Pont-Saint-Esprit mass poisoning

Leave a comment
Challet, V.. (2006). Compoix et tensions sociales : l’exemple de Pont-Saint-Esprit (1390). In De l’estime au cadastre en Europe. Le Moyen Âge (pp. 289–305). Institut de la gestion publique et du développement économique

Plain numerical DOI: 10.4000/books.igpde.12032
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Gabbai, Lisbonne, & Pourquier. (1951). Ergot Poisoning at Pont St. Esprit. BMJ, 2(4732), 650–651.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1136/bmj.2.4732.650
DOI URL
directSciHub download

The 1951 Pont-Saint-Esprit mass poisoning, also known as Le Pain Maudit, was a mass poisoning on 15 August 1951, in the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in southern France. More than 250 people were involved, including 50 people interned in asylums and 7 deaths. A foodborne illness was suspected, and among these it was originally believed to be a case of “cursed bread”.

A majority of (possibly naive) academic sources accept naturally occurring ergot poisoning as the cause of the epidemic, while a few theorize other causes such as poisoning by mercury, mycotoxins, or nitrogen trichloride.

Cf.:
U.S. General Accounting Office Report

The U.S. General Accounting Office issued a report on September 28, 1994, which stated that between 1940 and 1974, DOD and other national security agencies studied thousands of human subjects in tests and experiments involving hazardous substances.
Citation from the study:

… Working with the CIA, the Department of Defense gave hallucinogenic drugs to thousands of “volunteer” soldiers in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to LSD, the Army also tested quinuclidinyl benzilate, a hallucinogen code-named BZ. (Note 37) Many of these tests were conducted under the so-called MKULTRA program, established to counter perceived Soviet and Chinese advances in brainwashing techniques. Between 1953 and 1964, the program consisted of 149 projects involving drug testing and other studies on unwitting human subjects…


Background

During the Vichy government, the supply of grains from field to mill to bakery was directed by the government’s grain control board, the Office National Interprofessionnel des Céréales (ONIC), and later the Union Meuniere. Essentially, this created a government monopoly on the sale of flour, allowing the government a measure of control over wartime supply shortages. This also meant that flour would be purchased directly from ONIC, and delivered to the baker for a set price, without the baker being able to have any control on quality. Following the end of the second world war, this system was relaxed, allowing for bakers to have some choice over their flour supply. ONIC retained its monopoly on inter-departmental exportation and importation. By this system, millers in departments with more supply than demand could sell the excess to ONIC. In practice, this meant that the higher-quality flour would be delivered to local bakers and lower-quality flour would be exported to other departments. Thus, departments with net flour deficits, like the Gard department in which Pont-Saint-Esprit was located, would be supplied with lower-quality flour from other departments via ONIC, with the bakers having virtually no choice of the provenance or quality of their flour.[8]: 224-225
Previous sanitary events

In the weeks preceding the outbreak, several villages near Pont-Saint-Esprit reported outbreaks of food poisoning via bread. These outbreaks were all linked to bakeries that made their bread with most if not all of their flour supplied by the mill of Maurice Maillet, in Saint-Martin-la-Riviere. The symptoms reported were milder than those reported in Pont-Saint-Esprit.

At Issirac, at least 20 people reported cutaneous eruptions, diarrhea, vomiting and headaches. Similar symptoms were reported in Laval-Saint-Roman. Multiple families were reported sick in Goudargues and Lamotte-du-Rhone.

In Connaux, the town’s baker received reports from his clients that they believed his bread was causing violent diarrhea. He reported that his family, as well as himself, were all suffering from the same afflictions. The baker was quick to blame his flour, which he described as “bad, forming a sticky dough with acid fermentation” and which made gray and sticky bread.

In Saint-Genies-de-Comolas, the town’s mayor was alerted by one of the town’s two bakers that he received flour that was gray and full of worms. The mayor banned making bread with that flour, and referred the situation to the region’s prefect, as well as to the driver that delivered the flour.

The delivery driver, Jean Bousquet, sent the prefect a copy of a remark made to his employer, the miller’s union in Nimes, on 9 August. The note said that “almost every baker of Centre de Bagnols/Cèze has complained of the quality of the flour provided by Mr. Maillet”. Following the incident at Connaux, Bousquet requested immediate written instructions from his employer regarding the situation. On the 13th of August, he requested that samples be taken to determine if the flour was contaminated. During this period, 42 bakers complained of the flour delivered by Bousquet.
Mass poisoning

On 16 August 1951, the local offices of the town’s two doctors filled with patients reporting similar food poisoning symptoms; nausea, vomiting, cold chills, heat waves. These symptoms eventually worsened, with added hallucinatory crises and convulsions. The situation in the town deteriorated in the following days. On the night of 24 August, a man believed himself to be an aeroplane and died by jumping from a second-story window, and an 11-year-old boy tried to strangle his mother. One of the town’s two doctors would name the night nuit d’apocalypse; apocalyptic night.
Epidemiological investigation

Doctors Vieu and Gabbai investigated the epidemiology of the disease. On 19 August, they came to the conclusion that bread was to blame; all patients interrogated had purchased their bread at the Briand bakery in Pont-Saint-Esprit. In a family from a neighboring village four of whose nine members fell ill, all members who ate bread from the Briand bakery fell ill, whereas none of the others who ate bread from another bakery did. Another family shared a loaf of Briand’s bread among five of its seven members, the others preferring biscottes, with only the five falling ill.

