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Who's Killing the Star Wars Scientists?
Fifty-year-old Alistair Beckham was a successful British aerospace- projects engineer. His specialty was designing computer software for sophisticated naval defense systems. Like hundreds of other British scientists, he was working on a pilot program for America's Strategic Defense Initiative–better known as Star Wars. And like at least 21 of his colleagues, he died a bizarre, violent death.
It was a lazy, sunny Sunday afternoon in August 1988. After driving his wife to work, Beckham walked through his garden to a musty backyard toolshed and sat down on a box next to the door. He wrapped bare wires around his chest, attached the to an electrical outlet and put a handkerchief in his mouth. Then he pulled the switch.
With his death, Beckham's name was added to a growing list of British scientists who've died or disappeared under mysterious circumstances since 1982. Each was a skilled expert in computers, and each was working on a highly classified project for the American Star Wars program. None had any apparent motive for killing himself.
The British government contends that the deaths are all a matter of coincidence. The British press blames stress. Others allude to an ongoing fraud investigation involving the nation's leading defense contractor. Relatives left behind don't know what to think.
"There weren't any women involved. There weren't any men involved. We had a very good relationship," says Mary Beckham, Alistair's widow. "We don't know why he did it…if he did it. And I don't believe that he did do it. He wouldn't go out to the shed. There had to be something…."
The string of unexplained deaths can be traced back to March 1982, when Essex University computer scientist Dr. Keith Bowden died in a car wreck on his ay home from a London social function. Authorities claim Bowden was drunk. His wife and friends say otherwise.
Bowden, 45, was a whiz with super-computers and computer- controlled aircraft. He was cofounder of the Department of Computer Sciences at Essex and had worked for one of the major Star Wars contractors in England.
One night Bowden's immaculately maintained Rover careened across a four-lane highway and plunged off a bridge, down an embankment, into an abandoned rail yard. Bowden was found dead at the scene.
During the inquest, police testified that Bowden's blood alcohol level had exceeded the legal limit and that he had been driving too fast. His death was ruled accidental.
Wife Hillary Bowden and her lawyer suspected a cover-up. Friends he'd supposedly spent the evening with denied that Bowden had been drinking. Then there was the condition of Bowden's car.
"My solicitor instructed an accident specialist to examine the automobile," Mrs. Bowden explains. "Somebody had taken the wheels off and put others on that were old and worn. At the inquest this was not allowed to be brought up. Someone asked if the car was in a sound condition, and the answer was yes."
Hillary, in a state of shock, never protested the published verdict. Yet, she remains convinced that someone tampered with her husband's car. "It certainly looked like foul play," Hillary maintains.
Four years later the British press finally added Bowden's case to its growing dossier. First, there appeared to be two interconnected deaths, then six, then 12–suddenly there were 22.
Take 37-year-old David Sands, a senior scientist at Easams working on a highly sensitive computer-controlled satellite- radar system. In March 1987 Sands made a U-turn on his way to work and rammed his car into the brick wall of a vacant restaurant. His trunk was loaded with full gasoline cans. The car exploded on impact.
Given the incongruities of the accident and the lack of a suicide motive, the coroner refused to rule out the possibility of foul play. Meanwhile, information leaked to the press suggested that Sands had been under a tremendous emotional strain.
Margaret Worth, Sand's mother-in-law, claims these stories are totally inaccurate. "When David died, it was a great mystery to us," she admits. "He was very successful. He was very confident. He had just pulled off a great coup for his company, and he was about to be greatly rewarded. He had a very bright future ahead of him. He was perfectly happy the week before this happened."
Like many of the bereaved, Worth is still at a loss for answers. "One week we think he must have been got at. The next week we think it couldn't be anything like that," she says.
This wave of suspicious fatalities in the ultrasecret world of sophisticated weaponry has not gone unnoticed by the United States government. Late last fall, the American embassy in London publicly requested a full investigation by the British Ministry of Defense (MoD).
Members of British Parliament, such a Labour MP Doug Hoyle, copresident of the Manufacturing, Science & Finance Union, had been making similar requests for more than two years. The Thatcher government had refused to launch any sort of inquiry.
"How many more deaths before we get the government to give the answers?" Hoyle asks. "From a security point of view, surely both ourselves and the Americans ought to be looking into it."
The Pentagon refuses comment on the deaths. However, according to Reagan Administration sources, "We cannot ignore it anymore."
Actually, British and American intelligence agencies are on the situation. When THE SUNDAY TIMES in London published the details of 12 mysterious deaths last September, sources at the American embassy admitted being aware of at least ten additional victims whose names had already been sent to Washington. The sources added that the embassy had been monitoring reports of "the mysterious deaths" for two years.
English intelligence has suffered several damaging spy scandals in the 20 century. The CIA may suspect the deaths are an indication of security leaks, that Star Wars secrets are being sold to the Russians. Perhaps these scientists had been blackmailed into supplying classified data to Moscow and could no longer live with themselves. One or more may have stumbled onto an espionage ring and been silenced.
As NBC News London correspondent Henry Champ puts it, "In the world of espionage, there is a saying: Twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action."
Where SDI is concerned, a tremendous amount is at stake. In return for the Thatcher government's early support of the Star Wars program, the Reagan Administration promised a number of extremely lucrative SDI contracts to the British defense industry–hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars the struggling British economy can little afford to lose.
Britain traditionally has one of the finest defense industries in the world. Their annual overseas weapons sales amount to almost $250 billion. The publicity from a Star Wars spy scandal could seriously cut into the profits.
It would appear that only initial promises made to Prime Minister Thatcher hold the U.S. from cutting its losses and pulling out. A high-ranking American source was quoted in the SUNDAY TIMES saying, "If this had happened in Greece, Brazil, Spain, or Argentina, we'd be all over them like a glove!"
The Thatcher government's PR problem is that the scandal centers around Marconi Company Ltd., Britain's largest electronics-defense contractor. Seven Marconi scientists are among the dead.
Marconi, which employs 50,000 workers worldwide, is a subsidiary of Britain's General Electric Company (GEC). GEC managing director Lord Wienstock recently launched his own internal investigation.
Yet, the GEC and the Ministry of Defense still contend that the 22 deaths are coincidental. A Ministry of Defense spokesman claims to have found "no evidence of any sinister links between them."
However, an article in the British publication THE INDEPENDENT claims the incidence of suicide among Marconi scientists is twice the national average of mentally healthy individuals. Either Marconi is hiring abnormally unstable scientists or something is very wrong.
Two deaths brought the issue to light in the fall of 1986. Within weeks of each other, two London-based Marconi scientists were found dead 100 miles away, in Bristol. Both were involved in creating the software for a huge, computerized Star Wars simulator, the hub of Marconi's SDI program. Both had been working on the simulator just hours before their death. Like the others, neither had any apparent reason to kill himself.
Vimal Dajibhai was a 24-year-old electronics graduate who worked at Marconi Underwater Systems in Croxley Green. In August 1986 his crumpled body was found lying on the pavement 240 feet below the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol.
An inquest was unable to determine whether Dajibhai had been pushed off the bridge or whether he had jumped. There had been no witnesses. The verdict was left open. Yet, authorities did their best to pin his death on suicide.
Police testified that Dajibhai had been suffering from depression, something his family and friends flatly denied. Dajibhai had absolutely no history of personal or emotional problems.
Police also claimed that the deceased had been drinking with a friend, Heyat Shah, shortly before his death, and that a bottle of wine and two used paper cups had been found in his car. Yet, forensic tests were never done on the auto, and those who knew Vimal, including Shah, say that he had never taken a drink of alcohol in his life.
Investigating journalists found discrepancies in other evidence. "A police report noted a puncture mark on Dijabhai's left buttock after his fall from the bridge," explains Tony Collins, who covered the story for Britain's COMPUTER NEWS magazine. "Apparently, this was the reason his funeral was halted seconds before the cremation was to take place.
"Members of the Family were told that the body was to be taken away for a second postmortem, to be done by a top home- office pathologist. That's not normal. Then, a few months later, police held a press conference and announced that it hadn't been a puncture mark after all, that it was a wound caused by a bone fragment.
"I find it very difficult to reconcile the initial coroner's report with what the police were saying a few months later," Collins contends.
Officials didn't fare any better with the second Bristol fatality. Police virtually tripped over themselves to come up with a motive for the apparent–and unusually violent–suicide of Ashaad Sharif.
Sharif was a 26-year-old computer analyst who worked at the Marconi Defense Systems headquarters in Stanmore, Middlesex. On October 28, 1986, he allegedly drove to a public park not far from where Dajibhai had died. He tied one end of a nylon cord around a tree and tied the other end around his neck. Then he got back into his Audi 80 automatic, stepped on the gas and sped off, decapitating himself.
Marconi initially claimed Sharif was only a junior employee, and that he had nothing to do with Star Wars. Co-workers stated otherwise. At the time of his death, Sharif was apparently about to be promoted. Also, Ashaad reportedly worked for a time in Vimal Dajibhai's section.
The inquest determined that Sharif's death was a suicide. Investigating officers maintained that the man had killed himself because he'd been jilted by an alleged lover. Ashaad hadn't seen the woman in three years.
"Sharif was said to have been depressed over a broken romance," Tony Collins explains. "But the woman police unofficially say was his lover contends that she was only his landlady when he was working for British Aerospace in Bristol. She's married, has three children, and she's deeply religious. The possibility of the two having an affair seems highly unlikely–especially since Sharif had a fiancee in Pakistan. His family told me that he was genuinely in love with her."
Police suddenly switched stories. They began to say that Sharif had been deeply in love with the woman he was engaged to, and that he'd decapitated himself because another woman was pressuring him to call off the marriage.
Authorities claimed to have found a taped message in Sharif's car "tantamount" to a suicide note. On it, officers said, he'd admitted to having had an affair, thus bringing shame on his family. Family members who've heard the tape say that it actually gave no indication of why Sharif might want to kill himself.
Sharif's family was told by the coroner that it was "not in their best interest" to attend the inquest.
"It's been almost impossible to get to information about deaths that should be in the public domain," Tony Collins laments. "I've been given false names or incorrect spellings, or I've not been told where inquests have taken place. It's made it very difficult for me to try to track down the details of these cases."
In the Sharif case, two facts stand out: Ashaad had no history of depression, and there was absolutely no reason for him to be in Bristol.
A widely help theory among the establishment press is that the mysterious deaths are stress-related accidents or suicides. Such theories may not be far off the mark.
According to a high-ranking British government official, for the past year and a half the Ministry of Defense has been secretly investigating Marconi on allegations of defense- contract fraud–overcharging the government, bribing officials. The extensive probe has required most of the MoD's investiga- tive resources, conceivably reaching as far as Marconi's sub- contractors and into MoD research facilities such as the Royal Military College of Science and the Royal Air Force Research Center.
Almost all of the dead scientists were associated with one or more of these establishments.
If Marconi employees were being forced by management to perform or to cover up illegal activities, it may be that the stress did indeed get to them.
"In America, there are considerable incentives for people to blow the whistle if they're being asked to perform illegal acts like ripping off the government," a confidential source in Parliament explains. "However, in this country there have been perhaps 20 people who've blown the whistle, and none of them have ever worked again. They didn't receive any compensation. Here, you don't get any recognition. You get threatened with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. They can fire you. Then they can take away your home and get you blacklisted.
"It's an impossible position to be placed in," the source adds. "It's quite conceivable that these people could have killed themselves because they felt terribly ashamed of what they'd done. For that matter, some of the accidents or suicides could have been men who'd taken bribes but who couldn't face the embarrassment of public disclosure."
If Marconi was systematically defrauding the government for millions of pounds each year, perhaps an employee stumbled upon incriminating evidence and had to be done away with. It would be easy enough to make it look like an accident.
Consider the peculiar death of Peter Peapell, found dead beneath his car in the garage of his Oxfordshire home. Peapell, 46, worked for the Royal Military College of Science, a world authority on communications technology, electronics surveillance and target detection. Peapell was an expert at using computers to process signals emitted by metals. His work reportedly included testing titanium for its resistance to explosives.
On the night of February 22, 1987, Peapell spent an enjoyable evening out with his wife, Maureen, and their friends. When they returned home, Maureen went straight to bed, leaving Peter to put the car away.
When Maureen woke up the next morning, she discovered that Peter had not come to bed. She went looking for him. When she reached the garage, she noticed that the door was closed. Yet she could hear the car's engine running.
She found her husband lying on his back beneath the car, his mouth directly below the tail pipe. She pulled him into the open air, but he was already dead.
Initially, Maureen thought her husband's death an accident. She presumed he'd gotten under the car to investigate a knocking he'd heard driving home the night before, and that he'd gotten stuck. But the light fixture in the garage was broken, and Peter hadn't been carrying a flashlight.
Police had their own suspicions. A constable the same height and wieght as Peter Peapell found it impossible to crawl under the car when the garage door was closed. He also found it impossible to close the door once he was under the car.
Carbon deposits from the inside of the garage door showed that the engine had been running only a short time. Yet, Mrs. Peapell had found the body almost seven hours after she'd gone to bed.
The coroner's inquest could not determine whether the death was a homicide, a suicide or an accident. According to Maureen Peapell, Peter had no reason to kill himself. They had no marital or financial problems. Peter loved his job. He'd just received a sizable raise, and according to colleagues, he'd exhibited "absolutely no signs of stress."
We may never know what is killing these scientists. Everyone has a theory.
The National Forum Foundation, a conservative Washington D.C., think tank, believes the deaths are the work of European- based, left-wing terrorists, such as those who took credit for gunning down a West German bureaucrat who'd negotiated Star Wars contracts. The group also claims the July 1986 bombing death of a researcher director from the Siemens Company–a high-tech, West German electronics firm. They have yet to take credit for any of the scientists.
A more outrageous theory suggests that the Russians have developed an electromagnetic "death ray," with which they're driving the British scientists to suicide. A supermarket tabloid contends the ultrathin waves emitted by the device interfere with a person's brain waves, causing violent mood shifts, including suicidal depres- sion.
The genius of such a weapon is that the victim does all the dirty work and takes all the blame. Yet, if the Soviets have actually developed such a weapon, why waste it on 22 British defense workers?
Are the scientists victims of a corrupt defense industry? Have they been espionage pawns? Are the deaths nothing more than an extraordinary coincidence? Guess.
1. AUTO ACCIDENT–Professor Keith Bowden, 45, computer scientist, Essex University. In March 1982 Bowden's car plunged off a bridge, into am abandoned rail yard. His death was listed as an accident.
2. MISSING PERSON–Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Godley, 49, defense expert, head of work-study unit at the Royal Military College of Science. Godley disappeared in April 1983. His father bequeathes him more than $60,000, with the proviso that he claim it be 1987. He never showed up and is presumed dead.
3. SHOTGUN BLAST–Roger Hill, 49, radar designer and draftsman, Marconi. In March 1985 Hill allegedly killed himself with a shotgun at the family home.
4. DEATH LEAP–Jonathan Walsh, 29, digital-communications expert assigned to British Telecom's secret Martlesham Health research facility (and to GEC, Marconi's parent firm). In November 1985 Walsh allegedly fell from his hotel room while working on a British Telecom project in Abidjan, Ivory Coast (Africa). He had expressed a fear for his life. Verdict: Still in question.
5. DEATH LEAP–Vimal Dajibhai, 24, computer-software engineer (worked on guidance system for Tigerfish torpedo), Marconi Underwater Systems. In August 1986 Dajibhai's crumpled remains were found 240 feet below the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol. The death has not been listed as a suicide.
6. DECAPITATION–Ashaad Sharif, 26, computer analyst, Marconi Defense Systems. In October 1986, in Bristol, Sharif allegedly tied one end of a rope around a tree and the other end around his neck, then drove off in his car at high speed. Verdict: Suicide.
7. SUFFOCATION–Richard Pugh, computer consultant for the Ministry of Defense. In January 1987 Pugh was found dead, wrapped head-to- toe in rope that was tied four times around his neck. The coroner listed his death as an accident due to a sexual experiment gone awry.
8. ASPHYXIATION–John Brittan, Ministry of Defense tank batteries expert, Royal Military College of Science. In January 1987 Brittan was found dead in a parked car in his garage. The engine was still running. Verdict: Accidental death.
9. DRUG OVERDOSE–Victor Moore, 46, design engineer, Marconi Space Systems. In February 1987 Moore was found dead of a drug overdose. His death is listed as a suicide.
10. ASPHYXIATION–Peter Peapell, 46, scientist, Royal Military College of Science. In February 1987 Peapell was found dead beneath his car, his face near the tail pipe, in the garage of his Oxfordshire home. Death was due to carbon-monoxide poisoning, although test showed that the engine had been running only a short time. Foul play has not been ruled out.
11. ASPHYXIATION–Edwin Skeels, 43, engineer, Marconi. In February 1987 Skeels was found dead in his car, a victim of carbon-monoxide poisoning. A hose led from the exhaust pipe. His death is listed as a suicide.
12. AUTO ACCIDENT–David Sands, satellite projects manager, Eassams (a Marconi sister company). Although up for a promotion, in March 1987 Sands drove a car filled with gasoline cans into the brick wall of an abandoned cafe. He was killed instantly. Foul play has not been ruled out.
13. AUTO ACCIDENT–Stuart Gooding, 23, postgraduate research student, Royal Military College of Science. In April 1987 Gooding died in a mysterious car wreck in Cyprus while the College was holding military exercises on the island. Verdict: Accidental death.
14. AUTO ACCIDENT–George Kountis, experienced systems analyst at British Polytechnic. In April 1987 Kountis drowned after his BMW plunged into the Mersey River in Liverpool. His death is listed as a misadventure.
15. SUFFOCATION–Mark Wisner, 24, software engineer at Ministry of Defense experimental station for combat aircraft. In April 1987 Wisner was found dead in his home with a plastic bag over his head. At the inqust, his death was rules an accident due to a sexual experiment gone awry.
16. AUTO ACCIDENT–Michael Baker, 22, digital-communications expert, Plessey Defense Systems. In May 1987 Baker's BMW crashed through a road barrier, killing the driver. Verdict: Misadventure.
17. HEART ATTACK–Frank Jennings, 60, electronic-weapons engineer for Plessey. In June 1987 Jennings allegedly dropped dead of a heart attack. No inquest was held.
18. DEATH LEAP–Russel Smith, 23, lab technician at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment. In January 1988 Smith's mangled body was found halfway down a cliff in Cornwall. Verdict: Suicide.
19. ASPHYXIATION–Trevor Knight, 52, computer engineer, Marconi Space and Defense Systems. In March 1988 Knight was found dead in his car, asphyxiated by fume from a hose attached to the tail pipe. The death was ruled a suicide.
20. ELECTROCUTION–John Ferry, 60, assistant marketing director for Marconi. In August 1988 Ferry was found dead in a company-owned apartment, the stripped leads of an electrical cord in his mouth. Foul play has not been ruled out.
21. ELECTROCUTION–Alistair Beckham, 50, software engineer, Plessey. In August 1988 Beckham's lifeless body was found in the garden shed behind his house. Bare wires, which ran to a live main, were wrapped around his chest. Now suicide note was found, and police habe not ruled out foul play.
22. ASPHYXIATION–Andrew Hall, 33, engineering manager, British Aero- space. In September 1988 Hall was found dead in his car, asphyxiated by fumes from a hose that was attached to the tail pipe. Friends said he was well liked, had everything to live for. Verdict: Suicide.
Aldous Huxley at UC Berkeley 1962 (transcript)
Aldous Huxley, author of 'Brave New World', gives his speech "The Ultimate Revolution" at Cal Berkeley, 1962.
{garbled}Aldous Huxley, a renowned Essayist and Novelist who during the spring semester is residing at the university in his capacity of a Ford research professor. Mr Huxley has recently returned from a conference at the Institute for the study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara where the discussion focused on the development of new techniques by which to control and direct human behavior. Traditionally it has been possible to suppress individual freedom through the application of physical coercion through the appeal of ideologies through the manipulation of man's physical and social environment and more recently through the techniques, the cruder techniques of psychological conditioning. The Ultimate Revolution, about which Mr. Huxley will speak today, concerns itself with the development of new behavioral controls, which operate directly on the psycho-physiological organisms of man. That is the capacity to replace external constraint by internal compulsions. As those of us who are familiar with Mr. Huxley's works will know, this is a subject of which he has been concerned for quite a period of time. Mr. Huxley will make a presentation of approximately half an hour followed by some brief discussions and questions by the two panelists sitting to my left, Mrs. Lillian {garbled} and Mr. John Post. Now Mr. Huxley
Thank You.
