thewashingtonstandard--2020-09-08--MKUltra & The CIA’s War On The Human Mind

I ’ ve been reading , in what little spare time I have , TRANCE Formation of America : True life story of a mind control slave by Cathy O ’ Brien and Mark Phillips which is the true story of how a former CIA agent who aids a mind-controlled mother and her daughter in escape from being pimped out by her husband .
It ’ s truly amazing the cost this man paid in order to do the right thing by this woman and her child .
Still , many believe this is the stuff of mere “ conspiracy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the CIA coined that term to discredit those that disagreed with the official narrative of the Kennedy Assassination .
With that said , a book by Stephen Kinser titled Poisoner in Chief : Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control ( New York : Henry Holt and Company , 2019 ) has been reviewed by Jason Morgan and is an eye-opening for the person unfamiliar with MKUltra and even more confirming for the seasoned researcher about what our corrupt government has been involved in .
With that said , here ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book .
The Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ) has a fearsome reputation .
The author and executor of countless coups and political assassinations , the CIA is notorious for waterboarding , “ extraordinary rendition , ” regime change , kidnapping , narcotics smuggling , financing of guerrilla wars , and many other unsavory activities around the world , including against Americans , even inside the United States .
But “ fearsome ” does not mean “ flawless.
” The CIA has failed at least as often as it has succeeded , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sending thousands of anticommunist guerrilla fighters behind enemy lines in Korea , Eastern Europe , China , and Southeast Asia during the Cold War , where nearly all of them died—that CIA insiders wryly refer to their organization as “ Clowns In Action.
” A veteran reporter on foreign conflicts such as those in Rwanda , Guatemala , Nicaragua , and Iran , Kinzer is a former New York Times correspondent and , most famously , the author of the 2006 bestseller Overthrow : America ’ s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he brings his analytical skills to bear on perhaps the most disturbing CIA project of them all : MKULTRA , the top-secret , long-running effort to find a method for controlling the human mind .
“ History ’ s most systematic search for techniques of mind control , ” Kinzer writes , was a by-product of World War II .
At the end of 1942 , a University of Wisconsin bacteriologist named Ira Baldwin— “ America ’ s first bio-warrior ” and a part-time Quaker preacher—was loaned to Washington ( with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) in order to set up and run a bioweapons program for the United States military ( p. 16 ) .
Based out of Camp Detrick in Maryland , the Baldwin lab cranked out bioweapons for possible use against Allied enemies .
In one of Baldwin ’ s bigger projects , shipment of tons of anthrax spores , ordered by Winston Churchill for potential use against the Nazis , was approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and almost ready for delivery when the Germans surrendered on May 7 , 1945 ( p. 19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Quaker preachers , World War II cleared away the last of the psychological hurdles against unleashing bioweapons against an enemy .
Kinzer ’ s book tells the tale of how the targeting of unsuspecting populations was later justified by the bigger war , the Cold War , which followed the demise of the Third Reich .
The ruined Third Reich provided much of the original brainpower for MKULTRA .
Immediately after World War II , the CIA—formed out of the Office of War Information in 1945—was faced with a choice .
The Germans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ experiments on germ warfare and other forms of biological weaponry .
Should the Allies prosecute as war criminals the scientists involved with such projects , or hire them as expert advisors ?
With the Cold War starting and the Soviets looming as an unpredictable enemy , the CIA , with the tacit approval of the few members of the United States Congress who were allowed to know even the existence of the Central Intelligence Agency , decided to make use of the bioweapon expertise of erstwhile foes in order to counter the new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kurt Blome , the Nazis ’ director of biowarfare research and development whose work had been championed by Heinrich Himmler , was acquitted , by American political fiat , at the Doctors ’ Trial in Nuremberg in 1947 and sent to work—as part of Operation Paperclip designed mainly to bring German rocket scientists to the US—at Camp Detrick ( pp .
20–24 ) .
It was at Camp Detrick that Blome encountered a rising star in the CIA , Sidney Gottlieb .
Gottlieb , a bacteriological specialist who had been a star student @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , is the main figure in Kinzer ’ s book .
His career is virtually synonymous with MKULTRA .
Under the direction of Gottlieb , the CIA ’ s laboratories at Camp Detrick transitioned from R & D on bioweapons—often using unwitting American subjects , such as in 1950 when a US Navy minesweeper “ specially equipped with large aerosol hoses ” spent six days spraying the Serratia marcescens bacterium into the San Francisco fog , infecting some eight hundred thousand people ( pp .