On the morning of the 20th, the health service, the prefecture, the prosecutor of the Republic and the police were notified. Roch Briand was interrogated, and the sickness in the town was blamed on his bread.
Criminal investigation

The police investigation would eventually center on the second of three batches of bread made at Briand’s bakery on the day of 16 August. The flour composition of each batch varied, as having run out of flour during the preparation of the second batch, Briand had borrowed flour from two other local bakers, Jaussent and Fallavet. Briand’s assistant stated that when he picked up flour from Jaussent, the baker was out ill, and that he took the flour from his assistant instead.

Both Briand and his assistant agreed that the first batch was constituted of the previous day’s flour mixed with flour borrowed from Jaussent. They disagreed on the second and third batches. Whereas Briand stated that the second was made with Jaussent’s flour and the third with Fallavet’s flour, the assistant stated that both latter batches were made with a mix of the two.

The investigation led police to interrogate many of the town’s residents, who gave inconsistent ratings of Briand’s tainted batch. Some reported that the taste was perfectly normal, while others reported chemical smells (one described an odor of gasoline, another of bleach). Some reported that the bread looked normal, while others stated that its appearance was grayish.
Inquiry

On the 23rd of August, a judge of inquiry opened a formal investigation, and tasked commissaire Georges Sigaud with finding the cause of the mass poisoning event.

The tainted bread made by Briand was made with only four ingredients: flour, yeast, water and salt. All of the ingredients but the flour could be easily discounted as sources of the illness. The water used to make the bread was from a municipal source, the same that also supplied the rest of the village. Both the salt and the yeast used by Briand were sourced from the same suppliers as all other bakers in the region, and subsequent testing of the supplies found no toxicity.

The investigation of the provenance of the flour led Sigaud to the UM-Gard flour distribution centre, in Bagnols-sur-Cèze. The chief of the distribution network, Jean Bousquet, stated that since the end of July, the vast majority of the flour supplying the region was from two mills; one in Châtillon-sur-Indre, and the other being the mill of Maurice Maillet in Saint-Martin-la-Rivière, the latter of which was the subject of numerous complaints about the quality of its flour.

Maurice Maillet

In an interrogation that lasted multiple hours, Maurice Maillet denied mixing rye (which is highly susceptible to ergot) into his flour, opting instead to cut his product with 2% of bean flour. This was unusual, given that owing to a shortage of wheat, ONIC had mandated that rye flour be mixed in. However, in the Vienne department, rye of good quality was often more expensive than wheat, and accordingly, bean flour was authorised by ONIC as a replacement.[8]: 459

Despite this, it came to light that the supply of grains to be milled for export was sometimes mixed with grains milled in an informal agreement called échangisme. Under this type of agreement, often practiced at the time, a farmer would bring a baker grain he grew himself in exchange for bread that would later be made with his grain. The baker would bring the grain to the miller, who would mill it. The miller and baker would each take a cut for sale.

During the interrogation, Maillet admitted that he had made a deal with a baker, Guy Bruère, who had brought in bags to be milled. Since this was near the end of the season, the bags were filled with leftover grain that sometimes contained a high proportion of rye. The rye was not the only problem with the flour, as the miller also noted the presence of weevils, mites and dust. The baker was concerned that he would lose business should he refuse the grain on the basis of quality. Despite the miller having noticed the low quality of the grains, he agreed to exchange the grain for a lower quantity of flour already milled from grain marked for export. Given that the quantity of lower-quality grain was much lower than that of the grain for export, the miller thought that it would be possible to mix it all without reducing the overall quality of the flour.

Arrests and trial

On August 31, around 14:30, Sigaud addressed the media, announcing the arrests of Maillet and Bruère for involuntary manslaughter and involuntary injuries arising from their negligence in trading improper flour. Further arrests were made in the following days: an employee of Maillet, André Bertrand, was arrested, but released on bail as he was the head of a family of nine whose wife was about to give birth. The owners of the bakery at which Bruère was employed, Clothaire and Denise Audidier, were also arrested for infractions of fiscal legislation and of legislation governing wheat and flour.[8]: 471
Scientific publishing

Shortly after the incident, in September 1951, Dr. Gabbai and colleagues published a paper in the British Medical Journal declaring that “the outbreak of poisoning” was produced by ergot fungus.[10] The victims appeared to have one common connection. They had eaten bread from the bakery of Roch Briand, who was subsequently blamed for having used flour made from contaminated rye. Animals who had eaten the bread were also found to have perished.[10] According to reports at the time, the flour had been contaminated by the fungus Claviceps purpurea (ergot), which produces alkaloids that are structurally similar to the hallucinogenic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).

Other theories

Later investigations suggested mercury poisoning due to the use of Panogen or other fungicides to treat grain and seeds.

