Douglas Rushkoff
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
http://www.rushkoff.com/blog/2011/11/29/reality-as-subversion.html
I wrote this piece six years ago for Arthur magazine, anticipating or at least wishing for the Occupy movement. LSD magazine just republished it in their latest issue with some beautiful graphics, here.
Here's the original text version:
Arthur, June 2005
I had a weird vision the other day.
Having brought our newborn back from the hospital just days before, my wife and I weren’t getting much sleep. I lied on the bed next to the baby and slipped into one of those theta wave trances you can reach on the way to a magick spell, visionquest, or psychedelic trip.
I was in a natural chamber of some kind, maybe a cave or clearing in a woods. It was a starting place from which any number of journeys could be taken. At each opening, another creature or entity beckoned me to follow it. And, had it been any other time in my life, I probably would have picked the one that seemed the most promising and followed it down the twists and turns of its path – and been either delighted or terrified by what happened. (The idea of being an experienced traveler or magician is getting better at predicting, guiding, or simply tolerating the variety of what’s on offer, and learning to bring back things or ideas of value.)
This time, however, for no particular reason other than really being okay with floating in that little entrance foyer, decided to stay put. The beckoning entities gave up and scurried or drifted down their reality tunnels, and I lied there, motionless.
Only then, after I decided to do nothing, did I notice the Elders. Three or four of them - shamans, prophets, zen masters, or some combination – sitting on a bench to my side, looking down at me. “Welcome,” they said, nodding. And I immediately got it. By doing nothing, I was doing everything. The path of no path. Just be.
And though I’ve spent a career, maybe even a whole lifetime creating realities for myself and others as a way of retreating from the oppressive consensus culture of the American Marketplace, I’m wondering if we might best abandon that tactic. Maybe, it’s time to stand still and let them do the conjuring.
Hear me out.
What I teach in my classes is that the evolution of media sees control of the story move away from the teller, and towards the reader or listener. The invention of text allowed people other than priests and royals to read and write, showing human beings that they were contributing to the human story. Thanks to the alphabet, we got the Judeo-Christian tradition, laws, and all those notions of progress.
The printing press put texts in the hands of many, leading to the democratization of interpretation, the development of “perspective,” and eventually the Enlightenment. If all perspectives matter, then all people matter equally.
Although TV set things back a bit, deconstruction and post-modernism came to the rescue, giving us all the ability to take apart what we see, and dissemble the many messages being piped into our living rooms and brains. Master deconstructionists, from William Burroughs and Bryon Gysin to Genesis P-Orridge and Negativeland, cut-up the news and paste it back together in news ways, in Burroughs words, to find out “what it really says.”
Of course, they were only foretelling the advent of the Internet, which turned the whole mediascape – the primary landscape of alternative media creation – over to us. Now, at least in theory, we are as capable of creating and disseminating a message as anyone else. Your basic middle class American teen (admittedly, among the planet’s better equipped individuals) can build a set of images, texts, or videos that extend his visions to the greater world. Rupert Murdoch’s ideas matter no more than those of the kid posting on Slashdot.
And so we fight for our rights or even just our freedom to do what we want to in the media space. To keep our Bittorrents flowing and our alternative media blogs rolling. We know the power of image creation, and want to retain our ability to make the images that stimulate, hypnotize, and program our world.
That’s why the powers that be are so committed to retaking their control over the image factory. Whether it’s American Idol recasting its stacked deck talent show as some sort of SMS-enabled democracy, or Project Echelon monitoring all our keystrokes so that truly subversive material can be cut off at the source, we’re witnessing first hand the dismemberment of our new body politic. Just as the forces of business turned the original Internet into a strip mall, they are now bribing the most popular bloggers with ad-based revenues and creating watered down simulations of online autonomy.
Meanwhile, they distract us with scary stories about how the latest and greatest technologies will be used against us. Neuromarketing, for example, the latest new tool in the advertising arsenal, is supposedly capable of using MRI technology to measure, definitively, our response to packages and advertisements. They shove some poor soul into an MRI machine (that could be used for a diagnosing a sick person) and then show him some Coke or Pepsi labels and then see what parts of the brain light up. Then fascinated but misguided journalists write bestselling books about that moment of decision that supposedly takes place independent of any conscious or rational process. Worse, these subconscious triggers can be tripped intentionally by any marketer or political linguist with the access and money.
That’s magick, people. And fake magick, at that, except for the fact that we believe this shit. It just isn’t true. It’s the kind of tripe that marketers and advertisers use to peddle their wares to the companies trying to compete with real culture, real thought, and real human progress. Of course the books claiming that our most important decisions happen in a “blink” are going to sell well, because they are part of the culture of selling.
It’s no wonder we get fooled by such stuff. For in our effort to exert some measure of control over our reality, we have migrated to the semiotic landscape – fighting with image and symbol, rhetoric and reason. In the spirit of Hegel, we match their faulty thesis with our daring antithesis, but forget that neither one necessarily brings us any closer to the truth. Just because you’ve got two opposing arguments doesn’t mean they resolve into some reality-based synthesis. (Two politicians can argue about whether the tax code should have 39 or 40 lines while a peasant starves on the Capitol steps.)
The realities that marketers offer us, just like the ones we offer back in return, are speciously detached from reality on the ground. Sure, they provide solutions to our problems, but from where do those problems originate?
As a new parent, I’ve been painfully aware of how little real community there is around us. This is a market success. Our parents are too far, our friends are too shy, the mothering old ladies are nowhere to be found. So who teaches my wife to breast feed? The “lactation consultant.” Yes – there is such a thing! And who watches the baby when we have to take a shower or get to work? Not a family member or friend down the hall, but a professional babysitter, daycare center or nanny. The diminishment of community is what fuels these new markets.
The greatest magic act of all – the unrecognized king of all sigils – was the creation of the dollar itself. We support the reality of this symbol whether we’re going after dollars or complaining about the lack of opportunity to accumulate them. By taking the very real values of wealth and prosperity and assigning them to the symbol of money, we dissociated our labor from the real. Sure, if we had some authority over that symbol system we might be in business. But we don’t; it’s the most protected and inaccessible set of mythology around. No cut and paste permitted, William.
I’m thinking we should let them win. Surrender the unreal realities to the bad guys. If they want broadcast television, mainstream newspapers, or even the web, let ‘em have it. They’ve conjured up an alternative universe that has very little true connection to what’s really going on here. And the market-based, competitive, reality-as-propaganda dream has swallowed them up. They are the victims of their own illusions. We don’t have to be.
We can take charge of the real reality they left behind. I mean the world we’re actually living in. The yards and streets and fingers and tongues. Let’s build bike lanes and barbecues, after school programs and AIDS care networks, places to play music and playgrounds for kids. They’re so busy monitoring the airwaves for signs of treason against the market or state that they’ve lost track of what’s happening between real people. Turn off your cell phone and speak to that guy sitting next to you on the bus. That’s about the most subversive thing you could do.
Instead, like well-meaning Pied Pipers, we play our tunes hoping the children might follow us instead of the other guy taking them off the cliff. But when we enter into that competition, we’re no better than the tune we can muster at that moment. If ours is more hypnotic or captivating than theirs, we win for the time being, and keep the kids believing our version of things until the next round.
And in entering that pissing contest, we deny ourselves the home field advantage. We live here, after all. If we can learn to sit still for a moment rather than following any of those phantoms, we can take over real reality, instead. It’s right here for the taking.
Showing posts with label LSD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LSD. Show all posts
Friday, December 23, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Revisiting Ken Kesey's Drugged-Out 'Magic Trip'
A conversation with the makers of a new documentary about the seminal bus voyage
Robert Levin
Aug 5 2011
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/08/revisiting-ken-keseys-drugged-out-magic-trip/243170
Until now, Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test has been the definitive depiction of the famous school bus trip across America taken by Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters in 1964.
But there’s a worthy companion piece to Wolfe’s seminal work of new journalism: Magic Trip, a new documentary entirely comprised of little-seen contemporaneous 16mm footage and audio recordings by Kesey and the Pranksters.
Meticulously restored and put together by filmmakers Alison Ellwood and Alex Gibney, without relying on the crutch of perspective from contemporary talking heads, the film presents the LSD-loving pioneers who spawned ’60s counterculture in their own words and images. In an email exchange, Elliwood and Gibney, an occasional contributor to The Atlantic, offer their thoughts on the project.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What inspired you to take on the daunting challenge of making this film?
Alison Ellwood: We first heard about the footage when we read an article by Robert Stone in The New Yorker. Once we saw the footage, it was a no brainer. No one had ever seen most of this material. Something about it spoke to me — pulled me into it.
Alex Gibney: The footage — the idea that there was so much footage and that it might be used to create a kind of archival vérité portrait of this mythic moment.
What can we stand to learn from Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters? What makes them relevant today?
AG: This is a tough question. In some ways, Kesey and the Pranksters are hard to remove from their time. The year the bus trip was taken — 1964 — was a year with one foot in the ’50s and one foot in the ’60s to come. Kesey himself felt that the trip might be a kind of agent provocateur for those along the side of the road who were consumed by fear (the shadow of the bomb, the McCarthy era and the recent assassination of John F. Kennedy). He believed in magic and in a definitively American yearning for freedom. That's part of what the bus trip was about: a siren's song to those strapped to the mast to come out and play. Of course, in Greek mythology, the sweet sound of the sirens caused many ships to run aground on the rocks. So too, the freedoms of the ’60s can seem a kind of lunacy today. Indeed, they ran aground at Altamont as early as 1969.
"Kesey says in the film that those seeking freedom from social conventions are born to lose. Sooner or later, we all have to make a living."But as easy as it is to dismiss the bus trip (and when you look at the loony antics on film it's even easier) there is also something to admire. Kesey was an explorer — with writing, performance art and hallucinogens. In retrospect, explorers can look silly as we can see, with the benefit of maps written later, all their false starts, wrong turns and bumbling into dead ends. But they also help to blaze trails. The ’50s and the early ’60s (look at Mad Men) were a pretty rigid time. The country was rich but the weight of conformity was heavy. It's hard to even imagine how structured that world was. Today, we are the beneficiaries of cultural freedoms and expanded thinking … that wouldn't be possible without the explorers. (Even Lee Atwater ended up playing the electric guitar!)
It's also important to remember that Kesey and the Pranksters didn't have a rule book. That sadly would come later and was much parodied by Wolfe, [Joan] Didion, et al. They were making it up as they went along. Indeed, there is a lot about the bus ride that really isn't anything more profound than a frat house road trip. (And, because of that, the police didn't seem to mind: they couldn't even imagine the idea of LSD and never thought to arrest [Neal] Cassady even though he didn't have a valid driver's license.) But in the everyday chaos of this party on wheels, there is a lesson too about how history gets written. Kesey may have given up on literature for movie cameras (he was much better at operating the typewriter) but even as the bus was hurtling down the road, with a rambling speed freak at the wheel, Kesey the storyteller was hard at work imagining how this bus ride could pass into legend. And it did.
Kesey also says in the film that those seeking freedom from social conventions are born to lose. Sooner or later, we all have to make a living. Yet those noble losers force accommodations and personal freedoms that are important.
To those who take social injustice seriously, there is little concern in this story for civil rights, America's military overreach or the divisions between rich and poor. Through that lens, the trip can look self-indulgent and silly. But, as Kesey would remind us — and I would agree — it's also important to play and explore. Without giving ourselves over, from time to time, to the unrestrained forces of imagination, we are doomed to all become agents of the Department of Homeland Security, passing through an endless series of airport screening lines. That's something that seems relevant, and worth thinking about, today.
In making the film, how conscious were you of Tom Wolfe's book?
AG: We were conscious of avoiding Wolfe's book. He wrote a groundbreaking, inventive book and he had his say. But it's also a fact that he wasn't on the bus. We wanted this version of the trip to be seen from the inside out, rather than from the outside in. So we used the voices of Kesey and the pranksters to be the undependable narrators. In a way, we put the footage together as two films — one was the Prankster trip as told by them, the other was our arrangement of voices and context to say something we wanted to say about embracing the contradictions of that time.
What most surprised you about the footage and the characters therein?
AE: The footage wasn’t particularly well shot. However, they did do a good job at exposures. Considering they were messed up a lot of the time, it’s a miracle they got anything at all. I guess what most surprised me was their innocence and patriotism. They weren’t long haired anti-establishment types. They believed in America. They believed things could be better.
What's poignant or otherwise notable about Kesey and the Pranksters being clean-cut American acid heads, which would today seem contradictory?
AE: It only seems contradictory from our historical vantage point — we know what the ’60s became. But in 1964, the ’60s were very much still the ’50s. Cary Grant was a big fan of acid. Aldous Huxley had written Doors of Perception in 1954. Neither of those guys would be described as anything other than “clean-cut.” Frankly, I think gay Republicans are far more contradictory.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
New York Public Library buys Timothy Leary papers
KAREN MATTHEWS
Thursday, Jun. 16, 2011
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/16/3705544/new-york-public-library-buys-timothy.html
NEW YORK -- The New York Public Library has acquired the papers of LSD guru Timothy Leary, who coined the phrase "turn on, tune in, drop out."
The library announced Thursday that it purchased 335 boxes of papers, videotapes, photographs and other items from the estate of Leary, who died in 1996.
Leary was a Harvard professor who became notorious for advocating the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs. President Richard Nixon called Leary "the most dangerous man in America."
A trustee of Leary's estate tells The New York Times that the library paid $900,000 for the collection. Some of the money will be donated back to pay for the processing of the materials.
The collection includes letters from figures such as Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, G. Gordon Liddy and Cary Grant.
Thursday, Jun. 16, 2011
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/16/3705544/new-york-public-library-buys-timothy.html
NEW YORK -- The New York Public Library has acquired the papers of LSD guru Timothy Leary, who coined the phrase "turn on, tune in, drop out."
The library announced Thursday that it purchased 335 boxes of papers, videotapes, photographs and other items from the estate of Leary, who died in 1996.
Leary was a Harvard professor who became notorious for advocating the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs. President Richard Nixon called Leary "the most dangerous man in America."
A trustee of Leary's estate tells The New York Times that the library paid $900,000 for the collection. Some of the money will be donated back to pay for the processing of the materials.
The collection includes letters from figures such as Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey, G. Gordon Liddy and Cary Grant.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
LSD Goes Legit
From The Santa Cruz Patch:
The first clinical LSD study on the planet in more than 35 years is almost complete. The Santa Cruz Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is sponsoring this research, which began in 2008, when Swiss psychiatrist Peter Gasser, M.D., became the first medical researcher in the world to obtain government approval to do therapeutic research with LSD since 1972.
Before 1972, nearly 700 studies with LSD and other psychedelic drugs were conducted. This research suggested that LSD has remarkable medical potential. LSD-assisted psychotherapy was shown to reduce the anxiety of terminal cancer patients, the drinking of alcoholics and the symptoms of many difficult-to-treat psychiatric illnesses.
For example, early LSD studies with advanced-stage cancer patients showed that LSD-assisted psychotherapy could alleviate symptoms of anxiety, tension, depression, sleep disturbances, psychological withdrawal and even severe physical pain. Other early investigators found that LSD may have some valuable potential as a means to facilitate creativity, problem-solving abilities and spiritual awareness.
Between 1972 and 1990 there were no government-approved human studies with any psychedelic drugs anywhere in the world. Their disappearance was no mystery. The worldwide ban on psychedelic drug research was the result of a political backlash that followed the promotion of these drugs by the counterculture of the 1960s. This reaction not only made these substances illegal for personal use, it also made it extremely difficult for medical researchers to obtain government approval to study them.
The situation began to change in 1990 when, according to MAPS president Rick Doblin, “open-minded regulators at the FDA decided to put science before politics when it came to psychedelic and medical marijuana research.” There are now more than a half-dozen clinical studies occurring worldwide that are examining the medical potential of psychedelic drugs.
Gasser’s almost-completed, MAPS-sponsored LSD study is being conducted in Switzerland, where LSD was discovered in 1943 by Albert Hofmann. The study examines how LSD-assisted psychotherapy affects the anxiety associated with suffering from an advanced, life-threatening illness. There are 12 subjects in the study with advanced-stage cancer and other serious illnesses...
Landmark Clinical LSD Study Nears Completion
David Jay Brown
May 27, 2011
http://santacruz.patch.com/articles/landmark-clinical-lsd-study-nears-completion
The first clinical LSD study on the planet in more than 35 years is almost complete. The Santa Cruz Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is sponsoring this research, which began in 2008, when Swiss psychiatrist Peter Gasser, M.D., became the first medical researcher in the world to obtain government approval to do therapeutic research with LSD since 1972.
Before 1972, nearly 700 studies with LSD and other psychedelic drugs were conducted. This research suggested that LSD has remarkable medical potential. LSD-assisted psychotherapy was shown to reduce the anxiety of terminal cancer patients, the drinking of alcoholics and the symptoms of many difficult-to-treat psychiatric illnesses.
For example, early LSD studies with advanced-stage cancer patients showed that LSD-assisted psychotherapy could alleviate symptoms of anxiety, tension, depression, sleep disturbances, psychological withdrawal and even severe physical pain. Other early investigators found that LSD may have some valuable potential as a means to facilitate creativity, problem-solving abilities and spiritual awareness.
Between 1972 and 1990 there were no government-approved human studies with any psychedelic drugs anywhere in the world. Their disappearance was no mystery. The worldwide ban on psychedelic drug research was the result of a political backlash that followed the promotion of these drugs by the counterculture of the 1960s. This reaction not only made these substances illegal for personal use, it also made it extremely difficult for medical researchers to obtain government approval to study them.
The situation began to change in 1990 when, according to MAPS president Rick Doblin, “open-minded regulators at the FDA decided to put science before politics when it came to psychedelic and medical marijuana research.” There are now more than a half-dozen clinical studies occurring worldwide that are examining the medical potential of psychedelic drugs.
Gasser’s almost-completed, MAPS-sponsored LSD study is being conducted in Switzerland, where LSD was discovered in 1943 by Albert Hofmann. The study examines how LSD-assisted psychotherapy affects the anxiety associated with suffering from an advanced, life-threatening illness. There are 12 subjects in the study with advanced-stage cancer and other serious illnesses...