Uh, First of all, the, I'd like to say, that the conference at Santa Barbara was not directly concerned with the control of the mind. That was a conference, there have been two of them now, at the University of California Medical center in San Francisco, one this year which I didn't attend, and one two years ago where there was a considerable discussion on this subject. At Santa Barbara we were talking about technology in general and the effects it's likely to have on society and the problems related to technological transplanting of technology into underdeveloped countries.
Well now in regard to this problem of the ultimate revolution, this has been very well summed up by the moderator. In the past we can say that all revolutions have essentially aimed at changing the environment in order to change the individual. I mean there's been the political revolution, the economic revolution, in the time of the reformation, the religious revolution. All these aimed, not directly at the human being, but at his surroundings. So that by modifying the surroundings you did achieve, did one remove the effect of the human being.
Today we are faced, I think, with the approach of what may be called the ultimate revolution, the final revolution, where man can act directly on the mind-body of his fellows. Well needless to say some kind of direct action on human mind-bodies has been going on since the beginning of time. But this has generally been of a violent nature. The Techniques of terrorism have been known from time immemorial and people have employed them with more or less ingenuity sometimes with the utmost cruelty, sometimes with a good deal of skill acquired by a process of trial and error finding out what the best ways of using torture, imprisonment, constraints of various kinds.
But, as, I think it was (sounds like Mettenicht) said many years ago, you can do everything with {garbled} except sit on them. If you are going to control any population for any length of time, you must have some measure of consent, it's exceedingly difficult to see how pure terrorism can function indefinitely. It can function for a fairly long time, but I think sooner or later you have to bring in an element of persuasion an element of getting people to consent to what is happening to them.
It seems to me that the nature of the ultimate revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this: That we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably will always exist to get people to love their servitude. This is the, it seems to me, the ultimate in malevolent revolutions shall we say, and this is a problem which has interested me many years and about which I wrote thirty years ago, a fable, Brave New World, which is an account of society making use of all the devices available and some of the devices which I imagined to be possible making use of them in order to, first of all, to standardize the population, to iron out inconvenient human differences, to create, to say, mass produced models of human beings arranged in some sort of scientific caste system. Since then, I have continued to be extremely interested in this problem and I have noticed with increasing dismay a number of the predictions which were purely fantastic when I made them thirty years ago have come true or seem in process of coming true.
A number of techniques about which I talked seem to be here already. And there seems to be a general movement in the direction of this kind of ultimate revolution, a method of control by which a people can be made to enjoy a state of affairs by which any decent standard they ought not to enjoy. This, the enjoyment of servitude, Well this process is, as I say, has gone on for over the years, and I have become more and more interested in what is happening.
And here I would like briefly to compare the parable of Brave New World with another parable which was put forth more recently in George Orwell's book, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell wrote his book between, I think between 45 and 48 at the time when the Stalinist terror regime was still in Full swing and just after the collapse of the Hitlerian terror regime. And his book which I admire greatly, it's a book of very great talent and extraordinary ingenuity, shows, so to say, a projection into the future of the immediate past, of what for him was the immediate past, and the immediate present, it was a projection into the future of a society where control was exercised wholly by terrorism and violent attacks upon the mind-body of individuals.
Whereas my own book which was written in 1932 when there was only a mild dictatorship in the form of Mussolini in existence, was not overshadowed by the idea of terrorism, and I was therefore free in a way in which Orwell was not free, to think about these other methods of control, these non-violent methods and my, I'm inclined to think that the scientific dictatorships of the future, and I think there are going to be scientific dictatorships in many parts of the world, will be probably a good deal nearer to the brave new world pattern than to the 1984 pattern, they will a good deal nearer not because of any humanitarian qualms of the scientific dictators but simply because the BNW pattern is probably a good deal more efficient than the other.
That if you can get people to consent to the state of affairs in which they're living. The state of servitude the state of being, having their differences ironed out, and being made amenable to mass production methods on the social level, if you can do this, then you have, you are likely, to have a much more stable and lasting society. Much more easily controllable society than you would if you were relying wholly on clubs and firing squads and concentration camps. So that my own feeling is that the 1984 picture was tinged of course by the immediate past and present in which Orwell was living, but the past and present of those years does not reflect, I feel, the likely trend of what is going to happen, needless to say we shall never get rid of terrorism, it will always find its way to the surface.
But I think that insofar as dictators become more and more scientific, more and more concerned with the technically perfect, perfectly running society, they will be more and more interested in the kind of techniques which I imagined and described from existing realities in BNW. So that, it seems to me then, that this ultimate revolution is not really very far away, that we, already a number of techniques for bringing about this kind of control are here, and it remains to be seen when and where and by whom they will first be applied in any large scale.
And first let me talk about the, a little bit about the, improvement in the techniques of terrorism. I think there have been improvements. Pavlov after all made some extremely profound observations both on animals and on human beings. And he found among other things that conditioning techniques applied to animals or humans in a state either of psychological or physical stress sank in so to say, very deeply into the mind-body of the creature, and were extremely difficult to get rid of. That they seemed to be embedded more deeply than other forms of conditioning.
And this of course, this fact was discovered empirically in the past. People did make use of many of these techniques, but the difference between the old empirical intuitive methods and our own methods is the difference between the, a sort of, hit and miss craftsman's point of view and the genuinely scientific point of view. I think there is a real difference between ourselves and say the inquisitors of the 16th century. We know much more precisely what we are doing, than they knew and we can extend because of our theoretical knowledge, we can extend what we are doing over a wider area with a greater assurance of being producing something that really works.
In this context I would like to mention the extremely interesting chapters in Dr. William (sounds like Seargent's) Battle for the Mind where he points out how intuitively some of the great religious teachers/leaders of the past hit on the Pavlovian method, he speaks specifically of Wesley's method of producing conversions which were essentially based on the technique of heightening psychological stress to the limit by talking about hellfire and so making people extremely vulnerable to suggestion and then suddenly releasing this stress by offering hopes of heaven and this is a very interesting chapter of showing how completely on purely intuitive and empirical grounds a skilled natural psychologist, as Wesley was, could discover these Pavlovian methods.
Well, as I say, we now know the reason why these techniques worked and there's no doubt at all that we can if we wanted to, carry them much further than was possible in the past. And of course in the history of, recent history of brainwashing, both as applied to prisoners of war and to the lower personnel within the communist party in China, we see that the pavlovian methods have been applied systematically and with evidently with extraordinary efficacy. I think there can be no doubt that by the application of these methods a very large army of totally devoted people has been created. The conditioning has been driven in, so to say, by a kind of psychological iontophoresis into the very depths of the people's being, and has got so deep that it's very difficult to ever be rooted out, and these methods, I think, are a real refinement on the older methods of terror because they combine methods of terror with methods of acceptance that the person who is subjected to a form of terroristic stress but for the purpose of inducing a kind of voluntary quotes acceptance of the state the psychological state in which he has been driven and the state of affairs in which he finds himself.
So there is, as I say, there has been a definite improvement in the, even in the techniques of terrorism. But then we come to the consideration of other techniques, non-terroristic techniques, for inducing consent and inducing people to love their servitude. Here, I don't think I can possibly go into all of them, because I don't know all of them, but I mean I can mention the more obvious methods, which can now be used and are based on recent scientific findings. First of all there are the methods connected with straight suggestion and hypnosis.
I think we know much more about this subject than was known in the past. People of course, always have known about suggestion, and although they didn't know the word 'hypnosis' they certainly practiced it in various ways. But we have, I think, a much greater knowledge of the subject than in the past, and we can make use of our knowledge in ways, which I think the past was never able to make use of it. For example, one of the things we now know for certain, that there is of course an enormous, I mean this has always been known a very great difference between individuals in regard to their suggestibility. But we now know pretty clearly the sort of statistical structure of a population in regard to its suggestibility. Its very interesting when you look at the findings of different fields, I mean the field of hypnosis, the field of administering placebos, for example, in the field of general suggestion in states of drowsiness or light sleep you will find the same sorts of orders of magnitude continually cropping up.
You'll find for example that the experienced hypnotist will tell one that the number of people, the percentage of people who can be hypnotized with the utmost facility (snaps), just like that. is about 20%, and about a corresponding number at the other end of the scale are very, very difficult or almost impossible to hypnotize. But in between lies a large mass of people who can with more or less difficulty be hypnotized, that they can gradually be if you work hard enough at it be got into the hypnotic state, and in the same way the same sort of figures crop up again, for example in relation to the administration of placebos.
A big experiment was carried out three of four years ago in the general hospital in Boston on post-operative cases where several hundred men and woman suffering comparable kinds of pain after serious operations were allowed to, were given injections whenever they asked for them whenever the pain got bad, and the injections were 50% of the time were of morphine, and 50% of water. And about twenty percent of those who went through the experiment, about 20% of them got just as much relief from the distilled waters as from the morphea. About 20% got no relief from the distilled water, and in-between were those who got some relief or got relief occasionally.
So yet again, we see the same sort of distribution, and similarly in regard to what in BNW I called Hypnopedia, the sleep teaching, I was talking not long ago to a man who manufactures records which people can listen to in the, during the light part of sleep, I mean these are records for getting rich, for sexual satisfaction (crowd laughs), for confidence in salesmanship and so on, and he said that its very interesting that these are records sold on a money-back basis, and he says there is regularly between 15% and 20% of people who write indignantly saying the records don't work at all, and he sends the money back at once. There are on the other hand, there are over 20% who write enthusiastically saying they are much richer, their sexual life is much better (laughter) etc, etc. And these of course are the dream clients and they buy more of these records. And in between there are those who don't get much results and they have to have letters written to them saying "Go persist my dear, go on" (laughter) and you will get there, and they generally do get results in the long run.
Well, as I say, on the basis of this, I think we see quite clearly that the human populations can be categorized according to their suggestibility fairly clearly,. I suspect very strongly that this twenty percent is the same in all these cases, and I suspect also that it would not be at all difficult to recognize and {garbled} out who are those who are extremely suggestible and who are those extremely unsuggestible and who are those who occupy the intermediate space. Quite clearly, if everybody were extremely unsuggestible organized society would be quite impossible, and if everybody were extremely suggestible then a dictatorship would be absolutely inevitable. I mean it's very fortunate that we have people who are moderately suggestible in the majority and who therefore preserve us from dictatorship but do permit organized society to be formed. But, once given the fact that there are these 20% of highly suggestible people, it becomes quite clear that this is a matter of enormous political importance, for example, any demagogue who is able to get hold of a large number of these 20% of suggestible people and to organize them is really in a position to overthrow any government in any country.
And I mean, I think this after all, we had the most incredible example in recent years by what can be done by efficient methods of suggestion and persuasion in the form of Hitler. Anyone who has read, for example, (Sounds like Bulloch's) Life of Hitler, comes forth with this horrified admiration for this infernal genius, who really understood human weaknesses I think almost better than anybody and who exploited them with all the resources then available. I mean he knew everything, for example, he knew intuitively this pavlovian truth that condition installed in a state of stress or fatigue goes much deeper than conditioning installed at other times. This of course is why all his big speeches were organized at night. He speaks quite frankly, of course, in Mein Kampf, this is done solely because people are tired at night and therefore much less capable of resisting persuasion than they would be during the day. And in all his techniques he was using, he had discovered intuitively and by trial and error a great many of the weaknesses, which we now know about on a sort of scientific way I think much more clearly than he did.
But the fact remains that this differential of suggestibility this susceptibility to hypnosis I do think is something which has to be considered very carefully in relation to any kind of thought about democratic government . If there are 20% of the people who really can be suggested into believing almost anything, then we have to take extremely careful steps into prevent the rise of demagogues who will drive them on into extreme positions then organize them into very, very dangerous armies, private armies which may overthrow the government.
This is, I say, in this field of pure persuasion, I think we do know much more than we did in the past, and obviously we now have mechanisms for multiplying the demagogues voice and image in a quite hallucinatory way, I mean, the TV and radio, Hitler was making enormous use of the radio, he could speak to millions of people simultaneously. This alone creates an enormous gulf between the modern and the ancient demagogue. The ancient demagogue could only appeal to as many people as his voice could reach by yelling at his utmost, but the modern demagogue could touch literally millions at a time, and of course by the multiplication of his image he can produce this kind of hallucinatory effect which is of enormous hypnotic and suggestive importance.
But then there are the various other methods one can think of which, thank heaven, as yet have not be used, but which obviously could be used. There is for example, the pharmacological method, this is one of the things I talked about in BNW. I invented a hypothetical drug called SOMA, which of course could not exist as it stood there because it was simultaneously a stimulant, a narcotic, and a hallucinogen, which seems unlikely in one substance. But the point is, if you applied several different substances you could get almost all these results even now, and the really interesting things about the new chemical substances, the new mind-changing drugs is this, if you looking back into history its clear that man has always had a hankering after mind changing chemicals, he has always desired to take holidays from himself, but the, and, this is the most extraordinary effect of all that every natural occurring narcotic stimulant, sedative, or hallucinogen, was discovered before the dawn of history, I don't think there is one single one of these naturally occurring ones which modern science has discovered.
Modern science has of course better ways of extracting the active principals of these drugs and of course has discovered numerous ways of synthesizing new substances of extreme power, but the actual discovery of these naturally occurring things was made by primitive man goodness knows how many centuries ago. There is for example, in the underneath the, lake dwellings of the early Neolithic that have been dug up in Switzerland we have found poppy-heads, which looks as though people were already using this most ancient and powerful and dangerous of narcotics, even before the days of the rise of agriculture. So that man was apparently a dope-bag addict before he was a farmer, which is a very curious comment on human nature.
But, the difference, as I say, between the ancient mind-changers, the traditional mind-changers, and the new substances is that they were extremely harmful and the new ones are not. I mean even the permissible mind-changer alcohol is not entirely harmless, as people may have noticed, and I mean the other ones, the non-permissible ones, such as opium and cocaine, opium and its derivatives, are very harmful indeed. They rapidly produce addiction, and in some cases lead at an extraordinary rate to physical degeneration and death.
Whereas these new substances, this is really very extraordinary, that a number of these new mind-changing substances can produce enormous revolutions within the mental side of our being, and yet do almost nothing to the physiological side. You can have an enormous revolution, for example, with LSD-25 or with the newly synthesized drug psilocybin, which is the active principal of the Mexican sacred mushroom. You can have this enormous mental revolution with no more physiological revolution than you would get from drinking two cocktails. And this is a really most extraordinary effect.
And it is of course true that pharmacologists are producing a great many new wonder drugs where the cure is almost worse than the disease. Every year the new edition of medical textbooks contains a longer and longer chapter of what are Iatrogenic diseases, that is to say diseases caused by doctors (laughter} And this is quite true, many of the wonder drugs are extremely dangerous. I mean they can produce extraordinary effects, and in critical conditions they should certainly be used, but they should be used with the utmost caution. But there is evidently a whole class of drugs effecting the CNS which can produce enormous changes in sedation in euphoria in energizing the whole mental process without doing any perceptible harm to the human body, and this presents to me the most extraordinary revolution. In the hands of a dictator these substances in one kind or the other could be used with, first of all, complete harmlessness, and the result would be, you can imagine a euphoric that would make people thoroughly happy even in the most abominable circumstances.
I mean these things are possible. This is the extraordinary thing, I mean after all this is even true with the crude old drugs. I mean, a housemate years ago remarked after reading Milton's Paradise Lost, He Says "And beer does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man" (laughter). And beer is of course, an extremely crude drug compared to these ones. And you can certainly say that some of the psychic energizers and the new hallucinants could do incomparably more than Milton and all the Theologicians combined could possibly do to make the terrifying mystery of our existence seem more tolerable than it does. And here I think one has an enormous area in which the ultimate revolution could function very well indeed, an area in which a great deal of control could be used by not through terror, but by making life seem much more enjoyable than it normally does. Enjoyable to the point, where as I said before, Human beings come to love a state of things by which any reasonable and decent human standard they ought not to love and this I think is perfectly possible.
But then, very briefly, let me speak about one of the more recent developments in the sphere of neurology, about the implantation of electrodes in the brain. This of course has been done in the large scale in animals and in a few cases its been done in the cases of the hopelessly insane. And anybody who has watched the behavior of rats with electrodes placed in different centers must come away from this experience with the most extraordinary doubts about what on Earth is in store for us if this is got a hold of by a dictator. I saw not long ago some rats in the {garbled} laboratory at UCLA there were two sets of them, one with electrodes planted in the pleasure center, and the technique was they had a bar which they pressed which turned on a very small current for a short space of time which we had a wire connected with that electrode and which stimulated the pleasure center and was evidently absolutely ecstatic was these rats were pressing the bar 18,000 times a day (laughter). Apparently if you kept them from pressing the bar for a day, they'd press it 36,000 times on the following day and would until they fell down in complete exhaustion (laughter) And they would neither eat, nor be interested in the opposite sex but would just go on pressing this bar {pounds on podium}
Then the most extraordinary rats were those were the electrode was planted halfway between the pleasure and the pain center. The result was a kind of mixture of the most wonderful ecstasy and like being on the rack at the same time. And you would see the rats sort of looking at is bar and sort of saying "To be or not to be that is the question". (Laughter) Finally it would approach {Pounds on podium} and go back with this awful I mean, the (sounds like franken huminizer anthropomorphizer), and he would wait some time before pressing the bar again, yet he would always press it again. This was the extraordinary thing.
I noticed in the most recent issue of Scientific American there's a very interesting article on electrodes in the brains of chickens, where the technique is very ingenious, where you sink into their brains a little socket with a screw on it and the electrode can then be screwed deeper and deeper into the brainstem and you can test at any moment according to the depth, which goes at fractions of the mm, what you're stimulating and these creatures are not merely stimulated by wire, they're fitted with a miniature radio receiver which weighs less than an ounce which is attached to them so that they can be communicated with at a distance, I mean they can run about in the barnyard and you could press a button and this particular area of the brain to which the electrode has been screwed down to would be stimulated. You would get this fantastic phenomena, where a sleeping chicken would jump up and run about, or an active chicken would suddenly sit down and go to sleep, or a hen would sit down and act like she's hatching out an egg, or a fighting rooster would go into depression.
The whole picture of the absolute control of the drives is terrifying, and in the few cases in which this has been done with very sick human beings, The effects are evidently very remarkable too, I was talking last summer in England to Grey Walter, who is the most eminent exponent of the EEG technique in England, and he was telling me that he's seen hopeless inmates at asylums with these things in their heads, and these people were suffering from uncontrollable depression, and they had these electrodes inserted into the pleasure center in their brain, however when they felt too bad, they just pressed a button on the battery in their pocket and he said the results were fantastic, the mouth pointing down would suddenly turn up and they'd feel very cheerful and happy. So there again one sees the most extraordinary revolutionary techniques, which are now available to us.
Now, I think what is obviously perfectly clear is that for the present these techniques are not being used except in an experimental way, but I think it is important for us to realize what is happening to make ourselves acquainted with what has already happened, and then use a certain amount of imagination to extrapolate into the future the sort of things that might happen. What might happen if these fantastically powerful techniques were used by unscrupulous people in authority, what on Earth would happen, what sort of society would we get?
And I think it is peculiarly important because as one sees when looking back over history we have allowed in the past all those advances in technology which has profoundly changed our social and individual life to take us by surprise, I mean it seems to me that it was during the late 18 century early 19th century when the new machines were making possible the factory situation. It was not beyond the wit of man to see what was happening and project into the future and maybe forestall the really dreadful consequences which plagued England and most of western Europe and this country for sixty or seventy years, and the horrible abuses of the factory system and if a certain amount of forethought had been devoted to the problem at that time and if people had first of all found out what was happening and then used their imagination to see what might happen, and then had gone on to work out the means by which the worst applications of the techniques would not take place, well then I think western humanity might have been spared about three generations of utter misery which had been imposed on the poor at that time.
And the same way with various technological advances now, I mean we need to think about the problems with automation and more profoundly the problems, which may arise with these new techniques, which may contribute to this ultimate revolution. Our business is to be aware of what is happening, and then to use our imagination to see what might happen, how this might be abused, and then if possible to see that the enormous powers which we now possess thanks to these scientific and technological advances to be used for the benefit of human beings and not for their degradation.
Council on Foreign Relations: Non-Lethal Task Force (pdf file)
The recent war in Iraq proved to be a military triumph. The aftermath of major conflict, however, has been marked by looting and sabotage that has severely damaged Iraq's infrastructure and eroded popular support for the liberating forces. Although lethal force is necessary to successfully wage war, we are learning that it is not always appropriate for winning the peace. Nonlethal weapons—ranging from slippery foam and gun-fired bean bags to Taser guns and nets designed to entangle and stop vehicles—could be a better way to arm and protect U.S. forces and its allies without killing innocent people or destroying civil infrastructure.
Obama Reverses Bush's Space Policy (NY Times 29/6/10)
The Obama administration on Monday unveiled a space policy that renounces the unilateral stance of the Bush administration and instead emphasizes international cooperation, including the possibility of an arms control treaty that would limit the development of space weapons.