This type of contamination was considered owing to the presence of fluorescent stains on the outside of some used empty flour bags returned to the distributor. Panogen was sold containing a red colorant as a safety measure, to ensure that seeds coated with it would be used only for planting. Subsequent scientific tests showed that this coloring would not penetrate flour bags but that the active ingredient could do so. This would allow contamination of the flour, but it would appear to be limited to the bags. Further testing showed that if bread were to be baked using Panogen-contaminated flour, the rising of the bread could be partially or totally inhibited, depending on the concentration. This hypothesis was considered thoroughly in a French civil trial arising from the accident, with the contamination mechanism being a train wagon carrying flour that could have previously carried concentrated cylinders of Panogen intended for agricultural uses.[8] It was later discovered that pre-treating the seeds in Panogen could lead to mercury accumulation in the plants growing from those seeds. For this reason, Panogen, made by a Swedish company, was banned in Sweden in 1966. A revised version of the ban, in 1970, would prohibit the exportation of Panogen, leading to its removal from the market.

In 1982, a French researcher suggested Aspergillus fumigatus, a toxic fungus produced in grain silos, as a potential culprit.[13]

Historian Steven Kaplan’s 2008 book, Le Pain Maudit states that the poisoning might have been caused by nitrogen trichloride used to artificially (and illegally) bleach flour.

In his 2009 book, A Terrible Mistake, author and investigative journalist Hank P. Albarelli Jr claims that the Special Operations Division of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) tested the use of LSD on the population of Pont-Saint-Esprit as part of its MKNAOMI biological warfare program, in a field test called “Project SPAN”. According to Albarelli, this is based on CIA documents held in the US National Archives and a document supplied to the 1975 Rockefeller Commission that investigated CIA activities. Albarelli’s view was reported widely after the book’s publication, including by The Daily Telegraph, France 24 and BBC News. The attribution of the poisoning to the CIA in Albarelli’s book has been roundly criticized.[19] Historian Steven Kaplan, author of an earlier book about the events, said that this would be “clinically incoherent: LSD takes effects in just a few hours, whereas the inhabitants showed symptoms only after 36 hours or more. Furthermore, LSD does not cause the digestive ailments or the vegetative effects described by the townspeople.”

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1951_Pont-Saint-Esprit_mass_poisoning

Operation Sea-Spray (U.S. Navy secret biological warfare experiment using Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii bacteria)

Leave a comment

Operation Sea-Spray was a 1950 U.S. Navy secret biological warfare experiment in which Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii bacteria were sprayed over the San Francisco Bay Area in California, in order to determine how vulnerable a city like San Francisco may be to a bioweapon attack.

Starting on September 20, 1950 and continuing until September 27, the U.S. Navy released the two types of bacteria from a ship off the shore of San Francisco, believing them to be harmless to humans. Based on results from monitoring equipment at 43 locations around the city, the Army determined that San Francisco had received enough of a dose for nearly all of the city’s 800,000 residents to inhale at least 5,000 of the particles.

Senate subcommittee hearings

In 1977, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research held a series of hearings at which the U.S. Army disclosed the existence of the tests. Army officials noted the pneumonia outbreak in their testimony but said any link to their experiments was totally coincidental. The Army pointed out that no other hospitals reported similar outbreaks and all 11 victims had urinary-tract infections following medical procedures, suggesting that the source of their infections lay inside the hospital.
Lawsuit

In 1981, Nevin’s surviving family members filed suit against the federal government, alleging negligence and responsibility for the death of Edward J. Nevin, as well as financial and emotional harm caused to Mr. Nevin’s wife from the medical costs.

The lower court ruled against them primarily because the bacteria used in the test was unproven to be responsible for Mr. Nevin’s death. The Nevin family appealed the suit all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to overturn lower court judgments.

Similar biological warfare tests

In the Senate subcommittee hearings in 1977, the Army revealed:

Between 1949 and 1969, open-air tests of biological agents were conducted 239 times. In 80 of those experiments, the Army said it used live bacteria that its researchers at the time thought were harmless. In the others, it used inert chemicals to simulate bacteria.
In the 1950s, army researchers dispersed Serratia on Panama City and Key West Florida with no known illnesses resulting.
In the 1950s, army researchers dispersed zinc cadmium sulfide (now a known cancer-causing agent) over Minnesota and other Midwestern states to see how far they would spread in the atmosphere. The particles were detected more than 1,000 miles away in New York state.
Bacillus globigii, never shown to be harmful to people, was released in San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., and along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, among other places.
In New York, military researchers in 1966 spread Bacillus subtilis variant Niger, also believed to be harmless, in the subway system by dropping lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto tracks in stations in midtown Manhattan. The bacteria were carried for miles throughout the subway system. Army officials concluded in a January 1968 report that: “Similar covert attacks with a pathogenic disease-causing agent during peak traffic periods could be expected to expose large numbers of people to infection and subsequent illness or death.”
In a May 1965 secret release of Bacillus globigii at Washington’s National Airport and its Greyhound Lines bus terminal, more than 130 passengers were exposed to the bacteria traveling to 39 cities in seven states in the two weeks following the mock attack.

Source: Wikipeadia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray


Further References

Jim Carlton,Of Microbes and Mock Attacks: Years Ago, The Military Sprayed Germs on U.S. Cities, The Wall Street Journal. URL: www.wsj.com/articles/SB1003703226697496080

Bentley, Michelle. “The US has a history of testing biological weapons on the public – were infected ticks used too?”. The Conversation. URL: theconversation.com/the-us-has-a-history-of-testing-biological-weapons-on-the-public-were-infected-ticks-used-too-120638

David Rockefeller thanks the media

Leave a comment

David Rockefeller addressed a Trilateral Commission meeting in 1991 with these words:

We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications, whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years.