37–38 ) —to drugs which could be used @ @ @ @ @ @ @ MKULTRA ’ s sister CIA project , was also tasked with finding poisons and biotoxins which the CIA and the US government could use in various operations . )
Gottlieb provided the big ideas into which to fit Blome ’ s nefarious knowledge of mass murder by bacillus .
Gottlieb became , virtually overnight and with the help of former Nazi doctors , America ’ s “ poisoner in chief.
” The CIA ’ s mind control program , which was assuming a bigger and bigger importance as fears of Soviet brainwashing grew @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Operation Bluebird and was personally overseen by CIA higher-up Allen Dulles .
( 47 ) At first , the Bluebird team experimented with “ hypnosis , electroshock , and sensory deprivation , ” along with drugs like sodium amytal , at CIA sites in “ secret prisons in Germany and Japan , ” looking for a way to extract information out of POWs and captured spies ( pp .
44 , 48–49 ) .
But Dulles was unsatisfied with the results and decided to give the young CIA recruit Sidney Gottlieb control of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Artichoke ( pp .
51–52 ) .
The goal of Artichoke was to do whatever it took to get prisoners to divulge military and state secrets to the CIA .
The Cold War would brook nothing short of full-scale war against the human mind .
Dulles became deputy director of central intelligence three days after launching Artichoke in 1951 , and Gottlieb , invisible to the outside world , was given virtually unlimited rein to carry out any experiments thought necessary to achieve mind control ( p. 51 ) .
This drive to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ psyche eclipsed all reality and tactical limitation .
If the US didn ’ t win the race to the mind control method , many in the CIA thought , the entire American population lay vulnerable to mental enslavement by the Soviets .
Dulles , Kinzer writes , despite a disastrously unsuccessful three-year “ Artichoke ” attack on a Bulgarian political prisoner named Dmitri Dimitrov , “ had convinced himself not only that mind control techniques exist but that Communists had discovered them , and that this posed a mortal threat to the rest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 52–53 ) .
Mind control was the pressing need , but nothing brought it within reach .
Technique after technique , drug after drug , was tried on prisoners , but to no avail .
In frustration , Artichoke agents under Gottlieb upped the ante , turning to marijuana , cocaine , and then heroin as possible catalysts of CIA-directed , anti-Soviet brainwashing .
As part of Artichoke , a University of Rochester psychology professor was given a grant by the US Navy to test heroin on his students .
The control of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , despite the massive dosing of the Rochester student population with opiates .
Nothing seemed to have the potential to crack open the mind for the CIA ( p. 59 ) .
Someone in Artichoke suggested using mescaline after the other narcotics failed , and this gave Sidney Gottlieb an idea .
He remembered hearing about a drug called LSD which Dr. Albert Hofmann had discovered during an experiment at Sandoz laboratories in Basel , Switzerland , in 1943 .
Lysergic acid diethylamide ( LSD ) , an ergot enzyme , produced extraordinary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ found when he ingested some and recorded the drug ’ s effects .
Washington learned of Hofmann ’ s discovery in 1949 , and one of the chemical specialists in the US military complex told Gottlieb of the new substance ( pp .
34–35 ) In 1951 , Gottlieb asked Harold Abramson , who had been a physician in the Chemical Warfare Service during World War II , to administer LSD to him .
Gottlieb experienced the same psychedelic state as Dr. Hofmann had described .
Other subjects were tested , as well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and all seemed to exhibit similar reactions .
LSD most definitely altered the mind ( pp .
60–61 ) .
Gottlieb was convinced that he had found the magical drug which would allow the CIA to control the psyche , and therefore to beat the Soviets at ( what Allen Dulles , Gottlieb , and many others at CIA thought , at least , was ) the Soviets ’ own game .
The experiments on human subjects followed rapidly after Gottlieb ’ s conversion to belief in the powers of LSD .
These @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by murder .
One study quoted by Kinzer reports that The CIA carried out similar experimentation and executions in Korea and Germany ( p. 64 ) .
Gottlieb was usually personally involved .
Throughout the 1950s the experimentation continued .
An American artist named Stanley Glickman was lured to a bar near his studio in Paris by CIA agents in 1951 and a chemical was slipped into his drink .
Glickman began to hallucinate wildly .
He fled in a state of panic and remained in his Paris apartment for the next ten @ @ @ @ @ @ @ came to take him home , and then he spent the rest of his life as a near invalid .