Landmark Clinical LSD Study Nears Completion
David Jay Brown
May 27, 2011
http://santacruz.patch.com/articles/landmark-clinical-lsd-study-nears-completion
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Oswald and Synchronicity
A review of Adam Gorightly's The Prankster and the Conspiracy
James Leroy Wilson
April 26, 2011
http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=3607
An old proverb says, "Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it."
"The Prankster and the Conspiracy," Adam Gorightly's biography of Kerry Thornley, prompts a similar thought: "Be careful what you joke about: the joke may be on you."
I ordered the book for a couple of reasons. The first was that I heard Gorightly interviewed in a few podcasts and he seems like an interesting fellow. A pen name like his should be rewarded.
The second was to indulge my fascination with the nexus of individualist anarchism, neo-paganism, conspiracy theory, and synchro-mysticism.
Kerry Thornley lived this nexus. Born in 1938, as a teenager he founded the religion Discordianism with friends. As a Marine, he befriended Lee Harvey Oswald, and, when Oswald defected to the Soviet Union, began writing a novel based on him. In the early 60's, they both lived in New Orleans and met some of the same people, though Thornley had no recollection of seeing him there. Thornley became an anarchist writer and free-loving, LSD-using neo-pagan. And then he was indicted by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison for involvement in the JFK assassination. After charges were dropped, he came across more information which triggered disturbing memories that suggested mind control and made him suspect Garrison was right after all. This drove him mad, and he spent much of the rest of his life in near hobo-like conditions, although he kept writing. He passed away in 1998.
I didn't keep careful notes while reading, but Gorightly quotes either Thornley or one of his friends that, although the founders of Discordianism were essentially atheists or agnostics, it almost seemed as if the creation of the Discordian religion really did awaken the goddess of Chaos.
Thornley's life was filled with strange coincidences, or synchronicities, as if Eris was directly intervening to make things strange. Another way to look at it, however, is that Thornley's life was an example of the Law of Attraction at work. The Law says that "like attracts like," or that the Universe will respond at a vibrational level to our thoughts and words -- even if they're stated in a supposedly sarcastic or humorous way.
Gorightly doesn't discuss the Law of Attraction angle, which makes sense because "The Prankster" was published in 2003 and Law of Attraction ideas didn't become trendy again until 2006. But I couldn't help but think of the Law of Attraction while reading the book; as Thornley pulled off pranks, the Universe seemed to pull pranks on him:
Thornley's Discordianism was a parody religion based on worship of Eris, the goddess of chaos, strife, and discord; there was rarely any structure, order, or steady income in Thornley's own life
When sought out by the Warren Commission, Thornley joked to acquaintances that he masterminded the JFK assassination; he later began to believe that, as a subject of mind control, he was indeed involved
With Discordian friends such as the writer Robert Anton Wilson, he pulled off pranks under the name Operation Mindf---: eventually, it was his own mind that got f---ed up
Of course, all the coincidences connecting Thornley and the JFK assassination could just be "bad luck," being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps you don't believe this Law of Attraction stuff. Maybe you think your God punished Thornley for his unbelief. Or maybe you do believe in Eris. Or, maybe Thornleyactually was a JFK conspirator, with or without mind control.
In any case, this book reminds me to be careful what I think about, what I say, and what I do. Even when I make jokes.
Aside from these philosophical and mystical considerations, Gorightly's book provides an informative account of what life was like in the counterculture of the 60's and 70's. Thornley was a graduate of Robert Lefevre's Freedom School who opposed violence and The State. The "Far Left" and the counterculture wasn't just a bunch of young Democrats who didn't want to get drafted; it was full of people like Thornley who sought new ways of doing politics, new ways of practicing spirituality, and new ways of living.
"The Prankster and the Conspiracy" is recommended for conspiracy buffs, people interested in libertarian history, and anyone who's fascinated by the strange and synchronistic.
James Leroy Wilson
April 26, 2011
http://partialobserver.com/article.cfm?id=3607
An old proverb says, "Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it."
"The Prankster and the Conspiracy," Adam Gorightly's biography of Kerry Thornley, prompts a similar thought: "Be careful what you joke about: the joke may be on you."
I ordered the book for a couple of reasons. The first was that I heard Gorightly interviewed in a few podcasts and he seems like an interesting fellow. A pen name like his should be rewarded.
The second was to indulge my fascination with the nexus of individualist anarchism, neo-paganism, conspiracy theory, and synchro-mysticism.
Kerry Thornley lived this nexus. Born in 1938, as a teenager he founded the religion Discordianism with friends. As a Marine, he befriended Lee Harvey Oswald, and, when Oswald defected to the Soviet Union, began writing a novel based on him. In the early 60's, they both lived in New Orleans and met some of the same people, though Thornley had no recollection of seeing him there. Thornley became an anarchist writer and free-loving, LSD-using neo-pagan. And then he was indicted by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison for involvement in the JFK assassination. After charges were dropped, he came across more information which triggered disturbing memories that suggested mind control and made him suspect Garrison was right after all. This drove him mad, and he spent much of the rest of his life in near hobo-like conditions, although he kept writing. He passed away in 1998.
I didn't keep careful notes while reading, but Gorightly quotes either Thornley or one of his friends that, although the founders of Discordianism were essentially atheists or agnostics, it almost seemed as if the creation of the Discordian religion really did awaken the goddess of Chaos.
Thornley's life was filled with strange coincidences, or synchronicities, as if Eris was directly intervening to make things strange. Another way to look at it, however, is that Thornley's life was an example of the Law of Attraction at work. The Law says that "like attracts like," or that the Universe will respond at a vibrational level to our thoughts and words -- even if they're stated in a supposedly sarcastic or humorous way.
Gorightly doesn't discuss the Law of Attraction angle, which makes sense because "The Prankster" was published in 2003 and Law of Attraction ideas didn't become trendy again until 2006. But I couldn't help but think of the Law of Attraction while reading the book; as Thornley pulled off pranks, the Universe seemed to pull pranks on him:
Thornley's Discordianism was a parody religion based on worship of Eris, the goddess of chaos, strife, and discord; there was rarely any structure, order, or steady income in Thornley's own life
When sought out by the Warren Commission, Thornley joked to acquaintances that he masterminded the JFK assassination; he later began to believe that, as a subject of mind control, he was indeed involved
With Discordian friends such as the writer Robert Anton Wilson, he pulled off pranks under the name Operation Mindf---: eventually, it was his own mind that got f---ed up
Of course, all the coincidences connecting Thornley and the JFK assassination could just be "bad luck," being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps you don't believe this Law of Attraction stuff. Maybe you think your God punished Thornley for his unbelief. Or maybe you do believe in Eris. Or, maybe Thornleyactually was a JFK conspirator, with or without mind control.
In any case, this book reminds me to be careful what I think about, what I say, and what I do. Even when I make jokes.
Aside from these philosophical and mystical considerations, Gorightly's book provides an informative account of what life was like in the counterculture of the 60's and 70's. Thornley was a graduate of Robert Lefevre's Freedom School who opposed violence and The State. The "Far Left" and the counterculture wasn't just a bunch of young Democrats who didn't want to get drafted; it was full of people like Thornley who sought new ways of doing politics, new ways of practicing spirituality, and new ways of living.
"The Prankster and the Conspiracy" is recommended for conspiracy buffs, people interested in libertarian history, and anyone who's fascinated by the strange and synchronistic.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
RIP Owsley "Bear" Stanley
From Reuters:
Owsley "Bear" Stanley, a 1960s counterculture figure who flooded the flower power scene with LSD and was an early benefactor of the Grateful Dead, died in a car crash in his adopted home country of Australia on Sunday, his family said. He was 76.
The renegade grandson of a former governor of Kentucky, Stanley helped lay the foundation for the psychedelic era by producing more than a million doses of LSD at his labs in San Francisco's Bay Area.
"He made acid so pure and wonderful that people like Jimi Hendrix wrote hit songs about it and others named their band in its honor," former rock 'n' roll tour manager Sam Cutler wrote in his 2008 memoirs "You Can't Always Get What You Want."
Hendrix's song "Purple Haze" was reputedly inspired by a batch of Stanley's product, though the guitarist denied any drug link. The ear-splitting psychedelic-blues combo Blue Cheer took its named from another batch.
Stanley briefly managed the Grateful Dead, and oversaw every aspect of their live sound at a time when little thought was given to amplification in public venues. His tape recordings of Dead concerts were turned into live albums, providing him with a healthy income in later life.
"When it came to technology, the Bear was one of the most far-out and interesting guys on the planet," Cutler wrote. "The first FM live simulcast could be, in part, attributed to his vision, as could the first quadraphonic simulcast on radio."
The Dead, a fabled rock band formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1965 known for its improvisational live concerts, wrote about him in their song "Alice D. Millionaire" after a 1967 arrest prompted a newspaper to describe Stanley as an "LSD millionaire."
Steely Dan's 1976 single "Kid Charlemagne" was loosely inspired by Stanley's exploits...
Psychedelic icon Owsley Stanley dies in Australia
Sun Mar 13, 2011
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/13/us-owsleystanley-idUSTRE72C3AF20110313
Owsley "Bear" Stanley, a 1960s counterculture figure who flooded the flower power scene with LSD and was an early benefactor of the Grateful Dead, died in a car crash in his adopted home country of Australia on Sunday, his family said. He was 76.
The renegade grandson of a former governor of Kentucky, Stanley helped lay the foundation for the psychedelic era by producing more than a million doses of LSD at his labs in San Francisco's Bay Area.
"He made acid so pure and wonderful that people like Jimi Hendrix wrote hit songs about it and others named their band in its honor," former rock 'n' roll tour manager Sam Cutler wrote in his 2008 memoirs "You Can't Always Get What You Want."
Hendrix's song "Purple Haze" was reputedly inspired by a batch of Stanley's product, though the guitarist denied any drug link. The ear-splitting psychedelic-blues combo Blue Cheer took its named from another batch.
Stanley briefly managed the Grateful Dead, and oversaw every aspect of their live sound at a time when little thought was given to amplification in public venues. His tape recordings of Dead concerts were turned into live albums, providing him with a healthy income in later life.
"When it came to technology, the Bear was one of the most far-out and interesting guys on the planet," Cutler wrote. "The first FM live simulcast could be, in part, attributed to his vision, as could the first quadraphonic simulcast on radio."
The Dead, a fabled rock band formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1965 known for its improvisational live concerts, wrote about him in their song "Alice D. Millionaire" after a 1967 arrest prompted a newspaper to describe Stanley as an "LSD millionaire."
Steely Dan's 1976 single "Kid Charlemagne" was loosely inspired by Stanley's exploits...
Psychedelic icon Owsley Stanley dies in Australia
Sun Mar 13, 2011
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/13/us-owsleystanley-idUSTRE72C3AF20110313
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut
From PaulKrassner.com, Website of THE Paul Krassner:
Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut:
Misadventures in the Counterculture
by Paul Krassner — New Expanded Edition
– for $22 (plus $3 S&H)
“Krassner has the uncanny ability to alter your perceptions permanently.”
— Los Angeles Times
“Wickedly funny... Chillingly funny... A convincing look at a man who knows how to wield absurdity.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
“Krassner is one of the best minds of his generation to be destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked — but mainly hysterical. His true wacky, wackily true autobiography is the definitive book on the sixties.”
— Art Spiegelman
“Paul¹s own writing, in particular, seemed daring and adventurous to me; it took big chances and made important arguments in relentlessly funny ways. I felt, down deep, that maybe I had some of that in me, too; that maybe I could be using my skills to better express my beliefs. The Realist was the inspiration that kept pushing me to the next level; there was no way I could continue reading it and remain the same.”
— George Carlin
“He is an expert at ferreting out hypocrisy and absurdism from the more solemn crannies of American culture.”
— New York Times
“Krassner lives in a world where Truth and Satire are swingers, changing partners so often you never know who belongs with whom.”
— Playboy
From Amazon:
Kindle Price: $9.99 includes free wireless delivery via Amazon Whispernet
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004K1EY0W/thekonformist
In December 2010, the writers’ organization PEN presented Paul Krassner with their Lifetime Achievement Award. This expanded edition of his autobiography — Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture — provides the reasons for that honor.
He published a groundbreaking satirical magazine, The Realist, from 1958 to 1974, and reincarnated it as a newsletter in 1985. “The taboos may have changed,” he wrote, “but irreverence is still our only sacred cow.” When People magazine called Krassner “Father of the underground press,” he immediately demanded a paternity test. The final issue was published in Spring 2001. All the issues are online at The Realist Archive Project.
His style of personal journalism constantly blurred the line between observer and participant. He interviewed a doctor who performed abortions when it was illegal; Krassner then ran an underground abortion referral service. He covered the antiwar movement; then co-founded the Yippies with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin (writing a few animated re-enactment scenes for the documentary Chicago 10 four decades later). He published material on the psychedelic revolution; then took LSD with Tim Leary, Ram Dass and Ken Kesey, later accompanying Groucho Marx on his first and only acid trip.
In Confessions, you’ll read about his friendship with controversial comic Lenny Bruce, his association with Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, and his investigation of Scientology and Charles Manson. There’s an entire chapter, “The Parts Left Out of the Kennedy Book,” about his most notorious article.
Tom Robbins: “Thanks to Paul Krassner for continuing to be the lobster claw in the tuna casserole of modern America.”
Arianna Huffington: “Paul Krassner–confidant of Lenny Bruce, co-founder of the Yippies, defiler of Disney characters, publisher of The Realist, investigative satirist extraordinaire--as soon as we decided to create the Huffington Post, I knew I wanted Paul involved. His irreverence was just what the blog doctor ordered.”
Kurt Vonnegut: “I told Krassner one time that his writings made me hopeful. He found this an odd compliment to offer a satirist. I explained that he made supposedly serious matters seem ridiculous, and that this inspired many of his readers to decide for themselves what was ridiculous and what was not. Knowing that there were people doing that, better late than never, made me optimistic.”
Lewis Black: “I have been a fan of his since I was a snot-nosed kid, and his words have been a driving force and influence on my life. If you have read his work before, you know the joys that you are in for. If you haven’t, start reading, and consider this your lucky day. For Paul Krassner is an activist, a philosopher, a lunatic and a saint, but most of all he is funny.”
On the other hand, a couple of FBI agents went to one of his stand-up performances and stated in their report, “He purported to be humorous about government policies.” His FBI files indicate that after Life magazine published a favorable profile of him, the FBI sent a poison-pen letter to the editor, complaining: “To classify Krassner as a social rebel is far too cute. He’s a nut, a raving, unconfined nut.”
In May 2004, he received an ACLU Uppie (Upton Sinclair) Award for dedication to freedom of expression. At the 14th annual Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, Paul Krassner was inducted into the Counterculture Hall of Fame -- “my ambition,” he claims, “since I was three years old.”
Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 599 KB
Publisher: Paul Krassner (January 18, 2011)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
Language: English
ASIN: B004K1EY0W
Friday, August 20, 2010
The Hidden Tragedy of the CIA's Experiments on Children
Wednesday 11 August 2010
H.P. Albarelli Jr. and Dr. Jeffrey S. Kaye, t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report
http://www.truth-out.org/the-hidden-tragedy-cias-experiments-children62208
Bobby is seven years old, but this is not the first time he has been subjected to electroshock. It's his third time. In all, over the next year, Bobby will experience eight electroshock sessions. Placed on the examining table, he is held down by two male attendants while the physician places a solution on his temples. Bobby struggles with the two men holding him down, but his efforts are useless. He cries out and tries to pull away. One of the attendants tries to force a thick wedge of rubber into his mouth. He turns his head sharply away and cries out, "Let me go, please. I don't want to be here. Please, let me go." Bobby's physician looks irritated and she tells him, "Come on now, Bobby, try to act like a big boy and be still and relax." Bobby turns his head away from the woman and opens his mouth for the wedge that will prevent him from biting through his tongue. He begins to cry silently, his small shoulders shaking and he stiffens his body against what he knows is coming.
Mary is only five years old. She sits on a small, straight-backed chair, moving her legs back and forth, humming the same four notes over and over and over. Her head, framed in a tangled mass of golden curls, moves up and down with each note. For the first three years of her life, Mary was thought to be a mostly normal child. Then, after she began behaving oddly, she had been handed off to a foster family. Her father and mother didn't want her any longer. She had become too strange for her father, whose alcoholism clouded any awareness of his young daughter. Mary's mother had never wanted her anyway and was happy to have her placed in another home. When the LSD Mary has been given begins to have its effects, she stops moving her head and legs and sits staring at the wall. She doesn't move at all. After about ten minutes, she looks at the nearby physician observing her, and says, "God isn't coming back today. He's too busy. He won't be back here for weeks."
From early 1940 to 1953, Dr. Lauretta Bender, a highly respected child neuropsychiatrist practicing at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, experimented extensively with electroshock therapy on children who had been diagnosed with "autistic schizophrenia." In all, it has been reported that Bender administered electroconvulsive therapy to at least 100 children ranging in age from three years old to 12 years, with some reports indicating the total may be twice that number. One source reports that, inclusive of Bender's work, electroconvulsive treatment was used on more than 500 children at Bellevue Hospital from 1942 to 1956, and then at Creedmoor State Hospital Children's Service from 1956 to 1969. Bender was a confident and dogmatic woman, who bristled at criticism, oftentimes refused to acknowledge reality even when it stood starkly before her.
Despite publicly claiming good results with electroshock treatment, privately Bender said she was seriously disappointed in the aftereffects and results shown by the subject children. Indeed, the condition of some of the children appeared to have only worsened. One six-year-old boy, after being shocked several times, went from being a shy, withdrawn child to acting increasingly aggressive and violent. Another child, a seven-year-old girl, following five electroshock sessions had become nearly catatonic.
Years later, another of Bender's young patients who became overly aggressive after about 20 treatments, now grown, was convicted in court as a "multiple murderer." Others, in adulthood, reportedly were in and of trouble and prison for a battery of petty and violent crimes. A 1954 scientific study of about 50 of Bender's young electroshock patients, conducted by two psychologists, found that nearly all were worse off after the "therapy" and that some had become suicidal after treatment. One of the children studied in 1954 was the son of well-known writer Jacqueline Susann, author of the bestselling novel "Valley of the Dolls." Susann's son, Guy, was diagnosed with autism shortly after birth and, when he was three years old, Dr. Bender convinced Susann and her husband that Guy could be successfully treated with electroshock therapy. Guy returned home from Bender's care a nearly lifeless child. Susann later told people that Bender had "destroyed" her son. Guy has been confined to institutions since his treatment.