(Kent 2005, p. 66)

Kent, Deirdre. 2005. Healthy Money Healthy Planet: Developing Sustainability Through New
Money Systems. Nelson, New Zealand: Craig Potton

See also

Smith, J., Karides, M., Becker, M., Brunelle, D., Chase-Dunn, C., & Della Porta, D.. (2015). Global Democracy and the World Social Forums. Global Democracy and the World Social Forums, 2nd Edition. Routledge

Plain numerical DOI: 10.4324/9781315636375
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Guzman-Concha, C.. (2012). Jackie Smith, Social Movements for Global Democracy. International Sociology, 27(5), 661–664.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/0268580912452372c
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Swiss, L.. (2009). Jackie Smith, Social Movements for Global Democracy.. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 34(2), 518–520.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.29173/cjs6096
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Markoff, J.. (2010). Review of “Social Movements for Global Democracy,” by Jackie Smith. Journal of World-Systems Research, 310–315.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.5195/jwsr.2010.443
DOI URL
directSciHub download

WiFi radiation banned in France from daycares

Leave a comment

N° 2065 – Enregistré à la Présidence de l’Assemblée nationale le 26 juin 2014.

PROPOSITION DE LOI MODIFIÉE PAR LE SÉNAT,
relative à la sobriété, à la transparence, à l’information  et à la concertation en matière d’exposition aux ondes électromagnétiques,

www.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/propositions/pion2065.asp

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has confirmed that radiofrequency electromagnetic fields can be carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B). Wireless phone use has been linked to an increased risk for brain cancer. The National Agency Health Safety of Food, Environment and Labour (ANSES) has also recommended to limit exposure of the population to radiofrequencies – especially from mobile phones – and especially for children and heavy users.

What is even more worrying is that exposure to such radiations isn’t limited to Wi-Fi but every other gadget that you and your child love so much – cell phones, cordless phones, wireless laptops, routers, electronic devices…even electrical wiring, smart meters and phone towers! Taking a strong, proactive step to minimise damage, the French National Assembly in January 29, 2015 passed a national law to reduce exposure to wireless radiation and electromagnetic fields. While Wi-Fi and wireless devices have been completely banned in nurseries and daycare centres, their use has also been severely restricted in schools for children up to 11 years.

Source: ehtrust.org/france-new-national-law-bans-wifi-nursery-school/

In fact, after this disturbing finding, even India has started taking emergency steps. The Rajasthan High Court, for instance, has directed telecom service providers to remove towers that are near schools, hospitals and play grounds. Such actions are, as PRIARTEM, France’s association for the regulation of mobile phone base stations, points out – “A first step in the legal recognition of the need to regulate the development of mobile phone communications and all wireless applications. This legislative effort must be an encouragement to go further in protecting people.”

Source: https://www.powerwatch.org.uk/

Graphene – the perfect atomic lattice (Nobel lecture by Prof. Konstantin Novoselov)

Leave a comment

www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2010/illustrated-information/

So far, most of the possible practical applications for graphene exist only in our fantasies. A great deal of interest has been spurred by graphene’s conducting ability. Thus graphene transistors are predicted to be substantially faster than those made out of silicon today. Maybe we are on the verge of yet another miniaturization of electronics that will lead to computers becoming even more efficient in the future.

Graphene

Since graphene is practically transparent (up to nearly 98%) whilst being able to conduct electricity, it would be suitable for the production of transparent touch screens, light panels and maybe solar cells. Also plastics could be made into electronic conductors if only 1% of graphene were mixed into them. Likewise, by mixing in just a fraction of a per mille of graphene, the heat resistance of plastics would increase by 30˚ C while at the same time making them more mechanically robust. This resilience could be utilised in new super strong materials, which are also thin, elastic and lightweight.

The perfect structure of graphene also makes it suitable for the production of extremely sensitive sensors that could register pollution at molecular level.

Dr. Steven M. Greer: The unacknowledged threat secret and covert operations by the USA

Leave a comment

World Affairs: The Journal of International Issues
Vol. 8, No. 2 (2004), pp. 35-52
URL: www.jstor.org/stable/48504791

theunacknowledgedthreat

On ‘modified human agents’: John Lilly and the paranoid style in American neuroscience

Leave a comment
Williams, C.. (2019). On ‘modified human agents’: John Lilly and the paranoid style in American neuroscience. History of the Human Sciences, 32(5), 84–107.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/0952695119872094
DOI URL
directSciHub download

This article was adapted from a chapter of the PhD thesis Battles for the Mind: Brainwashing Altered States and the Politics of the Nervous System (1945-1970), completed at Birkbeck in 2018.

