After the horrible attack on a mosque in Egypt, in which more than 300 Sufi Muslims lost their lives at the hands of Daesh, I decided it was time to explain the connection between Sufism, drugs, spirituality, rebellion, and of course, prohibition. We’d like to think that drug use in the classical Islamic period of 700 AD doesn’t have anything to do with the attack last week by almost 30 ISIS militants, but history paints a different story. Many members of Sufi orders throughout history have been persecuted for their substance use, especially as a pretext by conservative rulers to shutter coffee houses, opium dens, brothels, bars, and other meeting places of potential insurrectionists.
Muslims invented the coffee house as we now know it, and were responsible for coffee finding its way into Christian Europe. But when coffee first made its way from Ethiopia into Yemen and up the Arabian Peninsula, some Muslims challenged its appropriateness. It was clear to early observers that coffee had an effect on people, but legal thinkers had to decide whether these effects qualified as intoxication. More threatening than coffee’s impact on the body, however, was the drink’s social consequence. Like wine drinkers, coffee drinkers tended to assemble in groups. Could the coffee house invite the same troublesome activities that surrounded taverns? Moreover, coffee appeared to assist Sufis in their all-night gatherings, leading some to consider that prohibiting coffee would also aid in the suppression of controversial religious practices and subversive teachings. ~Confession of a Muslim Psychedelic Tea Drinker, Michael Muhammad Knight (VICE.com)
Because the Sheriff arrests people related to Burning Man before the event and after the event, he is sending a bigger bill to BMorg. He’s “not sure” if last year’s bill was even paid by the $40 million festival.
Celebrity arrests among difficulties of managing Burning Man
The arrest of a celebrity’s ex-boyfriend at Burning Man drew inquiries from the tabloid press at the sheriff’s office last week. The calls indicated how time-consuming the world-famous festival can be.
Other duties had to wait as Sheriff Jerry Allen and Undersheriff Tom Bjerke researched the case and issued a press release on burner Vito Schnabel who had been in custody for alleged drug possession.
It wasn’t the first time the sheriff’s office has been barraged with media calls about Burning Man.
“This has happened before – when the man died in the fire this year, when the model from Hong Kong was arrested in 2015, when the participant was run over this year,” Allen said. “There are times when my office gets overwhelmed with calls for information regarding events at Burning Man.”
The total criminal statistics for this year’s event have not been released as crime reports are still coming in from an event that ended a month ago. The After Action Report anticipated by county officials, festival organizers and the media could be ready next month, Allen said. With two vacancies for sheriff’s deputies to be filled, he has little time for the paperwork right now.
“We haven’t condensed all that information yet. We’re still processing crime reports and getting more information together,” he said. “I’m hoping to have the report by the end of next month. That’s if I can get my staffing up and get myself away from the deputy’s job and back to doing my own job.”
A settlement agreement limits Burning Man’s payments for law enforcement and other county services according to the number of festival participants. Last year, however, Allen said he billed organizers about $40,000 for law enforcement services on the playa outside the event’s eight-day schedule.
Allen wasn’t certain if the bill had been paid but event organizers can expect another one for 2017.
“This year, we’re going to be over budget again because we’ve taken enforcement action before the event and after the event,” Allen said. “I will submit (a bill) for those calls pursuant to the event.”
The headline basically says it all. Re-blogged from Sydney’s Daily Telegraph (emphasis ours):
POLICE have charged 17 people with drug offences after an operation at Australia’s version of the Burning Man festival.
The large-scale long weekend police operation at the Burning Seed festival in the Matong Forest, near Wagga Wagga concludes tomorrow with police seizing a large number of drugs.
Sergeant Maggie Deall said there had been 40 drug detections and a total of 70 drug exhibits seized with additional police from Sydney helping in the operation.
“Some of those drug detections involve multiple drug possession matters,” she said.
“We have actually come across 36 different types of drugs; ranging from the party drugs that are fairly standard at these events.
“Ecstasy, MDMA, cocaine, all the way through to magic mushrooms, cannabis, and prescribed restricted substances like buprenorphine…People are so laissez-faire about their drug use given that they’re so far from medical help, I think it’s a fairly risky behaviour to undertake,” Sergeant Deall said.
“You may have taken 100 different pills, 100 different times and nothing has happened.
“You never know what’s in them. The next one could be the pill that kills you.”
The festival is now in its seventh year…
Those charged are believed to be from Sydney, Melbourne, the Northern Territory and even Germany and all listed to appear in court over the next couple of weeks.
Police have wrapped up their first ever drug operation at Burning Seed festival — Australia’s version of Burning Man — charging 17 punters with drug offences.
Cops with sniffer dogs set up a roadblock at the entrance to the ‘deep space’ themed music festival, which is currently underway at ‘Red Earth City’ in the Matong Forest, west of Wagga Wagga, seizing “a large variety of drugs” including cannabis, mushrooms, cocaine and ketamine.
“Police are very concerned with the amount of drugs that people are trying to take into the festival and the danger to their health and safety,” Acting Inspector Maggie Deall from Wagga Wagga police station tells the ABC.
While a dude named Rodney, who volunteers as second-in-command on the festival’s front gate, argues that the majority of the event’s attendees were ex-hippies who aren’t even that into drugs.
“I’m 35 and I’m one of the younger ones there really,” he says. “It’s not a drug-fuelled music festival. You can lose yourself without having to get inebriated.”
Punters angry about the police presence at this year’s festival have flooded the Burning Seed Facebook page, calling for the event to be shunted interstate where drug detection isn’t as tough.
A man from Canberra — where the government has just given the green light to pill-testing measures — writes: “I advocate for not holding it in NSW or even VIC going forward given how both those State Governments are treating festivals of late like this, come to the ACT where we don’t go hard on those responsibly having a good time.”
Like Burning Man, Burning Seed culminates with the burning of a wooden temple and a 13-metre effigy.
The five-day festival is now in its seventh year, and is due to wrap up on Monday.
A “punter” in Aussie parlance means a participant. It also means gambler, so perhaps they are suggesting that these 17 chose to try their chances against the sniffer dogs and came out on the losing side.
ACT, Australian Capital Territory, is not technically a State of Australia, it is a special district – like District of Columbia in Washington D.C., or Distrito Federal in Mexico City, or the City of London. Interesting that they are making a play now for the rave scene. It’s home to the nation’s capital city Canberra, where the politicians rule the country from. Canberra is a notorious hotbed of porn and prostitutes, another city laid out from a Masonic masterplan.
Maybe the Feds want to move Seed out closer to Pine Gap, all the better to keep the All-Seeing Eye of JORN on the trippers…
Cartoon by John Shakespeare, Sydney Morning Herald
Could be a Burning Man art installation…or could be Australia’s version of HAARP. JORN antenna array in Longreach, QLD
Is that White Ocean’s new camp setup?
Pine Gap is a great place for a party, as some lucky ravers in the year 2000 can attest
The Jindalee Operational Radar Network, a Lockheed Martin project
Some photos from the 