To their credit, some of Dr. Bender's colleagues considered her use of electroshock on children "scandalous," but few colleagues spoke out against her, a situation still today common among those in the medical profession. Said Dr. Leon Eisenberg, a widely respected physician and true pioneer in the study of autistic children, "[Lauretta Bender] claimed that some of these children recovered [because of her use of shock treatment]. I once wrote a paper in which I referred to several studies by [Dr. E. R.] Clardy. He was at Rockwin State Hospital - the back up to Bellevue - and he described the arrival of these children. He considered them psychotic and perhaps worse off then before the treatment." (This writer could find no case where any of Bender's colleagues spoke out against her decidedly racist viewpoints. Bender made it quite clear that she felt that African-Americans were best characterized by their "capacity for laziness" and "ability to dance," both features, Bender claimed, of the "specific brain impulses" of African-Americans.)
About the same time Dr. Bender was conducting her electroshock experiments, she was also widely experimenting on autistic and schizophrenic children with what she termed other "treatment endeavors." These included use of a wide array of psycho-pharmaceutical agents, several provided to her by the Sandoz Chemical Co. in Basel, Switzerland, as well as Metrazol, sub-shock insulin therapy, amphetamines and anticonvulsants. Metrazol was a trade name for pentylenetetrazol, a drug used as a circulatory and respiratory stimulant. High doses cause convulsions, as discovered in 1934 by the Hungarian-American neurologist and psychiatrist Ladislas J. Meduna.
Metrazol had been used in convulsive therapy, but was never considered to be effective, and side effects such as seizures were difficult to avoid. The medical records of several patients who were confined at Vermont State Hospital, a public mental facility, reveal that Metrazol was administered to them by CIA contractor Dr. Robert Hyde on numerous occasions in order "to address overly aggressive behavior." One of these patients, Karen Wetmore, received the drug on a number of occasions for no discernible medical reason. During the same ten-year period in which Metrazol was used by the Vermont State Hospital, patient deaths skyrocketed. In 1982, the FDA revoked its approval of Metrazol.
Here it should be noted that, during the cold war years, CIA and Army Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) interrogators, working as part of projects Bluebird and Artichoke, sometimes injected large amounts of Metrazol into selected enemy or Communist agents for the purposes of severely frightening other suspected agents, by forcing them to observe the procedure. The almost immediate effects of Metrazol are shocking for many to witness: subjects will shake violently, twisting and turning. They typically arch, jerk and contort their bodies and grimace in pain. With Metrazol, as with electroshock, bone fractures - including broken necks and backs - and joint dislocations are not uncommon, unless strong sedatives are administered beforehand.
A November 1936 Time magazine article seriously questioned the benefits of Metrazol, citing "irreversible shock" as a "great danger." The article described a typical Metrazol injection as such: "A patient receives no food for four or five hours. Then about five cubic centimeters of the drug [Metrazol] are injected into his veins. In about half-a-minute he coughs, casts terrified glances around the room, twitches violently, utters a horse wail, freezes into rigidity with his mouth wide open, arms and legs stiff as boards. Then he goes into convulsions. In one or two minutes the convulsions are over and he gradually passes into a coma, which lasts about an hour. After a series of shocks, his mind may be swept clean of delusions.... A patient is seldom given more than 20 injections and if no improvement is noted after ten treatments, he is usually given up as hopeless."
The Army, the CIA and Metrazol
Army CIC interrogators working with the CIA at prisoner of war camps and safe house locations in post-war Germany on occasion used Metrazol, morphine, heroin and LSD on incarcerated subjects. According to former CIC officer Miles Hunt, several "safe houses and holding areas outside of Frankfurt near Oberursel" - a former Nazi interrogation center taken over by the US - were operated by a "special unit run by Capt. Malcolm S. Hilty, Maj. Mose Hart and Capt. Herbert Sensenig. The unit was especially notorious in its applications of interrogation methods [including the use of electroshock and Metrazol, mescaline, amphetamines and other drugs]." Said Hunt: "The unit took great pride in their nicknames, the 'Rough Boys' and the 'Kraut Gauntlet,' and didn't hold back with any drug or technique ... you name it, they used it." Added Hunt, "Sensenig was really disappointed when it was found that nothing had to be used on [former Reichsmarschall] Herman Goering, who was processed through the camp. Goering needed no inducement to talk."
Eventually, CIC interrogators working in Germany would be assisted in their use of interrogation drugs by several "former" Nazi scientists recruited by the CIA and US State Department as part of Project Paperclip. By early 1952, the CIC's Rough Boys would routinely use Metrazol during interrogations, as well as LSD, mescaline and conventional electroshock units.
Metrazol-like drugs are still used in interrogations today. According to reports from several former noncommissioned Army officers, who served on rendition-related security details in Turkey, Pakistan and Romania, drugs that produce effects quite similar to Metrazol are still used in 2010 by the Pentagon and CIA on enemy combatants and rendered subjects held at the many "black sites" maintained across the globe. Observed one former officer recently, "They would twist up like a pretzel, in unbelievable shapes and jerk and shake like crazy, their eyes nearly popping out of their heads."
In 2008, at the behest of US Sens. Carl Levin, Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel and in reaction to a March 2008 article in The Washington Post, the Pentagon initiated an Inspector General Report on the use of "mind-altering substances by DoD [Department of Defense] Personnel during Interrogations of Detainees and/or Prisoners Captured during the War on Terror." It is not known if the investigation has been completed. Among the more famous recent cases of the use of drugs upon prisoners concerns one-time alleged "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla, who had originally been accused of wanting to set off a "dirty bomb." The charge was later forced, but Padilla was held in solitary confinement for many months and forced to take LSD or other powerful drugs while held in the Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina.
The government has gone to great efforts to keep the public uninformed as regards use of drugs on prisoners. In an article by Carol Rosenberg for McClatchy News in July 2010, Rosenberg reported that, when covering the Guantanamo military commissions trials, when the question of "what psychotropic drugs were given another accused 9/11 conspirator, Ramzi bin al Shibh, the courtroom censor hits a white noise button so reporters viewing from a glass booth can't hear the names of the drugs. Under current Navy instructions for the use of human subjects in research, the undersecretary of the Navy is described as the authority in charge of research concerning "consciousness-altering drugs or mind-control techniques," while at the same time is also responsible for "inherently controversial topics" that might attract media interest or "challenge by interest groups."
Dr. Bender Discovers LSD
In 1955 and1956, Dr. Bender began hearing glowing accounts about the potential of LSD for producing remarkable results in children suffering mental disorders, including autism and schizophrenia. Bender's earlier work with electroshock therapy had brought her into contact with several other prominent physicians who, at the time, were covert contractors with the CIA's MK/ULTRA and Artichoke projects. Primary among these physicians were Drs. Harold A. Abramson, Paul Hoch, James B. Cattell, Joel Elkes, Max Fink, Harris Isbell and Alfred Hubbard. Some of these names may be familiar to readers. Dr. Abramson, a noted allergist who surreptitiously worked for both the US Army and CIA since the late 1940s, was the physician Frank Olson was taken to see, shortly before his murder in New York City in November 1953.
About a year earlier, Drs. Hoch and Cattell were responsible for injecting unwitting New York State Psychiatric Institute patient Harold Blauer with a massive dose of mescaline that killed him. Dr. Elkes was one of the earliest physicians in Europe to experiment with LSD, having requested samples of the drug from Sandoz Chemical Co. in 1949. Elkes was a close associate of Dr. Abraham Wikler, who worked closely with Dr. Harris Isbell at the now-closed Lexington, Kentucky, prison farm, where hundreds of already drug-addicted inmates were given heroin in exchange for their participation in LSD and mescaline experiments underwritten by the CIA and Pentagon. Elkes worked closely with the CIA, Pentagon and Britain's MI6 on drug experiments in England and the United States.
Dr. Fink, who was greatly admired by Bender, is considered the godfather of electroshock therapy in the United States. In the early 1950s and beyond, Fink was a fully cleared CIA Project Artichoke consultant. In 1951, CIA officials under the direction of Paul Gaynor and Morse Allen of the agency's Security Research Service (SRS) that oversaw Artichoke, worked closely with Fink in New York City in efforts to thoroughly explore the merits of electroshock techniques for interrogations. The CIA was especially interested in the use of standard electroshock machines in producing amnesia, inducing subjects to talk and making subjects more prone to hypnotic control. According to one CIA document, Fink told officials "an individual could gradually be reduced through the use to electroshock treatment to the vegetable level."
In addition to Fink, Bender also greatly admired the work of Dr. Lothar B. Kalinowsky, a psychiatrist who also consulted closely with the CIA on electroshock matters. Kalinowsky, who was part Jewish and had fled Germany in 1933, was Fink's close friend and, like Fink, was widely recognized as an expert on electroconvulsive therapy. Kalinowsky met with the CIA's Allen and Gaynor frequently and sometimes was accompanied by Dr. Fink at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where he worked closely with Dr. Hoch.
While it is clear from Dr. Bender's papers that she also considered the early LSD work of "Dr." Alfred M. Hubbard in Vancouver, Canada, to be "very substantial and beneficial," it is important to state here that Hubbard was not a physician nor did he have any formal medical training. Hubbard, a jovial character who sometimes worked with the FBI and CIA, was a strong proponent of the use of LSD. Despite the fact that he had no medical credentials and once served time in prison for smuggling, he hoodwinked the Sandoz Chemical Co. into supplying him such ample amounts of LSD that he dispersed so widely and abundantly that he earned the title "The Johnny Appleseed of LSD." Hubbard's use of LSD in allegedly curing alcoholism is still cited today. How Hubbard so easily passed as a physician is unknown. Even a 1961 paper published by New York Medical College, Department of Psychiatry, and authored by Dr. A.M. Freedman, cited Hubbard's LSD work with "children, primarily delinquents" to have been 85% successful."
Other physicians whom Dr. Bender consulted about the effects of LSD on children were Drs. Ronald A. Sandison, Thomas M. Ling and John Buckman. These three worked in England at both the Chelsea Clinic in London and Potwick Hospital in Worcestershire, outside of London. Sandison is credited with having been the first person to bring LSD into England, this in 1952 after he met Albert Hofmann in Basle, Switzerland, at the Sandoz Chemical laboratories. Hofmann handed Sandison a box of around 600 ampules, each containing 100 micrograms of LSD. Back in England, Sandison shared his psychedelic bounty with associates Drs. Ling and Buckman. Before the year was out, Sandison also turned Hubbard on to LSD, guiding Hubbard through his first trip. Sandison also began a new treatment program at the Gothic-looking Potwick facility that he dubbed Psycholytic Therapy. His program's patients were mostly schizophrenics. In 1958, an LSD treatment unit was established at Potwick. Over the years, it has been reported that the CIA, MI6 and the Macy Foundation secretly helped finance the unit. Dr. Elkes helped by raising about $75,000 for the unit's operation. For the next ten years the unit administered over 15,000 doses of LSD to about 900 patients.
Drs. Buckman and Ling worked closely with Sandison in the Potwick unit. In 1963, Buckman and Ling wrote in a publication, describing "good examples" of the use of LSD in psycholytic psychotherapy: "The patients' experiences under LSD have not supported Marx's dictum that Religion is the opium of the people but rather that there is a deep basic belief in a Supreme Being, whether the religion background be Christian, Jewish or Hindu."
Dr. Buckman also worked at London's Chelsea Clinic, often times treating adults and sometimes children. Buckman believed strongly that "frigidity" in women could be treated successfully with LSD. In 1967, he said of LSD: "Many therapists believe that a transcendental experience - a feeling that it is a good world and one is a part of it - is a curative experience in itself." According to several informed sources in the London, for years MI6, the British intelligence service and the CIA closely monitored the LSD work conducted by Sandison, Ling and Buckman.
Two Sisters, LSD and Dr. Buckman
Marion McGill, today an attorney and college professor in the western United States and her sister, Trudy, were sent in 1960 by their parents to be interviewed by Drs. Ling and Buckman at the Chelsea Clinic in London. At the time, Marion was 13 years old and her sister was 15. Marion says that both her mother and father were "quite taken with the benefits of LSD and thought that we would also benefit from the drug." Both parents had undergone a series of ten LSD "treatments" at the Chelsea clinic. Marion goes on:
"As a 13-year old at the time, my decision-making capacity was very limited. I was, by nature, fairly compliant and docile, rather eager to please my parents. I understood nothing of what was being suggested for me and my 15 year-old sister - namely that we participate in some sort of 'research' that both our parents had also participated in. Whether the word 'experiment' was used, I don't recall. The term 'LSD' was vaguely familiar, however, because my parents were 'taking' this drug as a form of 'quick therapy' - their term for it - that had been recommended by my uncle, a psychiatrist at a well known east coast medical school. Both parents needed therapy, in my view. While highly successful professionally, my father was a tightly wound, rather angry and insecure man, an accomplished academic, but an 'industrial strength narcissist,' as I later called him. My mother was a submissive, obedient, Catholic woman without much identity of her own, other than being a doctor's wife.
"My sister and I, however, were about as 'normal' as any two teenagers could be. We were at the top of our classes in school; both of us had lots of friends, participated in extra curricular activities. We didn't need 'therapy.' We were told we would get a day off from school after each overnight stay at the clinic for this LSD. It was perhaps the prospect of a day off from Catholic girls' school that persuaded us to do it. I wasn't aware of making a 'decision.' The purpose of this program was never explained. There were to be 10 sessions - once a week for 10 weeks. I believe they started in January 1960.
"The experiences at the clinic where the LSD was administered were quite strange. There was a brief 'interview' by Dr. John Buckman, asking banal questions about health issues (none), but providing no information about what to expect from the LSD. There was no mention, for example, of hallucinations or perceptual distortions or anything frightening. I was not informed of any persistent effects, such as nightmares. Certainly the possibility of lasting damage was not mentioned. The word 'experiment' was not used. There was, in other words, no informed consent whatsoever. I was not told that I could refuse to participate, that I could quit at any time (as provided in the Nuremberg Code). Since I was below the age of consent, my parents would have been the ones to agree to this. Indeed, they were the ones to suggest that we be used in these experiments. It would not otherwise have happened. But my parents would never discuss this in later years and never explained why they did it.
"During the 10 sessions, each of which involved an injection, my sister and I were kept in separate bedrooms, darkened rooms, usually with someone present in the room, but I don't know who the person was. Occasionally, my mother was also present. At times, I was so frightened by the hallucinations that I screamed and tried to escape from the room. I remember once actually reaching the hallway and being forcibly put back into the bedroom by my mother. I saw a wild array of images - nightmarish visions, occasionally provoking hysterical laughter, followed immediately by wracking sobs. I had no idea what was happening to me. It was terrifying.
"There was no effort to counsel us during or after each of these sessions. There was no 'debriefing,' no explanation of what was happening or why this was being done to us. Why I did not refuse to participate after I first experienced it, I don't know. But as an adult and later as a professional medical ethicist, I recognized this lack of resistance as a function of childhood itself. Most children who are victims of parental abuse do not know how to resist. They fear rejection by parents more than they fear the abuse, it seems. The 'power differential' is huge between parents and children and the dependence on parents is virtually absolute. We were also, living in London at the time, away from our friends. My sister and I had been told not to talk about what we were doing. We were Catholics, obedient to parents, etc. Our father was a doctor, after all - it was hard to grasp that he would do harm to us or that our mother would. Children just don't think this way initially. A child's dependency usually means trusting one's parents or caregivers.
"Although each individual session was often terrifying, any lasting effects of the LSD unfolded gradually. In the weeks immediately following the final session, I experienced frequent nightmares - visions of crawling insects, horrible masks, etc. I couldn't sleep. I was afraid to shut my eyes. I became afraid of the dark. My parents were dismissive and unsympathetic. Their attitude was, in some ways, more disturbing to me than the experiments themselves because it meant that my parents had known full well that the experience would very likely be frightening - and hadn't cared.
"I discovered that my parents were dishonest and unfeeling in ways that I could not comprehend. They told my sister and me never to talk about the LSD experiences, never to disclose what had happened in London. This further ruptured our relationship with them, a relationship that was, by then, permanently damaged. I was still dependent on them, however and so was my sister.
"Two years after these experiments, during her freshman year in college, my sister suffered a nervous breakdown. I don't know the extent to which the LSD may have precipitated this. But my parents' response to what was probably a mild breakdown from which my sister could have recovered, was coercive and drastic. She had been asking questions about the LSD at this time. She was angry about it. We both were. We talked about it together, but I was afraid to confront our parents. My sister was not. The angrier she became, the more she was 'diagnosed' as a 'psychiatric' case and the more medication she was given. To this day, my sister is heavily medicated. She never fully recovered from that first episode.
"Our parents responded to my sister's anger in a way that frightened me further. I also felt tremendous guilt for not being able to prevent the horrors that my sister endured. Once she was 'classified' as a psychiatric patient, she was lost. Everything that was done to her in the name of 'treatment' seemed to me to be a form of ongoing abuse and torture.
"The fact that our father was a prominent, internationally known and widely respected physician - and his brother, who had introduced us to this LSD horror, was a prominent, internationally known and widely respected psychiatrist - made it impossible to expose them or go against them. Their reputations were more important to them than the health and well being of my sister.
"My own response was simply to leave home. I never trusted my parents again after the London LSD experience. I discovered many other ways in which my father and my uncle lied, covered up, dissembled and eventually threatened me, in order to keep this story from being told.
"On a positive note, the experience informed my career choices in both human rights and medical ethics, but it also made me alert to the ways in which academic medicine was - and is - corrupted by the drug industry itself and by the continuing abuse of human subjects to further the development of drugs as weapons - both for interrogation potential and also, more subtle behavior control on a massive scale. My own experience also sensitized me to the special vulnerability of children and teenagers in the medical environment.
"Even when I subsequently confronted my father with the evidence that LSD had been tested by the CIA for use as a military weapon in the 1950s and 1960s, he dismissed his participation by saying that it was an 'enlightening experience, like visiting an art gallery.' When I pointed out that this was not my experience as a child, he dismissed it, including the presumption that I must be a 'conspiracy theorist' to propose such a thing. At the age of 91, he finally admitted that it had perhaps not been a very good idea to subject my sister and me to LSD.