The chemical which the CIA had slipped into Glickman ’ s drink was almost certainly LSD , and Glickman , Kinzer suggests , had been chosen by the CIA because he had just recovered from hepatitis and the Artichoke team was conducting an experiment on the effects of hepatic infection on the efficacy of LSD ( pp .
66–67 ) Things got worse from there .
In 1952 , the CIA commissioned underworld @ @ @ @ @ @ @ White to run a human-subjects experiment site at 81 Bedford Street in Greenwich Village , New York ( pp .
74–75 ) .
White ’ s job was to bring to the CIA ’ s apartment “ expendables ” on whom Gottlieb and his team could test LSD .
White “ knew the whores , the pimps , the people who brought in the drugs , ” as one of Gottlieb ’ s MKULTRA colleagues later explained , and this made him invaluable for procuring the “ drug users , petty criminals , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not to complain about what had happened to them ” when the CIA ’ s experiments were finished ( pp .
76–77 ) .
Many of these “ expendables ” suffered nervous breakdowns , and some died .
In order to keep the supply of LSD flowing , CIA agents went to Basel , where LSD had been discovered , and tried to buy all the LSD in stock .
Allen Dulles authorized a $ 240,000 outlay to pay for it ( p. 86 ) .
Sandoz held the patent for Hofmann ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nothing to do with the troublesome substance and so Gottlieb , freed of any need to scruple over IP infringement , tasked US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly with making LSD in the States ( pp .
85–86 ) With their mind control serum in production , MKULTRA agents could focus on how to dose experimental subjects .
The CIA even hired a professional magician , John Mulholland , to teach Gottlieb and his agents how to deliver LSD into unsuspecting subjects ’ drinks and food without being detected ( pp .
89–94 ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Dr. Harry Isbell , to test LSD and new mind-altering drugs on prisoners and patients .
More lives were destroyed ( pp .
94–96 ) .
Among the victims of another of Gottlieb ’ s agent-doctors was none other than James “ Whitey ” Bulger , the mafioso who , along with “ nineteen other inmates ” at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary , beginning in 1957 “ was given LSD nearly every day for fifteen months , without being told what it was ” ( pp .
98–99 ) .
Bulger was plagued @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nightmares , suicidal thoughts , and “ deep depression ” ( p. 98 ) .
Bulger , who had been told that he was taking part in experiments designed to find a cure for schizophrenia , did not learn the truth about what had happened until 1979 ( pp .
263–64 ) .
The human toll of Gottlieb ’ s MKULTRA experiments continued to mount .
One of Gottlieb ’ s closest associates in the project , Frank Olson—a bacteriologist trained at the University of Wisconsin who had also been recruited for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Baldwin—began to express doubts about what the MKULTRA team was doing .
He told his wife that he had made a “ terrible mistake ” in his work ( p. 114 ) .
He shared his misgivings with his CIA colleagues as well .
Olson ’ s conscience appeared to be getting the better of him , and he became a liability to the team .
In late 1953 , Gottlieb surreptitiously dosed Olson with LSD at a backwoods MKULTRA gathering , “ Deep Creek Rendezvous , ” outside Camp Detrick ( p. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ frightening disorientation , and early in the morning on November 28 , 1953—a few days after Thanksgiving—Olson “ fell or jumped ” from a window of the Statler Hotel in Manhattan , dying few moments after hitting the concrete below .
Another MKULTRA agent , Gottlieb ’ s lieutenant Robert Lashbrook , was the only other person in the room when Olson “ fell or jumped ” ( pp .
120–21 ) .
Lashbrook told the New York City police that Olson had jumped out of the window and Olson ’ s death @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Olson family eventually grew suspicious and an investigation was carried out , including a new autopsy on Olson ’ s body .
The forensic pathologist , after a month ’ s examination of the corpse , declared : “ I think Frank Olson was intentionally , deliberately , with malice aforethought , thrown out of that window ” ( p. 250 ) .
Wounds on Olson ’ s body were consistent with methods taught in CIA manuals for incapacitating people and then killing them in order to make their deaths look self-inflicted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Olson ’ s demise , but they carried on with their work .
They spent the next few years looking for magic mushrooms in Mexico ( 157 ) ; arranging suicide capsules for American agents , including U-2 pilot Gary Powers ( who chose not to use his when he was shot down over the Soviet Union ) ( pp .