In recent years, both China and the United States have destroyed satellites in orbit, raising fears about the start of a costly arms race that might ultimately hurt the United States because it dominates the military use of space. China smashed a satellite in January 2007, and the United States did so in February 2008.
The new space policy explicitly says that Washington will "consider proposals and concepts for arms control measures if they are equitable, effectively verifiable and enhance the national security of the United States and its allies."
The Bush administration, in the space policy it released in August 2006, said it "rejects any limitations on the fundamental right of the United States to operate in and acquire data from space," a phrase that was interpreted as giving a green light to the development and use of antisatellite weapons.
The policy also stated that Washington would "oppose the development of new legal regimes or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit U.S. access or use of space," a phrase that effectively ruled out arms control.
In secret, the Bush administration engaged in research that critics said could produce a powerful ground-based laser, among other potential weapons meant to shatter enemy satellites in orbit.
By contrast, the Obama policy underlines the need for international cooperation. "It is the shared interest of all nations to act responsibly in space to help prevent mishaps, misperceptions and mistrust," the new policy says in its opening lines. "Space operations should be conducted in ways that emphasize openness and transparency."
Peter Marquez, director of space policy at the White House National Security Council, told reporters on Monday that the policy was reverting to a less confrontational approach that the United States had championed in the past.
"The arms control language is bipartisan language that appeared in the Reagan policy and George H. W. Bush's policy and the Clinton policy," Mr. Marquez said in a White House briefing. "So we're bringing it back to a bipartisan agreed-upon position."
Jeff Abramson, a senior analyst at the Arms Control Association, a private group in Washington, said the new policy "sets the stage for progress in space arms control — without getting into specifics."
For many years, diplomats from around the globe have gathered in Geneva to hammer out a treaty on the "prevention of an arms race in outer space," which would ban space weapons. Arms control supporters say that China and Russia have backed the process, and that the United States during the Bush administration dragged its feet.
In 2006, John Mohanco, a State Department official, told the diplomats in Geneva that as long as attacks on satellites remained a threat, "our government will continue to consider the possible role that space-related weapons may play in protecting our assets."
Now, the Obama administration has stopped the saber-rattling and started what might end in a new kind of peaceful accord — though with plenty of caveats and vague conditions.
Although the new policy calls on the United States to "lead in the enhancement of security, stability and responsible behavior in space," it also says that any resulting arms treaties would have to be equitable, verifiable and enhance the security interests of the United States and its allies.
"Those are the gates," Mr. Marquez told reporters, "that the arms control proposals must come through before we consider them."
The White House said the State Department would make more details public in coming weeks.
President Obama said in a statement that the new policy was "designed to strengthen America's leadership in space while fostering untold rewards here on Earth."
On the civilian use of space, the policy, which is 14 pages long, puts renewed emphasis on the commercial space industry, reflecting the administration's desire to get the National Aeronautics and Space Administration out of the business of launching astronauts.
Listed first among the administration's space goals is to "energize domestic industries." That contrasts with the top goal of the 2006 Bush administration policy, to "strengthen the nation's space leadership," and that of the 1996 Clinton administration policy, to "enhance the knowledge of the Earth, the solar system and the universe."
The Bush policy asserted that the government would buy commercial services "to the maximum practical extent" and refrain from federal activities that would discourage or compete with commercial options.
The Obama policy retains those provisions and, in addition, calls on federal agencies to "actively explore the use of inventive, nontraditional arrangements" like creating public-private partnerships, flying government instruments on commercial spacecraft or buying data from commercial satellite operators.
The commercial space section of the Obama policy also includes provisions for promoting American commercial space industry in foreign markets.
In contrast, the Bush administration highlighted national security concerns, like preventing unfriendly countries from obtaining advanced technologies.
Critics of that approach said the same technologies could often be bought from other countries, adding that the limitations hurt American aerospace companies without improving the nation's security.
The Mind Research Network (NY Times 8/5/10)
Rex Jung, Mind Research Network
Images from brain research conducted by the Mind Research Network. While intelligence and skill are associated with the fast and efficient firing of neurons in the brain, subjects who tested high in creativity had thinner white matter and connecting axons that slow nerve traffic. In these images, the green tracks show the white matter being analyzed. The yellow and red spots show where creativity corresponds with slower nerve traffic. The blue areas show where "openness to experience," associated with creativity, corresponds with slower nerve traffic.
Grab a timer and set it for one minute. Now list as many creative uses for a brick as you can imagine. Go.
The question is part of a classic test for creativity, a quality that scientists are trying for the first time to track in the brain.
They hope to figure out precisely which biochemicals, electrical impulses and regions were used when, say, Picasso painted "Guernica," or Louise Nevelson assembled her wooden sculptures. Using M.R.I. technology, researchers are monitoring what goes on inside a person's brain while he or she engages in a creative task.
Yet the images of signals flashing across frontal lobes have pushed scientists to re-examine the very way creativity is measured in a laboratory.
"Creativity is kind of like pornography — you know it when you see it," said Rex Jung, a research scientist at the Mind Research Network in Albuquerque. Dr. Jung, an assistant research professor in the department of neurosurgery at the University of New Mexico, said his team was doing the first systematic research on the neurology of the creative process, including its relationship to personality and intelligence.
Like many researchers over the past 30 years or so, Dr. Jung has relied on a common definition of creativity: the ability to combine novelty and usefulness in a particular social context.
As the study of creativity has expanded to include brain neurology, however, some scientists question whether this standard definition and the tests for it still make sense. John Kounios, a psychologist at Drexel University, argues that the standard "has outlived its usefulness."
"Creativity is a complex concept; it's not a single thing," he said, adding that brain researchers needed to break it down into its component parts. Dr. Kounios, who studies the neural basis of insight, defines creativity as the ability to restructure one's understanding of a situation in a nonobvious way.
Everyone agrees that no single measure for creativity exists. While I.Q. tests, though controversial, are still considered a reliable test of at least a certain kind of intelligence, there is no equivalent when it comes to creativity — no Creativity Quotient, or C.Q.
Dr. Jung's lab uses a combination of measures as proxies for creativity. One is the Creativity Achievement Questionnaire, which asks people to report their own aptitude in 10 fields, including the visual arts, music, creative writing, architecture, humor and scientific discovery.
Another is a test for "divergent thinking," a classic measure developed by the pioneering psychologist J. P. Guilford. Here a person is asked to come up with "new and useful" functions for a familiar object, like a brick, a pencil or a sheet of paper.
Dr. Jung's team also presents subjects with weird situations. Imagine people could instantly change their sex, or imagine clouds had strings; what would be the implications?
In another assessment, a subject is asked to draw the taste of chocolate or write a caption for a humorous cartoon, as is done in The New Yorker magazine's weekly contest. "Humor is an important part of creativity," Dr. Jung said.
The responses are used to generate what Dr. Jung calls a "Composite Creativity Index."
Dr. Jung's tests are based on ones created by Robert J. Sternberg, one of the country's pre-eminent intelligence researchers and the man partly responsible for the standard definition. Dr. Sternberg uses similar types of tests at Tufts University, where he investigates how people develop and master skills. He explained that his team asked subjects to think through what would have happened if, say, Rosa Parks had given up her seat for a white woman when that Montgomery bus driver told her to move to the back, or if Hitler had won World War II. They might also present them with a fanciful headline, like "The End of MTV."
As for Dr. Jung, his research has produced some surprising results. One study of 65 subjects suggests that creativity prefers to take a slower, more meandering path than intelligence.
"The brain appears to be an efficient superhighway that gets you from Point A to Point B" when it comes to intelligence, Dr. Jung explained. "But in the regions of the brain related to creativity, there appears to be lots of little side roads with interesting detours, and meandering little byways."
Although intelligence and skill are generally associated with the fast and efficient firing of neurons, subjects who tested high in creativity had thinner white matter and connecting axons that have the effect of slowing nerve traffic in the brain. This slowdown in the left frontal cortex, a region where emotional and cognitive abilities are integrated, Dr. Jung suggested, "might allow for the linkage of more disparate ideas, more novelty and more creativity."
Dr. Kounios, of Drexel, said that Dr. Jung was doing original and interesting work, but he maintained that trying to find a correlation between creativity and a single area of the brain is an "old-fashioned approach."
"Creativity is a collection of different processes that work in different areas of the brain," Dr. Kounios said, so the creative act must be broken down into tiny pieces. He also rejects utility as part of the definition, arguing that there can be brilliant and creative failures — what he calls near misses.
Last year he and Mark Beeman, a psychologist at Northwestern University, published a paper on what he calls the "Aha! moment," the sudden insight that solves a problem, reinterprets a situation or explains a joke. In their test, they used simple word puzzles that could be solved either with an instant creative insight or a quick analysis.
For example, here are three words: crab, pine and sauce.
Now, think of a single word that could be combined with each of the three to form a familiar term.
(Time's up. The answer is "apple.")
About half the subjects came up with a solution by methodically thinking through possibilities; with the other half, the answer popped into their minds.
A lot of different areas of the brain are involved in devising a solution, no matter which process is used, but during the Aha! moment, there is a burst of high-frequency activity in the right temporal lobe, Dr. Kounios said. What's more, he said, he and Dr. Beeman could predict in advance which process a subject would use. They watched the brains of systematic problem solvers prepare by paying closer attention to the screen before the words appeared. Their visual cortices were on high alert.
The brains of those who got a flash of creative insight, by contrast, prepared by automatically shutting down activity in the visual cortex for an instant — the equivalent of closing your eyes to block out distractions so that you can concentrate better. In this case, Dr. Kounios said that the brain was "cutting out other sensory input and boosting the signal-to-noise ratio" to retrieve the answer from the subconscious.
According to Kenneth Heilman, a neurologist at the University of Florida and the author of "Creativity and the Brain" (2005), creativity not only involves coming up with something new, but also with shutting down the brain's habitual response, or letting go of conventional solutions.
Risk taking and addictive behavior should also be measured, since both traits play a role in creativity, he said.
There may be, for example, a dampening of norepinephrine, the neurotransmitter that sets off the fight-or-flight alarm. That's why creative connections often occur when people are most peaceful — relaxing under a tree, like Isaac Newton, or in a dream state, like Coleridge when he thought up "Kubla Khan."
John Gabrieli, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, cautions that there is always a gap between what happens in the lab and the real world: "It seems that to be creative is to be something we don't have a test for."
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 11, 2010
An article on Saturday about research on creativity and the brain, in citing examples of questions that some researchers posed to subjects, misidentified the Alabama city in which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white person and referred incorrectly to that person. The incident occurred in Montgomery, not Birmingham, and the white person was a man, not a woman
Charting Creativity: Signposts of a Hazy Territory
Israel Participates in the "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative ("The Israel Lobby" excerpt)
Despite tensions over a wide array of issues – U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the 1981 bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor, Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights in December 1981, its invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and its abrupt rejection of the "Reagan Plan" for peace in September 1982 – security cooperation between Israel and the United States increased steadily in the Reagan years. Joint military exercises began in 1984, and in 1986 Israel became one of three foreign countries invited to participate in the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative (aka "Star Wars"). Finally, in 1988, a new memorandum of agreement reaffirmed the "close partnership between Israel and the United States" and designated Israel a "Major Non-NATO Ally," along with Australia, Egypt, Japan, and South Korea. States enjoying this status are eligible to purchase a wider array of U.S. weapons at lower prices, get priority delivery on war surplus materiel, and participate in joint research and development projects and U.S. counterterrorism initiatives. Commercial firms from these states also get preferential treatment when bidding for U.S. defense contracts.
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Pg. 33. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephan M. Walt (2007)
Alan Dershowitz replies to Mearsheimer and Walt's working paper:
Israel: Spy Satellite is Launched (al-Jazeera 23/6/10)
Israel has launched its latest military spy satellite, reportedly increasing its capacity to intelligence-gather on enemies such as Iran.
The Ofek 9 was blasted into orbit by an Israeli-made rocket on Tuesday, from the Palmachim air base south of Tel Aviv, joining three other Israeli spy satellites in space.
The defence ministry said the satellite had achieved its proper orbit, describing it as "a surveillance satellite with advanced technological capabilities".
Officials said it has a high-resolution camera and would join its other satellites to give Israel considerable coverage of sensitive areas, adding the camera could pick out missiles and launchers on the ground.
Along with the West, Israel believes Iran's uranium enrichment activities are aimed at producing nuclear weapons, an allegation Tehran denies.
Israel is also thought to be targeting Syria with its satellites. In 2007, alleged Israeli warplanes struck a site in Syria thought to be a nuclear facility under construction, although Israel has not commented on the incident.
Besides its spy satellites, Israel also has a number of communications satellites in orbit.
Israel is widely believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear power.
An attempt to launch an Ofek-6 in 2004 failed with the satellite crashing into the Mediterranean Sea after a technical malfunction with the launcher.
Technophobic Delusions in Schizophrenia -The Intrusion of Schizoid Thought into the Consensus Reality
Technophobic Delusions in Schizophrenia -The Intrusion of Schizoid Thought into the Consensus Reality
Thoughts on the Influencing Machine
By David Drexler
Copyright 2005 by David Drexler
Out of Control One
This is a work of fact. Any resemblance to persons or systems, living or dead, is intended as a libelous denunciation of their lamprey-like, sub-bethonic, scum sucking, degenerate nature.
He conversed a great deal on electricity, said that it was the moving power of the earth, that people might be made mad by it, but that he could not be played on by it, as he was in the secret. He said that he could prove from the scriptures, that people could be made mad by electricity, that they could converse by means of it at any distance, and that, by it he had heard voices from heaven. –
A case of Oinomania American Journal of insanity, July 1851
A belief that technology is being employed for coercive purposes has long been noted as an interesting characteristic of the delusions of the insane. Classical descriptions of schizophrenia include mention of the belief that "the most devilish, modern, technical apparatus ever invented has been put up and is used to speak from a distance, to project pictures, to electrocute" (Bleuler 114), or a fixation on "maleficant machines, rays, electrical zaps, and engines" (Glass 52). Such harassments are usually perpetrated by "gangs", mobs, or other ill-defined operatives. Frequently, these electronightmares are connected with "a delusional system…around the idea that the patient is persecuted because of his ideology, philosophy, or religion" (Glass 36). The first clear and reliable description of schizophrenia was given by John Haslam, curator of London's Bedlam Hospital, in 1809 (Seller in Howells 52) in his Observations on Madness and Melancholy. Haslam, a sort of 19th century Oliver Sacks, has also given us the most complete and fascinating account of the malevolent "influencing machine" in his 1810 Illustrations of Madness, long a hard to find underground psychology classic. This is the notorious "Air-Loom," operated by a gang of vicious underworld "pneumatic chemists". It seems that schizophrenics latched onto ideas of mechanics and electromagnetics very early, as perfect vehicles for their delusions of persecution and harassment. Similarly, the scientific discovery of microbes played well into the fixations on pollution, poisoning, and excessive washing that had already long been features of deranged thought. A central study of the influencing machine in schizophrenia mentions that "patients endeavor to discover the construction of the apparatus by means of their technical knowledge, and it appears that with the progressive popularization of the sciences, all the forces known to technology are utilized to explain the functioning of the apparatus" (Tausk 33).
Floater Throughout the 19th century, schizophrenics continued to incorporate advances in electromagnetic technology into their delusions. Developments such as radio, X-rays and radioactivity proved fertile ground for paranoid phantasy. Today, an internet search for "electronic harassment" will unleash a vast deluge of verbiage relating to contemporary experiences of the phenomenon. One can read day-by-day accounts of electronic attacks, and there even appears to be one company devoted to the production of very expensive and mysteriously undescribed "custom devices" to defend the victims, presumably if the traditional tin-foil hat fails to be effective.
More frighteningly, there appears to be some evidence that semi-secret government organizations have at least investigated the possibilities of electromagnetic attack. The microwaving of the US embassy in Moscow, and of nuclear protesters in the USA, are frequently cited examples. Investigation of this shadowy world, where lunatic paranoia merges into documented reality, suggests some fascinating possibilities. There is an apparent convergence between schizophrenic delusion and consensus reality, an intrusion of the schizophrenic worldview into the realms of technology and government control. In advanced industrialized society, the nightmares of the insane have begun to manifest in such phenomena as electronic wiretapping, nuclear radiation, industrial pollution, beam weaponry, and satellite spying.
I suggest that there is a parallel development between technology and mental illness, which began with Descartes' 17th century conception of the universe, and all beings in it, as clockwork mechanisms. A belief that one is "dead" or is a remote-controlled mechanism, is commonly reported in schizophrenics (Arnold 139). There is observable a certain mania for vivisection, or the experimental cutting up of animals, among scientists and doctors, which is analogous to the childhood murder of cats and small animals so often noted among those who later become psychopaths or mass murderers. The incredible explosion of the formerly obscure and undescribed illness termed autism, may also be part of this process. The autistic are often said to "react to people as objects", be rational, hyper-scientific, and unable to deal with human relationships (Paluszny 21). In an interesting example of feedback, or the circular influences between mental states and external reality, the autism "epidemic" may be caused by environmental factors consequent on the prevalence of technology itself (Kirby). Technology, a mindless, viral force, may be actively breeding humans especially adapted minister to, reproduce and exalt it.
The schizophrenic phantasy of the "influencing machine" should be considered a parallel to the influence of technology, and the Cartesian mechanist world view, on consciousness. In tracing the congruent histories of technology and schizophrenia, we can observe a curious interplay between them, in which delusions appear among the insane before manifesting in, or intruding into, the consensus reality. The current state of the industrialized world, with its ubiquitous wireless devices, televisions, CTV surveillance, microchip tracking etc…, could well be seen as a flourishing garden of schizoid delusions erupted into reality. Indeed, when cell phones first became common, many commentators wryly noted that someone using such a device was frequently indistinguishable from a lunatic. Seen in this context, that observation is extremely meaningful.
The history of technological progress is well known, but its parallels in mental illness are largely hidden and unrecognized. It is the purpose of this study to throw this connection into light, and to ultimately reveal and expose technology itself as an active, autonomous force, which has parasitized human beings for its own ends. Those familiar with the operations of DNA and genes should have no difficulties in recognizing yet another extremely cunning, inventive, persistent and autonomous force which is yet wholly unconscious, unliving, "dead," and requires other beings, or "survival machines" to manifest itself in the world.
Before tracing these contemporary manifestations further, it will be illuminating to lay out a brief history of mental disease, and how it relates to technological and electronic developments, from the obscurities of antiquity, through the galvanic and voltaic pursuits of the 19th century, to the writings of Ken Kesey and Philip K. Dick, and the explosive profusion of techno-paranoia that now flourishes on the net.
What forms did madness take in pre-industrial times? Information on this subject is largely and perhapsLightbulb tellingly absent. There are scarcely any case histories before Haslam in the early 19th century (Sedler in Howells 52), and the bits of information we have suggest only an indefinite raving. This has led some to believe that schizophrenia is largely a disease of civilization, and that it did not even exist until relatively modern times, being entirely dependent on, and resulting from, industrial civilization itself. There is indeed conclusive evidence from large, repeated studies that the incidence of schizophrenia is linked to being born and raised in urban areas, with rates diminishing with distance from the city center (Boydell 50). Yet there clearly were mad people in classical and medieval times as well. The absence of early case histories is probably attributable less to a lack of incidence, than to the regrettable custom of ancient authors to discourse at vast and overwhelming length on humors, biles, effluvia, elemental forces, phlogisthonics and their whole agglomeration of useless, unsupported, empty, pompous and bombastic theorizing, without stooping to the lowly expedient of providing any evidence at all. We must wait for the advent of the scientific method for more detailed accounts, unobscured by theories, which almost inevitably appear vain and risible to persons of later eras.
The only suggestive evidence I could find from classical times is the observation of Hippocrates (460-377 BC) that mad people "take an interest in subjects of which they are obviously ignorant, often in things which only interest scholars" (Roccatagliata in Howells 9). So, there is at least some evidence that lunatics have been attracted to scholarly, and thus scientific thinking for over 2000 years. Horace mentions an otherwise normal fellow who believed himself to hear tragedies in empty theaters (Horace, Epist. Lib ii v.128ff). Evidence of lunatics in medieval times is abundant but indefinite (Howells 29). It is only right as the industrial revolution got underway in the early 19th century that we are presented with a flood of evidence detailing a condition we can clearly recognize as schizophrenia.
