS!

"There's more of everything, the more they fight it the more drugs appear, it's like Lao Tzu said "The more laws they pass the more criminals they create and the more weapons they create the more terror stalks the land" - the more clearer the explanations the more frogs fall out of the sky.--Robert Anton Wilson, 2002, Santa Cruz CA.

Watch for yourself here:



Steven 'fly agaric 23' Pratt. 18th April 2012.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=gSrN2zIRwN8


 

Double-dutch Coffeeshop news-speak and Global news ambiguity.

Double-dutch Coffeeshop news-speak and Global news ambiguity.

I don't know about you dear reader, but I don't get my information (news) from the mainstream newspaper any longer, I get it from individual experienced bloggers (from many fields) from wikipedia, and mostly I get my news from my network of friends.

Friends often provide the extra turn of phrase or primary observation that make the information being communicated fluid, plus the fact that often you can smell your friends and see their facial expression, gestures and human imperfections.

During the months of May and June this year (2011) I have been repeatedly asked the question (will the coffeesshops be closing to foreign tourists?) while at work behind the 'weed counter' at coffeeshop 420, Amsterdam. My answer has always been an optimistic 'NO' due to my interpretation of events which results in the possible adoption of the 'weed pass' (private 'Dutch' members only card) in some of the Dutch boarder towns such as Mastricht, but not here in Amsterdam.

The International newswire, however, contrary to my own thoughts on the matter, tends to paint a cut and dried answer to the questions surrounding the new 'weed pass' proposal by imploying meaningless and ambiguous terminology (drug tourism, drugs, organized crime), and then repeating them over and over again across the global newswire, as if the editors at these useless 'disinformation' operations (news media corporations) are in fact nothing more than Zombie's, infected with the beaureacratic stench of the tabloid press and only capable of producing redundant predictable! communications. (see AP, Newscorp, Reuters, CNN etc,. BBC?)

I have noticed a serious inbalance and unfair interpretation in most but not all news stories concerning 'some drugs' (i.e Cannabis, LSD, magic mushrooms, DMT) but mostly surrounding Cannabis. This media imbalance strikes me between the eyes almost every day as the fact of living and working in a place where almost everybody smokes Cannabis on a regular basis and lives a trouble free and happy life, whereas if you turn to the newspapers and the Government sanctioned reports about Cannabis, especially in Europe these days (America seems to be on a somewhat upward spiral toward intelligent Cannabis liberation) then, if taken literally you may go seek immediate medical help after buying a bullet proof vest.

For me, living here in Amsterdam and working within the Cannabis culture for over four years I have grown to be very sceptical and critical of the news-media, but decided to generally ignore them and their stories and just get on with my own thing, me, my friends and the Global Village, but now I feel an urge to respond and in doing so entertain some new ideas I have about information.

Information equals surprise, predictability leads to less information. I believe this equation is the final call for the corporate controlled news media and their henchment, if they do not change their redundant methods of communication they will die a fast heat death in the entropic vapours of the digital age. Excuse me, they evapourated already, we are now living in the age of wikileaks and anonymous, upon a new playing field or battle field where surprise = information.

In the context of Dutch coffeeshops and international news then, I will simply quote some of the articles to give examples of how almost everything proposed in the 'is' state, on deeper thinking and research into the process, in fact, is not. And LO! begins the Punch and Judy show, right up front at the media circus. A RAW source once stated the fact that the 'war on drugs' cannot be a war on drugs, if it were they would be busting in the doors of every phamacy and drug store in town, therefore to remove a line of semantic distortion we should more correctly refer to 'the war on some drugs'. As simple and as easy as this seems (to just add the word 'some') hardly any news journalists pay tribute and continue with the 'cut and dry' either/or (two valued logic) that went out of style with Hitler.

There are then at least two areas of focus. The first is the actual situations and events or speech associated with the news item, the second is the language or language-trappings associated with the communication of the news item. The message and the media.

In the continued 'war on some people who use some drugs' and the 'culture wars' waged around the globe, language seems to me the first instrument of counter-attack. Artists and poets and musicians emerge for the sport of it all, to put life and love and liberty into a vortex and create something new, to help combat the redundant forces of fixed-stereotypes and the mass medicrity permeating every aspect of modern city life.

The Hermetic forces that have helped shape the modern information explosion are still with every one of us who chooses to tune them in. And since the innovation of general relativity, general semantics and information theory, (also tied to many Hermetic principles and methodologies, somewhat Pagan in spirit, if you will) the misuse and abuse of language by mediocrities and corporate fraudsters and spooks will cease to hold it's spell over the minds of a culture. The chains of law have been broken, follow the link...

So although I like to consider myself an activist for drug peace and tolerance, I am trying to distance myself here from the content or the 'message' itself, and target the corrupted 'medium' (i.e phrases like 'drugs-tourism' and 'war on drugs') and show that the whole field of 'some drugs related' journalism seems infected with a distinct lack of relative terminology and a distinct amplification of semantic distortions. If the medium is the message then the message has also been corrupted by obsolete.
 

--Steve 'fly agaric 23'
Amsterdam, July 2nd, 2011.