"Dr. Buckman and Ling were knowing participants in ongoing intelligence-based work with mind altering drugs. I 'met' Buckman in London when I was 13, but encountered him again years later at the university medical school in the United States where he was on the faculty.
"I went to see Dr. Buckman in his office. I asked him what he thought about the ethics of using children in an LSD experiment. At first, he didn't seem to realize who I was. I identified myself as one of his 'subjects' and gave him my business card as a Medical Ethicist and lawyer. He was clearly shocked, stood up, refused to talk to me and told me to leave his office. Shortly thereafter, I received a phone call from my father. His brother, the psychiatrist and colleague of Dr. Buckman, had been alerted to my impromptu visit. Subsequently, both my uncle and my father threatened me, saying they would make sure I lost my university faculty position if I disclosed anything publicly about the LSD experiments in London.
"'You will never work in bioethics again,' they said.
"The response of all these men to the threat of disclosure indicates their lack of ethical scruples, their lack of empathy, their own pathology. I don't know what the exact term would be, but I suspect there is a form of psychological 'doubling' at work - the sort of thing that was described in [Robert Jay] Lifton's book, The Nazi Doctors who were able to ignore their Hippocratic oath to 'first, do no harm,' and to inflict unimaginable horrors on their fellow human beings.
"The loss of my sister has been a life long source of sorrow for me. I attribute it to the LSD and its cover up, whether the chemicals themselves 'caused' her disintegration or not. In law this is called a 'contributing cause.' I learned that people cover up the most awful things, not just within a family but within communities, within universities, within 'polite society.' There is probably no absolute barrier that will prevent these things from being done, but they have to be exposed and called out for what they are, whenever they occur."
Dr. Bender's LSD Experiments on Children
Shortly after deciding to initiate her own LSD experiments on children, Bender attended a conference sponsored by a CIA front group, the Josiah Macy Foundation. The conference focused on LSD research and featured Dr. Harold A. Abramson as a presenter. In 1960, Abramson conducted his own LSD experiments on a group of six children ranging in age from five to 14 years of age. A few short months after the Macy Foundation conference, Dr. Bender was notified that her planned LSD experiments would be partially and surreptitiously funded by the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology (SIHE), another CIA front group then located in Forest Hills, New York. The Society, headed by James L. Monroe, a former US Air Force officer who had worked on top-secret psychological warfare and propaganda projects, oversaw about 55 top-secret experiments underwritten by the CIA. These projects involved LSD, ESP, black magic, astrology, psychological warfare, media manipulation, and other subjects. Apparently, Bender's work with children and LSD raised some concerns at the CIA's Technical Services Division (TSD). A 1961 TSD memo written to Monroe questioned the "operational benefits of Dr. Bender's work as related to children and LSD," and requested to be kept "closely appraised of the possible links between Dr. Bender's project and those being conducted under separate MK/ULTRA funding at designated prisons in New York and elsewhere."
In 1960, Dr. Bender launched her first experiments with LSD and children. They were conducted within the Children's Unit, Creedmoor State Hospital in Queens, New York. The LSD she used was supplied by Dr. Rudolph P. Bircher of the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company. (Dr. Bircher also provided Bender with UML-491, also a Sandoz-produced product, very much like LSD but sometimes "dreamier" in effect and longer lasting.) Her initial group of young subjects consisted of 14 children diagnosed schizophrenic, all under the age of 11. (Because diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia, autism, and other disorders have changed over the decades, one cannot assess what actual conditions these children really had.) There were 11 boys and three girls, ranging in age from six to ten years old.
Jean Marie is almost seven years old. She came here nearly a year ago after her parents abandoned her to the care of an aunt who had no interest in raising her. Marie, who prefers to be called Jean, is shy, withdrawn, and distrustful of most adults she encounters. There are reports she may have been sexually molested by her uncle ... Despite her withdrawn nature she smiles easily, and enjoys the company of other children. After receiving LSD on three occasions earlier this month, Marie ceased smiling at all and lost any interest in others her age ... In the past week, she seems to have become easily agitated and has lost any interest in reading, something she seemed to very much enjoy before treatment.
In a published report on her 196 LSD experiments with 14 "autistic schizophrenic" children, Bender states she initially gave each of the children 25 mcg. of LSD "intramuscularly while under continuous observation." She writes: "The two oldest boys, over ten years, near or in early puberty, reacted with disturbed anxious behavior. The oldest and most disturbed received Amytal sodium 150 mg. intramuscularly and returned to his usual behavior." Both boys were then excluded from the experiment.
The 12 remaining children were then given injections of 25 mcg. of LSD and then days later were each given 100 mcg. of LSD once a week. Bender's report states: "Then it was increased gradually to twice and three times a week as no untoward side-effects were noticed.... Finally, it was given daily and this continued for six weeks until the time of this report."
Bender's findings and conclusions concerning her LSD experiments indicated she found the use of the drug promising. Bender reported: "In general, they [the children] were happier; their mood was 'high' in the hours following the ingestion of the drug ... they have become more spontaneously playful with balls and balloons ... their color is rosy rather than blue or pale and they have gained weight." Bender concluded: "The use of these drugs [LSD, UML-401, UML-491] ... will give us more knowledge about both the basic schizophrenic process and the defensive autism in children and also about the reaction of these dilysergic acid derivatives as central and autonomic nervous system stimulants and serotonin antagonists. Hopefully these drugs will also contribute to our efforts to find better therapeutic agents for early childhood schizophrenia."
In an article published in 1970, Dr. Bender reported on the results of LSD dosing upon "two adolescent boys who were mildly schizophrenic." She reported that the boys experienced perceptual distortions. They thought the researchers were making faces at them, that their pencils were becoming "rubbery," and one boy reported the other boy's face had turned green. The boys began to complain that they were being experimented upon. Even so, Bender and her associate continued the two male adolescents on a regimen of 150 mcg. per day, in divided doses, of LSD. While one of the boys supposedly "benefited very much," Bender reported that he later returned to the hospital as "a disturbed adult schizophrenic." The other boy kept complaining that he was being experimented upon and they stopped giving him LSD, not because of the drug's effects itself, Bender explained, but "because of the boy's attitude towards it," which she attributed to "his own psychopathology."
Dr. Bender's LSD experiments continued into the late 1960s and, during that time, continued to include multiple experiments on children with UML-401, a little known LSD-type drug provided to her by the Sandoz Company, as well as UML-491, also a Sandoz product. Bender's reports on her LSD experiments give no indication of whether the parents or legal guardians of the subject children were aware of, or consented to, the experiments. Without doubt, parents or guardians were never informed that the CIA underwrote Bender's work. Over the years, there have been multiple reports that many of Bender's subject children were either "wards of the State" or orphans, but the available literature on the experiments reveals nothing on this. The same literature makes it obvious that the children had been confined to the Creedmoor State Hospital for long periods of time and that many, if discharged, needed "suitable homes or placements in the community." There is also no evidence that any follow-up studies were conducted on any of the children experimented upon by Dr. Bender. Today, Dr. Bender is best known and highly regarded in some circles as the creator of the Bender-Gestalt Test, which measures motor skills in children.
On Bender's use of LSD on children, Dr. Leon Eisenberg said years later: "She did all sorts of things. Lauretta Bender reached success in her career long before randomized controlled trials had even been heard of. She didn't see the need for trials of drugs because she was convinced she knew what worked." (See: "A History of Autism: Conversations with the Pioneers" by Adam Feinstein, Wiley-Blanchard, 2010.) Many other physicians speaking privately were far less diplomatic in condemning Bender's LSD work, but, still today, many are reluctant to criticize her, and, remarkably, many of the aging stalwarts of the arguable "virtues" and "potential" of LSD continue to cite her work with children as groundbreaking science.
Today, nearly 60 years beyond the horrors of Dr. Bender's CIA-sponsored experiments on children, few people are aware that they were conducted. For most people, regardless of their awareness of the experiments, it is difficult to fathom how intelligent, highly educated physicians and scientists could partake in such brutal, uncaring, unethical and illegal experiments on children. What was the basis of their motivation? Was it the quest for some sort of elusive medical grail? Was it for economic gain? Or was it simply the result of a misguided search for knowledge that appeared so infinitely important that any sense of compassion and respect for human rights and dignity was cast aside in the name of a higher goal or good - a search at times so exhilarating with the sense that one is at the precipice of a momentous discovery that any semblance of respect for humankind was thrown aside?
One can easily come to any and all these conclusions simply by reading the professional papers of such scientists and researchers. Not once do any of these papers express concern for the subjects at hand or denote any pangs of conscience at violating any oaths, codes and statutes regarding patient rights, human rights or human dignity. That America's most shameful period of human experimentation, the years 1950 through to about 1979, came on the heels of the making and adoption of the Nuremberg Codes only adds to the shame and hypocrisy. Today, human experimentation is still aggressively conducted by US government-sponsored and employed physicians and scientists regardless of those codes, which came directly out of the shocking madness of the Nazi era. That government-sponsored experimentation still occurs makes a mockery of any governmental efforts, however valid, to protect people from science run amok - and a nation that uses its young, its children, for such pursuits is a nation whose commitment to human rights and democratic principles should be seriously questioned and challenged.
(The names Marion McGill and that of her sister Trudy, are pseudonyms. Marion is a highly respected attorney and college professor, who asked that her real name not be used in this article. All other names in this article are real.)
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
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H.P. Albarelli Jr. and Dr. Jeffrey S. Kaye, t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report
http://www.truth-out.org/the-hidden-tragedy-cias-experiments-children62208
Bobby is seven years old, but this is not the first time he has been subjected to electroshock. It's his third time. In all, over the next year, Bobby will experience eight electroshock sessions. Placed on the examining table, he is held down by two male attendants while the physician places a solution on his temples. Bobby struggles with the two men holding him down, but his efforts are useless. He cries out and tries to pull away. One of the attendants tries to force a thick wedge of rubber into his mouth. He turns his head sharply away and cries out, "Let me go, please. I don't want to be here. Please, let me go." Bobby's physician looks irritated and she tells him, "Come on now, Bobby, try to act like a big boy and be still and relax." Bobby turns his head away from the woman and opens his mouth for the wedge that will prevent him from biting through his tongue. He begins to cry silently, his small shoulders shaking and he stiffens his body against what he knows is coming.
Mary is only five years old. She sits on a small, straight-backed chair, moving her legs back and forth, humming the same four notes over and over and over. Her head, framed in a tangled mass of golden curls, moves up and down with each note. For the first three years of her life, Mary was thought to be a mostly normal child. Then, after she began behaving oddly, she had been handed off to a foster family. Her father and mother didn't want her any longer. She had become too strange for her father, whose alcoholism clouded any awareness of his young daughter. Mary's mother had never wanted her anyway and was happy to have her placed in another home. When the LSD Mary has been given begins to have its effects, she stops moving her head and legs and sits staring at the wall. She doesn't move at all. After about ten minutes, she looks at the nearby physician observing her, and says, "God isn't coming back today. He's too busy. He won't be back here for weeks."
From early 1940 to 1953, Dr. Lauretta Bender, a highly respected child neuropsychiatrist practicing at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, experimented extensively with electroshock therapy on children who had been diagnosed with "autistic schizophrenia." In all, it has been reported that Bender administered electroconvulsive therapy to at least 100 children ranging in age from three years old to 12 years, with some reports indicating the total may be twice that number. One source reports that, inclusive of Bender's work, electroconvulsive treatment was used on more than 500 children at Bellevue Hospital from 1942 to 1956, and then at Creedmoor State Hospital Children's Service from 1956 to 1969. Bender was a confident and dogmatic woman, who bristled at criticism, oftentimes refused to acknowledge reality even when it stood starkly before her.
Despite publicly claiming good results with electroshock treatment, privately Bender said she was seriously disappointed in the aftereffects and results shown by the subject children. Indeed, the condition of some of the children appeared to have only worsened. One six-year-old boy, after being shocked several times, went from being a shy, withdrawn child to acting increasingly aggressive and violent. Another child, a seven-year-old girl, following five electroshock sessions had become nearly catatonic.
Years later, another of Bender's young patients who became overly aggressive after about 20 treatments, now grown, was convicted in court as a "multiple murderer." Others, in adulthood, reportedly were in and of trouble and prison for a battery of petty and violent crimes. A 1954 scientific study of about 50 of Bender's young electroshock patients, conducted by two psychologists, found that nearly all were worse off after the "therapy" and that some had become suicidal after treatment. One of the children studied in 1954 was the son of well-known writer Jacqueline Susann, author of the bestselling novel "Valley of the Dolls." Susann's son, Guy, was diagnosed with autism shortly after birth and, when he was three years old, Dr. Bender convinced Susann and her husband that Guy could be successfully treated with electroshock therapy. Guy returned home from Bender's care a nearly lifeless child. Susann later told people that Bender had "destroyed" her son. Guy has been confined to institutions since his treatment.
To their credit, some of Dr. Bender's colleagues considered her use of electroshock on children "scandalous," but few colleagues spoke out against her, a situation still today common among those in the medical profession. Said Dr. Leon Eisenberg, a widely respected physician and true pioneer in the study of autistic children, "[Lauretta Bender] claimed that some of these children recovered [because of her use of shock treatment]. I once wrote a paper in which I referred to several studies by [Dr. E. R.] Clardy. He was at Rockwin State Hospital - the back up to Bellevue - and he described the arrival of these children. He considered them psychotic and perhaps worse off then before the treatment." (This writer could find no case where any of Bender's colleagues spoke out against her decidedly racist viewpoints. Bender made it quite clear that she felt that African-Americans were best characterized by their "capacity for laziness" and "ability to dance," both features, Bender claimed, of the "specific brain impulses" of African-Americans.)
About the same time Dr. Bender was conducting her electroshock experiments, she was also widely experimenting on autistic and schizophrenic children with what she termed other "treatment endeavors." These included use of a wide array of psycho-pharmaceutical agents, several provided to her by the Sandoz Chemical Co. in Basel, Switzerland, as well as Metrazol, sub-shock insulin therapy, amphetamines and anticonvulsants. Metrazol was a trade name for pentylenetetrazol, a drug used as a circulatory and respiratory stimulant. High doses cause convulsions, as discovered in 1934 by the Hungarian-American neurologist and psychiatrist Ladislas J. Meduna.
Metrazol had been used in convulsive therapy, but was never considered to be effective, and side effects such as seizures were difficult to avoid. The medical records of several patients who were confined at Vermont State Hospital, a public mental facility, reveal that Metrazol was administered to them by CIA contractor Dr. Robert Hyde on numerous occasions in order "to address overly aggressive behavior." One of these patients, Karen Wetmore, received the drug on a number of occasions for no discernible medical reason. During the same ten-year period in which Metrazol was used by the Vermont State Hospital, patient deaths skyrocketed. In 1982, the FDA revoked its approval of Metrazol.
Here it should be noted that, during the cold war years, CIA and Army Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) interrogators, working as part of projects Bluebird and Artichoke, sometimes injected large amounts of Metrazol into selected enemy or Communist agents for the purposes of severely frightening other suspected agents, by forcing them to observe the procedure. The almost immediate effects of Metrazol are shocking for many to witness: subjects will shake violently, twisting and turning. They typically arch, jerk and contort their bodies and grimace in pain. With Metrazol, as with electroshock, bone fractures - including broken necks and backs - and joint dislocations are not uncommon, unless strong sedatives are administered beforehand.
A November 1936 Time magazine article seriously questioned the benefits of Metrazol, citing "irreversible shock" as a "great danger." The article described a typical Metrazol injection as such: "A patient receives no food for four or five hours. Then about five cubic centimeters of the drug [Metrazol] are injected into his veins. In about half-a-minute he coughs, casts terrified glances around the room, twitches violently, utters a horse wail, freezes into rigidity with his mouth wide open, arms and legs stiff as boards. Then he goes into convulsions. In one or two minutes the convulsions are over and he gradually passes into a coma, which lasts about an hour. After a series of shocks, his mind may be swept clean of delusions.... A patient is seldom given more than 20 injections and if no improvement is noted after ten treatments, he is usually given up as hopeless."
The Army, the CIA and Metrazol
Army CIC interrogators working with the CIA at prisoner of war camps and safe house locations in post-war Germany on occasion used Metrazol, morphine, heroin and LSD on incarcerated subjects. According to former CIC officer Miles Hunt, several "safe houses and holding areas outside of Frankfurt near Oberursel" - a former Nazi interrogation center taken over by the US - were operated by a "special unit run by Capt. Malcolm S. Hilty, Maj. Mose Hart and Capt. Herbert Sensenig. The unit was especially notorious in its applications of interrogation methods [including the use of electroshock and Metrazol, mescaline, amphetamines and other drugs]." Said Hunt: "The unit took great pride in their nicknames, the 'Rough Boys' and the 'Kraut Gauntlet,' and didn't hold back with any drug or technique ... you name it, they used it." Added Hunt, "Sensenig was really disappointed when it was found that nothing had to be used on [former Reichsmarschall] Herman Goering, who was processed through the camp. Goering needed no inducement to talk."
Eventually, CIC interrogators working in Germany would be assisted in their use of interrogation drugs by several "former" Nazi scientists recruited by the CIA and US State Department as part of Project Paperclip. By early 1952, the CIC's Rough Boys would routinely use Metrazol during interrogations, as well as LSD, mescaline and conventional electroshock units.
Metrazol-like drugs are still used in interrogations today. According to reports from several former noncommissioned Army officers, who served on rendition-related security details in Turkey, Pakistan and Romania, drugs that produce effects quite similar to Metrazol are still used in 2010 by the Pentagon and CIA on enemy combatants and rendered subjects held at the many "black sites" maintained across the globe. Observed one former officer recently, "They would twist up like a pretzel, in unbelievable shapes and jerk and shake like crazy, their eyes nearly popping out of their heads."
In 2008, at the behest of US Sens. Carl Levin, Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel and in reaction to a March 2008 article in The Washington Post, the Pentagon initiated an Inspector General Report on the use of "mind-altering substances by DoD [Department of Defense] Personnel during Interrogations of Detainees and/or Prisoners Captured during the War on Terror." It is not known if the investigation has been completed. Among the more famous recent cases of the use of drugs upon prisoners concerns one-time alleged "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla, who had originally been accused of wanting to set off a "dirty bomb." The charge was later forced, but Padilla was held in solitary confinement for many months and forced to take LSD or other powerful drugs while held in the Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina.
