In various works of fiction, it’s presented that people can be pretty much reprogrammed to think or believe whatever the programmers want. The methods usually depicted are intense psychological indoctrination, hypnotic drugs, electrode implants in the brain, or any of those in combination.
In fiction, these methods are used to produce “sleeper” agents such as assassins who don’t know they’ve been programmed. Or to turn government agents or officials into moles. Or to train women kidnapped into white slavery.
Certainly after the Korean war, when concerns about “brainwashing” first surfaced, it can be presumed that the government has researched any feasible methods of mind control. My question is, fiction aside, what is the actual state of the art for mind control? Unfortunately, all my searchs for “mind control” on the Net turn up are conspiracy theory sites, web pages by schizophrenics, and porn stories. Any good sources for the Straight Dope on this?
I read in Robert Young Pelton’s “The World’s Most Dangerous Places” (both the N. Korea and the Sudan chapter) that mind control is best done through complete control of the media, and limiting contact with others. After a while, people give up thinking. N. Koreans, for example, believe that Kim Jong Il (the first dictator) is responsible for the sun rising in the morning and that he discovered gravity, amongst other things.
Occasionally, some of this leaks out in their news service (www.kcna.co.jp)…but since the “thawing of relations” the readin’ isn’t nearly as fun as it used to be.
I do not believe “brainwashing” (as in “The Manchurian Candidate”) is possible. However, “mind control” is something different.
If you can get a person to want what you want him to want, you can make him process reality differently. Consider the case of the “Heaven’s Gate” cult.
However, I don’t know how one would go about making somebody do something he or she doesn’t want to do, for a cause he or she does not support. At least, not once the person is outside your sphere of control. (That’s why Jonestown was so sinister: people who changed their minds were basically screwed.)
It’s far simpler to persuade somebody through blackmail or extortion than to use some wild-ass technology to transmogrify them into an unconscious operative.
Remember Patricia Hearst who was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970s and ended up robbing banks for her kidnappers? She was locked in a small cupboard for a long period of time and subjected to sensory deprivation and other tortures designed to break her will. Although she claimed this had resulted in her being brainwashed she was not widely believed. I remember her saying in an interview that not many people realise just how fragile the human mind is because not many have the chance to find out through undergoing experiences like hers. I’m sure she’s right. By the way, I’ve forgotten where Symbia is.
Back in WW II, it was discovered that the human brain will rectify certain radio frequencies. They discovered this when soldiers would stand in the vicinity of radars. The soldiers would hear a hiss that sounded like it was coming from behind them. No matter which way they turned, the hiss always sounded like it was coming from behind them.
Some time ago, there was an American team studying just what could be done with this fact. They started having all kinds of success getting people to hear voices. Right then, the program went black (the Fed.'s removed all of their funding and a new research team was formed and worked in top secret, that’s when you know something’s up).
By now, there’s no doubt that the Fed.'s can put a voice in your head. The Russians can definitely do it. They were doing it in Afghanistan but they lost anyway so it must not have done them all that much good. A Russian expert was called in by the Fed.'s to help at the Waco siege. Apparently, they decided to not carry it out, but the intention was to put the voice of god into the head of David Koresh.
There's no doubt that they can put a voice into one's head. Perhaps they can control whether or not one is dreaming or otherwise affect the way a person naturally sleeps (prevent REM sleep, for example). The real question is: Can they affect a person's will? Who knows? This absolutely astonishing fact that the brain will rectify a radio frequency means anything is possible, I would say. You just know they're working day and night with an unlimited budget to accomplish mind-control, don't you? You just know it. Don't worry though, with the exemplary track record of our political leaders, I'm sure we have nothing to fear.
Oh, one other thing. Since a brain will rectify an RF signal, it's not all that out of the question that perhaps the brain will transmit an RF signal. If that is happening, get prepared to have your thoughts read. Won't be any hiding then, that's for sure.
I’m not exactly qualified to be evaluating the material.
There’s a guy, Dr. José M.R. Delgado, whose apparently written a book, Physical Control of the Mind, Toward a Psychocivilized Society, that has made him a a central figure in the writings of the conspiracy-minded. He’s real, I think; I found him listed on the Board of Directors of THE INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY. But I don’t know much about his work and I’d hate to characterize it based on what I have found on the sites of the scared.
This scared site purports to quote the doctor’s text. Nothing I read there really made me feel as if he was talking about a “Vote for XXXXXXXXX” radio tower. I am aware of a device, the Thalmic Stimulator made by Medtronic, that uses a brain implant to deliver impulses to control tremors and my searching also ran me by a site that discussed inducing audio perceptions in the deaf.
So, I don’t know. Here’s some scared sites for y’all:
[aside]If you’ve really got some important news to impart to the world, it will be much better received if it’s not delivered in a variety of screaming typefaces held together by a garish color scheme.[/aside]
> I second the request for cites on that radar-brain thingie. It sounds a lot like the stories fomented by people who wear aluminum foil hats. <
Tin foil would not do any good. To block the RF frequencies, you have to use copper wire mesh that is less than the quarter wavelength of the RF frequency that you are trying to block. This is why many military computers are covered in copper mesh.
Jack Dean Tyler: I also thought that aluminum-foil hats wouldn’t make any difference (especially since they’re not grounded), but I saw a demonstration on a Canadian science show ("@Discovery.ca") that made me think twice. All the guy did was three-quarters wrap a table radio with a single layer of foil, and lo and behold most of the signal was cut out.
Obviously you could do better by sitting in a Faraday cage, but in a pinch the hat does seem to offer some protection.
Jack Dean Tyler: Thank God we’ve got you out there exposing such things. First they take away our foreskins. And now they’re beaming voices into our heads. What next? Hopefully America will wake up now that you are on the job. Once I learned that the voices in my head that told me to get my children circumcized are radio transmissions from YHWH knows where, I have found the strength to resist them. God bless you, Jack Dean Tyler!