Abstract
The personal papers of the neurophysiologist John C. Lilly at Stanford University hold a classified paper he wrote in the late 1950s on the behavioural modification and control of ‘human agents’. The paper provides an unnerving prognosis of the future application of Lilly’s research, then being carried out at the National Institute of Mental Health. Lilly claimed that the use of sensory isolation, electrostimulation of the brain, and the recording and mapping of brain activity could be used to gain ‘push-button’ control over motivation and behaviour. This research, wrote Lilly, could eventually lead to ‘master- slave controls directly of one brain over another’. The paper is an explicit example of
Lilly’s preparedness to align his research towards Cold War military aims. It is not, however, the research for which Lilly is best known. During the 1960s and 1970s, Lilly developed cult status as a far-out guru of consciousness exploration, promoting the use of psychedelics and sensory isolation tanks. Lilly argued that, rather than being used as tools of brainwashing, these techniques could be employed by the individual to regain control of their own mind and retain a sense of agency over their thoughts and actions. This article examines the scientific, intellectual, and cultural relationship between the sciences of brainwashing and psychedelic mind alteration. Through an analysis of Lilly’s autobiographical writings, I also show how paranoid ideas about brainwashing and mind control provide an important lens for understanding the trajectory of Lilly’s research.

The ‘Cold War brainwashing scare’

Lilly’s appointment to the NIMH came shortly after a new term – brainwashing – had been introduced into the English language. The term was first used publicly by journalist .7 In this article and in later works, Hunter claimed that by combining Pavlovian theory with modern technology, Russian and Chinese psychologists had developed powerful techniques for manipulating minds. Although it resonated with concerns about the growing global influence of communism, the term brainwashing would perhaps never have gained traction if it had not been for a series of scandals involving collaboration between American POWs and the Chinese enemy during the Korean War. Most famously, in 1952, Colonel Frank Schwable and 35 other captured US Air Force personnel publicly confessed to committing crimes of germ warfare against North Korea. Other accounts of collaboration at the hands of the Chinese, including the making of public anti-war and anti-McCarthy broadcasts, received widespread attention during the war. Perhaps most controversially, after a long-awaited armistice deal was agreed in 1953, one British and 21 American POWs refused to be repatriated after the war, choosing to relocate to communist China instead. It was widely reported that the soldiers had been exposed to sophisticated techniques of mental coercion based on Pavlovian science, similar to those reported to have been used to extract confessions for Soviet purge trials such as that of Cardinal József Mindszenty in 1949 ().

Scholarship on this period has described the ‘Cold War brainwashing scare’, the ‘brainwashing idea’, and the ‘spectre of brainwashing’, as a central motif in postwar film and literature upon which myriad concerns about agency and influence were projected (for use of these phrases see, respectively, ; ; ). Whilst such scholarship has often described brainwashing as a ‘cultural fantasy’, the idea of brainwashing nonetheless had real effects, not least within the human sciences. In the early 1950s, building on investigations carried out since the Second World War, the CIA established its notorious MKULTRA programme, which aimed, in the words of its former director Sidney Gottlieb, to ‘investigate whether and how it was possible to modify an individual’s behaviour by covert means’ (: 57). What the historian Alfred McCoy has called ‘the Manhattan Project of the mind’ was fuelled by a dual sense of hubris about the CIA’s own research and development potential and paranoia about the capabilities of the enemy, enhanced, as it were, by the semi-tangible reports of enemy scientific projects within what Melley has called the ‘covert sphere’ (; ).

According to his own memoirs, Lilly had long been interested in questions of behavioural control. It was reportedly his reading of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World in 1934 and its portrayal of the misuse of the human sciences that influenced his decision to major in biology rather than physics as a student (: 57). Although Lilly has somewhat successfully cultivated an image of himself as someone who resisted the lure of military and intelligence funding, like many of his peers, his work and career was heavily shaped by the wider forces shaping the human sciences after the war (; ).


*Lilly, ‘Special Considerations of Modified Human Agents as Reconnaissance and Intelligence Devices (Committee D, Intelligence and Reconnaissance)’, Lilly Papers, Box 54, Folder 17. Exactly when and where this paper was delivered is unclear. In his paper on human manipulation, Lilly implies that both papers were presented at the same place or at connected events: ‘In the following discussion I wish to mention a few human cases; a later supplement will mention certain non-human species as possible agents.’ It is likely that this work or similar was presented at the Pentagon meeting discussed in Lilly’s memoirs (: 93–5). According to a former intelligence official’s description of this meeting ‘Dr. Lilly stated that the potential of this technique in “brain-washing” or interrogation or in the field of controlling the actions of humans and animals is almost limitless’: memorandum, Jones to Deloach, 2, FBI personal file, as quoted in . However, an old inventory for Lilly’s archive from 1992 includes the entry ‘Manuscript of Presentation Given to GAP Symposium on Brainwashing Entitled: “Special Considerations of Modified Human Agents as Reconnaissance and Intelligence Devices”: November 1956’, suggesting that Lilly may have delivered this paper at a meeting for the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, which we know he attended (). Yet this is further complicated by the fact that both papers include references dated as late as 1958, suggesting the papers in the archive were presented after 1956.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6899429/pdf/10.1177_0952695119872094.pdf


Further References


Bexton W. H., Heron W., Scott T. H. (1954) ‘Effects of Decreased Variation in the Sensory Environment’, Canadian Journal of Psychology
8(2): 70–6. [PubMed] []

Brenninkmeijer J. (2010) ‘Taking Care of One’s Brain: How Manipulating the Brain Changes People’s Selves’, History of the Human Sciences
23(1): 107–26. [PubMed] []

Burnett D. G. (2012) The Sounding of the Whale: Science and Cetaceans in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. []