"The only solution to get rid of the cannabis tourism in our border areas would be the introduction of cannabis outlets in Germany, Belgium, France and the UK, so they do not have to come to Dutch coffeeshops any more. --http://pr.cannazine.co.uk/201106201481/green/eco-news/dutch-cannabis-exclusion-zone-doomed-says-coffee-shop-owner.html

"Dutch to ban foreigners from pot shops.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/06/07/amsterdam.pot.shops.ban/

"However the Dutch government is keen to crack down on this kind of "drugs tourism." The Dutch executive announced earlier this year that they wanted coffee shops to become private members clubs, only open to the local market. This would mean only Dutch nationals could become members and legally purchase cannabis.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15194412,00.html

Words of praise for marijuana's spiritual properties by John Sinclair

Higher Ground

Sacramental herb

Words of praise for marijuana's spiritual properties

By John Sinclair

Published: May 25, 2011

I'm crossing the English Channel on the Stena Line steamship as I write this, moving on from London to Amsterdam for the next 10 days, and then on to Italy. It was a rough April in the Motor City with one cold, gray day after another and the Tigers foundering until I left, but London was bright and sunny almost every day, and the weather should just get better from here.

England is a rough place to cop good medicine, and marijuana is considered illegal in every application — not at all what you'd call smoker-friendly. I ventured outside the city one day to visit my religious leader, the Rev. Ferre (as we'll call him) of the THC Ministry, and he made sure my medicinal needs were well taken care of.
In fact, I just sneaked my last smoke from that stash in my little cabin on the ship so I could write this column, and soon after I arrive at the Hook of Holland in the morning I'll be back at my regular stand at the 420 Café in Amsterdam, where you can always buy your weed over the counter whether you're sick or well and the price is always the same.

The THC Ministry is based in Holland and operates under the slogan, "We use cannabis religiously — and so can you!" I'm proud to be a member of the ministry, and it takes me back before the advent of socialized medicinal marijuana, when we thought perhaps the solution was to highlight the spiritual and indeed religious aspects of the sacrament as a way to escape the heavy hand of the narcotics police.

The brilliant hallucinogen called peyote had been established as a religious sacrament used for spiritual purposes by several Southwestern Native American nations, and many beatniks, hippies and fellow seekers had gained experiential knowledge of its potency as a spiritual force.

Many of us felt the same way about marijuana: that its spiritual properties and potentialities qualified weed as a religious sacrament for ritual use and equally beneficial in navigating the vicissitudes of daily life as well, much as prayer itself seems to work for the Christians and other faithful. Our daily marijuana use went well beyond the concept of recreational drugs — it was integral to our work and play in equal measure, and helped us keep our minds to the mental grindstone at all times.

Eventually, we sought to register an entirely different definition of marijuana from the orthodoxy enshrined and promoted by the forces of law and order. Not only were marijuana and associated psychedelic or euphoriant substances neither narcotics nor "dangerous drugs," they were in fact benevolent and had manifestly evident healing powers and could serve to help bring their adherents into alignment and closer harmony with the natural forces of the universe.
 
I can't remember exactly when, but at some point in 1969-1972 we formed the First Zenta Church of Ann Arbor, a nonprofit ecclesiastical corporation chartered by the state of Michigan that held marijuana, hashish, peyote, psilocybin and other psychoactive natural substances as sacraments central to the church and the religious and spiritual lives of the congregation.

Now these tenets we held true, plain and simple, but the underlying social idea was that members of the Church of Zenta could thenceforth rely on the constitutional doctrine of freedom of religion as their protection against conviction for possession and use of narcotics — or later, "controlled substances" — under the state's marijuana laws. Zenta members used marijuana religiously, as the THC Ministry puts it today, and were entitled to protection as religious practitioners following the basic tenets of their creed.

There were other benefits of ecclesiastical corporation: Organized religious bodies didn't pay sales or income taxes; their real estate transactions were exempt from taxation as well; and their forms of worship, however diverse or divergent from the Christian norm, were given wide latitude by the temporal government. Churches were churches, another order of being from the rest of the social order, and our church was determined to join their number and enjoy equal protection under the law of the land.

Like our other efforts to combat the narcotics laws and the incipient War on Drugs based in their idiotic assumptions — for example, as I've said many times before, marijuana was never a narcotic — the establishment of the First Church of Zenta was meant to deny and counteract the demonization of recreational drug users by the dominant social order as the first line of offense against us.

If you can create a mythology centered on the demonization of illicit drug use and the characterization of illicit drug users as dangerous criminals and enemies of conventional society, deploying ever-increasing numbers of narcotics police to stomp out this evil seems to follow.

When this tissue of horseshit (to quote William Burroughs) is stripped away and the stigma of evilness is removed, the marijuana smoker is revealed instead as a harmless seeker of spiritual truth or a suffering patient in need of medicine. These are not reasonable targets for prosecution as criminals, and the police must move back at least a few steps and sheathe the dreaded nightstick of drug law prosecution.

Now that we have legalized medical marijuana as a potential source of relief for a whole panoply of aches and pains, both physical and mental, and recommends that the state of Michigan certify the applicant as a registered medical marijuana patient, we've taken a big first step away from the reviled War on Drugs. Perhaps it's time to renew the religious argument as well.

Briefly put, we need all the help we can get i to wrest the jackboot of the War on Drugs off the necks of marijuana smokers in our society.

In closing I'd like to point out that I've completed this column upon my arrival in Amsterdam, working my way through my various obligatory stops — the 420 Café, the Cannabis College, the Hempshopper on the Singel Canal — checking in with my peeps around the Centrum and trying to honor my commitment to the paper and my readers at the same time. At the end of the month, I'll be on my way to Florence, Italy, on a personal mission, and I'll file the next column from there. Happy trails! —420 Cafe, Amsterdam

> Email John Sinclair

http://metrotimes.com/mmj/sacramental-herb-1.1151881?smsss=email&at_xt=4ddd19419190a25f%2C0

Open Source Medicine - Amsterdam Blues Scholars by flyagaric23

Open Source Medicine - Amsterdam Blues Scholars  by  flyagaric23