The government has gone to great efforts to keep the public uninformed as regards use of drugs on prisoners. In an article by Carol Rosenberg for McClatchy News in July 2010, Rosenberg reported that, when covering the Guantanamo military commissions trials, when the question of "what psychotropic drugs were given another accused 9/11 conspirator, Ramzi bin al Shibh, the courtroom censor hits a white noise button so reporters viewing from a glass booth can't hear the names of the drugs. Under current Navy instructions for the use of human subjects in research, the undersecretary of the Navy is described as the authority in charge of research concerning "consciousness-altering drugs or mind-control techniques," while at the same time is also responsible for "inherently controversial topics" that might attract media interest or "challenge by interest groups."
Dr. Bender Discovers LSD
In 1955 and1956, Dr. Bender began hearing glowing accounts about the potential of LSD for producing remarkable results in children suffering mental disorders, including autism and schizophrenia. Bender's earlier work with electroshock therapy had brought her into contact with several other prominent physicians who, at the time, were covert contractors with the CIA's MK/ULTRA and Artichoke projects. Primary among these physicians were Drs. Harold A. Abramson, Paul Hoch, James B. Cattell, Joel Elkes, Max Fink, Harris Isbell and Alfred Hubbard. Some of these names may be familiar to readers. Dr. Abramson, a noted allergist who surreptitiously worked for both the US Army and CIA since the late 1940s, was the physician Frank Olson was taken to see, shortly before his murder in New York City in November 1953.
About a year earlier, Drs. Hoch and Cattell were responsible for injecting unwitting New York State Psychiatric Institute patient Harold Blauer with a massive dose of mescaline that killed him. Dr. Elkes was one of the earliest physicians in Europe to experiment with LSD, having requested samples of the drug from Sandoz Chemical Co. in 1949. Elkes was a close associate of Dr. Abraham Wikler, who worked closely with Dr. Harris Isbell at the now-closed Lexington, Kentucky, prison farm, where hundreds of already drug-addicted inmates were given heroin in exchange for their participation in LSD and mescaline experiments underwritten by the CIA and Pentagon. Elkes worked closely with the CIA, Pentagon and Britain's MI6 on drug experiments in England and the United States.
Dr. Fink, who was greatly admired by Bender, is considered the godfather of electroshock therapy in the United States. In the early 1950s and beyond, Fink was a fully cleared CIA Project Artichoke consultant. In 1951, CIA officials under the direction of Paul Gaynor and Morse Allen of the agency's Security Research Service (SRS) that oversaw Artichoke, worked closely with Fink in New York City in efforts to thoroughly explore the merits of electroshock techniques for interrogations. The CIA was especially interested in the use of standard electroshock machines in producing amnesia, inducing subjects to talk and making subjects more prone to hypnotic control. According to one CIA document, Fink told officials "an individual could gradually be reduced through the use to electroshock treatment to the vegetable level."
In addition to Fink, Bender also greatly admired the work of Dr. Lothar B. Kalinowsky, a psychiatrist who also consulted closely with the CIA on electroshock matters. Kalinowsky, who was part Jewish and had fled Germany in 1933, was Fink's close friend and, like Fink, was widely recognized as an expert on electroconvulsive therapy. Kalinowsky met with the CIA's Allen and Gaynor frequently and sometimes was accompanied by Dr. Fink at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where he worked closely with Dr. Hoch.
While it is clear from Dr. Bender's papers that she also considered the early LSD work of "Dr." Alfred M. Hubbard in Vancouver, Canada, to be "very substantial and beneficial," it is important to state here that Hubbard was not a physician nor did he have any formal medical training. Hubbard, a jovial character who sometimes worked with the FBI and CIA, was a strong proponent of the use of LSD. Despite the fact that he had no medical credentials and once served time in prison for smuggling, he hoodwinked the Sandoz Chemical Co. into supplying him such ample amounts of LSD that he dispersed so widely and abundantly that he earned the title "The Johnny Appleseed of LSD." Hubbard's use of LSD in allegedly curing alcoholism is still cited today. How Hubbard so easily passed as a physician is unknown. Even a 1961 paper published by New York Medical College, Department of Psychiatry, and authored by Dr. A.M. Freedman, cited Hubbard's LSD work with "children, primarily delinquents" to have been 85% successful."
Other physicians whom Dr. Bender consulted about the effects of LSD on children were Drs. Ronald A. Sandison, Thomas M. Ling and John Buckman. These three worked in England at both the Chelsea Clinic in London and Potwick Hospital in Worcestershire, outside of London. Sandison is credited with having been the first person to bring LSD into England, this in 1952 after he met Albert Hofmann in Basle, Switzerland, at the Sandoz Chemical laboratories. Hofmann handed Sandison a box of around 600 ampules, each containing 100 micrograms of LSD. Back in England, Sandison shared his psychedelic bounty with associates Drs. Ling and Buckman. Before the year was out, Sandison also turned Hubbard on to LSD, guiding Hubbard through his first trip. Sandison also began a new treatment program at the Gothic-looking Potwick facility that he dubbed Psycholytic Therapy. His program's patients were mostly schizophrenics. In 1958, an LSD treatment unit was established at Potwick. Over the years, it has been reported that the CIA, MI6 and the Macy Foundation secretly helped finance the unit. Dr. Elkes helped by raising about $75,000 for the unit's operation. For the next ten years the unit administered over 15,000 doses of LSD to about 900 patients.
Drs. Buckman and Ling worked closely with Sandison in the Potwick unit. In 1963, Buckman and Ling wrote in a publication, describing "good examples" of the use of LSD in psycholytic psychotherapy: "The patients' experiences under LSD have not supported Marx's dictum that Religion is the opium of the people but rather that there is a deep basic belief in a Supreme Being, whether the religion background be Christian, Jewish or Hindu."
Dr. Buckman also worked at London's Chelsea Clinic, often times treating adults and sometimes children. Buckman believed strongly that "frigidity" in women could be treated successfully with LSD. In 1967, he said of LSD: "Many therapists believe that a transcendental experience - a feeling that it is a good world and one is a part of it - is a curative experience in itself." According to several informed sources in the London, for years MI6, the British intelligence service and the CIA closely monitored the LSD work conducted by Sandison, Ling and Buckman.
Two Sisters, LSD and Dr. Buckman
Marion McGill, today an attorney and college professor in the western United States and her sister, Trudy, were sent in 1960 by their parents to be interviewed by Drs. Ling and Buckman at the Chelsea Clinic in London. At the time, Marion was 13 years old and her sister was 15. Marion says that both her mother and father were "quite taken with the benefits of LSD and thought that we would also benefit from the drug." Both parents had undergone a series of ten LSD "treatments" at the Chelsea clinic. Marion goes on:
"As a 13-year old at the time, my decision-making capacity was very limited. I was, by nature, fairly compliant and docile, rather eager to please my parents. I understood nothing of what was being suggested for me and my 15 year-old sister - namely that we participate in some sort of 'research' that both our parents had also participated in. Whether the word 'experiment' was used, I don't recall. The term 'LSD' was vaguely familiar, however, because my parents were 'taking' this drug as a form of 'quick therapy' - their term for it - that had been recommended by my uncle, a psychiatrist at a well known east coast medical school. Both parents needed therapy, in my view. While highly successful professionally, my father was a tightly wound, rather angry and insecure man, an accomplished academic, but an 'industrial strength narcissist,' as I later called him. My mother was a submissive, obedient, Catholic woman without much identity of her own, other than being a doctor's wife.
"My sister and I, however, were about as 'normal' as any two teenagers could be. We were at the top of our classes in school; both of us had lots of friends, participated in extra curricular activities. We didn't need 'therapy.' We were told we would get a day off from school after each overnight stay at the clinic for this LSD. It was perhaps the prospect of a day off from Catholic girls' school that persuaded us to do it. I wasn't aware of making a 'decision.' The purpose of this program was never explained. There were to be 10 sessions - once a week for 10 weeks. I believe they started in January 1960.
"The experiences at the clinic where the LSD was administered were quite strange. There was a brief 'interview' by Dr. John Buckman, asking banal questions about health issues (none), but providing no information about what to expect from the LSD. There was no mention, for example, of hallucinations or perceptual distortions or anything frightening. I was not informed of any persistent effects, such as nightmares. Certainly the possibility of lasting damage was not mentioned. The word 'experiment' was not used. There was, in other words, no informed consent whatsoever. I was not told that I could refuse to participate, that I could quit at any time (as provided in the Nuremberg Code). Since I was below the age of consent, my parents would have been the ones to agree to this. Indeed, they were the ones to suggest that we be used in these experiments. It would not otherwise have happened. But my parents would never discuss this in later years and never explained why they did it.
"During the 10 sessions, each of which involved an injection, my sister and I were kept in separate bedrooms, darkened rooms, usually with someone present in the room, but I don't know who the person was. Occasionally, my mother was also present. At times, I was so frightened by the hallucinations that I screamed and tried to escape from the room. I remember once actually reaching the hallway and being forcibly put back into the bedroom by my mother. I saw a wild array of images - nightmarish visions, occasionally provoking hysterical laughter, followed immediately by wracking sobs. I had no idea what was happening to me. It was terrifying.
"There was no effort to counsel us during or after each of these sessions. There was no 'debriefing,' no explanation of what was happening or why this was being done to us. Why I did not refuse to participate after I first experienced it, I don't know. But as an adult and later as a professional medical ethicist, I recognized this lack of resistance as a function of childhood itself. Most children who are victims of parental abuse do not know how to resist. They fear rejection by parents more than they fear the abuse, it seems. The 'power differential' is huge between parents and children and the dependence on parents is virtually absolute. We were also, living in London at the time, away from our friends. My sister and I had been told not to talk about what we were doing. We were Catholics, obedient to parents, etc. Our father was a doctor, after all - it was hard to grasp that he would do harm to us or that our mother would. Children just don't think this way initially. A child's dependency usually means trusting one's parents or caregivers.
"Although each individual session was often terrifying, any lasting effects of the LSD unfolded gradually. In the weeks immediately following the final session, I experienced frequent nightmares - visions of crawling insects, horrible masks, etc. I couldn't sleep. I was afraid to shut my eyes. I became afraid of the dark. My parents were dismissive and unsympathetic. Their attitude was, in some ways, more disturbing to me than the experiments themselves because it meant that my parents had known full well that the experience would very likely be frightening - and hadn't cared.
"I discovered that my parents were dishonest and unfeeling in ways that I could not comprehend. They told my sister and me never to talk about the LSD experiences, never to disclose what had happened in London. This further ruptured our relationship with them, a relationship that was, by then, permanently damaged. I was still dependent on them, however and so was my sister.
"Two years after these experiments, during her freshman year in college, my sister suffered a nervous breakdown. I don't know the extent to which the LSD may have precipitated this. But my parents' response to what was probably a mild breakdown from which my sister could have recovered, was coercive and drastic. She had been asking questions about the LSD at this time. She was angry about it. We both were. We talked about it together, but I was afraid to confront our parents. My sister was not. The angrier she became, the more she was 'diagnosed' as a 'psychiatric' case and the more medication she was given. To this day, my sister is heavily medicated. She never fully recovered from that first episode.
"Our parents responded to my sister's anger in a way that frightened me further. I also felt tremendous guilt for not being able to prevent the horrors that my sister endured. Once she was 'classified' as a psychiatric patient, she was lost. Everything that was done to her in the name of 'treatment' seemed to me to be a form of ongoing abuse and torture.
"The fact that our father was a prominent, internationally known and widely respected physician - and his brother, who had introduced us to this LSD horror, was a prominent, internationally known and widely respected psychiatrist - made it impossible to expose them or go against them. Their reputations were more important to them than the health and well being of my sister.
"My own response was simply to leave home. I never trusted my parents again after the London LSD experience. I discovered many other ways in which my father and my uncle lied, covered up, dissembled and eventually threatened me, in order to keep this story from being told.
"On a positive note, the experience informed my career choices in both human rights and medical ethics, but it also made me alert to the ways in which academic medicine was - and is - corrupted by the drug industry itself and by the continuing abuse of human subjects to further the development of drugs as weapons - both for interrogation potential and also, more subtle behavior control on a massive scale. My own experience also sensitized me to the special vulnerability of children and teenagers in the medical environment.
"Even when I subsequently confronted my father with the evidence that LSD had been tested by the CIA for use as a military weapon in the 1950s and 1960s, he dismissed his participation by saying that it was an 'enlightening experience, like visiting an art gallery.' When I pointed out that this was not my experience as a child, he dismissed it, including the presumption that I must be a 'conspiracy theorist' to propose such a thing. At the age of 91, he finally admitted that it had perhaps not been a very good idea to subject my sister and me to LSD.
"Dr. Buckman and Ling were knowing participants in ongoing intelligence-based work with mind altering drugs. I 'met' Buckman in London when I was 13, but encountered him again years later at the university medical school in the United States where he was on the faculty.
"I went to see Dr. Buckman in his office. I asked him what he thought about the ethics of using children in an LSD experiment. At first, he didn't seem to realize who I was. I identified myself as one of his 'subjects' and gave him my business card as a Medical Ethicist and lawyer. He was clearly shocked, stood up, refused to talk to me and told me to leave his office. Shortly thereafter, I received a phone call from my father. His brother, the psychiatrist and colleague of Dr. Buckman, had been alerted to my impromptu visit. Subsequently, both my uncle and my father threatened me, saying they would make sure I lost my university faculty position if I disclosed anything publicly about the LSD experiments in London.
"'You will never work in bioethics again,' they said.
"The response of all these men to the threat of disclosure indicates their lack of ethical scruples, their lack of empathy, their own pathology. I don't know what the exact term would be, but I suspect there is a form of psychological 'doubling' at work - the sort of thing that was described in [Robert Jay] Lifton's book, The Nazi Doctors who were able to ignore their Hippocratic oath to 'first, do no harm,' and to inflict unimaginable horrors on their fellow human beings.
"The loss of my sister has been a life long source of sorrow for me. I attribute it to the LSD and its cover up, whether the chemicals themselves 'caused' her disintegration or not. In law this is called a 'contributing cause.' I learned that people cover up the most awful things, not just within a family but within communities, within universities, within 'polite society.' There is probably no absolute barrier that will prevent these things from being done, but they have to be exposed and called out for what they are, whenever they occur."
Dr. Bender's LSD Experiments on Children
Shortly after deciding to initiate her own LSD experiments on children, Bender attended a conference sponsored by a CIA front group, the Josiah Macy Foundation. The conference focused on LSD research and featured Dr. Harold A. Abramson as a presenter. In 1960, Abramson conducted his own LSD experiments on a group of six children ranging in age from five to 14 years of age. A few short months after the Macy Foundation conference, Dr. Bender was notified that her planned LSD experiments would be partially and surreptitiously funded by the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology (SIHE), another CIA front group then located in Forest Hills, New York. The Society, headed by James L. Monroe, a former US Air Force officer who had worked on top-secret psychological warfare and propaganda projects, oversaw about 55 top-secret experiments underwritten by the CIA. These projects involved LSD, ESP, black magic, astrology, psychological warfare, media manipulation, and other subjects. Apparently, Bender's work with children and LSD raised some concerns at the CIA's Technical Services Division (TSD). A 1961 TSD memo written to Monroe questioned the "operational benefits of Dr. Bender's work as related to children and LSD," and requested to be kept "closely appraised of the possible links between Dr. Bender's project and those being conducted under separate MK/ULTRA funding at designated prisons in New York and elsewhere."
In 1960, Dr. Bender launched her first experiments with LSD and children. They were conducted within the Children's Unit, Creedmoor State Hospital in Queens, New York. The LSD she used was supplied by Dr. Rudolph P. Bircher of the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company. (Dr. Bircher also provided Bender with UML-491, also a Sandoz-produced product, very much like LSD but sometimes "dreamier" in effect and longer lasting.) Her initial group of young subjects consisted of 14 children diagnosed schizophrenic, all under the age of 11. (Because diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia, autism, and other disorders have changed over the decades, one cannot assess what actual conditions these children really had.) There were 11 boys and three girls, ranging in age from six to ten years old.
Jean Marie is almost seven years old. She came here nearly a year ago after her parents abandoned her to the care of an aunt who had no interest in raising her. Marie, who prefers to be called Jean, is shy, withdrawn, and distrustful of most adults she encounters. There are reports she may have been sexually molested by her uncle ... Despite her withdrawn nature she smiles easily, and enjoys the company of other children. After receiving LSD on three occasions earlier this month, Marie ceased smiling at all and lost any interest in others her age ... In the past week, she seems to have become easily agitated and has lost any interest in reading, something she seemed to very much enjoy before treatment.
In a published report on her 196 LSD experiments with 14 "autistic schizophrenic" children, Bender states she initially gave each of the children 25 mcg. of LSD "intramuscularly while under continuous observation." She writes: "The two oldest boys, over ten years, near or in early puberty, reacted with disturbed anxious behavior. The oldest and most disturbed received Amytal sodium 150 mg. intramuscularly and returned to his usual behavior." Both boys were then excluded from the experiment.
The 12 remaining children were then given injections of 25 mcg. of LSD and then days later were each given 100 mcg. of LSD once a week. Bender's report states: "Then it was increased gradually to twice and three times a week as no untoward side-effects were noticed.... Finally, it was given daily and this continued for six weeks until the time of this report."
Bender's findings and conclusions concerning her LSD experiments indicated she found the use of the drug promising. Bender reported: "In general, they [the children] were happier; their mood was 'high' in the hours following the ingestion of the drug ... they have become more spontaneously playful with balls and balloons ... their color is rosy rather than blue or pale and they have gained weight." Bender concluded: "The use of these drugs [LSD, UML-401, UML-491] ... will give us more knowledge about both the basic schizophrenic process and the defensive autism in children and also about the reaction of these dilysergic acid derivatives as central and autonomic nervous system stimulants and serotonin antagonists. Hopefully these drugs will also contribute to our efforts to find better therapeutic agents for early childhood schizophrenia."