Burnett D. G. (2016) ‘Adult Swim: How John C. Lilly Got Groovy (and Took the Dolphin With Him), 1958–1968’, in Kaiser D., McCray W. P. (eds) Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation, and American Counterculture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 13–50. []

Cameron D. E. (1950) General Psychotherapy. New York: Grune & Stratton. []

Carruthers S. L. (1998) ‘“The Manchurian Candidate” (1962) and the Cold War Brainwashing Scare’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
18(1): 75–94. []

Carruthers S. L. (2009) Cold War Captives: Imprisonment, Escape, and Brainwashing. Berkeley: University of California Press. []

Clarke B. (2014) ‘John Lilly, The Mind of the Dolphin, and Communication Out of Bounds’, communication +1
3(1): Article 8, available at: scholarworks.umass.edu/cpo/vol3/iss1/8. []

Cooper G. (1986) Opinion of George Cooper, Q.C., Regarding Canadian Government Funding of the Allan Memorial Institute in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services Canada. []

Dearden B., director (1963) The Mind Benders [Motion picture]. UK: Anglo-Amalgamated. []

Dror O. E. (2016) ‘Cold War “Super-Pleasure”: Insatiability, Self-Stimulation, and the Postwar Brain’, Osiris
31(1): 227–49. [PubMed] []

Dunne M. W. (2013) A Cold War State of Mind: Brainwashing and Postwar American Society. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. []

Foucault M. (1988) Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, ed. Martin L. H., Gutman H., Hutton P. H.
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. []

Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (1956) ‘Symposium No. 3: Factors Used to Increase the Susceptibility of Individuals to Forceful Indoctrination: Observations and Experiments’, available at: ourgap.org/resources/Documents/Symposiums/3-symposiums_factors_usedto_incre.pdf.

Hebb D. O. (1958) ‘The Motivating Effects of Exteroceptive Stimulation’, American Psychologist
13(3): 109–13. []

Heron W. (1961) ‘Cognitive and Physiological Effects of Perceptual Isolation’, in Solomon P., Kubzansky P. E., Leiderman P. H., Mendelson J. H., Trumbull R., Wexler D. (eds) Sensory Deprivation: A Symposium Held at Harvard Medical School. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 7–33. []

Hofstadter R. (1964, 15
November) ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’, Harper’s Magazine, 77–86. []

Holmes M. (2017. a) ‘Brainwashing the Cybernetic Spectator: The Ipcress File, 1960s Cinematic Spectacle and the Sciences of Mind’, History of the Human Sciences
30(3): 3–24. [PMC free article] [PubMed] []

Holmes M. (2017. b, 26
May) ‘Edward Hunter and the Origins of “Brainwashing”’, Hidden Persuaders, available at: www.bbk.ac.uk/hiddenpersuaders/blog/hunter-origins-of-brainwashing/.

Hunter E. (1950, 24
September) ‘“Brain-Washing” Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party’, Miami Daily News, p. 2. []

Jeffrey F., Lilly J. C. (1990) John Lilly, So Far. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher. []

Kaiser D., McCray W. P., eds (2016) Groovy Science: Knowledge, Innovation, and American Counterculture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. []

Labor-Health, Education, and Welfare Appropriations for 1957: Hearings on H.R. 9720, 84th Cong. 553 (1956) (statement of Dr Robert H. Felix), available at: hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b3636813.

Langlitz N. (2006) ‘Tripping in Solitude: Introducing Honza Samotar by Way of John Lilly’, in Solhdju K. (ed.) Introspective Self-Rapports: Shaping Ethical and Aesthetic Concepts, 1850–2006 (Preprint
322). Berlin: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, pp. 81–92. []

Lemov R. (2011) ‘Brainwashing’s Avatar: The Curious Career of Dr. Ewen Cameron’, Grey Room
45: 61–87. []

Lilly J. C. (1950) ‘A Method of Recording the Moving Electrical Potential Gradients in the Brain: The 25-Channel Bavatron and Electro-Iconograms’, in American Institute of Electronic Engineers (eds) Conference on Electronic Instrumentation in Nucleonics and Medicine
New York: American Institute of Electronic Engineering, pp. 37–3. []

Lilly J. C. (1955, 13
November) ‘Some Thoughts on Brain-Mind and on Restraint and Isolation of Mentally Healthy Subjects’, paper presented at the meeting of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, Asbury Park, NJ. []

Lilly J. C. (1958. a) ‘Learning Motivated by Subcortical Stimulation: The “Start” and the “Stop” Patterns of Behavior’, in Jasper H. H., Proctor L. D., Knighton R. S., Noshay W. C., Costello R. T. (eds) Reticular Formation of the Brain: Henry Ford Hospital International Symposium. Boston: Little Brown, pp. 705–21. []

Lilly J. C. (1958. b) ‘Electrode and Cannulae Implantation in the Brain by a Simple Percutaneous Method’, Science
127: 1181–2. [PubMed] []

Lilly J. C. (1961) Man and Dolphin. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. []

Lilly J. C. (1972) Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer: Theory and Experiments. New York: Julian Press. []

Lilly J. C. (1973) The Centre of the Cyclone: An Autobiography of Inner Space. London: Calder & Boyars. []

Lilly J. C. (1978) The Scientist: A Novel Autobiography. Philadelphia: Lippincott. []