To what degree this is the result of changes in medical thought and practice, or a consequence of industrialization itself, is an interesting question which at this point can probably never be resolved. Aside from Haslam's clear description of schizophrenia in 1810, we also have the English physician Thomas Arnold's Observations on the Nature, Kind, Causes and Prevention of Insanity, issued in 1806. Here we learn of symptoms and delusions recognizable in more recent and contemporary schizophrenic thought, such as patients feeling "dead", being "deprived of their proper nature as human beings", having no soul, believing their food is poisoned, raving, "a gloomy silence and reserve", hearing voices, and "thinking one is a king, prince, hero, orator, tragedian, or a man endowed with wonderful science and extraordinary learning" (Arnold 113 ff). An erudite English quasi-lunatic is described, who would "compare himself to DEMOCRITUS, who for his admirable discoveries in anatomy was reckoned distracted by his fellow citizens, till HIPPOCRATES cured them of their mistake" (Arnold 115-6). The idea that one is possessed of advanced scientific or technological knowledge that is unknown to the present is common to lunatics and scientists.
Hampster escape Many of these same themes from the early 1800s were noted by the first theorists of schizophrenia like Kraepelin, in the early 1900s, and Bleuler in the 1950s. Bleuler mentions patients who feel "dead", who believe that their internal organs are decayed, or that their food has been poisoned (Bleuler 96). The belief that one is dead, that ones food is poisoned, and that one is pursued and harassed by a gang or mob of vague, underworld characters, are all typical symptoms of schizophrenic delusion. Although individual patients would not realize it, we can see how all these symptoms parallel the development of industrial technology and centralized state control. Feeling "dead" or totally alienated from ones surroundings sounds like Cartesian rationalism gone just a little too far. The idea of being poisoned or contaminated would certainly not be far fetched in heavily industrialized nations in the 19th century, when no emissions controls existed, and massive, extremely toxic pollution was rampant. The belief that one is being poisoned by one's environment manifests in the contemporary epidemic of allergies and toxic shock syndrome, which are unheard of outside the West. The amount of toxic pesticides and herbicides in industrially produced foods is well known. Here we can perceive the schizophrenic world invading the consensus reality.
Furthermore, the classic schizophrenic delusion of being harassed, pursued, and observed by vaguely defined gangsters, mobsters or some sort of secret agency parallels the development of secret intelligence forces in the political reality of Industrialized nations. Independent spies have perhaps always been a feature of monarchies and governments, but it was only in the 19th century that extensive, hierarchically organized secret police organizations came into existence. The world of high ranking courtiers, or top government officials offers an intriguing parallel to the schizophrenic worldview. Here everyone must be on guard for treasonous seditions, deep cover spies and advanced electronic gadgetry, and it is essential to perceive the hidden, implied meanings behind mundane aspects of behavior. A secret agent is like a schizophrenic immersed in his own world of dissemblance, distrust, spying, and exotic secret weaponry, be it nuclear arms, or space based laser arrays. Indeed, schizophrenics often believe that they themselves are very important figures, such as monarchs, politicians, etc… This delusion of one's own importance is perhaps the clearest connecting linkage between the "leaders" of large scale, hierarchical, industrial political systems, and the mentally ill. The dreadlocked, shopping cart pushing lunatic, ranting about electronic harassment, gangs of spies, and his own central importance in world affairs, arises ultimately from the same causes that produce the secretive top government official, wary of bugs and infiltration, and convinced that he is among the central, moving powers in the world. Both of these realities largely result from an alienated, mechanistic worldview reflecting the dominance of technology. These are realities based on coercion, violence, inflicted death and domination. Paranoia rules the minds of courtiers and lunatics. The current state of the industrialized world, characterized by incessant war, informants, spying, pollution and toxicity, is the full emergence of hubristic paranoid lunacy into mainstream reality.
It may even be feasible to trace the beginnings of this alienated worldview back to the emergence of civilization, which is based on the domination and control of plants and animals, and to early theologies that stressed man's separateness from the rest of "creation". But we need not drift off into such vast speculations. An examination of more recent history abounds in examples of the congruency of schizophrenic thought and technology. It was only in the 19th century that some real understanding of electricity was gained, and that electrical era was to prove especially fertile for the schizophrenic imagination.
Mesmeric Revelations and the Air Loom
At the end of the 18th century, and for decades at the beginning of the 19th, the idea of mesmerism (hypnosis) was commonly confused with and connected to the latest advances in the sciences of electricity and magnetism. The mesmeric effects were believed to occur by means of something called "animal magnetism," which the operator conveyed across space to his subjects. This was popularly conceived as a sort of invisible ray, wave or occult emanation. Engravings show wavy lines emanating from the mesmerist's hands, and intersecting with the lower anatomies of his female subjects. Electricity was thought of as a fluid, the "electrical fluid," which raised the possibility that it was related to the various fluids or animating spirits of the human body.
It was in this intellectual atmosphere that the earliest case of the schizophrenic influencing machine was recorded, the famed Air Loom of Bedlam inmate James Tilly Matthews. The account appears in Haslam's 1810 Observations of Madness. This is also probably the most fully realized and lavishly documented case, and thus deserves special attention. Matthews was a highly intelligent man, trained in various arts. Significantly, he was also deeply involved in secret negotiations that preceded the French revolution. It was from this environment of spying and mesmeric intrigues that the Air Loom phantasy developed. Haslam wrote this book to prove that his patient Matthews was indeed insane, as there was continual litigious disputation over the matter. Despite this motive, Haslam should really be given immense credit for publishing the first detailed case history of a schizophrenic person. Prior to this time, there are no real records of anyone actually listening to what a madman had to say. The tone is one of deliciously ironical gravity. The account shows a sort of Joycean relishment in the obscene foulness and minute intricacies with which the delusion was described and developed. In many of these elements, we can trace themes and details that appear repeatedly in the delusions of later schizophrenics.
The idea of the vaguely defined gang of harassing, lowlife persons is an almost inevitable adjunct of schizoid technophobic delusions, and appears here for the first time, and in unusual detail. In Matthew's case, the gang consisted of seven vile personages, each fully described, though "of their general habits little is known" (Haslam 20). Appearing on the street, they would be taken for "pickpockets or private distillers" (20). At home, "they lie together in promiscuous intercourse and filthy community" (21). "Mr. Matthews insists that in some apartment near London wall, there is a gang of villains profoundly skilled in Pneumatic Chemistry who assail him by means of an Air Loom" (19). The Air Loom itself, described and illustrated in a "curious plate" is a sort of prototype of the directed-beam electromagnetic weaponry that appears again and again in the literature. The curious plate, with its beam of assailing radiation, is a clear example of a technology that showed up in schizophrenic delusion long before manifesting in reality. The Air Loom is described as operating by means of magnetic and mesmeric influences, which were at the time considered part of a single electrochemical hypnotic phenomenon. It is fueled by a list of substances or "preparations" that deserves to be transcribed in its glorious totality-
Preparations which are employed in the Air Loom by these Pneumatic Chemists for the purpose of Assailment
Seminal fluid, male and female-Effluvia of copper-ditto of Sulpher- the vapors of vitriol and aqua fortis- ditto of nightshade and hellebore- effluvia of dogs-stinking human breath- putrid effluvia- ditto of mortification and of the plague- stench of the sesspool- gaz from the anus of the horse- human gaz- gaz of the horses greasy heels-Egyptian snuff, (this is a dusty vapor, extremely nauseous, but its composition has not hitherto been ascertained)- vapor and effluvia of arsenic-poison of toad-otto of roses and carnation.(28)
This fixation on seminal fluids, poisons, effluvia, metals and involuntary bodily functions appears repeatedly, but seldom in such livid detail, in later accounts of schizoid misery. The effects of the Air Loom are described with a similar primal gusto-"Fluid locking, Cutting soul from sense, Stone making, Thigh talking, Bomb bursting, Kiting, Lobster cracking, Stomach skinning, Apoplexy working with the Nutmeg grater, Lengthening of the brain, Thought making, Laugh making, Pushing up of the quicksilver, Bladder filling, Gaz-plucking, Spark-exploding, Eye screwing, etc, etc…(30). The natures of these assailments are individually described.
Air Loom
This is John Haslam's curious plate depicting the Airloom. Note barrels of effluvia and pneumatic chemist.
The account also contains the earliest description of a "Manchurian Candidate" type scenario. Matthews explained that his assailants also influenced a certain Hadfield and "by means of magnetic impregnations… compelled him to fire the Pistol at his Majesty in the theater" (22). The whole confused mass of secret agents, mobs, spies, gangs, political conspiracies, toxic effluvia, hypnotism, machines, occult influences and paranoia represents a summation of themes that appear repeatedly in both schizophrenic thought and the realities of fascist and totalitarian governments. Throughout the 19th century, the growing intrusion of electromechanical devices was only to increase this toxic brew.
The Nineteenth Century
Looking through publications from the 1800s, one can see that a thriving trade was carried on in things like electric invigorators, vibrators, magnetic collars, belts and rings, electrified suppositories and the like. Later, intentional ingestion of radioactive substances proved a popular diversion (de la Pena 7). Some obscure remnants of this trade in medico-electric and magnetic devices are still being quietly pursued to this day. This was also an era when spiritualism, table turning and séances became increasingly popular. Itinerant mesmerists wandered the rural areas, hypnotizing audiences with mysterious influences (de la Pena 4). Those who scoffed at electrical technologies were consistently proved wrong, as successive inventions erupted to great success, such as telegraphs, phonographs, electrical lights and so on. Few dared to question the amazing powers of electricity. According to one investigator, "by the late 19th century, it was possible to believe that external energies could alter the physical body" (de la Pena 4). The delusions of James Tilly Matthews, ensconced in Bedlam asylum, had become common knowledge decades later. By the 1870s, US congressmen were voluntarily electrocuting themselves in the "engine room" of the capitol building, seeking re-invigoration (de la Pena 89). Electricity and its powers were common subjects of discussion on the streets, and of unbounded ranting in the madhouses. In 1851, one American lunatic opined "that a whole workhouse might be mad by electricity… and that people could converse by means of it at any distance, and that, by it, he had heard voices from heaven (American Journal of Insanity, July 1851). The idea that "a whole workhouse might be mad by electricity" is extremely suggestive. I think I have encountered a few such workhouses myself.
In general, the schizophrenic hearing of voices in the head was a precursor and parallel development to the invention of telephones, radio, microphones and speakers. Photographs of American cities in the late 1800s often show huge tangled masses of wires stretching everywhere. Electrical machines were invading all aspects of the visual and mental environments. Words formerly used in technical applications were applied to human bodies and relations (a twist in ones transmission, etc…(de la Pena 23-4)). This was a time when the popular imagination seethed with occult electromagnetic phantasy. Ideas of rays, radiations, influences, fields and ethers pervaded thought and discourse. The actual technology lagged behind, but by the 20th century, all these dim visions had fully emerged into the consensus reality, as radio, X-rays, atomic radiation, radar and eventually television, that most effective and enslaving of all influencing machines.
The idea of the body as a machine, first promoted by Descartes in the 17th century, came to produce some interesting developments in the 19th. People began to strap themselves into machines in efforts to obtain good health. Aside from the electrical belts, trusses, rings and suppositories already mentioned, a growing mania for exercise equipment began to take hold. These devices were often employed as a cure for "neurasthenia," a vaguely defined illness which, like chlorosis or ptomaine poisoning, has long since been superseded by more popular and equally vague complaints (de la Pena 25). The first exercise machines were heavy, crude devices, which perhaps recalled to contemporary minds the Jesuitical devices of the Inquisition like the rack, the wheel, and the thumbscrews. These machines were part of an effort to make the human body itself more hard, resilient and machine-like. Our bodies' natural tendencies to frailty, sensitivity, and softness were to be rigorously counteracted by entering mechanical devices and flailing away therein.
Rigidity, uprightness, and hard, armored tightness were also promoted by the legion corsets, trusses, stays etc… which fill the pages of all advertising publications throughout the entire 19th century. This was a time when it was considered indecent for women to appear in public without what would now be considered hard-core sadomasochistic bondage gear. This whole emphasis on inflexibility, rigidity, muscular strength and reliability were all parallel developments to the intrusion of machines into all aspects of public and inner life.
It is in this context that the delusions of Daniel Paul Schreber, one of the most celebrated and studied lunatics of the 19th century, become extremely interesting and suggestive. Schreber was a prominent German judge in the late 1800s who came from an illustrious family (Niederland). The fact that he was a highly intelligent and cultured man gave his phantasies a depth and richness seldom seen among the insane. He wrote a wonderful book of Memoirs, finally published in 1911, detailing the history and nature of his mental illness. This book was read by Freud, who was to use Schreber to bolster his own theories in his "Psychoanalytic notes upon an autobiographical case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides)"published shortly after the memoirs appeared. Schreber was clearly schizophrenic, reporting classic delusions like hearing voices, imagining putrefaction of the gut, feeling dead and rotten, and developing one of the most rampant and florid cases of total paranoia ever documented. The Memoirs detail a series of delusional racking tortures which he termed "miracles."
"The most abominable of all miracles was the head-being-tied-together machine (die Kopfzusammenschnurugsmaschine)…which compressed my head as though in a vice by turning a kind of screw, causing my head to assume an elongated, almost pear-shaped form. It had an extremely threatening effect, accompanied by severe pain. The screws were loosened temporarily but only very gradually, so that the compressed state was usually continued for some time (in Neiderland 76)."
Geradehalter What is of particular interest here is Schreber's unusual childhood. His father, Daniel Gottlieb Schreber, was an early and fervent promoter of exercise machines, fresh air walks, cold water immersions, rigid posture, orthopedics and the like. He composed something like 20 books on these subjects and was considered "a giant among his contemporaries" (Niederland 77). His father was an important promoter of the sort of proto-fascist Teutonic fixation on fresh air, immersion in frigid, Hyperborean waters, health, exercise etc… that was to be very important in the early history of the Nazi movement in the following century. He strapped his offspring into numerous iron contraptions of his own devising. "In order to ensure a proper growth of the skull, he constructed a helmet-like device" (Niederland 77). This was of course later to appear in his son's delusions as die Kopfzusammenschnurugsmaschine. The father's much celebrated books advocate, in oft repeated passages, "use of a maximum of coercion and pressure during the earliest stages of a child's life," and that "an absolutely rigid posture be maintained at all times, even in bed" (51). For this latter purpose, he devised a sort of rack, "made from iron throughout" to ensure total rigidity in sleeping children. He advised detailed rules for every action during every minute of a child's life, and wrote that "passions and softness" are to be met with "direktes Niederkampfen" or crushing opposition (56). The life of this eminent figure was regrettably terminated when a heavy iron ladder fell on his head "in the course of his regular gymnastic exercises" (58). While Daniel Gottlieb Schreber may appear to be a sort of parody of Teutonic sadism, his writings were immensely popular and influential in his own period, and wholly in keeping with the general current of thought. His Pangymnastikon was translated into English and published in Boston in 1863 as The New Gymnastics for Men, Women and Children. In this whole subject, we may clearly trace the relations between schizophrenia, human-machine interactions, and fascism.
As machines and electrical devices intruded into the popular consciousness, they produced and promoted an ideal of the body as a rigid, hard, well-exercised machine, and the mind as something allied to magnetism and electricity, subject to influence by currents, waves and occult emanations acting at a distance. The result of all this was the emergence in the 20th century of, on the one hand, electrical machines that conveyed thought and language, and on the other, mass fascism and total state control. There had always been tyrants, and human propensities for evil, but it was only with the introduction of technology and the machine virus that these forces were able to gain absolute control over all aspects of human thought and behavior, by means of machine guns, flying bombs, gas chambers, secret police, barbed wire, listening devices, tanks, poison gas, mines, atomic weapons, surveillance cameras, flame throwers, grenades, wiretaps, cattle prods, intercontinental ballistic missiles, infrared vision, napalm, television, phosphorus bombs, torpedoes, etc, etc… By means of these improvements, the fascist and totalitarian states that emerged in the 20th century embodied the total intrusion of the techno-schizoid nightmare into full reality.
As a sort of culmination of these developments, an unusual medical practice appeared in Mussolini's fascist Italy in the late 1930s. Electroconvulsive "therapy", or ECT, grew out of earlier methods of treating mental illness by inducing "shock", like immersion in freezing water and chemically induced comas. These are all variants of the one, single therapy that was and is practiced on lunatics, namely, beating them until they shut up. Whether this is carried out with rods and iron chains, or powerful pharmaceuticals, is really only a matter of degree of refinement. Carletti, the inventor of ECT, first experimented on animals, by attaching electrodes to the mouths and anuses of dogs. Half died (Kalinowsky in Abrams 2). Presumably, the others were able to continue in their loyal efforts assisting Carletti in his investigations, despite charred anuses.
The first human subject of ECT was considered cured when he returned to work after a long series of induced convulsions. The therapy soon became popular among those charged with treating, or maintaining, the mentally ill. American psychiatrists were especially enthusiastic. Until the 1950s, ECT was conducted without anesthesia, resulting in frequent fractures of the vertebrae, and breakage of other bones such as the femur and pelvis (Kalinowsky in Abrams 2). Aside from these salutary benefits, early research concluded that ECT could produce massive memory loss and severe and permanent brain damage (Breggin 36-8). These reports were suppressed, and the treatment continued, and continues. One patient, admitted for depression, described the horrors experienced while waiting in line for a session of ECT: "…and then those who got the shock ahead of me, I'd hear them on their cots choking and gurgling like water going through their nose and mouth and gasping and other horrible sounds" (Breggin 35). These accounts of ECT bear a curious resemblance to the "lobster cracking" and other torments experienced by Matthews, when at the mercy of the nefarious Air Loom gang.
Although ECT can be seen as a logical development of the historical torments dealt out to those deviating from the consensus reality, it is especially interesting in that it involves a massive application of the "electrical fluid" which features so prominently in the delusions of the insane. There is even some evidence that exposure to electrical shock can produce a liability to hallucinations and episodes of deviant perception in later life. The affinity of UFOs for high voltage power lines in well known. Some investigators have advanced the theory that many supposedly paranormal events are actually hallucinations induced by exposure to electromagnetic fields. One schizophrenic reported being struck by lightning as a child. "…a lightning bolt between Monterey and Nuevo Laredo struck me and our car, some few inches on the highway" (Moroz 49).
Contemporary Manifestations of the Influencing Machine
Aura Only a few years ago, those carrying out research on the influencing machine in schizophrenia would have been limited to poring through illimitable dusty volumes in university libraries, diligently seeking out a few scraps of information from the scattered case histories in the mass of technical and theoretical verbiage that fills almost all books on psychiatric subjects. But the introduction and pervasion of the internet has at a stroke provided us with an almost unimaginable profusion of exactly the sort of first person delusional narratives we might search scholarly books for in vain. There is so much material here, and it is so transient, that I'll not provide detailed footnotes with web addresses. A search for "electronic harassment" will provide ample fodder for those so inclined. There is even a fairly extensive "gang-stalking community" on the net. It is fascinating to see the same precise and obscure delusions mentioned in the traditional literature on the subject multiplied and reflected many times in a luxurious abundance of paranoid phantasy on the net.
A brief search turned up victims of "electromagnetic torture" suffering from many Air Loom type effects. One victim complains that the machines "can inject air from inside the upper lip when the lips are firmly closed…resulting in a loud noise like flatulence." Another victim describes symptoms almost identical to those mentioned in Tausk's 1919 paper on the Influencing Machine in Schizophrenia. She explains "I'm literally connected by remote control to a very high-tech but basic voodoo doll of some sort." The main subject of Tausk's study had the same delusion, although unembellished with information on "EMF/ microwave gadgetry that someone managed to get their hands on, and teach many others how to use."
Particularly striking are the many accounts of persecution by "gangs," mobs, underworld characters etc…, which seem to be an inevitable feature of machine paranoias. In fascist and totalitarian forms of mass schizophrenia, these have their unique correlates. For the Nazis, jews and gypsies, for Stalinists, spies, and for contemporary American republicrat fascists, dark, vaguely defined and shadowy "terrorists." In previous periods of incipient American fascism, these enemies took the form of lurking anarchists from Southern Europe, and communist spies from Russia. Saco, Vanzetti, and the Rosenbergs were all treated to complimentary electrotherapy in a gruesome protrusion of schizoid reality into daily life. In various nations today, crypto-fascist political movements typically rail against immigrants in classical schizoid fashion. Racism, and in particular anti-Semitism, are almost inevitable topics in fringe and paranoid discourse.
One recent account on the net details harassment by Mexican gangsters, as well as by satellite based beam weaponry and microwave attack. In these sorts of cases, we run into some deep and fascinating difficulties in disentangling paranoid delusion from political reality. The fact is, that technological advancement and government control have reached such a state of dominant perfection and pervasiveness that paranoid schizophrenics now have ample hard, documented evidence to back up their claims. Most contemporary accounts of the influencing machine now include links to real technological developments in projected sound, microwave attack, and actual evidence of interference, infiltration and spying by govern-mental agencies such as the FBI and CIA. What has happened is that the schizoid, paranoid realities of governments, engineers, and corporate powers have grown to such a degree that they interweave seamlessly with the schizoid, paranoid realities of many private citizens.