172–75 ) ; attempting , at the order of then attorney general Robert Kennedy , to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro ( after exploding cigars and exploding conch shells were ruled out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with fungi and bacteria ) ( p. 184 ) ; and hooking Allen Ginsberg and other radicals on LSD ( pp .
188–90 ) .
Gottlieb personally delivered to the American embassy in Leopoldville in the Congo poisons that Gottlieb had developed to assassinate Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba , but the Belgians and the Africans beat the CIA to it ( pp .
176–80 ) .
Gottlieb ’ s career brought ruin and suffering to untold numbers of people , many of them innocent .
He retired from the CIA in 1973 after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 211 ) .
Lifelong devotees of folk dance , Gottlieb and his wife , Margaret , moved to the countryside in rural Virginia and attempted to blend in with the small community there , volunteering , dancing , and experimenting with radical ecology .
However , “ investigative reporter Seymour Hersh , who had won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the My Lai massacre in Vietnam , ” learned of the MH-CHAOS program targeting Americans , and the Congress was forced to act .
Gottlieb ’ s career , long a well-kept secret @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and his retirement would therefore be far from peaceful .
But there were still many who tried to cover up what Gottlieb and the other MKULTRA agents had done .
In 1975 , after the outcry caused by the Hersh reporting , President Gerald Ford deputized Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to chair a commission on the CIA .
The new CIA director , William Colby , was remarkably frank .
Colby informed the Rockefeller Commission that “ the CIA had conducted LSD experiments that resulted in deaths .
Later he referred to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Nelson Rockefeller , attempting to prevent the CIA director from revealing too much , buttonholed Colby later : “ Bill , do you really have to present all this material to us ?
” ( p. 216 ) .
In 1977 , in the wake of the Church Report on further American intelligence excesses , Senator Edward Kennedy , Robert ’ s brother , spurred on by some documents which had been discovered as the result of a FOIA request ( Gottlieb had ordered all MKULTRA files burned , but some undetected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Turner to testify before Congress on MKULTRA .
The walls were closing in .
Gottlieb himself was eventually forced to testify—albeit in a closed-room setting his lawyer had helped arrange—but Gottlieb essentially pleaded amnesia ( nearly all of his answers to questions about MKULTRA were some version of “ I do not recall ” ) and the matter seemed to end there .
Still , the skeletons in Gottlieb ’ s closet would not go away .
In 1984 Gottlieb agreed to meet with the family of Frank Olson , the former MKULTRA @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” from his Manhattan hotel room in 1953 .
Eric Olson , Frank Olson ’ s son , was unconvinced by Gottlieb ’ s explanation for the “ accident , ” and , after Frank Olson ’ s widow and Eric ’ s mother passed away , ordered Frank ’ s body exhumed in 1994 .
As information about MKULTRA built in the public ’ s awareness , other cases were reopened , including that of Stanley Glickman .
( 257 ) The courts were now involved and Gottlieb could not count on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his legal trouble .
Gottlieb pushed back the trial for Glickman ’ s murder as long as he could , and then , in early March , 1999 , Sidney Gottlieb died .
Like Frank Olson , it was not officially revealed whether or not the death had been a suicide ( p. 259 ) .
Stephen Kinzer ’ s Poisoner in Chief is a highly readable , thoroughly researched introduction to the life and work of one of America ’ s most unknown , and yet infamous , government agents .
Kinzer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , courageous book .
Even those who have studied the CIA and the various schemes and crimes which “ the Agency ” has committed over the past seventy-five years will be surprised by some of the information Kinzer relates .
To see in one volume a rendering of just some of the lives ruined by just one CIA program , MKULTRA , is a sobering revelation .
Sidney Gottlieb , the person directly responsible for much , if not most , of the MKULTRA devastation over more than twenty years , remains as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s volume as at the beginning , however .
By all accounts , Gottlieb was a good student from a stable family .
Kinzer speculates that perhaps Gottlieb ’ s having been rejected for military service in World War II—Gottlieb stuttered and had a clubfoot—left him unsatisfied and impatient to prove his patriotism , an urgent task for the son of immigrant Jews ( p. 50 ) .
Gottlieb was heavily involved in New Age mysticism and meditation and appears to have expended considerable energy psychologically compartmentalizing his “ work , ” so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the experiments he and his MKULTRA team were carrying out were , at best , unethical , and objectively speaking often outright crimes .
But Gottlieb was hardly alone in his endeavors , and the explanation that Gottlieb , Allen Dulles , and many others in the CIA gave—to themselves and to each other , and to the world around when pressed—makes the most sense .