In an article published in 1970, Dr. Bender reported on the results of LSD dosing upon "two adolescent boys who were mildly schizophrenic." She reported that the boys experienced perceptual distortions. They thought the researchers were making faces at them, that their pencils were becoming "rubbery," and one boy reported the other boy's face had turned green. The boys began to complain that they were being experimented upon. Even so, Bender and her associate continued the two male adolescents on a regimen of 150 mcg. per day, in divided doses, of LSD. While one of the boys supposedly "benefited very much," Bender reported that he later returned to the hospital as "a disturbed adult schizophrenic." The other boy kept complaining that he was being experimented upon and they stopped giving him LSD, not because of the drug's effects itself, Bender explained, but "because of the boy's attitude towards it," which she attributed to "his own psychopathology."
Dr. Bender's LSD experiments continued into the late 1960s and, during that time, continued to include multiple experiments on children with UML-401, a little known LSD-type drug provided to her by the Sandoz Company, as well as UML-491, also a Sandoz product. Bender's reports on her LSD experiments give no indication of whether the parents or legal guardians of the subject children were aware of, or consented to, the experiments. Without doubt, parents or guardians were never informed that the CIA underwrote Bender's work. Over the years, there have been multiple reports that many of Bender's subject children were either "wards of the State" or orphans, but the available literature on the experiments reveals nothing on this. The same literature makes it obvious that the children had been confined to the Creedmoor State Hospital for long periods of time and that many, if discharged, needed "suitable homes or placements in the community." There is also no evidence that any follow-up studies were conducted on any of the children experimented upon by Dr. Bender. Today, Dr. Bender is best known and highly regarded in some circles as the creator of the Bender-Gestalt Test, which measures motor skills in children.
On Bender's use of LSD on children, Dr. Leon Eisenberg said years later: "She did all sorts of things. Lauretta Bender reached success in her career long before randomized controlled trials had even been heard of. She didn't see the need for trials of drugs because she was convinced she knew what worked." (See: "A History of Autism: Conversations with the Pioneers" by Adam Feinstein, Wiley-Blanchard, 2010.) Many other physicians speaking privately were far less diplomatic in condemning Bender's LSD work, but, still today, many are reluctant to criticize her, and, remarkably, many of the aging stalwarts of the arguable "virtues" and "potential" of LSD continue to cite her work with children as groundbreaking science.
Today, nearly 60 years beyond the horrors of Dr. Bender's CIA-sponsored experiments on children, few people are aware that they were conducted. For most people, regardless of their awareness of the experiments, it is difficult to fathom how intelligent, highly educated physicians and scientists could partake in such brutal, uncaring, unethical and illegal experiments on children. What was the basis of their motivation? Was it the quest for some sort of elusive medical grail? Was it for economic gain? Or was it simply the result of a misguided search for knowledge that appeared so infinitely important that any sense of compassion and respect for human rights and dignity was cast aside in the name of a higher goal or good - a search at times so exhilarating with the sense that one is at the precipice of a momentous discovery that any semblance of respect for humankind was thrown aside?
One can easily come to any and all these conclusions simply by reading the professional papers of such scientists and researchers. Not once do any of these papers express concern for the subjects at hand or denote any pangs of conscience at violating any oaths, codes and statutes regarding patient rights, human rights or human dignity. That America's most shameful period of human experimentation, the years 1950 through to about 1979, came on the heels of the making and adoption of the Nuremberg Codes only adds to the shame and hypocrisy. Today, human experimentation is still aggressively conducted by US government-sponsored and employed physicians and scientists regardless of those codes, which came directly out of the shocking madness of the Nazi era. That government-sponsored experimentation still occurs makes a mockery of any governmental efforts, however valid, to protect people from science run amok - and a nation that uses its young, its children, for such pursuits is a nation whose commitment to human rights and democratic principles should be seriously questioned and challenged.
(The names Marion McGill and that of her sister Trudy, are pseudonyms. Marion is a highly respected attorney and college professor, who asked that her real name not be used in this article. All other names in this article are real.)
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
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Friday, July 30, 2010
7 Drugs That You Can Legally Grow Right In Your Home
http://www.thebachelorguy.com/7-drugs-that-you-can-legally-grow-right-in-your-home.html
7 Drugs That You Can Legally Grow Right In Your Home
06/24/2010
DISCLAIMER: I am not advocating, advising, endorsing, recommending, celebrating, or glamorizing drug use. That's the job of the music industry.
I am merely providing interesting and educational information on several plants that, while perfectly legal to grow, provide some added "recreational" effects when used for purposes other than decorating your home. (And if you want to read about three bonus plants, head over to our friends at GrowingPlantsIndoors.com, the green thumbs that provided this info.) I'm starting to rethink my No Living Houseplants rule.
1. Salvia
Saliva is unique because it isn’t habit forming, is hallucinogenic... and is legal to grow. The plant is usually dried and smoked (similar to marijuana), and when taken makes the user momentarily lose touch with reality. In the states, growing the plant (which is legal) is different than using the plant as a drug (which is illegal). As of this writing Florida, Illinois, Delaware, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Virginia, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, Ohio, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi and North Dakota have laws against its usage.
2. Calea zacatechichi- Dream Herb
The dream herb gets its name from of the incredibly vivid dreams that users experience. The Chontal Indians of Mexico are known to smoke the plant’s leaves just before bedtime as a way of becoming conscious of dreaming while still in the dream. In typical US fashion, the plant is legal to grow AND to sell... but illegal to use.
3. Hawaiian Baby Woodrose
Hawaiian Baby Woodrose, also known as Elephant Creeper, is a vine that produces hallucinogenic seeds. With preparation , the active ingredient (LSA) can be extracted and has the same effect as LSD when consumed. However, consumption is illegal in the US, while growing the vine itself is not.
4. Kratom
Kratom is addictive, yet it remains legal to grow and to use. In appearance it resembles a small tree, usually growing up to 15 feet tall. The leaves contain the active ingredient and, unlike many other hallucinagenics, the leaves are constantly replaced on the same tree.
5. Wormwood
Wormwood emits a poison and can kill if too much is consumed. It’s also the primary herb used in absinthe. The leaves can also be smoked, usually in conjunction with marijuana. And, to this date, wormwood is legal to grow virtually anywhere in the world.
6. Betel Nut
As a whole, Betel Nut is relatively "soft." It induces a mild feeling of well being, reduces one’s appetite and isn’t physically addictive. The plant is legal to grow and to use, but it only grows in tropical or subtropical ecosystems. A variety of indoor growing systems can be used to succesfully grow this plant in your home.
7. Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca, or "vine of the dead," grows freely in the South American Amazon and is used by Shamans in healing/cleansing rituals. The vine, which contains DMT as an active ingredient, is brewed with a secondary plant which contains MAOI and is drank for effect. Growing the vine is legal in the US, but extracting the DMT (active ingredient) is against the law.
For three more drugs that are legal to grow in your home, go to GrowingPlantsIndoors.com.
7 Drugs That You Can Legally Grow Right In Your Home
06/24/2010
DISCLAIMER: I am not advocating, advising, endorsing, recommending, celebrating, or glamorizing drug use. That's the job of the music industry.
I am merely providing interesting and educational information on several plants that, while perfectly legal to grow, provide some added "recreational" effects when used for purposes other than decorating your home. (And if you want to read about three bonus plants, head over to our friends at GrowingPlantsIndoors.com, the green thumbs that provided this info.) I'm starting to rethink my No Living Houseplants rule.
1. Salvia
Saliva is unique because it isn’t habit forming, is hallucinogenic... and is legal to grow. The plant is usually dried and smoked (similar to marijuana), and when taken makes the user momentarily lose touch with reality. In the states, growing the plant (which is legal) is different than using the plant as a drug (which is illegal). As of this writing Florida, Illinois, Delaware, Hawaii, Oklahoma, Virginia, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, Ohio, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi and North Dakota have laws against its usage.
2. Calea zacatechichi- Dream Herb
The dream herb gets its name from of the incredibly vivid dreams that users experience. The Chontal Indians of Mexico are known to smoke the plant’s leaves just before bedtime as a way of becoming conscious of dreaming while still in the dream. In typical US fashion, the plant is legal to grow AND to sell... but illegal to use.
3. Hawaiian Baby Woodrose
Hawaiian Baby Woodrose, also known as Elephant Creeper, is a vine that produces hallucinogenic seeds. With preparation , the active ingredient (LSA) can be extracted and has the same effect as LSD when consumed. However, consumption is illegal in the US, while growing the vine itself is not.
4. Kratom
Kratom is addictive, yet it remains legal to grow and to use. In appearance it resembles a small tree, usually growing up to 15 feet tall. The leaves contain the active ingredient and, unlike many other hallucinagenics, the leaves are constantly replaced on the same tree.
5. Wormwood
Wormwood emits a poison and can kill if too much is consumed. It’s also the primary herb used in absinthe. The leaves can also be smoked, usually in conjunction with marijuana. And, to this date, wormwood is legal to grow virtually anywhere in the world.
6. Betel Nut
As a whole, Betel Nut is relatively "soft." It induces a mild feeling of well being, reduces one’s appetite and isn’t physically addictive. The plant is legal to grow and to use, but it only grows in tropical or subtropical ecosystems. A variety of indoor growing systems can be used to succesfully grow this plant in your home.
7. Ayahuasca
Ayahuasca, or "vine of the dead," grows freely in the South American Amazon and is used by Shamans in healing/cleansing rituals. The vine, which contains DMT as an active ingredient, is brewed with a secondary plant which contains MAOI and is drank for effect. Growing the vine is legal in the US, but extracting the DMT (active ingredient) is against the law.
For three more drugs that are legal to grow in your home, go to GrowingPlantsIndoors.com.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Renowned Author H.P. Albarelli
http://ileneproctor.net/ Media Contact, Ilene Proctor 310-858-6643
Cell: +1 310-721-2336
Ilene Proctor Proudly Presents Great Minds Series #38
Renowned Author H.P. Albarelli
A Terrible Mistake
The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments
“MK ULTRA and CIA human experimentation. This book is a fucking atom bomb. The CIA Used People as Innocent Human Guinea Pigs in LSD Experiments. And Worse.”
Taking on the CIA is not for the faint of heart. It takes toughness, tenacity, and an undisputed moral compass. It’s those core values that compelled Hank Albarelli Jr. to spend ten years uncovering the dark truths in his formidable expose: A Terrible Mistake - The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments.
A Terrible Mistake reveals the CIA as a rogue government agency whose defining characteristic is dirty, scorched-earth policies carried out at any cost. It brings to light of day important new information from the 1950's heyday of Olson's work, delving into military and CIA Cold War experimentation, information which Olson’s death was intended to bury. Unwitting citizens were the subjects of mind-control experiments which lead to the development of techniques still employed today at Black Sites around the world. Among the details revealed are efforts to weaponize LSD for battlefield use and unconscionable tests on innocent civilians, including children.
Moderator: Matt Damon – I Wish, Aiming High
Entertainment: Keaton Simons
Honored Guest: Eric Roberts
WHEN: April 23, 2010
WHERE: Hosts, Jan Goodman and Jerry Manpearl
939 San Vicente Blvd
Santa Monica, CA. 90402
(310) 458-7213
(corner of San Vicente and 10th Street)
TIME: 7:00 PM to 9:30 PM
Fee: $20.00 includes refreshments and drinks
Please rsvp via email: jan-pi@mindspring.com or proctor@artnet.net tel: (310) 858 6643 or (310) 458 7213
Cell: +1 310-721-2336
Ilene Proctor Proudly Presents Great Minds Series #38
Renowned Author H.P. Albarelli
A Terrible Mistake
The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments
“MK ULTRA and CIA human experimentation. This book is a fucking atom bomb. The CIA Used People as Innocent Human Guinea Pigs in LSD Experiments. And Worse.”
Taking on the CIA is not for the faint of heart. It takes toughness, tenacity, and an undisputed moral compass. It’s those core values that compelled Hank Albarelli Jr. to spend ten years uncovering the dark truths in his formidable expose: A Terrible Mistake - The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments.
A Terrible Mistake reveals the CIA as a rogue government agency whose defining characteristic is dirty, scorched-earth policies carried out at any cost. It brings to light of day important new information from the 1950's heyday of Olson's work, delving into military and CIA Cold War experimentation, information which Olson’s death was intended to bury. Unwitting citizens were the subjects of mind-control experiments which lead to the development of techniques still employed today at Black Sites around the world. Among the details revealed are efforts to weaponize LSD for battlefield use and unconscionable tests on innocent civilians, including children.
Moderator: Matt Damon – I Wish, Aiming High
Entertainment: Keaton Simons
Honored Guest: Eric Roberts
WHEN: April 23, 2010
WHERE: Hosts, Jan Goodman and Jerry Manpearl
939 San Vicente Blvd
Santa Monica, CA. 90402
(310) 458-7213
(corner of San Vicente and 10th Street)
TIME: 7:00 PM to 9:30 PM
Fee: $20.00 includes refreshments and drinks
Please rsvp via email: jan-pi@mindspring.com or proctor@artnet.net tel: (310) 858 6643 or (310) 458 7213
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Mind control and understanding Shutter Island
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2010/1811
Bob Fitrakis
Mind control and understanding Shutter Island
Feb 21, 2010
To understand Martin Scorsese’s well-crafted psychological thriller Shutter Island, viewers should do an Internet search on the following three terms: MK-Ultra, Manchurian candidates, and Operation Paperclip. For the extended value-added search, throw in the combination of “CIA” and “LSD.”
Shutter Island is being released at a very propitious time. Just look at last Saturday’s front page of the New York Times. Above the fold we have two related stories, the first, under the inaccurate headline “A new report, a new verdict, in terror fight.” A more accurate title would read “U.S. government and Obama administration reaffirm Bush administration commitment to torture.”
The post-World War II U.S. administrations and its rising security-industrial complex covertly embraced torture and secret dosing of unsuspecting people with psychedelic drugs to control their behavior and create assets and assassins during the Red Scare. Now, overt torture done in the name of “fighting terror” has been embraced by the administration of Mr. “Hope and Change.”
The Times announced that the recent government report that exonerated “ . . . the lawyers who gave justification to the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation tactics” officially “ . . . brings to a close a pivotal chapter in the debate over the legal limits of the Bush administration’s fight against terrorism and whether its treatment of Qaeda prisoners amounted to torture.”
This means the first modern nation that banned torture in its Constitution now officially endorses torture by redefining “cruel and unusual punishment.”
J.S. Bybee, now a federal judge, and John Yoo, now a professor at the University of Califormia, Berkeley, serve in the renewed roles of Operation Paperclip Nazi war criminals brought to the United States following World War II. There is little difference between Bybee/Yoo and von Braun/Strughold.
Werner von Braun got a pass from being hanged at Nuremberg because he was useful tthe U.S. military, and later the space, industries. Hubertus Strughold, the father of U.S. space medicine, was directly responsible for the inhumane torture of human subjects at Dachau.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Edward Daniels, was at the liberation of Dachau, and discovered a Paperclip Nazi on Shutter Island continuing to experiment on human subjects, only now with the sanction of the U.S. government. Only a frontal lobotomy will silence his quest for truth.
Our new mass frontal lobotomies come by way of the mainstream media with imprecise headlines and official acceptance of unacceptable government decisions. Torture by any other name, or sanctioned by a memo, is still torture.
The second front page Times article headlined “F.B.I. Shuts Book on Anthrax Case, Fatal to Five in 2001” gives us the government’s version of “the lone gunman.” Dr. Bruce E. Ivins is a minor-league version of Lee Harvey Oswald. We’re to believe that he, and he alone, sent the trillion-spores-per-gram Ames strain silicon impregnated U.S. military grade anthrax through the mail.
Nowhere in the article will you find mention of Battelle Memorial Institute, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. The Times reported earlier on Battelle’s “Project Jefferson” and “Clear Vision,” and curious characters like William C. Patrick III and Ken Alibeck. Alibeck is the former number two man in the Soviet’s illegal biochemical program who consulted at Battelle with Patrick, another Battelle consultant who wrote a paper on sending anthrax through the mail.
Readers might want to Google Battelle, the security-industrial complex’s favorite non-profit, and their Shutter Island-like facility in West Jefferson, Ohio. The FBI originally told the Free Press that they were looking at Battelle in West Jefferson, and the profit motive of a newly-formed company that stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars off of anthrax vaccines.
We’re now to believe that it was Ivins, according to the Times, “a biodefense expert who cast blame on an alternate personality called ‘Crazy Bruce’” and anyone who doesn’t believe this story will be called the “C” word: conspiracy theorist.
Ivins, like Edward Daniels in Shutter Island, had his flaws and makes a perfect patsy for the “lone mailer” theory. Ivins, who committed suicide in 2008, allegedly stalked two women who were able to confirm that it was “Crazy Bruce,” his other personality, who sent the letters. As the Times dutifully reported, “‘Crazy Bruce,’ who surfaces periodically as paranoid, severely depressed, and ridden with incredible anxiety.”
Just like the movie Shutter Island, there’s a “Rule of 4” coded message that Ivins left, according to the FBI. The Times noted, that “Ivins embedded a complex coded message in the notes that he mailed with anthrax in 2001. The coded message, based on DNA biochemistry, alluded to two female colleagues with whom he was obsessed.”
So says the FBI; so reports the New York Times. The government also initially denied they brought Nazi war criminals into the United States, and that there was a secret harassment campaign against U.S. citizens called COINTELPRO. And, that they were dosing unsuspecting people with LSD and BZ and other psychedelic and mind-altering drugs. We should all see Shutter Island and shudder at the fact that it’s closer to the truth than we’ll ever get in corporate-controlled newspapers.
Bob Fitrakis
Mind control and understanding Shutter Island
Feb 21, 2010
To understand Martin Scorsese’s well-crafted psychological thriller Shutter Island, viewers should do an Internet search on the following three terms: MK-Ultra, Manchurian candidates, and Operation Paperclip. For the extended value-added search, throw in the combination of “CIA” and “LSD.”
Shutter Island is being released at a very propitious time. Just look at last Saturday’s front page of the New York Times. Above the fold we have two related stories, the first, under the inaccurate headline “A new report, a new verdict, in terror fight.” A more accurate title would read “U.S. government and Obama administration reaffirm Bush administration commitment to torture.”
The post-World War II U.S. administrations and its rising security-industrial complex covertly embraced torture and secret dosing of unsuspecting people with psychedelic drugs to control their behavior and create assets and assassins during the Red Scare. Now, overt torture done in the name of “fighting terror” has been embraced by the administration of Mr. “Hope and Change.”