A corollary development is the introduction into psychiatric discourse of the concept of "borderline personality" and paranoid disorders. This is an effort to bring many fairly sane, but essentially deluded persons within the power and compass of medical diagnosis. While the full-blown, wholly irrational and disorganized schizophrenic is quickly recognizable by "word salad" speech, manifestly absurd beliefs, and inaccessibility to reason, there also exists a wide range of persons not clinically insane, who nevertheless manifest in a lesser degree, many characteristics of the extreme lunatic. Recent works from the past few years attempt to classify these persons into various "borderline" states (Kantor 34 ff). One text from 2004 includes schizoid, sub clinical behaviors like "grandiosity, illogic, withdrawal, tendency to collect injustices, feuding, and litigious delusions" (Kantor). These all are, and always have been, well within the normal, accepted, and fully explored range of human folly and stupidity. Activists and vegetarians are included in this silly author's attempt to medicalize the whole spectrum of human behaviors which do not conform to his ideal of total and abject submission to consensus reality.
Persons deeply sunk in schizophrenia are generally too far gone to develop their ideas into fully realized and documented forms. Their word salads, while often novel and suggestive, are too confused to be interpreted, and too transient to be developed. Those suffering from influencing machinery seem often to belong to a different category of intelligent and high functioning schizophrenics, able to develop a complete and internally coherent delusion that ingeniously incorporates aspects of modern political and technical reality. Such certainly was Matthews. Some might include the celebrated American Sci-fi author Philip K Dick in this category. His later works dealt with, and he apparently experienced, a "reality generator" operating from an artificial satellite in space. His accounts involve pink laser beams projecting holograms and conveying information. He called this VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System). Those familiar with PK Dick's works will recognize many themes involving schizophrenia and the influence of machines. Those unfamiliar with them need to get reading.
Another prominent public figure whose writings dealt with themes of machine control and paranoia was the inimitable Francis E Dec esquire. This man was capable of producing the sort of prose that the standard human neurological apparatus is hopelessly unable to replicate, and at which it can only reel in staggered, awestruck amazement. A few sentences from one of Dec's stream of consciousness rants basically just blow the collected works of Joyce out of the water. Phrases like "Frankenstein earphone radio control, Frankenstein eyesight TV, Communist computer god parroting puppet gangster slaves, Lifelong constant threshold brainwash radio" have a condensed forcefulness which adheres in the mind like Shakespearian wit. At the risk of rendering this essay a mere vestigial appendage to a work of far greater perspicuity, power, and relevance, I have decided to attach a selection from the oeuvre of Francis E Dec esquire as an appendix.
boiler explosion Psychiatrist James Glass documents a recent patient who not only "believed that she was being observed all the time by way of TV sets, radios, and other types of listening and spy devices," but "refused to believe that machines were inanimate and incapable of thought or sexual desire" (Glass 73-4). She was of the opinion that "all machines want to have sex with me" (Glass 75). "Her conception of how machines work, and of the machine-like nature of human responses and feelings, animated all aspects of her life" (Glass 74). Writing of the general influence of machines on schizophrenic thought, Glass notes that "when technology appears in delusional imagery, it provokes torment and fear. 'I am being electrocuted,' 'My brain is being burned with X-rays.' …Technical functions and activities become persecuting instruments" (Glass 52-3).
Surveying the whole progression of this parasitic electromechanical delusion, from Matthew's time to the present, unveils and mirrors the insidious effects of technology and mechanistic thinking on political and social reality. Certain modern manifestations deserve special attention.
The "television" device is basically a classical schizophrenic influencing machine that has totally infested almost every aspect of the consensus reality. The projection of sound and vision directly into the brains of couch bound, apparently mesmerized subjects, by means of cunning manipulations of electromagnetic energies, is so similar to the ubiquitous schizoid delusion of the influencing machine as to be almost laughable. The total pervasiveness of the television, and its apparently banal content, disguise its essentially alien, schizoid nature. Televisions are the Air Looms by which the machine virus enforces obedience, spurs consumption, and blocks out competing realities.
While inventions such as telegraphy, radio, and telephone also clearly represent schizoid intrusions from the machine virus, the introduction of the cell, or mobile phone, has taken the development to a new and unmistakable level. We've already noted the difficulties distinguishing cell phone users from schizophrenics, as they walk around, waving their arms, and apparently contending with voices in their heads. Another schizoid feature of cell phone users is the palpable and immediate drop in their awareness that occurs as soon as their cell rings. People become paralyzed while blocking doorways, or clog up narrow corridors as their awareness is visibly siphoned off. The effect is particularly notable in cell phone users driving cars. Riding my bike through American cities, I frequently note sudden, random manifestations of incompetence in the behavior of the mechanical pods that surround me. Peering inside, I inevitably see the driver talking into a mobile phone. The effect of lost awareness, or not being "all there" is typical of schizophrenia. In the intrusion of these technologies into daily life, we can observe the unmistakable, though unconscious efforts of the schizoid machine to engineer a population of mesmerized drones, wholly devoted to fostering the virus that parasitizes them. They are like dazed, shambling, suppurated forms, loaded down heavy with bloated, glutted parasites, of whose true nature they are wholly unaware, and which they indeed consider as desirable and modish appurtenances.
To gain an understanding of the real forces at work behind the stunning, horrific developments of recent centuries, requires that we look outside the mundane, accepted realities of normal persons, to the visionary delusions of great inventers and dictators like Tesla, Stalin, Edison, Hitler, and his devotee Henry Ford. These are the intellects that most clearly manifest the emergent forces that have latched onto and invaded our collective social conscious. The paranoid conspiracy theories which abound in our world seem absurd, yet strangely relevant. This is because most contemporary conspiracy theories are incisively accurate except for one thing. They vainly seek agency in gangs, cabals, secret government organizations, black projects, or the vile plottings of high ranking officials, CEOs and vice presidents, when in reality, the perpetrator of these wicked developments is not a group, or even a human being, but a mindless viral force, arising out of the interactions of persons who have surrendered their autonomy, their energy, and their genius to the mechanisms and technologies that their ancestors created.
We have a new type of rule now. Not one man rule, or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy, but of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures, and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decision. They are representative of abstract forces that have gained control through surrender of self. …The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident, inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling experts to tell them what buttons to push.
–WS Burroughs Interzone-Lees Journals p. 71
Lo, man has become the tool of his tools. –Henry David Thoreau
Things are in the saddle and ride man. –Ralph Waldo Emerson
bioforms Those who have any difficulty in believing that technology itself is an active, controlling force in human affairs, not being used by people so much as enslaving and parasitizing us for its own mindless, viral, destructive, cancerous purposes of endless reproduction, might be instructed by a perusal of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. This popular book clearly demonstrates how very simple, apparently "dead" material, mere alignments of repeatable molecules in the genetic code, can give rise to amazing developments in the interaction of living organisms. The crux of the matter is, that the idea of life itself is false, and bears no true relation to the actual situation in our universe. Life is notoriously impossible to define, because it does not exist. Just because we have a word in our language does not mean that it represents an existent reality in the universe. There is no alive, there is no dead. The animist of the Amazon, and Descartes at his parlor fireside, have two partial views of the same reality. Everything is both alive and dead, mechanical and spiritual at once. Those who would deny agency to technology, claiming it is not "alive," forget that all organisms are but super-complex arrangements of molecules and atoms, extrusions into macroscopic reality of the life force expressing through energy/matter at the atomic level.
Another approach to the idea of technology as a living or viral force might be sought in the perennially irresolvable issue of the nature of consciousness. How is it that you, a pile of meat, are able to have conscious experience and awareness of the world? How does awareness or feelings (qualia) arise from matter? This is another case of a convenient but false distinction in our language producing an unsolvable philosophic problem. The simplest way to clear up the whole matter at once is to recognize that consciousness in inherent in matter. This was probably common knowledge throughout most of human history, and survives in contemporary belief systems termed "animist". Excellent and rigorous work on this subject has been done by University of Glasgow chemist A.G. Cairns-Smith. Two of his books are recommended: Evolving the Mind (1996) and Secrets of the Mind (1999). Many naturalists and thinkers have speculated on a sort of rudimentary consciousness pervading all matter. The growing forms of crystals and ice have always proved suggestive to pansophists and the alchemically inclined. The "rationalist" delusion that matter is dead serves to blind us to the rampant viral parasitism of technological systems.
Technology, like all other arrangements of matter/energy, has a sort of living essence which seeks to grow and reproduce itself. What is important is for us to recognize that technology is not "just a tool". Far from it. Technology is more properly thought of as a rudimentary but powerful life form that we have created. It has no conscious, centralized mind, or single source of agency, but it nevertheless seeks to grow and reproduce like any other organism. Because of its viral nature, it must rely on parasitical relations to produce copies of itself. It may be compared to common "invasive species" or "weeds" such as purple loosestrife, Himalayan blackberry, Marine toads, humans, bindweed etc…There is no cabal of underworld figures promoting the growth of crabgrass, nor is there such installing CCTV cameras everywhere. Both are examples of organized, living systems seeking to expand and dominate their environment. The difference is that technology requires a host species.
Should we embrace technology as a new life form on our planet, or seek to violently extirpate it as a parasitic,technocave viral, cancerous growth that enslaves and controls us, preying with mindless avidity on our energies? I incline to the latter view. Currently, our society seems to be totally unaware of the living, autonomous nature of the machine virus, although hints abound in certain parts of popular culture. This life form, technology, is about at the level of a virus. It can reproduce only with the aid of much more complex organisms (industrialized, domesticated humans), and the process of its reproduction is extremely toxic to its host. Cancer, extremely rare in the preindustrial world, now strikes nearly everyone, should they live long enough. Pollution, schizophrenia, autism, monstrous deformities, appalling environmental pollution, destruction and degradation, the mass extinction of species, and tragic impoverishment, are all symptoms of total infestation by the machine virus. It has caused us to reproduce far beyond our natural limits, spamming the environment with redundant copies, while attendant wars and atrocities inevitably ensue. Furthermore, almost all our waking hours are devoted to ministering to and fostering it. The entire urban environment has become a macrocosmic reflection of a circuit board or a cancerous growth. Monoculture and an autistic intolerance for novelty are characteristic of the fascist, impoverished, schizophrenic, star-trek machine reality. People travel around in huge exoskeletal, insectoidal armored pods, filled with explosive supercarcinogens extracted from deep underground. Children and newborns sprout horrific, squamous, festering growths, gnarled masses of confused tissue, teeth and boneless hairballs. They sit staring at clothes tossing in the dryer, memorizing phonebooks. The sad and paltry improvements that technology affords us are but the poisoned bait it uses to extend its mindless tentacles into every aspect of our mental and physical reality. These swiftly discarded baubles, and their voluminous packaging, are soon reduced to mountainous undifferentiated piles of useless trash which surround us like the gruesome, putrescent remains of a zombie feast.
Anything created exerts a compulsive and fascinating influence on its creator. Through a sort of feedback, technology exercises a vampiric effect, whereby its creators are enthralled into its service. Technical metaphors invade current speech, and the whole of society is engineered to encourage the total technodomination of leisure and wildness. Walking at night, one sees hard-bodied, skinny persons treading away, strapped into exercise machines in the brightly illuminated interiors of suburban gyms, their transport pods parked outside. The stars and galaxies, once visible from the dark hearts of great cities, are no longer to be seen. The effective removal of the stars from human visual experience is perhaps the cruelest and subtlest trick of the machine virus. Black exhaust spews everywhere, illuminated by lamps of metal halides and mercuric vapors. An incessant, inescapable vibration pervades everything, emanating from florescent lights, computers, leaf blowers, jet skis, refrigerators, ventilation systems, lawn mowers, industrial vacuum cleaners, traffic and manifold devices. Listen. Can you hear it now?
Those who argue that technology is merely an inert, neutral thing, to be used as we see fit, could not be more sadly, pathetically and totally deluded. The toll of homage that machines exert is paid in the form of the energy and the attention that we exert while ministering to their needs, or when being supposedly "entertained". Machines are energy vampires. Almost all of the work we perform goes to support the machines and technologies that render the work necessary in the first place.
Taking all of this into consideration, what I thus advocate is not so much a random, destructive rampage against all technological devices, as the dawning of a clear understanding of what they really are. Consider that parasitism is a universal, ubiquitous phenomenon in Biology, arising in diverse profusion everywhere systems interact. With this in mind, perhaps try taking a machine apart. Explore its innards and see how lifelike it is. Play with it. Make art from wreckage.
How much of your time is spent with machines? How often, and in what contexts, do you ever set foot on a surface which has not been constructed or extruded by a mechanical device?
As a human being, you are heir to an innate joy in freedom and wildness deriving from spiritual exaltation and vast potentials of awareness. Technology and its gangs of thuggish minions, -enslaved, cubical bound drones, administrators, mobsters, functionaries, teachers, doctors, police and politicians are all operating against that inheritance in you. The most effective way to fight them is not to mail them explosives, but to simply refuse to enter their reality. By removing your thought and personal energy, the real nature of which is immense and unknowable, you inflict more damage on the machine virus than boxes of bullets, or the cunningest of bombs.
Abrams, R.. Electroconvulsive Therapy. SP Medical and Scientific Books, 1987.
Arnold, Thomas. Observations on the Nature, Kind, Causes, and Prevention of Insanity, 1806
Bleuler, Eugen. Dementia Praecox, International University Press, 1950.
Breggin, Peter. Electroshock-Its brain Disabling Effect. Springer, 1979
Cairns-Smith, A.G..Secrets of the Mind, Copernicus, 1999.
Cairns-Smith, AG. Evolving the Mind. Cambridge, 1996.
De la Pena, Carolyn Thomas. The Body Electric. NYU Press, 2003.
Glass, James. Delusion. University of Chicago Press, 1985
Haslam, John. Illustrations of Madness, 1810.
Haslam, John. Observations on Madness and Melancholy, 1809.
Howells, John. The Concept of Schizophrenia, Historical Perspectives, American Psychiatric Press, 1950.
Kantor, Martin. Understanding Paranoia. Praeger 2004.
Kirby, David. Evidence of Harm-Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic. St. Martins Press, 2005.
Moroz, Marvin. An experimental Study of the Understanding of Schizophrenic Language. University of Oregon Thesis, 1962.
Niederland, William. The Schreber Case. Anylitic Press, 1984.
Paluszny. Autism. Syracuse University Press, 1979.
Tausk, Viktor. On the Origin of the Influencing Machine in Schizophrenia. 1919
Mind Control: The Ultimate Brave New World (Part 2 of 2) (Dr. Nick Begich)
New technologies to control the mind, change behaviour and even transfer thoughts for good or ill have been created using sound as well as external and internal electrostimulation of the brain.
Auditory Effects (continued)
The military interest in auditory effects was present since the first inventions were patented, but in 1971 came a system which would allow troops to communicate through a radio transmitter which would render the enemy deaf and disoriented while allowing "friendly" combatants to communicate at the same time.
The device is described as follows:
"Broadly, this disclosure is directed to a system for producing aural and psychological disturbances and partial deafness of the enemy during combat situations. Essentially, a high directional beam is radiated from a plurality of distinct transducers and is modulated by a noise, code, or speech beat signal. The invention may utilize various forms and may include movable radiators mounted on a vehicle and oriented to converge at a desired point, independently positioned vehicles with a common frequency modulator, or means employed to modulate the acoustical beam with respect to a fixed frequency.
During combat, friendly forces would be equipped with a reference generator to provide aural demodulation of the projected signal, thereby yielding an intelligible beat signal while enemy personnel would be rendered partially deaf by the projected signal as well as being unable to perceive any intelligence transmitted in the form of a modulated beat signal."29
What this says simply is that at-a-distance personal communication could be achieved by one's own forces while denying it to others and disabling adversaries at the same time.
In 1974, it was noted that using a microwave a signal was changed (transduced) by the receiver into an acoustic signal. This signal was "heard" inside or just behind the head. The report stated: "…it was noticed that the apparent locus of the 'sound' moved from the observer's head to the absorber. That is, the absorber acted as a transducer from microwave energy to an acoustic signal. This observation, to the best of our knowledge, has not been described in the literature and may serve as a mechanism mediating the 'hearing' of pulsed microwave signals."31
By 1989, the science took another leap forward with the combination of the modulated signal on a microwave carrier. This provided a much more efficient delivery of the sound. It was reported:
"Sound is induced in the head of a person by radiating the head with microwaves in the range of 100 megahertz to 10,000 megahertz that are modulated with a particular waveform. The waveform consists of frequency modulated bursts. Each burst is made up of ten to twenty uniformly spaced pulses grouped tightly together. The burst width is between 500 nanoseconds and 100 microseconds. The pulse width is in the range of 10 nanoseconds to 1 microsecond. The bursts are frequency modulated by the audio input to create the sensation of hearing in the person whose head is irradiated."31
Two other patents awarded that year addressed this breakthrough. The first invention related to devices for aiding hearing in mammals:
"The invention is based upon perception of sounds which is experienced in the brain when the brain is subjected to certain microwave radiation signals."32
The second invention confirmed the earlier observations:
"Sound is induced in the head of a person by radiating the head with microwaves in the range of 100 megahertz to 10,000 megahertz that are modulated with a particular waveform. The waveform consists of frequency modulated bursts. Each burst is made up of ten to twenty uniformly spaced pulses grouped tightly together."33
In 1992, another patent was issued with the following description: "A silent communications system in which nonaural carriers, in the very low or very high audio frequency range or in the adjacent ultrasonic frequency spectrum, are amplitude or frequency modulated with the desired intelligence and propagated acoustically or vibrationally, for inducement into the brain, typically through the use of loudspeakers, earphones or piezoelectric transducers."34
This device had limited practicality in that it required the person to be in contact with or in close proximity to the sending device. When examined together, each of these patents is seen to be a discrete step toward a new weapon system.
In 1995, it was reported that in the early research, clear sound signals had been sent and received. It is difficult now to determine what level of military or other research was being advanced in these areas. The history is clear from congressional reports that this entire area was of great interest to the intelligence communities. According to Scientists for Global Responsibility:
"Drs Alan Frey and Joseph Sharp conducted related research. Sharp himself took part in these experiments and reported that he heard and understood words transmitted in pulse-microwave analogs of the speaker's sound vibrations. Commenting on these studies, Dr Robert Becker, twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, observed that such a device has obvious applications in covert operations designed to drive a target crazy with voices, or deliver undetectable instructions to a potential assassin."35
Then, in 1996 came another development, a…"wireless communication system undetectable by radio frequency methods for converting audio signals, including human voice, to electronic signals in the ultrasonic frequency range, transmitting the ultrasonic signal by means of acoustic pressure waves across a carrier medium, including gases, liquids, or solids, and reconverting the ultrasonic acoustical pressure waves back to the original audio signal".36
Although this was meant to be used with both receiving and sending hardware, what was determined were the modulation methods for transferring the signal.
The real work was yet to be made public in the form of patents. However, the military claims in the area were starting to surface.
What was known from experience was that patents were being held back by the government and confiscated by the military. When this intellectual property was seized, the inventors were given a choice: work for the government, or you cannot continue research or even talk about your invention under a national security order. Those who did not cooperate could have their work effectively shut down.
Brain-to-Computer Connections
Major steps are being made to connect biology to information technology. In 1990 came the news that, "[s]cientists have succeeded for the first time in establishing a colony of human brain cells that divide and grow in laboratory dishes, an achievement with profound implications for understanding and treating a wide range of neurological disorders from epilepsy to Alzheimer's disease".37
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal in February 1994: "Researchers said they took a key first step toward creating electronic microchips that use living brain cells. The researchers said they had learned how to place embryonic brain cells in desired spots on silicon or glass chips and then induce the brain cells to grow along desired paths."38
The other possibility is that both brain cells and computer hardware could be built in the laboratories, creating, perhaps, the first biologically augmented computers.
What's on Your Mind?
A significant initiative was started for use in creating counter-drug measures: the Brain Imaging Technology Initiative.
"This initiative establishes NIDA [National Institute on Drug Abuse] regional neuroimaging centers and represents an interagency cooperative endeavor funded by CTAC [Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center], Department of Energy (DOE), and NIDA to develop new scientific tools (new radiotracers and technologies) for understanding the mechanisms of addiction and for the evaluation of new pharmacological treatments."39
Through neuroimaging, not only could the stated objective be achieved, but through imaging a person's emotional states could be mapped, chemical influences determined and perhaps even specific thoughts read.