Lilly J. C. (1988) The Scientist: A Metaphysical Autobiography (2nd ed). Berkeley: Ronin. []

Lilly J. C. (1997) The Scientist: A Metaphysical Autobiography (3rd ed). Berkeley: Ronin. []

Lilly J. C., Hughes J. R., Alvord E. C., Jr, Galkin T. W. (1955) ‘Brief, Noninjurious Electric Waveform for Stimulation of the Brain’, Science
121(3144): 468–9. [PubMed] []

Lilly J. C., Shurley J. T. (1961) ‘Experiments in Solitude, in Maximum Achievable Physical Isolation With Water Suspension, of Intact Healthy Persons’, in Flaherty B. E. (ed.) Psychological Aspects of Space Flight. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 238–47. []

Lutz C. (1997) ‘The Psychological Ethic and the Spirit of Containment’, Public Culture
9(2): 135–59. []

Marks J. (1978) The Search for the ‘Manchurian Candidate’: The CIA and Mind Control. New York: Times Books. []

McClen R., Brown D. J. (2013) ‘John C. Lilly Interviewed’, Awaken, available at: www.awaken.com/2013/03/john-c-lilly-interviewed/.

McCoy A. W. (2006) A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror. New York: Metropolitan. []

Melley T. (2000) Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. []

Melley T. (2011) ‘Brain Warfare: The Covert Sphere, Terrorism, and the Legacy of the Cold War’, Grey Room
45: 19–41. []

Melley T. (2012) The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. []

Oaklander M. (2015, 18
November) ‘Behind the Strange New Science of Floating’, TIME.com, available at: time.com/floating/.

Pickering A. (2008, 24/25
April) ‘Brains, Selves and Spirituality in the History of Cybernetics’, paper presented at the Transhumanism and the Meaning of Progress workshop, Arizona State University, 24–25 April 2008, available at: ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10036/81576/ASU-spirit.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y. []

Pickering A. (2010) The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. []

Raz M. (2013) ‘Alone Again: John Zubek and the Troubled History of Sensory Deprivation Research’, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
49(4): 379–95. [PubMed] []

Reisch G. (2012) ‘The Paranoid Style in American History of Science’, Theoria
27(3): 323–42. []

Rose N. (1998) Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. []

Roszak T. (1969) The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition. Berkeley: University of California Press. []

Russell K., director (1980) Altered States [Motion picture]. USA: Warner Brothers. []

Seed D. (2004) Brainwashing: The Fictions of Mind Control: A Study of Novels and Films Since World War II. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press. []

Shiga J. (2013) ‘Of Other Networks: Closed-World and Green-World Networks in the Work of John C. Lilly’, Amodern
2, available at: amodern.net/article/of-other-networks/.

Shurley J. T. (1992) ‘Sensory Deprivation and Sensory Isolation Research, and Political Torture: A 35-Year Critical Retrospective’, in Kales A., Pierce C. M., Greenblatt M. (eds) The Mosaic of Contemporary Psychiatry in Perspective. New York: Springer, pp. 200–10. []

Suedfeld P. (1980) Restricted Environmental Stimulation: Research and Clinical Applications. New York: Wiley. []

Szasz T. S. (1965) Psychiatric Justice. New York: Macmillan. []

‘Tank Test Linked to Brainwashing; U.S. and Canadian Scientists Report to Congress on Their Experiments’ (1956, 15
April) New York Times, p. 18. []

Taylor K. (2004) Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control. Oxford: Oxford University Press. []

German post-war “re-education”

Leave a comment

Review: Re-Education in Post-War Germany
Reviewed Work: Neuordnung oder Restauration? Das Demokratiekonzept der amerikanischen Besatzungsmacht und die politsche Sozialisation der Westdeutschen: Wirtschaftsordnung. Schulstruktur. Politsche Bildung by Jutta-B. Lange-Quassowski
Review by: Konrad Jaraush
History of Education Quarterly
Vol. 22, No. 3, Special Issue: Educational Policy and Reform in Modern Germany (Autumn, 1982), pp. 387-390 (4 pages)
Published By: Cambridge University Press
History of Education Quarterly
doi.org/10.2307/367777
www.jstor.org/stable/367777

Kreis, R.. (2018). From reeducation to partnership: Amerikahäuser and German-American institutes in Bavaria. In German-American Encounters in Bavaria and Beyond, 1945-2015
Anderton, A.. (2016). Hearing democracy in the ruins of Hitler’s Reich: American musicians in postwar Germany. Comparative Critical Studies

Plain numerical DOI: 10.3366/ccs.2016.0200
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Druffner, F.. (2014). Education is reeducation: Peter suhrkamp’s programmatic work in cooperation with the military government in Germany. Germanic Review

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/00168890.2014.932198
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Wegner, G. P., & Füssl, K.. (1997). Wissenschaft als säkularer Kreuzzug: Thomas V. Smith und die Deutschen Kriegsgefangenen in den USA (1944–1946). International Journal of Phytoremediation

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/0030923970330108
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Castillo, G.. (2004). Design Pedagogy Enters the Cold War. Journal of Architectural Education, 57(4), 10–18.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1162/104648804323085437
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Parkinson, A. M.. (2017). A sentimental reeducation: Postwar West Germany’s intimate geographies. Emotion, Space and Society, 25, 95–102.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.emospa.2017.05.009
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Shuster, G. N.. (1949). German Reeducation: Success or Failure. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 23(3), 12.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.2307/1173036
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Weiner, D. R. P.. (2020). American and british efforts to democratize schoolbooks in occupied Italy and Germany from 1943 to 1949. Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society