The Times announced that the recent government report that exonerated “ . . . the lawyers who gave justification to the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation tactics” officially “ . . . brings to a close a pivotal chapter in the debate over the legal limits of the Bush administration’s fight against terrorism and whether its treatment of Qaeda prisoners amounted to torture.”
This means the first modern nation that banned torture in its Constitution now officially endorses torture by redefining “cruel and unusual punishment.”
J.S. Bybee, now a federal judge, and John Yoo, now a professor at the University of Califormia, Berkeley, serve in the renewed roles of Operation Paperclip Nazi war criminals brought to the United States following World War II. There is little difference between Bybee/Yoo and von Braun/Strughold.
Werner von Braun got a pass from being hanged at Nuremberg because he was useful tthe U.S. military, and later the space, industries. Hubertus Strughold, the father of U.S. space medicine, was directly responsible for the inhumane torture of human subjects at Dachau.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Edward Daniels, was at the liberation of Dachau, and discovered a Paperclip Nazi on Shutter Island continuing to experiment on human subjects, only now with the sanction of the U.S. government. Only a frontal lobotomy will silence his quest for truth.
Our new mass frontal lobotomies come by way of the mainstream media with imprecise headlines and official acceptance of unacceptable government decisions. Torture by any other name, or sanctioned by a memo, is still torture.
The second front page Times article headlined “F.B.I. Shuts Book on Anthrax Case, Fatal to Five in 2001” gives us the government’s version of “the lone gunman.” Dr. Bruce E. Ivins is a minor-league version of Lee Harvey Oswald. We’re to believe that he, and he alone, sent the trillion-spores-per-gram Ames strain silicon impregnated U.S. military grade anthrax through the mail.
Nowhere in the article will you find mention of Battelle Memorial Institute, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. The Times reported earlier on Battelle’s “Project Jefferson” and “Clear Vision,” and curious characters like William C. Patrick III and Ken Alibeck. Alibeck is the former number two man in the Soviet’s illegal biochemical program who consulted at Battelle with Patrick, another Battelle consultant who wrote a paper on sending anthrax through the mail.
Readers might want to Google Battelle, the security-industrial complex’s favorite non-profit, and their Shutter Island-like facility in West Jefferson, Ohio. The FBI originally told the Free Press that they were looking at Battelle in West Jefferson, and the profit motive of a newly-formed company that stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars off of anthrax vaccines.
We’re now to believe that it was Ivins, according to the Times, “a biodefense expert who cast blame on an alternate personality called ‘Crazy Bruce’” and anyone who doesn’t believe this story will be called the “C” word: conspiracy theorist.
Ivins, like Edward Daniels in Shutter Island, had his flaws and makes a perfect patsy for the “lone mailer” theory. Ivins, who committed suicide in 2008, allegedly stalked two women who were able to confirm that it was “Crazy Bruce,” his other personality, who sent the letters. As the Times dutifully reported, “‘Crazy Bruce,’ who surfaces periodically as paranoid, severely depressed, and ridden with incredible anxiety.”
Just like the movie Shutter Island, there’s a “Rule of 4” coded message that Ivins left, according to the FBI. The Times noted, that “Ivins embedded a complex coded message in the notes that he mailed with anthrax in 2001. The coded message, based on DNA biochemistry, alluded to two female colleagues with whom he was obsessed.”
So says the FBI; so reports the New York Times. The government also initially denied they brought Nazi war criminals into the United States, and that there was a secret harassment campaign against U.S. citizens called COINTELPRO. And, that they were dosing unsuspecting people with LSD and BZ and other psychedelic and mind-altering drugs. We should all see Shutter Island and shudder at the fact that it’s closer to the truth than we’ll ever get in corporate-controlled newspapers.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
MK-ULTRA: The CIA's Mind Control Program
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/02/mk-ultra-cias-mind-control-program.html
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
MK-ULTRA: The CIA's Mind Control Program
Stephen Lendman
MK-ULTRA was the code name for a secret CIA mind control program, begun in 1953, under Director Allen Dulles. Its purpose was multifold, including to perfect a truth drug for interrogating suspected Soviet spies during the Cold War. It followed earlier WW II hypnosis, primitive drugs research, and the US Navy's Project Chatter, explained by its Bureau of Medicine and Surgery in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request as follows:
It began "in the fall of 1947 focusing on the identification and testing of drugs (LSD and others) in interrogations and the recruitment of agents. The research included laboratory experiments on both animal and human subjects. The program ended shortly after the Korean War in 1953."
It was run under the direction of Dr. Charles Savage of the Naval Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, MD from 1947 - 1953, after which CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence continued it under the name Project Bluebird, its first mind control program to:
-- learn how to condition subjects to withstand information from being extracted from them by known means;
-- develop interrogation methods to exert control;
-- develop memory enhancement techniques; and
-- establish ways to prevent hostile control of Agency personnel.
In 1951, it was renamed Project Artichoke, then MK-ULTRA under Deputy CIA Director Richard Helms in 1953. It aimed to control human behavior through psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs, electroshock, radiation, graphology, paramilitary techniques, and psychological/sociological/anthropological methods, among others - a vast open-field of mind experimentation trying anything that might work, legal or otherwise on willing and unwitting subjects.
Ongoing at different times were 149 sub-projects in 80 US and Canadian universities, medical centers and three prisons, involving 185 researchers, 15 foundations and numerous drug companies. Everything was top secret, and most records later destroyed, yet FOIA suits salvaged thousands of pages with documented evidence of the horrific experiments and their effects on human subjects.
Most were unwitting guinea pigs, and those consenting were misinformed of the dangers. James Stanley was a career soldier when given LSD in 1958 along with 1,000 other military "volunteers." They suffered hallucinations, memory loss, incoherence, and severe personality changes. Stanley exhibited uncontrollable violence. It destroyed his family, impeded his working ability, and he never knew why until the Army asked him to participate in a follow-up study.
He sued for damages under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), his case reaching the Supreme Court in United States v. Stanley. Argued and decided in 1987, the Court dismissed his claim (5 - 4), ruling his injuries occurred during military service. Justices Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan and Sandra Day O'Conner wrote dissenting opinions, saying the Nuremberg Code applies to soldiers as well as civilians. In 1996, Stanley got $400,000 in compensation, but no apology from the government.
Perhaps MK-ULTRA's most publicized victim was Frank Olsen, a biochemist working for the Army Chemical Corps' Special Operations Division at Ft. Detrick, MD. On November 18, 1953, he was administered LSD. Immediately, he became agitated and severely paranoid. Nine days later, he reportedly committed suicide by jumping 13 stories to his death through a New York hotel's closed window. His family members didn't know he was drugged until MK-ULTRA was exposed in 1975.
President Gerald Ford apologized, granted a $750,000 settlement, but Olson's son discovered documents suggesting his father was killed. In 1994, he exhumed the body, had it forensically evaluated, and the conclusion was homicide based on a previously undetected skull fracture suggesting a blow on the head and other disturbing evidence.
Stanley Glickman was another MK-ULTRA tragedy, an unwitting victim of hallucinogenic drugs and electroshock treatment. He became traumatized, couldn't work, barely ate, suffered a psychological breakdown and never fully recovered. After learning about the CIA's LSD experiments, he sued in 1983. The trial was delayed 16 years, he died, but his sister Gloria Kronisch pursued the case.
MK-ULTRA chief Stanley Gottleib was at issue, hired to run its Technical Service Staff (TSS) to develop poisons to assassinate political opponents, truth serum drugs for interrogating spies, and mind control techniques to create robot assassins or unwitting double agents. He used Nazi scientists and their state of the art methods, perfected on concentration camp victims. Some were known as programmers, skilled professionals in the art of breaking down and controlling the human mind.
Joseph Mengele did similar work, experimenting extensively with children and adults using mescaline, electroshock therapy, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, torture, rape, starvation, and trauma bonding. He was so successful with the latter technique that survivors expressed strong affection for him.
The CIA and US military copied the Nazi methodology through numerous programs, including MK-ULTRA, MK being an abbreviation for words "mind control" in German. According to obtained documents, it works best when severe trauma (such as rape) occurs by age three, the result often causing the personality to split or dissociate (called dissociative identity disorder or DID) to repress painful memories.
Therapists can cause multiple personality disorder (MPD) by mind manipulation, but early in life trauma makes victims especially vulnerable. Gottlieb focused on LSD for mind control and exotic poisons and drugs for political assassinations.
Under Operation Paperclip, 9,000 Nazi scientists and technicians were recruited to help undermine the Soviet Union.
In 1952, Gottlieb met Glickman in a Paris cafe, bought him a drink and laced it with LSD. After finally being held to account, he became ill. The trial was postponed, and on the eve of its resumption he died unexpectedly. At the time, New York Times and Los Angeles Times obituaries reported that his family refused to disclose the cause. The online WorldNet Daily explained it was after a "month-long bout with pneumonia," saying that after being admitted to the University of Virginia Medical Center, he lapsed into a coma, never recovered, but foul play couldn't be determined.
At trial against his estate, the judge died of a heart attack while exercising. The question again arose. Was it natural or was he killed, especially since his replacement was prejudicial to the plaintiff having thrown out his case two years earlier. Perhaps so after the jury ruled against Glickman's family, denying them justice.
On December 22, 1974, Seymour Hersh exposed MK-ULTRA in a New York Times article. Headlined, "Huge CIA Operation Reported in US Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years," it documented illegal activities, including secret experiments on US citizens during the 1960s and earlier. Church Committee Congressional investigations followed, headed by Senator Frank Church, on abusive intelligence practices, replaced by the Pike Committee five months later. The Rockefeller Commission, under vice president Nelson Rockefeller, also examined the domestic activities of the CIA, FBI, and military intelligence agencies.
By summer 1975, it was learned that CIA and Department of Defense had conducted illegal experiments on willing and unwitting subjects as part of an exhaustive program to influence human behavior through psychoactive drugs (including LSD and mescaline) and other chemical, biological, psychological, and other methods.
Origins of CIA Mind Manipulation Practices
CIA became interested in Montreal Dr. Ewen Cameron's work at McGill University's Allan Memorial Institute. With full knowledge of the Canadian government, he was funded to perform bizarre experiments on his psychiatric patients, including keeping them asleep and isolated for weeks, then administering large doses of electroshock and experimental drug cocktails, LSD and PCP angel dust among them.
Though clearly unethical, Cameron believed by blasting the human brain with an array of shocks, he could unmake impaired minds, rebuilding them with new personalities cleansed of their previous state. It was voodoo science and failed, but CIA gained a wealth of knowledge it's used to this day.
In 1951, the Agency engaged McGill's director of psychology, Dr. Donald Hebb, and others to conduct sensory-deprivation experiments on volunteer students. They showed intense isolation disrupts clear thinking enough to make subjects receptive to suggestion. They were also formidable interrogation techniques amounting to torture when forcibly administered.
These early experiments laid the foundation for CIA's two-stage torture process - sensory deprivation followed by overload. University of Wisconsin historian Alfred McCoy documented them in his book, "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror," calling them "the first real revolution in the cruel science of pain in more than three centuries."
CIA developed and codified them in manuals, used extensively in Southeast Asia, Central America, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and at secret black sites globally. McCoy referred to an offshore information extraction mini-gulag during the Cold War and War on Terror. Out of sight, nothing is banned, including physical harshness and psychologically crippling mind control methods that turn human beings into mush.
MK-ULTRA was one of them, even though Gerald Ford's 1976 Executive Order (EO 11905) "establish(ed) policies to improve the quality of intelligence needed for national security (and) establish(ed) effective oversight to assure compliance with law in the management and direction of intelligence agencies and departments of the national government."
The EO prohibited "experimentation with drugs on human subjects, except with their informed consent, in writing and witnessed by a disinterested party, of each such human subject," according to guidelines issued by the National Commission. Subsequent Carter and Reagan directives banned all human experimentation. Nonetheless, they continue, in violation of the Nuremberg Code that prohibits:
-- medical experiments without the voluntary consent of human subjects - "without coercion, fraud, deceit, and the full disclosure of known risks;"
-- those "where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur;" and
-- only ones expected "to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study...."
Conducting human mind control experiments are clearly illegal and unethical. They're more sophisticated than ever today, and claims that MK-ULTRA experiments were halted in the 1970s were false. Renamed they continue and much more.
America's Long History of Human Experimentation
Prior examples include:
-- In 1931, Dr. Cornelius Rhoads infected human subjects with cancer cells under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations; Rhoads later conducted radiation exposure experiments on American soldiers and civilian hospital patients;
-- In 1932, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study began on 200 black men; they're weren't told of their illness, were denied treatment, and were used as human guinea pigs to follow their disease symptoms and progression; they all subsequently died;
-- in 1940, 400 Chicago prisoners were infected with malaria to study the effects of new and experimental drugs;
-- from 1942 - 1945, the US Navy used human subjects (locked in chambers) to test gas masks and clothing;
-- since the 1940s, human radiation experiments were conducted to test its effects and determine how much can kill; unwitting subjects were used in prisons, hospitals, orphanages, and mental institutions, including men, women, children, and the unborn of all races, mostly people from lower socio-economic brackets; in addition, more than 200,000 US soldiers were exposed to above ground nuclear tests; many later became ill and died;
-- in 1945, the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) implemented "Program F," the most exhaustive American study of fluoride's health effects - a key component in atomic bomb production and one of the most toxic chemicals known; it causes marked adverse central nervous system effects; in the interest of national security, the information was suppressed;
-- in 1945, VA hospital patients became guinea pigs for medical experiments;
-- in 1947, the AEC's Colonel EE Kirkpatrich issued secret document #07075001, stating that the agency will begin administering intravenous doses of radioactive substances to human subjects;
-- in 1949, the US Army released biological agents in US cities to study the effects of a real germ warfare attack; tests continued secretly through at least the 1960s in San Francisco, New York, Washington, DC, Panama City and Key West, FL, Minnesota, other midwest locations, along the Pennsylvania turnpike and elsewhere;
-- in 1950, the Defense Department (DOD) began open-air testing of nuclear weapons in desert areas, then monitored downwind residents for medical problems and mortality rates;
-- in 1951, African-Americans were exposed to potentially fatal stimulants as part of a race-specific fungal weapons test in Virginia;
-- in 1953, DOD released zinc cadmium sulfide gas over Winnipeg, Canada, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Fort Wayne, the Monocacy River Valley, MD, and Leesburg, VA - to determine how efficiently chemical agents can be dispersed;
-- in 1953, joint Army-Navy-CIA experiments were conducted in New York and San Francisco, exposing tens of thousands of people to the airborne agents Serratia marcescens and Bacillus glogigii;
-- in 1955, the CIA released bacteria from the Army's Tampa, FL biological warfare arsenal to test its ability to infect human populations;
-- in 1956, the US military released mosquitoes infected with Yellow Fever over Savannah, GA and Avon Park, FL to test the health effects on humans;
-- in 1965, Homesburg State Prison, Philadelphia prisoners were subjected to dioxin, the highly toxic Agent Orange agent, to study their carcinogenic effects;
-- in 1966, the New York subway system was used for a germ warfare experiment;
-- in 1969, an apparent nerve agent killed thousands of sheep in Utah;
-- in 1970, the Military Review reported that "ethnic weapons" development was intensified to be able to target specific ethnic groups thought susceptible to genetic differences and DNA variations;
-- in 1976, Americans were warned about an earlier Swine Flu scare, urging everyone to be vaccinated; millions complied, many of whom were harmed; 500 Guillan-Barre Syndrome (GBS - the deadly nerve disorder) resulted; people died from respiratory failure after severe paralysis, and experts said the vaccine increased the GBS risk level eight-fold;
-- in 1985 and 1986, open-air biological agents testing was done in populated areas;
-- in 1990, over 1,500 six-month old Los Angeles black and hispanic babies were given an experimental measles vaccine, never informing parents of the potential harm
-- in 1990 and 1991 before deploying to the Persian Gulf, all US troops were inoculated with experimental anthrax and botulinum toxoid vaccines, even though concerns were raised about their adverse long-term effects; over 12,000 died and over 30% became ill from non-combat-related factors in what subsequently was called Gulf War Syndrome, the result of exposure to a variety of toxins;
-- in 1994, Senator Jay Rockefeller issued a report revealing that for the past 50 or more years, DOD used hundreds of thousands of US military personnel, exposing them to dangerous substances experimentally; materials included mustard and nerve gas, ionizing radiation, psychochemicals, hallucinogens, and other drugs;
-- in 1995, Dr. Garth Nicolson discovered that toxic agents used during the Gulf War were pre-tested on Texas Department of Corrections prisoners;
-- in 1996, DOD admitted that Gulf War troops were exposed to chemical agents; and
-- in 2009, experimental vaccines were again used to inoculate people globally in response to another hyped Swine Flu scare; scattered reports of illnesses and deaths followed.
MK-ULTRA Victim Maryam Ruhullah
This writer will interview Ruhullah and Dr. James Randall Noblitt, a licensed psychologist, on The Progressive Radio News Hour (on The Progressive Radio Network), February 18 at 10AM US Central time to discuss MK-ULTRA, Ruhullah's experience and Noblitt's work with survivors of extreme abuse and individuals afflicted with identity dissociation. Noblitt is a Professor at the California School of Professional Psychology and Chair of the International Society of Trauma and Dissociation Ritual Abuse/Mind Control Interest Group.
The program will be archived for later listening.
As an MK-ULTRA victim, Ruhullah's memory was impaired and somewhat still is because of what she experienced. She explained it as follows.
In the early 1970s, she lived in Boston, MA, was married with a six-year old son, and as a lawyer worked for a prestigious firm, its name she can't remember. "One day, two federal agents came to (her) home unannounced," asking her to be a federal witness against an alleged organized crime figure. For her safety, they explained, she'd be placed in protective custody for a period not exceeding six months. She was asked to leave her family and job immediately, and say nothing to her husband and employer.
She "was forced to leave (her) home with the agents that day." She got no choice, and "was treated more like a prisoner than a witness." She couldn't use the phone or communicate with anyone, was transfered frequently, and held in "very low budget places," during which time her life "became a succession of abuses and exploitations."
"To this day," she says, she doesn't know precisely "when or why the government decided to use" her for MK-ULTRA experimentation, "but one day (she) was a mother, wife, and attorney, then, (later) had no memory of (her) past."
