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Psychedelic icon leaves 'lasting legacy'

Psychedelic icon Owsley 'Bear' Stanley in 1969 with the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia. (Rosie McGhee)

Owsley "Bear" Stanley, who fuelled the 1960s flower power generation with LSD and worked closely with the Grateful Dead, has been remembered as a man of "enormous influence".

Stanley worked as a sound engineer for the band and is remembered for the millions of LSD doses he manufactured at his lab in San Francisco, which helped to kick off the psychedelic era.
The 76-year-old died on Sunday in a car crash close to his home near Cairns, in far north Queensland. His wife Sheilah was also injured in the crash but has now been released from hospital.
Former Rolling Stones and Grateful Dead tour manager, Sam Cutler, says Stanley leaves behind a "long lasting legacy".
"Before LSD was legal he was one of the chemists in San Franciso who made it, and he made a lot of it. So he certainly had an influence on our times, as it were, on that level," he told ABC News Online.
"The psychedelic era is still with us. It's still out there happening, on one level or another.
"But that's just one aspect of the man - there are other things that he needs to be remembered for as well."
Cutler says his "brother, teacher and friend" developed music technology which is now taken for granted.
"When you go to a rock and roll concert, what you listen to is something in stereo sound. The person who invented that, and first brought it up, was the Bear," he said.
"The Grateful Dead were the first people to have a stereo sound system.
"Another thing he was responsible for were on-stage monitors, so you could actually hear what you were singing, or saying.
"Just those two things alone are major, major contributions to how popular music was presented to people."
Cutler says Stanley was a "rare and very special man" who was also a great artist.
"He was an alchemist, a wonderful man, a great thinker," he said.
"A very rare man, and very special. He's just an amazing man on all kinds of different levels.
"He made the most wonderful enamel sophisticated artworks - a kind of renaissance man of the 20th century. A bit of a Leonardo da Vinci for his time.
"He had enormous influence, in what he said and what he wrote - a huge amount of influence for just one individual.
"He affected the Grateful Dead but that was only one of the bands he had an influence on. Jimi Hendrix wrote Purple Haze as a result of the Bear's activities - there was an LSD of the Bear's called Purple Haze."
The guitarist, however, has denied the song's title takes its name from the drug.
Stanley is survived by his wife Sheilah, four children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Cutler says many more will mourn him following the fatal crash, which happened "on a terribly bad stretch of road that has killed lots of people".
"He has a large extended family in Australia and America," he said.
"He will be sorely missed by a great deal of people - including lots of people who loved the man dearly, who never met him but whose lives were radically altered by him."
Monique Ross @'ABC'

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Saudi Arabian forces prepare to enter Bahrain after day of clashes

Saudi Arabian forces were preparing to enter Bahrain after clashes between police and protesters. Photograph: James Lawler Duggan/AFP/Getty Images

Saudi forces are preparing to intervene in neighbouring Bahrain, after a day of clashes between police and protesters who mounted the most serious challenge to the island's royal family since demonstrations began a month ago.
The Crown Prince of Bahrain is expected to formally invite security forces from Saudi Arabia into his country today, as part of a request for support from other members of the six-member Gulf Co-operation Council.
Thousands of demonstrators on Sunday cut off Bahrain's financial centre and drove back police trying to eject them from the capital's central square, while protesters also clashed with government supporters on the campus of the main university.
Amid the revolt Bahrain also faces a potential sectarian conflict between the ruling minority of Sunnis Muslims and a majority of Shia Muslims, around 70% of the kingdom's 525,000 residents.
The crown prince, Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, said in a televised statement that Bahrain had "witnessed tragic events" during a month of unprecedented political unrest.
Warning that "the right to security and safety is above all else", he added: "Any legitimate claims must not be made at the expanse of security and stability."
The crown prince has also promised that national dialogue would look at increasing the power of Bahrain's parliament, and that any deal could be put to nationwide referendum.
However, some protesters have pressed their demands further to call for the toppling of the Sunni dynasty.
The unrest is being closely watched in Saudi Arabia, where Shia are some 15% of the population.
The secretary general of the Gulf Co-operation Council, Abdulrahman bin Hamad al-Attiya, expressed the "full solidarity with Bahrain's leadership and people", adding that "safeguarding security and stability in one country is a collective responsibility".
In an apparent reference to Iran, which Gulf Arab ruling elites fear may capitalise on an uprising by Shiites in Bahrain, he also expresssed "strong rejection of any foreign interference in the kingdom's internal affairs, asserting that any acts aiming to destabilise the kingdom and sow dissension between its citizens represent a dangerous encroachment on the whole GCC security and stability." Reports that the Saudi National Guard was poised to enter Bahrain were cited by the Foreign Office, alongside a recent increase in protests, as it changed its advice to advise British citizens against all travel to Bahrain.
Earlier on Sunday, police moved in on Pearl Square, a site of occupation by members of Bahrain's Shia majority, who are calling for an elected government and equality with Bahrain's Sunnis.
Witnesses said security forces surrounded the protesters' tent compound, shooting tear gas and rubber bullets at the activists in the largest effort to clear the square since a crackdown last month that left four dead after live ammunition was fired.
Activists tried to stand their ground yesterday and chanted "Peaceful, peaceful" as the crowd swelled into thousands, with protesters streaming to the square to reinforce the activists' lines, forcing the police to pull back by the early afternoon.
At Bahrain University, Shia demonstrators and government supporters held competing protests that descended into violence when plainclothes pro-government backers and security forces forced students blocking the campus main gate to seek refuge in classrooms and lecture halls, the Associated Press reported.
The latest demonstrations took place a day after the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, visited Bahrain and said that the Khalifa family must go beyond "baby steps" reform and enact substantial economic and political change.
Ben Quinn @'The Guardian'