Back in 1975, Physics Today reported:
"Developments in ways to measure the extremely weak magnetic fields emanating from organs such as the heart, brain and lungs are leading to important new methods for diagnosing abnormal conditions."40
In 1995, a system for capturing and decoding brain signals was patented which includes a transducer for stimulating a person and EEG transducers for recording brainwave signals from the person. It also includes a computer for controlling and synchronizing stimuli presented to the person and at the same time recording brainwave signals, and either interpreting these signals using a model for conceptual, perceptual and emotional thought to correspond to the EEG signals of the person's thoughts or comparing the signals to normal brain signals from a normal population to diagnose and locate the origin of brain-dysfunctional underlying perception, conception and emotion.41
In other words, the device reads your mind by comparing your brain activity to other people's.
In 1996 came this Orwellian development: "…a method for remotely determining information relating to a person's emotional state, as waveform energy having a predetermined frequency and a predetermined intensity is generated and wirelessly transmitted towards a remotely located subject. Waveform energy emitted from the subject is detected and automatically analyzed to derive information relating to the individual's emotional state.
Physiological or physical parameters of blood pressure, pulse rate, pupil size, respiration rate and perspiration level are measured and compared with reference values to provide information utilizable in evaluating [an] interviewee's responses or possibly criminal intent in security sensitive areas."42
This technology could be used for determining what a person might do, given his totally discernible interior emotions. This technology walks through any behaviour wall a person can erect and goes straight to the brain to see what may be on a person's mind.
Inducing behaviour rather than just reading a person's emotional state is the subject of one scientist's work in Canada.
"Scientists are trying to recreate alien abductions in the laboratory… The experiment, to be run by Professor Michael Persinger, a neuroscientist at Laurentian University, of Sudbury, Ontario, consists of a converted motorcycle helmet with solenoids on its sides that set up magnetic fields across a subject's head."43
This experiment was carried out and was the subject of a Canadian Broadcasting System exposé on mind control. The segment ran on a program called Undercurrents in February 1999. This author also appeared in that program, along with several others interested in this field.
A 1993 report said that for over 20 years Dr Persinger, "…has been working on a theory that connects not only UFOs and earthquakes, but also powerful electromagnetic fields and an explanation of paranormal beliefs in terms of unusual brain activity. He has also found that stimulating another area, the temporal lobes, can produce all sorts of mystical experiences, out-of-body sensations and other apparently paranormal phenomena."44
This doctor's work suggests that these experiences may be the result of activity in the brain and not the actual experiences of the individuals. He has had some measure of success in re-creating many of these experiences in his subjects. Dr Persinger is also known for his work in studying the effects of ELF [extra-low-frequency waves] on memory and brain function.45
In 1991, a method for changing brain waves to a desired frequency was patented.46 A 1975 patent discussed a similar technology: a device and method for, "…sensing brain waves at a position remote from a subject whereby electromagnetic signals of different frequencies are simultaneously transmitted to the brain of the subject in which the signals interfere with one another to yield a waveform which is modulated by the subject's brain waves. The interference waveform which is representative of the brain wave activity is retransmitted by the brain to a receiver where it is demodulated and amplified. The demodulated waveform is then displayed for visual viewing and then routed to a computer for further processing and analysis. The demodulated waveform also can be used to produce a compensating signal which is transmitted back to the brain to effect a desired change in electrical activity therein."47
In simple terms, the brain's activity is mapped in order to read a person's emotional state, conceptual abilities or intellectual patterns. A second signal can be generated and sent back into the brain which overrides the natural signal, causing the brain's energy patterns to shift. This is the "brain entrainment" which causes the shift in consciousness. There are many uses of a positive nature for this kind of technology, as was mentioned at the front of this section, the important factor being who controls the technology and for what purpose.
In January 1998, the following encapsulating statement appeared in the leading scientific journal Nature, quoting Pasteur Institute neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux, chairman of the French national bioethics committee:
"But neuroscience also poses potential risks, he said, arguing that advances in cerebral imaging make the scope for invasion of privacy immense…it will become commonplace and capable of being used at a distance, he predicted. That will open the way for abuses such as invasion of personal liberty, control of behaviour and brainwashing."48
Dancing to the Tune of an Unknown Drummer
In…"…a dramatic demonstration of mind reading, neuroscientists have created videos of what a cat sees by using electrodes implanted in the animal's brain. 'Trying to understand how the brain codes information leads to the possibility of replacing parts of the nervous system with an artificial device,' he said."49
The scientist commenting on this technology—Gattett Stanley, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Harvard—saw the future possibility of brain activity mapping being used in creating electronic components to replace damaged parts of the system.
The use of mind-mapping had other possibilities as well. Similar research in controlling the behaviour of humans and animals was pursued by Dr José Delgado at Yale University, one of the leading research institutions in the United States. Actual testing of certain systems proved that "movements, sensations, emotions, desires, ideas, and a variety of psychological phenomena may be induced, inhibited, or modified by electrical stimulation of specific areas of the brain".50
By 1985, Dr Delgado was able to create these effects using only a radio signal sent to the brain remotely, using energy concentrations of less than 1/50th of what the Earth naturally produces. This discovery implied that frequency, waveform and pulse rate (modulation) were the important factors rather than the amount of energy being used. In considering this, it makes sense because the human body does not require high electromagnetic power concentration to regulate its normal functioning. The key was in finding the "tuning" mechanisms for locating the right "receiving station" in the brain.
By 1993, publicly released information was being discussed as a result of information openly flowing out of Russia. Meetings were held to assess the threat: "the main purpose of the March meetings was described in the Psychotechnologies memo as to 'determine whether psycho-correction technologies represent a present or future threat to US national security in situations where inaudible commands might be used to alter behavior'".51
The threat assessment was likely to begin to condition Americans for the public acknowledgement of one of the government's long-held secrets: that the human mind and body can be controlled remotely, without a trace of evidence being left behind.
In another quote, one of the leading researchers in this area, Dr Igor Smirnov, began to announce his findings.
"But psychological warfare experts on all sides still dream that they will one day control the enemy's mind. And in a tiny, dungeon-like lab in the basement of Moscow's ominously named Institute of Psycho-Correction, Smirnov and other Russian psychiatrists are already working on schizophrenics, drug addicts and cancer patients."52
The results of this research have been investigated and demonstrated to members of the intelligence community in the United States, and have even been demonstrated by Dr Smirnov in an interview for the Canadian television documentary Undercurrents.
This issue is also an interesting one, as can be seen in this 1999 article excerpt.
"Fantasies are thought processes involving internal monologues and imaginative sequences which can motivate healthy people to constructive behaviour; likewise, they can inspire unbalanced individuals to destructive or dangerous behaviour. One conclusion from that research was that fantasy played a major role among violent criminals.
Researchers learned that criminals often daydreamed their fantasies, and then practiced elements of those fantasies before committing their crime. FBI agents determined that violent criminals often exhibit telltale signs as children and as adults. Hence, disturbed employees or students may demonstrate signs of violent fantasies to close observers. Troubled individuals may be obsessively interested in music with violent lyrics, or may have a drug or alcohol problem.
When these signs reveal themselves, they should be reported to a threat management team, which can then neutralize the threat, either by therapy, if rehabilitation is possible, or by firing the employee. Workplace and school violence is usually preceded by warning signs."53
The ability to determine a "predisposition" for a behaviour does not mean that a person will make the "choice" to act on the feelings and internal thoughts. Every person on the planet can remember times when his thoughts were dangerous, immoral or otherwise unacceptable, falling below the standards set by societal and cultural "norms". Yet, we can have these thoughts in the privacy of our own mind.
The trend in the application of mind control technology now would make our most private internal thoughts, as we wrestle with the temptations and choices of everyday life, subject to scrutiny by government and employers. Who will define the rules for psycho-correction? Who will decide what is ethical and right in this area as it develops over the next decade?
Control of the Mind and Body
The predominant brain wave frequencies indicate the kind of activity taking place in the brain. There are four basic groups of brain wave frequencies which are associated with most mental activity.
The first group, beta waves (13–35 Hertz or pulses per second), is associated with normal activity. The high end of this range is associated with stress or agitated states which can impair thinking and reasoning skills.
The second group, alpha waves (8–12 Hertz), can indicate relaxation. Alpha frequencies are ideal for learning and focused mental functioning.
The third group, theta waves (4-7 Hertz), indicates mental imagery, access to memories and internal mental focus. This state is often associated with young children, behavioural modification and sleep/dream states.
The last group, ultra-slow delta waves (0.5–3 Hertz), is found when a person is in deep sleep.
The general rule is that the brain's predominant wave frequency will be lowest in terms of pulses per second when a person is relaxed, and highest when a person is most alert or agitated.54
External stimulation of the brain by electromagnetic means can cause the brain to be entrained or locked into phase with an external signal generator.55 Predominant brain waves can be driven or pushed into new frequency patterns by external stimulation. In other words, the external signal driver or impulse generator entrains the brain, overriding the normal frequencies and causing changes in the brain waves, which then cause changes in brain chemistry, which then cause changes in brain outputs in the form of thoughts, emotions or physical condition. As you are driven, so you arrive.
Brain manipulation can be either beneficial or detrimental to the individual being impacted, depending on the level of knowledge or the intentions of the person controlling the technology.
In combination with specific wave-forms, the various frequencies trigger precise chemical responses in the brain. The release of these neurochemicals causes specific reactions in the brain which result in feelings of fear, lust, depression, love, etc. All of these, and the full range of emotional/intellectual responses, are caused by very specific combinations of these brain chemicals which are released by frequency-specific electrical impulses.
"Precise mixtures of these brain juices can produce extraordinarily specific mental states, such as fear of the dark, or intense concentration."56
The work in this area is advancing at a very rapid rate, with new discoveries being made regularly. Unlocking the knowledge of these specific frequencies will yield significant breakthroughs in understanding human health. Radiofrequency radiation, acting as a carrier for extremely low frequencies (ELF), can be used to entrain brain waves wirelessly.
The control of mind and body by using various forms of electromagnetic energy including radio signals, light pulsations, sound and other methods has resulted in several inventions and innovations. The positive health effects and uses have been pursued by private researchers around the world. In 1973, an…
"…apparatus for the treatment of neuropsychic and somatic disorders wherein light, sound, VHF electromagnetic field and heat sources, respectively, are simultaneously applied by means of a control unit to the patient's central nervous system with a predetermined repetition rate. The light radiation and sound radiation sources are made so as to exert an adequate and monotonous influence of the light and sound radiation on the patient's visual analyzers and auditory analyzers, respectively."57
This results in the brain following the external stimulating source in triggering brain pattern changes which affect the brain immediately and directly.
A simple invention patented in 1977…
"…provides a device for improving upon the aforesaid application [see below, patent for full text] in assisting the induction of natural sleep. As stated above, this invention is concerned specifically with an improvement that will permit the creation of several waveforms such that an analgesic noise device can approximate soothing sounds of nature, i.e., waves, rain, wind."58
These kinds of devices are available everywhere and are noted for their calming effects in helping people relax and sleep.
In 1980, another patent was issued which disclosed…
"…a method and apparatus for producing a noise-like signal for inducing a hypnotic or anesthetic effect in a human being. The invention also has application in crowd control and consciousness level training (biofeedback). The invention may also be used in creating special musical effects."59
This device would have a profound effect in controlling individuals to a point otherwise only achievable through the application of hypnotherapy or drugs.
A couple of years later, another device was engineered to create these types of effects, again using very subtle energy:
"Brain wave patterns associated with relaxed and meditative states in a subject are gradually induced without deleterious chemical or neurological side effects."60
Various systems were perfected and patents issued for controlling brain activity.61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68 These inventions generated a whole array of breakthroughs for controlling a person's emotional state, concentration and pain levels and creating other effects as well. In 1990, the results of a study strongly indicated that…
"…specific types of subjective experiences can be enhanced when extremely low frequency magnetic fields of less than 1 milligauss are generated through the brain at the level of the temporal lobes. Vestibular feelings (vibrations, floating), depersonalization (feeling detached, sense of a presence) and imaginings (vivid images from childhood) were more frequent within the field exposed groups than the sham field exposed group."69
In a 1996 "new age" invention, quartz crystals are used to create stress relief by slowing brain activity.
"Physiological stress in a human subject is treated by generating a weak electromagnetic field about a quartz crystal. The crystal is stimulated by applying electrical pulses of pulse widths between 0.1 and 50 microseconds each at a pulse repetition rate of between 0.5k and 10k [500 and 10,000] pulses per second to a conductor positioned adjacent to the quartz crystal thereby generating a weak magnetic field. A subject is positioned within the weak magnetic field for a period of time sufficient to reduce stress."70
It is interesting that "New Age" thinkers have played on "crystal magic" as a way to get "in tune" with oneself and relax, and here is a quartz crystal being included as a component of this invention. Again, the crossovers between fiction and science continue to appear.
Consciousness training is also a big theme in cults, religious organizations and others pursuing the "New Age". Science has now gained a greater understanding of how the mind and brain work, so that what used to take years or even decades to achieve can now be mastered in weeks, days or even minutes. For instance, in 1996 a method and apparatus for the use in achieving alpha and theta brainwave states and effecting positive emotional states in humans was developed.71
Three years before, a patent was issued for a device which could create desired consciousness states:
"…in the training of an individual to replicate such states of consciousness without further audio stimulation; and in the transferring of such states from one human being to another through the imposition of one person's EEG, superimposed on desired stereo signals, on another individual, by inducement of a binaural beat phenomenon."72
Thought transference?
This is interesting in that it speaks to the ideas alluded to earlier by the military in changing the memory of a person by imposing computer-manipulated signals which would integrate with the normal memory of a person. The possibility for abuse is obvious, and the opportunity for personal advancement is great. Imagine gaining education by the transfer of data directly into the human brain by these new methods rather than by the standard methods of learning.
A serious consideration in developing these types of memory transfer systems is that they bypass normal intellectual filters: information is deposited into the brain as fact, without question or careful consideration. What happens when the new information conflicts with existing information? Would it be possible to include hidden information meant to unduly influence things like religious beliefs, politics or consumption of goods and services?
The possibilities are immense and the ethical and moral questions surrounding these matters are equally large. We can no longer avoid the debate. In fact, the debate is lagging far behind the scientific advances.
In the interim, there are some simple things we could all do to enhance our own, or our children's, learning capacity by applying simple and available knowledge. For instance,
"researchers at the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at University of California, Irvine, have determined that 10 minutes of listening to a Mozart piano sonata raised the measurable IQ of college students by up to nine points".73
This is a simple thing of great use to anyone seeking self-improvement.
Weapons of the Mind
A 1984 paper titled "The Electromagnetic Spectrum in Low-Intensity Conflict" said much about the military's interest in EMR:
"The results of many studies that have been published in the last few years indicate that specific biological effects can be achieved by controlling the various parameters of the electromagnetic (EM) field. A few of the more important EM factors that can be manipulated are frequency, wave shape, rate of pulse onset, pulse duration, pulse amplitude, repetition rate, secondary modulation, and symmetry and asymmetry of the pulse.
Many of the clinical effects of electromagnetic radiation were first noticed using direct current applied directly to the skin. Later the same effects were obtained by applying external fields. Electromagnetic radiation has been reported in the literature to induce or enhance the following effects.
Stimulation of bone regeneration [in fractures]
Healing of normal fractures
Treatment of congenital pseudarthrosis
Healing of wounds
Electroconvulsive therapy
Behavior modification in animals
Altered electroencephalograms in animals and humans
Altered brain morphology in animals
Effects of acupuncture
Treatment of drug addiction
Electrostimulation for relief of pain
Altered firing of neuronal cells
"These are but a few of the many biological effects and uses that have been reported over the past decade. They are not exhaustive and do not include many of the effects reported in the Soviet and East European literature.
"As with most human endeavors, these applications of electromagnetic radiation have the potential for being a double-edged sword. They can produce significant benefits, yet at the same time can be exploited and used in a controlled manner for military or covert applications. This paper focuses on the potential uses of electromagnetic radiation in future low-intensity conflicts.
"'Potential Military Applications of EMR
"The exploitation of this technology for military uses is still in its infancy and only recently has been recognized by the United States as a feasible option. A 1982 Air Force review of biotechnology had this to say.
'Currently available data allow the projection that specially generated radio frequency radiation (RFR) fields may pose powerful and revolutionary military threats. Electroshock therapy indicates the ability of induced electric current to completely interrupt mental functioning for short periods of time, to obtain cognition for longer periods and to restructure emotional response over prolonged intervals.
'Experience with electroshock therapy, RFR experiments and the increasing understanding of the brain as an electrically mediated organ suggested the serious probability that impressed electromagnetic fields can be disruptive to purposeful behavior and may be capable of directing and or interrogating such behavior. Further, the passage of approximately 100 milliamperes through the myocardium can lead to cardiac standstill and death, again pointing to a speed-of-light weapons effect.
'A rapidly scanning RFR system could provide an effective stun or kill capability over a large area. System effectiveness will be a function of wave form, field intensity, pulse widths, repetition frequency, and carrier frequency. The system can be developed using tissue and whole animal experimental studies, coupled with mechanisms and waveform effects research.
'Using relatively low-level RFR it may be possible to sensitize large military groups to extremely dispersed amounts of biological or chemical agents to which the unirradiated population would be immune.
'The potential applications of artificial electromagnetic fields are wide ranging and can be used in many military or quasi-military situations.
'Some of these potential uses include dealing with terrorist groups, crowd control, controlling breeches [sic] of security at military installations, and antipersonnel techniques in tactical warfare… One last area where electromagnetic radiation may prove to be of some value is in enhancing abilities of individuals for anomalous phenomena.'"74
Quite the papers for the 1980s. Stimulating anomalous phenomena was another interesting point revealed in the Air Force review. What could this mean? In one press report in November 1995, the interest of the CIA was disclosed when it was announced that for…
"…20 years, the United States has secretly used psychics in attempts to help drug enforcement agencies track down Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and find plutonium in North Korea, the CIA and others confirm. The ESP spying operations—code named 'Stargate'—were unreliable, but three psychics continued to work out of Ft Meade, at least into July, researchers who evaluated the program for the CIA said…"75
It is also worth pointing out that this report coincided with the public disclosure by military personnel of this project. The story was revealed in David Morehouse's book Psychic Warrior.76
Col. John Alexander, working out of Los Alamos and a major proponent of this area of research, was quoted as saying:
"…there are weapons systems that operate on the power of the mind and whose lethal capacity has already been demonstrated… The psychotronic weapon would be silent, difficult to detect, and would require only a human operator as a power source."77
According to a paper on non-lethal weapons:
"An RF weapon currently under development is the high powered, very low frequency (VLF) modulator. Working in the 20–35 kHz spectrum, the frequency emits from a 1–2 meter antenna dish to form into a type of acoustic bullet. The weapon is especially convenient because the power level is easily adjustable. At its low setting, the acoustic bullet causes physical discomfort—enough to deter most approaching threats. Incrementally increasing the power nets an effect of nausea, vomiting and abdominal pains. The highest settings can cause a person's bones to literally explode internally. Aimed at the head, the resonating skull bones have caused people to hear 'voices'."
The weapon was researched by the Russian military more extensively than by the US. Indeed,
"…the Russians actually offered the use of such a weapon to the FBI in the Branch Davidian standoff to make them think that 'God' was talking to them. Concerned with the unpredictability of what the voices might actually say to the followers, the FBI declined the offer. Another RF weapon that was ready for use back in 1978 was developed under the guise of Operation PIQUE. Developed by the CIA, the plan was to bounce high powered radio signals off the ionosphere to affect the mental functions of people in selected areas, including Eastern European nuclear installations."78
The use of the ionosphere in the CIA's experiments reminds one of the possibilities now available with systems such as HAARP, which was developed 15 years later. What is clear in all of this is that these systems have been developed and hidden from public view. The practice continues to this day.
"The next area of non-lethal weapons is primarily used against machinery… these devices can either cause the machinery to stop functioning or to render it vulnerable to further, more lethal attacks. In addition to this effect, man has become very dependent upon the use of machines and is often rendered helpless in a situation when they become dysfunctional. Therefore, it is only appropriate that they are covered here. The primary anti-machinery arsenal includes the microwave weapon, the non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse, and the laser weapon.
"US Special Operations Command has in its arsenal the portable microwave weapon. The capability of such a weapon is varied in that it can not only disrupt enemy communications, but can also superheat internal organs. Of course, directing this type of weapon towards personnel eliminates it from the non-lethal classification. Developed in the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the weapon forms its signal similar to the RF weapons discussed above in that it directs the energy into a high-powered pulse and destroys transistors and other electrical equipment… On an even smaller scale, a portable EMP weapon could be carried by ground forces to destroy the electrical components in an armored vehicle or tank. This capability is being developed with police forces to emit a pulse that would stop a car almost immediately."79
These systems offer both promises and risks as we move into the new century. What will be the public reaction to these systems? We suggest that the reaction will cause a significant change in the uses and further developments of these technologies. Additionally, we suspect that monitoring systems would be developed which would allow for the detection of these technologies in order to control abuse.