Having partly recovered it, she recalls "being given non-medically necessary electro-shock treatments. This was done to create amnesia (to block her) core personality and replac(e) it with" only need-to-know information.
She remembers "that the shock treatment given (her) was so severe and often that one day something happened and" she wasn't returned to her room. She now speaks of "an unbelievable long list of horrid exploitations and inhumane abuses" done to her.
In the late 1980s, fragments of her memory returned. She sought information on her case through an FOIA request, but was told no records were found. From 1992 - 1996, no one helped her until a member of B'nai Brith, Stephanie Suleiman, offered to do so but needed a few weeks to complete other work.
When Ruhullah recontacted her, she learned that "this thirty-two year old mother of two died of a heart attack," very suspicious given her age.
Ruhullah also explains that federal agents stopped communicating with her. Her experiences were "totally removed from the public record," and she went from "being a missing person to becoming a person erased." She's now divorced and unable to contact her children and former friends. "The US government does not want (her) story told."
She adds that the "only way (she) can measure (her) length of time held (is) by her son's age. (He) was six when (agents) entered (her) home, and he is (now) in his late thirties." She considers herself to have been continuously separated from her children, grandchildren, family, friends, assets, memories, and educated skills.
She calls each day "an experience of being held against (her) will while living in a vat of bureaucratic arrogance which refuses to acknowledge what was done (made worse by stopping (her) from getting (her) life back." Each day she's "being more injured and having more of (her) life robbed from" her.
She says she "was not released from custody." After being used for medical experiments, she was "given an implanted false identity, then left penniless and without proof of (her) true identity or lineage." She still considers herself a prisoner, a body with no persona, with little knowledge of her former self, stripped of everything important in her life.
MK-ULTRA and Ruhullah's story will be featured on the Progressive Radio News Hour on February 18 at 10AM US Central time on The Progressive Radio Network. Listen live or later through archives.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to the Lendman News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday and The Progressive Radio News Hour Thursdays and weekends for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
MK-ULTRA: The CIA's Mind Control Program
Stephen Lendman
MK-ULTRA was the code name for a secret CIA mind control program, begun in 1953, under Director Allen Dulles. Its purpose was multifold, including to perfect a truth drug for interrogating suspected Soviet spies during the Cold War. It followed earlier WW II hypnosis, primitive drugs research, and the US Navy's Project Chatter, explained by its Bureau of Medicine and Surgery in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request as follows:
It began "in the fall of 1947 focusing on the identification and testing of drugs (LSD and others) in interrogations and the recruitment of agents. The research included laboratory experiments on both animal and human subjects. The program ended shortly after the Korean War in 1953."
It was run under the direction of Dr. Charles Savage of the Naval Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, MD from 1947 - 1953, after which CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence continued it under the name Project Bluebird, its first mind control program to:
-- learn how to condition subjects to withstand information from being extracted from them by known means;
-- develop interrogation methods to exert control;
-- develop memory enhancement techniques; and
-- establish ways to prevent hostile control of Agency personnel.
In 1951, it was renamed Project Artichoke, then MK-ULTRA under Deputy CIA Director Richard Helms in 1953. It aimed to control human behavior through psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs, electroshock, radiation, graphology, paramilitary techniques, and psychological/sociological/anthropological methods, among others - a vast open-field of mind experimentation trying anything that might work, legal or otherwise on willing and unwitting subjects.
Ongoing at different times were 149 sub-projects in 80 US and Canadian universities, medical centers and three prisons, involving 185 researchers, 15 foundations and numerous drug companies. Everything was top secret, and most records later destroyed, yet FOIA suits salvaged thousands of pages with documented evidence of the horrific experiments and their effects on human subjects.
Most were unwitting guinea pigs, and those consenting were misinformed of the dangers. James Stanley was a career soldier when given LSD in 1958 along with 1,000 other military "volunteers." They suffered hallucinations, memory loss, incoherence, and severe personality changes. Stanley exhibited uncontrollable violence. It destroyed his family, impeded his working ability, and he never knew why until the Army asked him to participate in a follow-up study.
He sued for damages under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), his case reaching the Supreme Court in United States v. Stanley. Argued and decided in 1987, the Court dismissed his claim (5 - 4), ruling his injuries occurred during military service. Justices Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan and Sandra Day O'Conner wrote dissenting opinions, saying the Nuremberg Code applies to soldiers as well as civilians. In 1996, Stanley got $400,000 in compensation, but no apology from the government.
Perhaps MK-ULTRA's most publicized victim was Frank Olsen, a biochemist working for the Army Chemical Corps' Special Operations Division at Ft. Detrick, MD. On November 18, 1953, he was administered LSD. Immediately, he became agitated and severely paranoid. Nine days later, he reportedly committed suicide by jumping 13 stories to his death through a New York hotel's closed window. His family members didn't know he was drugged until MK-ULTRA was exposed in 1975.
President Gerald Ford apologized, granted a $750,000 settlement, but Olson's son discovered documents suggesting his father was killed. In 1994, he exhumed the body, had it forensically evaluated, and the conclusion was homicide based on a previously undetected skull fracture suggesting a blow on the head and other disturbing evidence.
Stanley Glickman was another MK-ULTRA tragedy, an unwitting victim of hallucinogenic drugs and electroshock treatment. He became traumatized, couldn't work, barely ate, suffered a psychological breakdown and never fully recovered. After learning about the CIA's LSD experiments, he sued in 1983. The trial was delayed 16 years, he died, but his sister Gloria Kronisch pursued the case.
MK-ULTRA chief Stanley Gottleib was at issue, hired to run its Technical Service Staff (TSS) to develop poisons to assassinate political opponents, truth serum drugs for interrogating spies, and mind control techniques to create robot assassins or unwitting double agents. He used Nazi scientists and their state of the art methods, perfected on concentration camp victims. Some were known as programmers, skilled professionals in the art of breaking down and controlling the human mind.
Joseph Mengele did similar work, experimenting extensively with children and adults using mescaline, electroshock therapy, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, torture, rape, starvation, and trauma bonding. He was so successful with the latter technique that survivors expressed strong affection for him.
The CIA and US military copied the Nazi methodology through numerous programs, including MK-ULTRA, MK being an abbreviation for words "mind control" in German. According to obtained documents, it works best when severe trauma (such as rape) occurs by age three, the result often causing the personality to split or dissociate (called dissociative identity disorder or DID) to repress painful memories.
Therapists can cause multiple personality disorder (MPD) by mind manipulation, but early in life trauma makes victims especially vulnerable. Gottlieb focused on LSD for mind control and exotic poisons and drugs for political assassinations.
Under Operation Paperclip, 9,000 Nazi scientists and technicians were recruited to help undermine the Soviet Union.
In 1952, Gottlieb met Glickman in a Paris cafe, bought him a drink and laced it with LSD. After finally being held to account, he became ill. The trial was postponed, and on the eve of its resumption he died unexpectedly. At the time, New York Times and Los Angeles Times obituaries reported that his family refused to disclose the cause. The online WorldNet Daily explained it was after a "month-long bout with pneumonia," saying that after being admitted to the University of Virginia Medical Center, he lapsed into a coma, never recovered, but foul play couldn't be determined.
At trial against his estate, the judge died of a heart attack while exercising. The question again arose. Was it natural or was he killed, especially since his replacement was prejudicial to the plaintiff having thrown out his case two years earlier. Perhaps so after the jury ruled against Glickman's family, denying them justice.
On December 22, 1974, Seymour Hersh exposed MK-ULTRA in a New York Times article. Headlined, "Huge CIA Operation Reported in US Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years," it documented illegal activities, including secret experiments on US citizens during the 1960s and earlier. Church Committee Congressional investigations followed, headed by Senator Frank Church, on abusive intelligence practices, replaced by the Pike Committee five months later. The Rockefeller Commission, under vice president Nelson Rockefeller, also examined the domestic activities of the CIA, FBI, and military intelligence agencies.
By summer 1975, it was learned that CIA and Department of Defense had conducted illegal experiments on willing and unwitting subjects as part of an exhaustive program to influence human behavior through psychoactive drugs (including LSD and mescaline) and other chemical, biological, psychological, and other methods.
Origins of CIA Mind Manipulation Practices
CIA became interested in Montreal Dr. Ewen Cameron's work at McGill University's Allan Memorial Institute. With full knowledge of the Canadian government, he was funded to perform bizarre experiments on his psychiatric patients, including keeping them asleep and isolated for weeks, then administering large doses of electroshock and experimental drug cocktails, LSD and PCP angel dust among them.
Though clearly unethical, Cameron believed by blasting the human brain with an array of shocks, he could unmake impaired minds, rebuilding them with new personalities cleansed of their previous state. It was voodoo science and failed, but CIA gained a wealth of knowledge it's used to this day.
In 1951, the Agency engaged McGill's director of psychology, Dr. Donald Hebb, and others to conduct sensory-deprivation experiments on volunteer students. They showed intense isolation disrupts clear thinking enough to make subjects receptive to suggestion. They were also formidable interrogation techniques amounting to torture when forcibly administered.
These early experiments laid the foundation for CIA's two-stage torture process - sensory deprivation followed by overload. University of Wisconsin historian Alfred McCoy documented them in his book, "A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror," calling them "the first real revolution in the cruel science of pain in more than three centuries."
CIA developed and codified them in manuals, used extensively in Southeast Asia, Central America, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, and at secret black sites globally. McCoy referred to an offshore information extraction mini-gulag during the Cold War and War on Terror. Out of sight, nothing is banned, including physical harshness and psychologically crippling mind control methods that turn human beings into mush.
MK-ULTRA was one of them, even though Gerald Ford's 1976 Executive Order (EO 11905) "establish(ed) policies to improve the quality of intelligence needed for national security (and) establish(ed) effective oversight to assure compliance with law in the management and direction of intelligence agencies and departments of the national government."
The EO prohibited "experimentation with drugs on human subjects, except with their informed consent, in writing and witnessed by a disinterested party, of each such human subject," according to guidelines issued by the National Commission. Subsequent Carter and Reagan directives banned all human experimentation. Nonetheless, they continue, in violation of the Nuremberg Code that prohibits:
-- medical experiments without the voluntary consent of human subjects - "without coercion, fraud, deceit, and the full disclosure of known risks;"
-- those "where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur;" and
-- only ones expected "to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study...."
Conducting human mind control experiments are clearly illegal and unethical. They're more sophisticated than ever today, and claims that MK-ULTRA experiments were halted in the 1970s were false. Renamed they continue and much more.
America's Long History of Human Experimentation
Prior examples include:
-- In 1931, Dr. Cornelius Rhoads infected human subjects with cancer cells under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations; Rhoads later conducted radiation exposure experiments on American soldiers and civilian hospital patients;
-- In 1932, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study began on 200 black men; they're weren't told of their illness, were denied treatment, and were used as human guinea pigs to follow their disease symptoms and progression; they all subsequently died;
-- in 1940, 400 Chicago prisoners were infected with malaria to study the effects of new and experimental drugs;
-- from 1942 - 1945, the US Navy used human subjects (locked in chambers) to test gas masks and clothing;
-- since the 1940s, human radiation experiments were conducted to test its effects and determine how much can kill; unwitting subjects were used in prisons, hospitals, orphanages, and mental institutions, including men, women, children, and the unborn of all races, mostly people from lower socio-economic brackets; in addition, more than 200,000 US soldiers were exposed to above ground nuclear tests; many later became ill and died;
-- in 1945, the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) implemented "Program F," the most exhaustive American study of fluoride's health effects - a key component in atomic bomb production and one of the most toxic chemicals known; it causes marked adverse central nervous system effects; in the interest of national security, the information was suppressed;
-- in 1945, VA hospital patients became guinea pigs for medical experiments;
-- in 1947, the AEC's Colonel EE Kirkpatrich issued secret document #07075001, stating that the agency will begin administering intravenous doses of radioactive substances to human subjects;
-- in 1949, the US Army released biological agents in US cities to study the effects of a real germ warfare attack; tests continued secretly through at least the 1960s in San Francisco, New York, Washington, DC, Panama City and Key West, FL, Minnesota, other midwest locations, along the Pennsylvania turnpike and elsewhere;
-- in 1950, the Defense Department (DOD) began open-air testing of nuclear weapons in desert areas, then monitored downwind residents for medical problems and mortality rates;
-- in 1951, African-Americans were exposed to potentially fatal stimulants as part of a race-specific fungal weapons test in Virginia;
-- in 1953, DOD released zinc cadmium sulfide gas over Winnipeg, Canada, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Fort Wayne, the Monocacy River Valley, MD, and Leesburg, VA - to determine how efficiently chemical agents can be dispersed;
-- in 1953, joint Army-Navy-CIA experiments were conducted in New York and San Francisco, exposing tens of thousands of people to the airborne agents Serratia marcescens and Bacillus glogigii;
-- in 1955, the CIA released bacteria from the Army's Tampa, FL biological warfare arsenal to test its ability to infect human populations;
-- in 1956, the US military released mosquitoes infected with Yellow Fever over Savannah, GA and Avon Park, FL to test the health effects on humans;
-- in 1965, Homesburg State Prison, Philadelphia prisoners were subjected to dioxin, the highly toxic Agent Orange agent, to study their carcinogenic effects;
-- in 1966, the New York subway system was used for a germ warfare experiment;
-- in 1969, an apparent nerve agent killed thousands of sheep in Utah;
-- in 1970, the Military Review reported that "ethnic weapons" development was intensified to be able to target specific ethnic groups thought susceptible to genetic differences and DNA variations;
-- in 1976, Americans were warned about an earlier Swine Flu scare, urging everyone to be vaccinated; millions complied, many of whom were harmed; 500 Guillan-Barre Syndrome (GBS - the deadly nerve disorder) resulted; people died from respiratory failure after severe paralysis, and experts said the vaccine increased the GBS risk level eight-fold;
-- in 1985 and 1986, open-air biological agents testing was done in populated areas;
-- in 1990, over 1,500 six-month old Los Angeles black and hispanic babies were given an experimental measles vaccine, never informing parents of the potential harm
-- in 1990 and 1991 before deploying to the Persian Gulf, all US troops were inoculated with experimental anthrax and botulinum toxoid vaccines, even though concerns were raised about their adverse long-term effects; over 12,000 died and over 30% became ill from non-combat-related factors in what subsequently was called Gulf War Syndrome, the result of exposure to a variety of toxins;
-- in 1994, Senator Jay Rockefeller issued a report revealing that for the past 50 or more years, DOD used hundreds of thousands of US military personnel, exposing them to dangerous substances experimentally; materials included mustard and nerve gas, ionizing radiation, psychochemicals, hallucinogens, and other drugs;
-- in 1995, Dr. Garth Nicolson discovered that toxic agents used during the Gulf War were pre-tested on Texas Department of Corrections prisoners;
-- in 1996, DOD admitted that Gulf War troops were exposed to chemical agents; and
-- in 2009, experimental vaccines were again used to inoculate people globally in response to another hyped Swine Flu scare; scattered reports of illnesses and deaths followed.
MK-ULTRA Victim Maryam Ruhullah
This writer will interview Ruhullah and Dr. James Randall Noblitt, a licensed psychologist, on The Progressive Radio News Hour (on The Progressive Radio Network), February 18 at 10AM US Central time to discuss MK-ULTRA, Ruhullah's experience and Noblitt's work with survivors of extreme abuse and individuals afflicted with identity dissociation. Noblitt is a Professor at the California School of Professional Psychology and Chair of the International Society of Trauma and Dissociation Ritual Abuse/Mind Control Interest Group.
The program will be archived for later listening.
As an MK-ULTRA victim, Ruhullah's memory was impaired and somewhat still is because of what she experienced. She explained it as follows.
In the early 1970s, she lived in Boston, MA, was married with a six-year old son, and as a lawyer worked for a prestigious firm, its name she can't remember. "One day, two federal agents came to (her) home unannounced," asking her to be a federal witness against an alleged organized crime figure. For her safety, they explained, she'd be placed in protective custody for a period not exceeding six months. She was asked to leave her family and job immediately, and say nothing to her husband and employer.
She "was forced to leave (her) home with the agents that day." She got no choice, and "was treated more like a prisoner than a witness." She couldn't use the phone or communicate with anyone, was transfered frequently, and held in "very low budget places," during which time her life "became a succession of abuses and exploitations."
"To this day," she says, she doesn't know precisely "when or why the government decided to use" her for MK-ULTRA experimentation, "but one day (she) was a mother, wife, and attorney, then, (later) had no memory of (her) past."
Having partly recovered it, she recalls "being given non-medically necessary electro-shock treatments. This was done to create amnesia (to block her) core personality and replac(e) it with" only need-to-know information.
She remembers "that the shock treatment given (her) was so severe and often that one day something happened and" she wasn't returned to her room. She now speaks of "an unbelievable long list of horrid exploitations and inhumane abuses" done to her.
In the late 1980s, fragments of her memory returned. She sought information on her case through an FOIA request, but was told no records were found. From 1992 - 1996, no one helped her until a member of B'nai Brith, Stephanie Suleiman, offered to do so but needed a few weeks to complete other work.
When Ruhullah recontacted her, she learned that "this thirty-two year old mother of two died of a heart attack," very suspicious given her age.
Ruhullah also explains that federal agents stopped communicating with her. Her experiences were "totally removed from the public record," and she went from "being a missing person to becoming a person erased." She's now divorced and unable to contact her children and former friends. "The US government does not want (her) story told."
She adds that the "only way (she) can measure (her) length of time held (is) by her son's age. (He) was six when (agents) entered (her) home, and he is (now) in his late thirties." She considers herself to have been continuously separated from her children, grandchildren, family, friends, assets, memories, and educated skills.
She calls each day "an experience of being held against (her) will while living in a vat of bureaucratic arrogance which refuses to acknowledge what was done (made worse by stopping (her) from getting (her) life back." Each day she's "being more injured and having more of (her) life robbed from" her.
She says she "was not released from custody." After being used for medical experiments, she was "given an implanted false identity, then left penniless and without proof of (her) true identity or lineage." She still considers herself a prisoner, a body with no persona, with little knowledge of her former self, stripped of everything important in her life.
MK-ULTRA and Ruhullah's story will be featured on the Progressive Radio News Hour on February 18 at 10AM US Central time on The Progressive Radio Network. Listen live or later through archives.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to the Lendman News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday and The Progressive Radio News Hour Thursdays and weekends for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.
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