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"You sons of Jews. You servants of infidels. You brought others here to occupy Afghanistan. You brought people to kill innocent Afghans. You are responsible. You motherfuckers. You sons of whores."
Half a dozen police officers were clustered around a radio in the headquarters at Pol-e-Khomri, capital of Baghlan province in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban insults came through loud and clear. The insurgents were only a few miles away. And they had good radios, Motorolas they had stolen from the police.
The radios had been taken last year in an incident the police didn't like to talk about but which was, nevertheless, revealing. Several policemen were captured by the Taliban. The insurgents seized their weapons and equipment. The policemen were beaten, and certainly humiliated, but they were not killed. That was only sensible on the part of the Taliban: War in Afghanistan has always been marked by changing alliances. Today's enemy may be tomorrow's friend. "This is not Iraq, where thousands of bodies were turning up in Baghdad with holes drilled in their kneecaps," one NATO officer with experience of both places told me.
The killing here may be restrained by pragmatism, but the exchange over the radio was bitter enough. "Murderers," the police officers shot back. "You servants of the Pakistanis. You brought Punjabis, ISI officers [Pakistani spies], Arabs, and Chechens here. You robbed millions of girls of an education. You destroyed this country to please your foreign masters."
The Taliban retorted: "You will pay. If you are men, why don't you fight us? Why do you hide like women? Why do you hide like foxes? Come out, sons of Jews."
The Taliban were about to get their wish. The police in Pol-e-Khomri were preparing an attack. An offensive was already under way across three other northern provinces. In Baghlan, the main thrust would be against one district, Borka, which was firmly in Taliban hands.
The man in charge of the offensive was a soft-spoken and charismatic general named Mohammed Daoud Daoud. He had once been secretary to martyred Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, whose picture is still displayed everywhere in this part of the country. Daoud now commanded all Interior Ministry forces in the north, including his own elite force of police commandos, Pamir 303. The government in Kabul was shortly to announce which parts of the country would begin transitioning to Afghan security control, and Daoud had invited my BBC crew -- me, my cameraman, a security guy, and an interpreter -- he said, so that we could see how Afghan forces were already conducting their own operations with very little help from NATO. He wanted to show us that Afghans were ready to lead the fight against the Taliban...

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Philip was a bright, nervous child. He was younger than average in his grade, his mother having started him a year early. He was close to his parents, who divorced when he was 13, and then lived with his mother, who struggled to make ends meet. As he grew up, married, and became a father, he evolved into a worrier. He divorced, remarried shortly after. He joined the military and seemed to enjoy it, but later reported that his job was not fully satisfying, and he felt he hadn't lived up to his potential. He died early, before his 65th birthday, of a heart attack.
Philip was one of 1,500 bright children who were tracked for more than 80 years in a massive longitudinal study begun in 1921 by psychologist Lewis Terman. Terman and his successors—he died before many of the children—collected millions of details about these subjects, including whether they were breast-fed, how much they exercised, what their marriages were like, how satisfying their sex lives were, how satisfying their jobs were. Could this sea of information teach us how to avoid Philip's fate?...