Mind Control Victims
Sometimes referred to as "wavies" or "beamers", these individuals are usually dismissed when asserting that they are the victims of mind control weapons testing. In fact:
"University of South Florida researchers have published a study showing that fears of the Internet are replacing the CIA and radio waves as a frequent delusion in psychiatric patients. In every case of Internet delusion documented by the researchers, the patient actually had little experience with computers."80
The problem is that it is difficult if not impossible to sort out which people might be victims and which are delusional. Attempts to determine the reality of the complaints are often the butt of jokes and fear. For example, the University of Albany has…
"…shut down the research of a psychology professor probing the 'X-Files' world of government surveillance and mind control. At conferences, in papers and research over two semesters, Professor Kathryn Kelley explored the claims of those who say they were surgically implanted with communications devices to read their thoughts."81
Since the release of our first book, Angels Don't Play This HAARP: Advances in Tesla Technology,82 we have heard from hundreds of people making such claims. We cannot sort out what might be real experimentation from that which resides only in the minds of these people. We believe that the claims should be taken seriously and that people should have some place to go in order to find the truth or gain the medical treatments they otherwise deserve. The history of the United States is littered with examples of people being exploited by scientists working under the cover of darkness provided by "black budgets". Could these reports have a factual basis? We believe that some do.
Government control of the mind in order to impose its will on people is best summarized on the wall of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial with an inscription that reads:
"They [who] seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers… call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order."83
29. US Patent #3,566,347, Feb. 23, 1971, "Psycho-Acoustic Projector"; Inventor: Flanders, Andrew E.; Assignee: General Dynamics Corporation. EPI260
30. Sharp et al., "Generation of Acoustic Signals by Pulsed Microwave Energy", IEEE Transactions On Microwave Theory And Techniques, May 1974. EPI817
31. US Patent #4,877,027, Oct. 31, 1989, "Hearing System"; Inventor: Brunkan, Wayne. EPI1124
32. US Patent #4,858,612, Aug. 22, 1989, "Hearing Device"; Inventor: Stocklin, William L. EPI270
33. US Patent #4,877,027, Oct. 31, 1989, "Hearing System"; Inventor: Brunkan, Wayne B. EPI262
34. US Patent #5,159,703, Oct. 27, 1992, "Silent Subliminal Presentation System", Inventor: Lowry, Oliver M. EPI285
35. Scientists for Global Responsibility, "Non-Lethal Defence: The New Age Mental War Zone", issue 10, 1995. EPI810
36. US Patent #5,539,705, July 23, 1996, "Ultrasonic Speech Translator and Communication System"; Inventor: Akerman, M. Alfred et al.; Assignee: Martin Marietta Energy Systems. EPI293
37. Specter, Michael, "Scientists make brain cells grow", Anchorage Daily News, May 4, 1990. EPI527
38. Bishop, Jerry, "Nervy Scientists Move Toward Union Of Living Brain Cells With Microchips", Wall Street Journal, February 1, 1994, p. B3. EPI49
39. ONDCP, CTAC, "Counterdrug Research and Development Blueprint Update"
40. Cohen, David, "Magnetic Fields of the Human Body", Physics Today, August 1975. EPI1179
41. US Patent #5,392,788, Feb. 28, 1995, "Method And Device For Interpreting Concepts And Conceptual Thought From Brainwave Data And For Assisting For Diagnosis Of Brainwave Dysfunction"; Inventor: Hudspeth, William J. EPI1129
42. US Patent #5,507,291, April 16, 1996, "Method And An Associated Apparatus For Remotely Determining Information As To Person's Emotional State"; Inventors: Stirbl et al. EPI1130
43. Watts, Susan, "Alien kidnaps may just be mind zaps", The Sydney Morning Herald, November 19, 1994. EPI816
44. Opall, Barbara, "US Explores Russian Mind-Control Technology", Defense News, January 11-17, 1993. EPI818
45. Persinger, M. et al., "Partial Amnesia for a Narrative Following Application of Theta Frequency EM Fields", Journal of Bioelectricity 4(2):481-494 (1985). EPI372
46. US Patent #5,036,858, Aug. 6, 1991, "Method And Apparatus For Changing Brain Wave Frequency"; Inventors: Carter et al. EPI1127
47. US Patent #3,951,134, April 20, 1976, "Apparatus And Method For Remotely Monitoring And Altering Brainwaves"; Inventor: Malech, Robert G.; Assignee: Dorne & Margolin Inc. EPI1122
48. "Advances in Neuroscience 'May Threaten Human Rights'", Nature, vol. 391, January 22, 1998. EPI116
49. Kahney, Leander, "A Cat's Eye Marvel", Wired.com News, October 7, 1999
50. Delgado, José M.R., Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society, Harper & Row, New York, 1969. EPI850
51. "DoD, Intel Agencies Look at Russian Mind Control Technology, Claims", Defense Electronics, July 1993. EPI538
52. Elliot, Dorinda and Barry, John, "A Subliminal Dr Strangelove", Newsweek, August 21, 1994. EPI542
53. Depue, Roger L. and Depue, Joanne M., "To Dream, Perchance to Kill", Security Management, vol. 43, no. 6, July 1999. Source: NLECTC Law Enforcement & Technology News, Summary, July 8, 1999. EPI932
54. Hutchison, Michael, MegaBrain: New Tools and Techniques for Brain Growth and Mind Expansion, 1986. EPI1235
55. US Patent #5,356,368, Oct. 18, 1994, "Method and Apparatus for Inducing Desired States of Consciousness", Inventor: Monroe, Robert; Assignee: Interstate Industries, Inc. EPI286
56. Hutchison, MegaBrain, op. cit., p. 114. EPI1235
57. US Patent #3,773,049, Nov. 20, 1973, "Apparatus for the Treatment of Neuropsychic and Somatic Diseases with Heat, Light, Sound and VHF Electromagnetic Radiation"; Inventors: Rabichev et al. EPI257
58. US Patent #4,034,741, July 12, 1977, "Noise Transmitter and Generator"; Inventors: Adams et al.; Assignee: Solitron Devices Inc. EPI267
59. US Patent #4,191,175, March 4, 1980, "Method and Apparatus for Repetitively Producing a Noise-Like Audible Signal", Inventor: Nagle, William L. EPI269
60. US Patent # 4,335,710, June 22, 1982, "Device for the Induction of Specific Brain Wave Patterns"; Inventor: Williamson, John D.; Assignee: Omnitronics Research Corporation. EPI292
61. US Patent #4,717,343, Jan. 5, 1988, "Method of Changing a Person's Behavior"; Inventor: Densky, Alan. EPI284
62. US Patent #4,834,701, May 30, 1989, "Apparatus for Inducing Frequency Reduction in Brainwave", Inventor: Masaki, Kazumi; Assignee: Hayashibara, Ken. EPI266
63. US Patent #4,889,526, Dec. 26, 1989, "Non-Invasive Method and Apparatus for Modulating Brain Signals Through an External Magnetic Or Electric Field To Reduce Pain"; Inventors: Rauscher, Elizabeth A. and Van Bise, William L.; Assignee: Megatech Laboratories, Inc. EPI268
64. US Patent #4,227,516, Oct. 14, 1990, "Apparatus for Electrophysiological Stimulation"; Inventors: Meland et al. EPI283
65. US Patent #4,883,067, Nov. 28, 1989, "Method and Apparatus for Translating the EEG into Music to Induce and Control Various Psychological and Physiological States and to Control a Musical Instrument"; Inventors: Knispel et al.; Assignee: Neurosonics, Inc. EPI282
66. US Patent # 5,123,899, June 23, 1992, "Method and System for Altering Consciousness"; Inventor: Gall, James. EPI289.
67. US Patent # 5,352,181, Oct. 4, 1994, "Method and Recording For Producing Sounds and Messages to Achieve Alpha and Theta Brainwave States and Positive Emotional States in Humans"; Inventor: Davis, Mark E. EPI291
68. US Patent #5,289,438, Feb. 22, 1994, "Method and System For Altering Consciousness", Inventor: Gall, James. EPI333
69. Ruttan, Leslie A. et al., "Enhancement of Temporal Lobe-Related Experiences During Brief Exposures To Milligauss Intensity Extremely Low Frequency Magnetic Fields", Journal of Bioelectricity 9(1):33-54 (1990). EPI311
70. US Patent #5,562,597, Oct. 8, 1996, "Method and Apparatus for Reducing Physiological Stress"; Inventor: Van Dick, Robert C. EPI294
71. US Patent # 5,586,967, Dec. 24, 1996, "Method and Recording or Producing Sounds and Messages To Achieve Alpha and Theta Brainwave States in Humans", Inventor: Davis, Mark E. EPI296
72. US Patent #5,213,562, May 25, 1993, "Method of Inducing Mental, Emotional and Physical States of Consciousness, Including Specific Mental Activity in Human Beings"; Inventor: Monroe, Robert; Assignee: Interstate Industries, Inc. EPI287
73. Hotz, Robert Lee, "Listening to Mozart a real – but temporary – IQ builder, study says", Anchorage Daily News, October 15, 1993. EPI529
74. Tyler, Capt. Paul E., MC, USN, "The Electromagnetic Spectrum in Low-Intensity Conflict" in Lt. Col. David Dean (ed.), Low-Intensity Conflict and Modern Technology, Air University Press, June 1986. EPI709
75. Cole, Richard, "ESP spies, 'Stargate' are psychic reality", Saint Paul Pioneer Press, November 30, 1995. EPI491
76. Morehouse, David, Psychic Warrior, Michael Joseph Ltd, UK, St Martin's Press, USA, 1996.
77. Aftergood, Steven, "The ''Soft Kill' Fallacy", Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September/October 1994. EPI281
78. Suhajda, Joseph M., "Non-Lethal Weapons for Military Operations Other Than War"
79. ibid.
80. "Internet Feeds Delusions", Associated Press, July 5, 1999. EPI123
81. Brownstein, Andrew. "U. Albany Suspends implants research", Times Union, August 25, 1999. EPI833
82. Begich, Dr Nick and Jeane Manning, Angels Don't Play This HAARP: Advances in Tesla Technology, EarthPulse Press, Anchorage, 1995.
84. Lalli, Anthony N., "Human Research Subject Protection"
Mind Control: The Ultimate Brave New World (Part 1 of 2) (Dr. Nick Begich)
Technologies for stimulating the brain and controlling the mind can have benefits, but they have a dark side that military and intelligence planners have been exploiting for decades.
It would also appear possible to create high fidelity speech in the human body, raising the possibility of covert suggestion and psychological direction… Thus, it may be possible to "talk" to selected adversaries in a fashion that would be most disturbing to them.1
— US Air Force, New World Vistas: Air and Space Power for the 21st Century1
The idea that the brain can be made to function at a more efficient and directed level has been the subject of research by scientists, mystics, health practitioners and others for as long as mankind has contemplated such matters. In the last decade, advances in the science of the brain have begun to yield significant results. The results of the research are startling, challenging and, if misused, will be frightening. The certainty to be expected from the research is that it will continue to proceed.
The idea that people can be impacted by external signal generators which create, for example, pulsed electromagnetic fields, pulsed light and pulsed sound signals is not new. The following information demonstrates some of the possibilities and gives hints of the potentials of the technology. On the positive side, researchers in the field of light and sound are making huge progress in a number of areas, including working with learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, stroke recovery, accelerated learning, drug/alcohol addiction and enhanced human performance. The research has shown that certain brain states can be influenced in a way which causes changes within the brain itself. These changes allow individuals the possibility of influencing specific conditions in the mind and body otherwise thought beyond our direct control.
The military and others interested in such things have also focused a large amount of research into this area for the purpose of enhancing the performance of soldiers while degrading the performance of adversaries.
What is known is that great strides in the area of behaviour control are now possible with systems developed and under development by most sophisticated countries on the planet. These new technologies represent a much different approach to warfare which our government is describing as part of the "Revolution in Military Affairs". While these new technologies offer much for military planners, they offer even more to citizens generally. Their potential use in military applications and "peacekeeping" creates the need for open debate of this new realm of intelligence-gathering, manipulation and warfare. The most basic ethical questions regarding use of these technologies have not been adequately addressed.
At the same time that defense and intelligence-gathering capabilities are being sought, independent researchers are fully engaged in seeking positive uses for the technology. The potentials of the technology, like all technology, are great as both a destructive or constructive force for change. The idea of enhancing physical and mental performance while bypassing what heretofore was a long and arduous road to achieve the same results is exciting. Maintaining the research in the open literature and ensuring that constructive uses are encouraged is critical.
I began looking into technologies for stimulating brain performance about fifteen years ago. At the time, there were limited tools available compared to what is now possible. Now it is possible to obtain light and sound, electrocranial and biofeedback tools for use in this exploration. Moreover, there are audio materials also available for use with most of these tools. These audio materials can be used for learning languages, behaviour modification or enhanced performance. The biofeedback side of the new technology is being used to train people to reach specific desired brain states for optimum performance.
The use of light and sound devices for stimulating brain activity which is conducive to accelerated learning and relaxation is a growing area of interest to many people. Moreover, the use of these tools in conjunction with biofeedback has been the subject of quickly evolving research. The combined technologies of brain state inducement and biofeedback offer exciting possibilities. It has been found with the combination that a person, in a matter of several weeks, can learn to modify purposefully his/her brain activity in a way which would have taken a Zen master twenty years to accomplish. It has been shown that some children with attention deficit disorders can be taught to regulate their brain activities so that they can learn efficiently without chemicals. It has been demonstrated that recovering stroke victims can more rapidly recover when working with brain-biofeedback practitioners and these new tools.
The research is also teaching us a good deal about our suggestibility in terms of influences which have an impact on our behaviour. The underlying message that comes with the new technology is the necessity of providing safeguards against misuse. Additionally, recognition of the everyday stimulation we all get and the effect of these information inputs on our learning processes becomes more clear. The suggestibility of humans, particularly when in a fatigued condition, has been exploited by terrorists, cults and others in pursuit of their own aims. The passive suggestibility of radio and television as we weave in and out of the semi-sleep states is for the most part not even recognized. The passive learning situations become even more relevant when we consider how we "receive the news" in our daily lives. The ability to influence thinking, behaviour and performance is indeed a two-edged sword.
The 1980s and 1990s were focused on building up the physical body. The 21st century will see a focus on building the mind and optimizing mental performance. The idea of merging the new technologies into education is interesting and also calls into question who will decide what is to be learned. In the interim, the possibilities are incredible for those interested in such pursuits. The control of our mental function is no different than the control of the muscles in our bodies. Learning to control or coordinate the activity of our minds will propel our bodies through a much more productive and fuller life. The new tools may offer just such opportunities.
On the other side of the issue is the potential for misuse and exploitation of the science. Military planners, law enforcement officials and others are now seeking the covert use of these technologies for controlling the ultimate "information processor"—the Human Being.
"Dr Gottlieb, born August 3, 1918, was the CIA's real-life 'Dr Strangelove'—a brilliant bio-chemist who designed and headed MK-ULTRA, the agency's most far-reaching drug and mind-control program at the height of the Cold War. Though the super-secret MK-ULTRA was ended in 1964, a streamlined version called MK-SEARCH was continued—with Gottlieb in charge—until 1972."2
During this period, substantial interest in mind control was stimulated by Soviet use of microwaves. In 1988, "thirty-five years after security officers first noticed that the Soviets were bombarding the US embassy in Moscow with microwave radiation, the US government still has not determined conclusively—or is unwilling to reveal—the purpose behind the beams".3
The US government did know what was happening. The Soviets had developed methods for disrupting the purposeful thought of humans and were using their knowledge to impact diplomats in the United States embassy in Moscow.
In 1994, a report concerning the MKULTRA program was issued, containing the following information:
"In the 1950s and '60s, the CIA engaged in an extensive program of human experimentation, using drugs, psychological, and other means, in search of techniques to control human behavior for counterintelligence and covert action purposes.
"In 1973, the CIA purposefully destroyed most of the MKULTRA files concerning its research and testing on human behaviour. In 1977, the agency uncovered additional MKULTRA files in the budget and fiscal records that were not indexed under the name MKULTRA. These documents detailed over 150 subprojects that the CIA funded in this area, but no evidence was uncovered at that time concerning the use of radiation.
"The CIA did investigate the use and effect of microwaves on human beings in response to a Soviet practice of beaming microwaves on the US embassy. The agency determined that this was outside the scope of the Advisory Committee's purview.
"…The Church Committee found some records, but also noted that the practice of MKULTRA at that time was 'to maintain no records of the planning and approval of test programs'. …MKULTRA itself was technically closed out in 1964, but some of its work was transferred to the Office of Research and Development (ORD) within the DS&T under the name MKSEARCH and continued into the 1970s.
"The CIA worked closely with the Army in conducting the LSD experiments. This connection with the Army is significant because MKULTRA began at the same time that Secretary of Defense Wilson issued his 1953 directive to the military services on ethical guidelines for human experiments.
"Throughout the course of MKULTRA, the CIA sponsored numerous experiments on unwitting humans. After the death of one such individual (Frank Olson, an army scientist, was given LSD in 1953 and committed suicide a week later), an internal CIA investigation warned about the dangers of such experimentation. The CIA persisted in this practice for at least the next ten years. After the 1963 IG [Inspector-General] report recommended termination of unwitting testing, Deputy Director for Plans Richard Helms (who later became Director of Central Intelligence) continued to advocate covert testing on the ground that 'positive operational capability to use drugs is diminishing, owing to a lack of realistic testing. With increasing knowledge of state of the art, we are less capable of staying up with the Soviet advances in this field'. …Helms attributed the cessation of the unwitting testing to the high risk of embarrassment to the Agency as well as the 'moral problem'. He noted that no better covert situation had been devised than that which had been used, and that 'we have no answer to the moral issue'."4
They did have the answers to the moral questions on human experimentation but chose to ignore them, destroy the records, hide the truth and still continue in their efforts. Nothing has changed as each participating organization, using national security laws, avoids disclosure and accountability. The records which were destroyed contained the evidence necessary perhaps to send some participants to jail for society's version of behaviour modification. Once again, there was no accountability and no recognition of the rights of the individuals damaged by these experiments.
Mind Wars
"For the first time in some 500 years, a scientific revolution has begun that will fundamentally change the world as much as the Renaissance and Enlightenment did. A handful of extraordinary new advances in science are taking humans quickly and deeply into areas that will have profound implications for the future."5
One of these areas is control of the human mind. The issues surrounding behaviour modification, mind control and information warfare become crystal clear as the facts unfold.
The following is taken from a current military document, "The Information Revolution and the Future Air Force" by Colonel John A. Warden III, USAF, which clarifies their position in the emerging area of research, taking a much different direction than the one described above:
"We're currently experiencing, on an unprecedented global basis, three simultaneous revolutions, any one of which would be more than enough to shock and confound us. The first revolution, a geopolitical revolution, sees a single dominant power in the world for the first time since the fall of Rome. The opportunities that are inherent in this situation are extraordinary, as are the pitfalls. Unfortunately, there is no one around that has first hand experience in how to deal with that kind of single power dominant world.
"The second revolution, and there's a lot of discussion about this so far, is the information revolution. As other people have mentioned, it is following inexorably in tandem behind Moore's law of computing power. Attendant to it, though, is not the creation of new ideas and technologies, but also an exponential growth in the velocity of information dissemination, and for us that is of extraordinary importance. A key part of this information revolution has an awesome impact on competition. The business that introduced a new product ten years ago could count on probably five years before it had to look seriously at potential competitors based overseas. Today, you're lucky if you can count on five months or even five weeks before you are facing the overseas competitor. In today's world, success simply demands rapid introduction of successively new products or military systems. Success now goes to the organization which exploits information almost instantly, while failure is the near certain fate of the organization which tries to husband or hide ideas. Real simple—use it or you're going to lose it.
"The third revolution, which is a little bit more complex, is the military/technological revolution, or in some places called the revolution in military affairs. I'm convinced that this is the first military technological revolution ever because we now have, for the first time, a conceptually different way to wage war. We can wage war in parallel now. In the past, communications and weapons technology, especially weapons accuracy, have constrained us to waging serial war. This changes almost everything.
"Biological Process Control:
As we look forward to the future, it seems likely that this nation will be involved in multiple conflicts where our military forces increasingly will be placed in situations where the application of full force capabilities of our military might cannot be applied. We will be involved intimately with hostile populations in situations where the application of non-lethal force will be the tactical or political preference. It appears likely that there are a number of physical agents that might actively, but largely benignly, interact or interfere with biological processes in an adversary in a manner that will provide our armed forces the tools to control these adversaries without extensive loss of life or property. These physical agents could include acoustic fields, optical fields, electromagnetic fields, and combinations thereof. This paper will address only the prospect of physical regulation of biological processes using electromagnetic fields.