Plain numerical DOI: 10.3167/jemms.2020.120106
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Inducing Resistance to Conspiracy Theory Propaganda: Testing Inoculation and Metainoculation Strategies

Leave a comment

Inoculation theory
“McGuire’s (Papageorgis & McGuire, 1961, 1961a; 1961b) original conceptualization
of inoculation theory proposed that individuals can be inoculated against counter-
attitudinal attacks in a manner similar to immunization against viral attacks.
Just as preemptive immunization shots protect people from future exposure to viruses,
McGuire posited that preemptive messages could protect attitudes from subsequent
exposure to counterattitudinal persuasive messages. Inoculation treatments contain
two essential message features: threat and refutational preemption (Compton & Pfau,
2005; Szabo & Pfau, 2002). Threat is the motivational component of an inoculation.
It forewarns of a persuasive attack, highlighting the vulnerability of an individual’s
current attitudes, and thereby motivates resistance. The refutational preemption
component contains specific content that can be used to bolster attitudes against
an impending attack (Pfau et al., 1997). The purpose of the refutational component
is twofold: It provides individuals with arguments or evidence that can be used to
counter persuasive attacks, and it also allows individuals to practice defending their
beliefs through counterarguing (Compton & Pfau, 2005; Insko, 1967; Wyer, 1974).
Research reveals inoculation to be an effective strategy for conferring resistance
to persuasion. … Conspiracy theories present an interesting challenge for inoculation scholars
because they defy the rational, logical, and reasoned approach exemplified by
inoculation interventions. Conspiratorial arguments often employ circular reasoning,
repetition of unproven premises, nonfalsifiable premises, and a host of other logical
flaws (Miller, 2002). Persuasion is not a purely rational process, however, and dual-
process theories (e.g., Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) apply the metaphor of two separate
routes to persuasion: A central route, based on careful processing of the evidence;
and a peripheral route, based on some mental shortcut instead of careful evaluation
of arguments and evidence. These theories propose that both motivation and ability
to process persuasive messages are necessary for central route processing to occur.
Watching a film is a more passive process than reading, which should reduce the
ability to counterargue or process many of the empirical claims presented (Compton
& Pfau, 2005).”

Abstract

This investigation examined the boundaries of inoculation theory by examining how inoculation can be applied to conspiracy theory propaganda as well as inoculation itself (called metainoculation). A 3-phase experiment with 312 participants compared 3 main groups: no-treatment control, inoculation, and metainoculation. Research questions explored how inoculation and metainoculation effects differ based on the argument structure of inoculation messages (fact- vs. logic-based). The attack message was a 40-minute chapter from the 9/11 Truth conspiracy theory film, Loose Change: Final Cut. The results indicated that both the inoculation treatments induced more resistance than the control message, with the fact-based treatment being the most effective. The results also revealed that metainoculation treatments reduced the efficacy of the inoculation treatments.


Banas, J. A., & Miller, G.. (2013). Inducing Resistance to Conspiracy Theory Propaganda: Testing Inoculation and Metainoculation Strategies. Human Communication Research, 39(2), 184–207.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/hcre.12000
DOI URL
directSciHub download

van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., Rosenthal, S., & Maibach, E.. (2017). Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change. Global Challenges, 1(2), 1600008.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1002/gch2.201600008
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Maertens, R., Anseel, F., & van der Linden, S.. (2020). Combatting climate change misinformation: Evidence for longevity of inoculation and consensus messaging effects. Journal of Environmental Psychology

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2020.101455
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Enforcing Social Conformity: A Theory of Authoritarianism

Leave a comment

“…people who value social conformity… support the government when it wants to increase its control over social behavior and punish nonconformity…valuing social conformity increases the motivation for placing restrictions on behavior…the desire for social freedom is now subservient to the enforcement of social norms and rules. Thus, groups will be targeted for repression to the extent that they challenge social conformity…
~ Stanley Feldman, Enforcing Social Conformity: A Theory of Authoritarianism

Abstract

Fifty years after the publication of The Authoritarian Personality, the empirical literature on authoritarianism continues to grow even though there is no widely accepted theory to account for the phenomenon. The absence of a secure theoretical grounding severely limits our understanding of authoritarianism. This paper offers a new conceptualization in which authoritarian predispositions originate in the conflict between the values of social conformity and personal autonomy. Prejudice and intolerance should be observed among those who value social conformity and perceive a threat to social cohesion. These hypotheses were tested with a sample of undergraduate students; the questionnaire included new measures of the dimension of social conformity–autonomy as well as items from Altemeyer’s RWA (right–wing authoritarianism) scale.

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.”
~ Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal


Feldman, S.. (2003). Enforcing Social Conformity: A Theory of Authoritarianism. Political Psychology

, 24(1), 41–74.
Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/0162-895X.00316
DOI URL
directSciHub download

Passini, S.. (2022). Songs and flags: Concern for Covid-19 and submission to authority. Personality and Individual Differences

, 185, 111251.
Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2021.111251
DOI URL
directSciHub download