"Prior to the mid-21st century, there will be a virtual explosion of knowledge in the field of neuroscience. We will have achieved a clear understanding of how the human brain works, how it really controls the various functions of the body, and how it can be manipulated (both positively and negatively). One can envision the development of electromagnetic energy sources, the output of which can be,
pulsed, shaped, and focused
that can couple with the human body in a fashion that will allow one to prevent voluntary muscular movements
control emotions (and thus actions)
produce sleep
transmit suggestions
interfere with both short-term and long-term memory
produce an experience set
delete an experience set
This will open the door for the development of some novel capabilities that can be used in armed conflict, in terrorist/hostage situations, and in training. New weapons that offer the opportunity of control of an adversary without resorting to a lethal situation or to collateral casualties can be developed around this concept. This would offer significant improvements in the capabilities of our special operation forces.
"Initial experimentation should be focused on the interaction of electromagnetic energy and the neuromuscular junctions involved in voluntary muscle control. Theories need to be developed, modeled, and tested in experimental preparations. Early testing using in vitro cell cultures of neural networks could provide the focus for more definitive intact animal testing. If successful, one could envision a weapon that would render an opponent incapable of taking any meaningful action involving any higher motor skills (e.g., using weapons, operating tracking systems). The prospect of a weapon to accomplish this when targeted against an individual target is reasonable; the prospect of a weapon effective against a massed force would seem to be more remote. Use of such a device in an enclosed area against multiple targets (hostage situation) may be more difficult than an individual target system, but probably feasible.
"It would also appear to be possible to create high fidelity speech in the human body, raising the possibility of covert suggestion and psychological direction. When a high power microwave pulse in the gigahertz range strikes the human body, a very small temperature perturbation occurs. This is associated with a sudden expansion of the slightly heated tissue. This expansion is fast enough to produce an acoustic wave. If a pulse stream is used, it should be possible to create an internal acoustic field in the 5–15 kilohertz range, which is audible. Thus, it may be possible to 'talk' to selected adversaries in a fashion that would be most disturbing to them.
"In comparison to the discussion in the paragraphs above, the concept of imprinting an experience set is highly speculative, but nonetheless highly exciting. Modern electromagnetic scattering theory raises the prospect that ultrashort pulse scattering through the human brain can result in reflected signals that can be used to construct a reliable estimate of the degree of central nervous system arousal. The concept behind this 'remote EEG' is to scatter off of action potentials or ensembles of action potentials in major central nervous system tracts. Assuming we will understand how our skills are imprinted and recalled, it might be possible to take this concept one step further and duplicate the experience set in another individual. The prospect of providing a 'been there—done that' knowledge base could provide a revolutionary change in our approach to specialized training. How this can be done or even if it can be done are significant unknowns [sic]. The impact of success would boggle the mind!"6
The above report was a forecast for the year 2020. However, the reality is that these technologies already exist and there are a number of patents in the open literature which clearly show the possibilities. This research is not new but goes back to the 1950s.
"A new class of weapons, based on electromagnetic fields, has been added to the muscles of the military organism. The C3I [Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence] doctrine is still growing and expanding. It would appear that the military may yet be able to completely control the minds of the civilian population."7
The targeting of civilian populations by the military is a significant departure from its history. In the past, the military has used persuasion through real information rather than using deliberate deception and mind manipulation to win populations over.
"A decoy and deception concept presently being considered is to remotely create the perception of noise in the heads of personnel by exposing them to low power, pulsed microwaves. When people are illuminated with properly modulated low power microwaves the sensation is reported as a buzzing, clicking, or hissing which seems to originate (regardless of the person's position in the field) within or just behind the head.
The phenomena occurs [sic] at average power densities as low as microwatts per square centimeter with carrier frequencies from 0.4 to 3.0 GHz. By proper choice of pulse characteristics, intelligible speech may be created. Before this technique may be extended and used for military applications, an understanding of the basic principles must be developed. Such an understanding is not only required to optimize the use of the concept for camouflage, decoy and deception operations but is required to properly assess safety factors of such microwave exposure."8
Actual testing of certain systems has proven, "that movements, sensations, emotions, desires, ideas, and a variety of psychological phenomena may be induced, inhibited, or modified by electrical stimulation of specific areas of the brain. These facts have changed the classical philosophical concept that the mind was beyond experimental reach."9
The first widespread interest in the subject of mind control hit the mainstream of military think-tanks after the Korean War when returning prisoners of war exhibited significant behavioural changes. In 1956, the following was written into the United States Congressional Record:
"Reports of the treatment of American prisoners of war in Korea have given rise to several popular misconceptions, of which the most widely publicized is 'brainwashing'. The term itself has caught the public imagination and is used, very loosely, to describe any act committed against an individual by the Communists. Actual 'brainwashing' is a prolonged psychological process, designed to erase an individual's past beliefs and concepts and to substitute new ones. It is a highly coercive practice which is irreconcilable with universally accepted medical ethics. In the process of 'brainwashing', the efforts of many are directed against an individual. To be successful, it requires, among other things, that the individual be completely isolated from normal associations and environment."10
The ethical considerations have not changed, but the military's position on the ethics has changed as it has gained significant capabilities in these areas.
"Psychological warfare is becoming increasingly important for US forces as they engage in peacekeeping operations. 'In the psychological operations area, we're always looking to build on our existing technologies, so much of this is evolutionary,' [military planner] Holmes said. 'It is critically important that we stay ahead of the technology curve."11
The temptation to dabble in this area has now overcome the ethical considerations.
A Russian military article offered a slightly different slant to the problem, declaring that "humanity stands on the brink of a psychotronic war" with the mind and body as the focus.11a These "psychotronic" weapons aim to control or alter the psyche, or to attack the various sensory and data-processing systems of the human organism. In both cases, the goal is to confuse or destroy the signals that normally keep the body in equilibrium.
According to a US Department of Defense directive (S-3600.1, December 9, 1996), "information warfare" is defined as, "an information operation conducted during time of crisis or conflict to achieve or promote specific objectives over a specific adversary or adversaries".
An "information operation" is defined in the same directive as "actions taken to affect adversary information and information systems". These "information systems" lie at the heart of the modernization effort of the US armed forces and manifest themselves as hardware, software, communications capabilities and highly trained individuals.
Information warfare has tended to ignore the role of the human body as an information or data processor in this quest for dominance, except in those cases where an individual's logic or rational thought may be upset via disinformation or deception…
Yet, the body is capable not only of being deceived, manipulated or misinformed but also shut down or destroyed—just as any other data-processing system. The "data" the body receives from external sources, such as electromagnetic, vortex or acoustic energy waves, or creates through its own electrical or chemical stimuli, can be manipulated or changed, just as the data (information) in any hardware system can be altered. If the ultimate target of information warfare is the information-dependent process, "whether human or automated", then the definition implies that human data-processing of internal and external signals can clearly be considered an aspect of information warfare.12
On a much grander scale, the use of mind control was contemplated as far back as 1969 by a former science adviser to President Johnson.
"Gordon J. F. Macdonald, a geophysicist specializing in problems of warfare, has written that accurately timed, artificially excited strokes 'could lead to a pattern of oscillations that produce relatively high power levels over certain regions of the earth… In this way, one could develop a system that would seriously impair the brain performance of very large populations in selected regions over an extended period…'"13
This capability exists today through the use of systems which can stimulate the ionosphere to return a pulsed (modulated) signal which, at the right frequency, can override normal brain functions. By overriding the natural pulsations of the brain, chemical reactions are triggered which alter the emotional state of targeted populations.
Subliminal Messages and Commercial Uses
One of the areas where this new technology is being used is in systems to dissuade shoplifters, using sound below the range of hearing.
"Japanese shopkeepers are playing CDs with subliminal messages to curb the impulses of the growing band of shoplifters. The Mind Control CDs have sound-tracks of popular music or ocean waves, with encoded voices in seven languages… warning that anyone caught stealing will be reported to the police."14
A number of devices have been developed to influence behaviour in this way, and patents have been awarded. The following summations are taken from some of these patents dealing with both audio and video programming—only this time, we are the program:
"An auditory subliminal programming system includes a subliminal message encoder that generates fixed frequency security tones and combines them with a subliminal message signal to produce an encoded subliminal message signal which is recorded on audio tape or the like. A corresponding subliminal decoder/mixer is connected as part of a user's conventional stereo system and receives as inputs an audio program selected by the user and the encoded subliminal message."15
"Ambient audio signals from the customer shopping area within a store are sensed and fed to a signal processing circuit that produces a control signal which varies with variations in the amplitude of the sensed audio signals. A control circuit adjusts the amplitude of an auditory subliminal anti-shoplifting message to increase with increasing amplitudes of sensed audio signals and decrease with decreasing amplitudes of sensed audio signals. This amplitude controlled subliminal message may be mixed with background music and transmitted to the shopping area."16
"Data to be displayed is combined with a composite video signal. The data is stored in memory in digital form. Each byte of data is read out in sequential fashion to determine: the recurrence display rate of the data according to the frame sync pulses of the video signal; the location of the data within the video image according to the line sync pulses of the video signal; and the location of the data display within the video image according to the position information."17
"This invention is a combination of a subliminal message generator that is 100% user programmable for use with a television receiver. The subliminal message generator periodically displays user specified messages for the normal television signal for [a] specific period of time. This permits an individual to employ a combination of subliminal and supraliminal therapy while watching television."18
The above points may seem a bit complicated; however, they can be summarized. These patents are designed to provide a way to hide messages in video or audio formats, masking any suggestions that the programmer wishes to convey. These kinds of messages bypass the conscious mind and are acted upon by the person hearing them; they are not sorted out by the active mind. Although these technologies are being developed for personal use and as security measures, consider the possibilities for abuse by commercial interests where the messages might be "buy, buy, buy", "drink more, don't worry", or some other self-serving script. Should these systems be regulated? By whom and under what conditions?
New Standards for What is a Memory
"Nevada is currently the only state to allow witness testimony of a person who has undergone hypnosis. As of October 1, 1997, courts hearing both civil and criminal cases can take a hypnotically refreshed testimony, as long as the witness, if a minor, has had the informed consent of parent or guardian, and the person performing the hypnosis is any of the following: a health care provider, a clinical social worker licensed in accordance with 641B of Nevada Revised Statute, or a disinterested investigator."19
This issue will surely become more complex as technology advances in terms of evidence. When the day arrives that it is possible to change or alter memory completely, as suggested earlier by military officers, what then? How will we separate the real from the unreal? What will be the impact on the burden of proof in courts as it relates to "reasonable doubt"?
Again, the emergence of the technology has first to be recognized as real before laws can be constructed and systems established for controlling misuse. Think how long it has taken the courts even to recognize hypnotherapy as valid science. We are hopeful that we will not have to wait so long for legislative bodies to take the initiative to address these issues.
Auditory Effects
The questions which this section raises are profound. Is it possible to transmit a signal to the brain of a person, from a distance, which deposits specific sounds, voice or other information which can be understood? Is it possible to transfer sound in a way where only the targeted person can hear the "voice in the head" and no one else hears a thing? Is it possible to shift a person's emotions using remote electromagnetic tools? The answer to each of these questions is a resounding "Yes!" The state of the science has passed even the most optimistic predictions, and the capabilities are here now.
Military literature suggests that this is possible. A series of experiments, patents and independent research confirm that this technology exists today. While giving testimony to the European Parliament in 1998, I demonstrated one such device to the astonishment of those in attendance. This particular device required physical contact in order to work and was nearly forty years old. This area of research is one of the most important because it points to the ultimate weapon of political control: the ability to place information directly into the human brain, bypassing all normal filtering mechanisms.
In 1995, the US Department of Defense put forward the contract, "Communicating via the Microwave Auditory Effect; Awarding Agency: Department of Defense; SBIR Contract Number: F41624-95-C-9007". The description of this technology, which would be used for direct communications with military personnel, is written as follows:
"Title: Communicating via the Microwave Auditory Effect
"Description: An innovative and revolutionary technology is described that offers a means of low-probability-of-intercept Radio Frequency (RF) communications. The feasibility of the concept has been established using both a low intensity laboratory system and a high power RF transmitter. Numerous military applications exist in areas of search and rescue, security and special operations."20
The feasibility was not only demonstrated in the laboratory but also in the field using a radio-frequency carrier. In the case of the Gulf War, we had always suspected that the reason the Iraqis gave up in mass was not because of the heavy bombardments but because they were being hit with new "non-lethal" systems which created fear and perhaps even worse. Our research uncovered reports which now confirm our suspicions as fact.
"What the 'Voice of the Gulf' began broadcasting, along with prayers from the Koran and testimonials from well-treated Iraqi prisoners, was precise information on the units to be bombed each day, along with a new, silent psychological technique which induced thoughts of great fear in each soldier's mind…"21
This makes a great deal of sense today, given what has become increasingly known about mind-control weapons.
"According to statements made by captured and deserting Iraqi soldiers, however, the most devastating and demoralizing programming was the first known military use of the new, high tech, type of subliminal messages referred to as ultra-high-frequency 'Silent Sounds' or 'Silent Subliminals'."22
The use of these new techniques, we believe, went well beyond the injection of fear and may have involved more powerful signal generators which caused the other symptoms which the world observed, including head pain, bleeding from the nose, disorientation and nausea—all possible with so-called non-lethal weapons. The questions which now remain: Are they still using the techniques like an electronic concentration camp in order to control the population? Is this part of the way in which modern governments will suppress rogue nations?
The development of the technology followed a very traceable history which began in the early 1960s at the height of the Cold War. In 1961, Dr Allen Frey wrote:
"Our data to date indicate that the human auditory system can respond to electromagnetic energy in at least a portion of the radio frequency (RF) spectrum. Further, this response is instantaneous and occurs at low power densities, densities which are well below that necessary for biological damage. For example, the effect has been induced with power densities 1/60 of the standard maximum safe level for continuous exposure."23
This observation had incredible ramifications because it meant that within certain ranges RF could create a sound within the brain of a person at energy concentration levels considered too small to be significant.
Later that year, a patent was issued to Henry K. Puharich and Joseph L. Lawrence which stated in part:
"The present invention is directed to a means for auxiliary hearing communication, useful for improving hearing, for example, and relates more specifically to novel and improved arrangements for auxiliary hearing communications by effecting the transmission of sound signals through the dental structure and facial nervous system of the user."24
This crude device produced a signal which could be heard in the brain by inducing a vibration which was transferred through the bone into the inner ear, where it was then carried to the brain via the nervous system. Puharich continued researching along this line, gaining an additional patent in 1965.25 Both of these inventions required physical contact with the head of the subject.
By 1962, Dr Allan Frey had advanced his work and was able to create sound at a distance from the subject, using a pulsed (modulated) radio transmitter.
"Using extremely low average power densities of electromagnetic energy, the perception of sounds was induced in normal and deaf humans. The effect was induced several hundred feet from the antenna the instant the transmitter was turned on, and is a function of carrier frequency and modulation."26
What was occurring in this research were the first attempts to "tune" into the brain of a human in the same manner as "tuning" into a radio station. The same energy was being used; it was just at a different frequency with a slight vibration (modulation) on the carrier wave which delivered the signal.
In 1968, G. Patrick Flanagan was issued a patent for a device which also required physical contact with the skin of the subject.
"This invention relates to electromagnetic excitation of the nervous system of a mammal and pertains more particularly to a method and apparatus for exciting the nervous system of a person with electromagnetic waves that are capable of causing that person to become conscious of information conveyed by the electromagnetic waves."27
This invention was much different than what others had created by that time, because this device actually sent a clear, audible signal through the nervous system to the brain.
The device could be placed anywhere on the body, and a clear voice or music would appear in the head of the subject. This was a most unbelievable device which had actually been invented in the late 1950s. It had taken years to convince patent examiners that it worked. The initial patent was only granted after the dramatic demonstration of the device on a deaf employee of the US Patent Office.
In 1972, a second patent was issued to G. Patrick Flanagan after being suppressed by the military since 1968. This device was much more efficient in that it converted a speech waveform into, "a constant amplitude square wave in which the transitions between the amplitude extremes are spaced so as to carry the speech information".28
What this did is establish the code of modulation or timing sequences necessary for efficient transfers into the nervous system where the signals could be sent to the brain and decoded as sound in the same way that normal sound is decoded.
The result was a clear and understandable sound.
1. US Air Force, New World Vistas: Air and Space Power for the 21st Century – Ancillary Volume, Scientific Advisory Board (USAF), Washington, DC, Document #19960618040, 1996, pp. 89-90. EPI402
2. Foster, Sarah, "Cold War legend dies at 80: Famed as CIA's real-life 'Dr Strangelove'", Worldnetdaily, March 9, 1999. EPI279
3. Reppert, Barton, "The Zapping of an Embassy: 35 Years Later, The Mystery Lingers", AP, May 22, 1988. EPI1112
4. Advisory Committee Staff, Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, Methodological Review of Agency Data Collection Efforts: Initial Report on the Central Intelligence Agency Document Search, June 27, 1994. EPI579
5. Petersen, John L., The Road to 2015: Profiles of the Future, Waite Group Press, 1994, ISBN 1-878739-85-9. EPI849
6. USAF, New World Vistas, ibid.
7. US EPA, Summary and Results of the April 26-27, 1993 Radiofrequency Radiation Conference, Volume 2: Papers, 402-R-95-011, March 1995. EPI728
8. Oscar, K.J., "Effects of low power microwaves on the local cerebral blood flow of conscious rats", Army Mobility Equipment Command, June 1, 1980. EPI1195
9. Delgado, José M.R., Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1969. EPI850
10. US Senate, Communist Interrogation, Indoctrination and Exploitation of American Military and Civilian Prisoners, Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on Investigations, 84th Congress, 2nd Session, December 31, 1956. EPI1131
11. Cooper, Pat, "US Enhances Mind Games", Defense News, April 17-23, 1995. EPI1154
11a. Chernishev, I., "Can Rulers Make 'Zombies' and Control the World?", Orienteer, February 1997, pp. 58-62.
12. Thomas, Timothy L., "The Mind Has No Firewall", Parameters, vol. XXVIII, no. 1, Spring 1998. EPI525
13. Brzezinski, Zbigniew, Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, Viking Press, New York, 1970. EPI787
14. McGill, Peter, "'Mind Control Music' Stops Shoplifters", The Sydney Morning Herald, February 4, 1995. EPI95
15. US Patent #4,777,529, October 11, 1988, "Auditory Subliminal Programming System"; Inventors: Schultz et al.; Assignee: Richard M. Schultz and Associates, Inc. EPI265
16. US Patent #4,395,600, July 26, 1983, "Auditory Subliminal Message System and Method"; Inventors: Lundy et al. EPI264
17. US Patent #5,134,484, July 28, 1992, "Superimposing Method and Apparatus Useful for Subliminal Messages"; Inventor: Willson, Joseph; Assignee: MindsEye Educational Systems, Inc. EPI290
18. US Patent #5,270,800, December 14, 1993, "Subliminal Message Generator"; Inventor: Sweet, Robert L. EPI288
19. Hall, E. Gene, "Watch Carefully Now: Solving Crime in the 21st Century", Police, June 1999, vol. 23, no. 6. Source: NLECTC Law Enforcement & Technology News Summary, June 17, 1999. EPI944
20. US Department of Defense (awarding agency), "Communicating via the Microwave Auditory Effect", SBIR Contract Number F41624-95-C-9007. EPI277
21. ITV News Bureau, "A Psy-Ops Bonanza On The Desert", 1991, EPI568
22. ITV News Bureau, "High Tech Psychological Warfare Arrives in the Middle East", 1991, EPI567
23. Frey, Allan H., "Auditory System Response to Radio Frequency Energy", Aerospace Medicine, December 1961, vol. 32, pp. 1140-1142. EPI370
24. US Patent #2,995,633, August 8, 1961, "Means for Aiding Hearing"; Inventors: Puharich et al. EPI256
25. US Patent #3,170,993, February 23, 1965, "Means for Aiding Hearing by Electrical Stimulation of the Facial Nerve System"; Inventors: Henry K. Puharich and Joseph L. Lawrence. EPI1119
26. Frey, Allan H., "Human Auditory System Response to Modulated Electromagnetic Energy", Journal of Applied Physiology 17(4):689-692, 1962. EPI544
27. US Patent #3,393,279, July 16, 1968, "Nervous System Excitation Device"; Inventor: Flanagan, Gillis Patrick; Assignee: Listening Incorporated. EPI261
28. US Patent #3,647,970, March 7, 1972, "Method and System of Simplifying Speech Waveforms"; Inventor: Flanagan, Gillis P. EPI259