They had a country to defend , they faced an enemy of unprecedented cruelty in the Soviet Union , and they were willing to do whatever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , to keep Americans as a whole from falling under the spell of communist mind control .

I’ve been reading, in what little spare time I have, TRANCE Formation of America: True life story of a mind control slave by Cathy O’Brien and Mark Phillips which is the true story of how a former CIA agent who aids a mind-controlled mother and her daughter in escape from being pimped out by her husband. It’s truly amazing the cost this man paid in order to do the right thing by this woman and her child. Still, many believe this is the stuff of mere “conspiracy theory,” which by the way the CIA coined that term to discredit those that disagreed with the official narrative of the Kennedy Assassination. With that said, a book by Stephen Kinser titled Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019) has been reviewed by Jason Morgan and is an eye-opening for the person unfamiliar with MKUltra and even more confirming for the seasoned researcher about what our corrupt government has been involved in.
With that said, here’s Jason’s review of the book.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has a fearsome reputation. The author and executor of countless coups and political assassinations, the CIA is notorious for waterboarding, “extraordinary rendition,” regime change, kidnapping, narcotics smuggling, financing of guerrilla wars, and many other unsavory activities around the world, including against Americans, even inside the United States.
But “fearsome” does not mean “flawless.” The CIA has failed at least as often as it has succeeded, and sometimes the failures are so flagrant—such as sending thousands of anticommunist guerrilla fighters behind enemy lines in Korea, Eastern Europe, China, and Southeast Asia during the Cold War, where nearly all of them died—that CIA insiders wryly refer to their organization as “Clowns In Action.”
Which is it? Is the CIA a dastardly menace or a hotbed of horrible mistakes? If Stephen Kinzer’s new book, Poisoner in Chief, is any indication, the answer is both.
A veteran reporter on foreign conflicts such as those in Rwanda, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Iran, Kinzer is a former New York Times correspondent and, most famously, the author of the 2006 bestseller Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. In his latest effort, he brings his analytical skills to bear on perhaps the most disturbing CIA project of them all: MKULTRA, the top-secret, long-running effort to find a method for controlling the human mind.
“History’s most systematic search for techniques of mind control,” Kinzer writes, was a by-product of World War II. At the end of 1942, a University of Wisconsin bacteriologist named Ira Baldwin—“America’s first bio-warrior” and a part-time Quaker preacher—was loaned to Washington (with the blessing of the University of Wisconsin president) in order to set up and run a bioweapons program for the United States military (p. 16). Based out of Camp Detrick in Maryland, the Baldwin lab cranked out bioweapons for possible use against Allied enemies. In one of Baldwin’s bigger projects, shipment of tons of anthrax spores, ordered by Winston Churchill for potential use against the Nazis, was approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and almost ready for delivery when the Germans surrendered on May 7, 1945 (p. 19).
For many, even for Quaker preachers, World War II cleared away the last of the psychological hurdles against unleashing bioweapons against an enemy. Kinzer’s book tells the tale of how the targeting of unsuspecting populations was later justified by the bigger war, the Cold War, which followed the demise of the Third Reich.
The ruined Third Reich provided much of the original brainpower for MKULTRA. Immediately after World War II, the CIA—formed out of the Office of War Information in 1945—was faced with a choice. The Germans and the Japanese had been conducting advanced experiments on germ warfare and other forms of biological weaponry. Should the Allies prosecute as war criminals the scientists involved with such projects, or hire them as expert advisors? With the Cold War starting and the Soviets looming as an unpredictable enemy, the CIA, with the tacit approval of the few members of the United States Congress who were allowed to know even the existence of the Central Intelligence Agency, decided to make use of the bioweapon expertise of erstwhile foes in order to counter the new adversary in Moscow.
For example, Kurt Blome, the Nazis’ director of biowarfare research and development whose work had been championed by Heinrich Himmler, was acquitted, by American political fiat, at the Doctors’ Trial in Nuremberg in 1947 and sent to work—as part of Operation Paperclip designed mainly to bring German rocket scientists to the US—at Camp Detrick (pp. 20–24).
It was at Camp Detrick that Blome encountered a rising star in the CIA, Sidney Gottlieb. Gottlieb, a bacteriological specialist who had been a star student of Ira Baldwin’s at Wisconsin, is the main figure in Kinzer’s book. His career is virtually synonymous with MKULTRA. Under the direction of Gottlieb, the CIA’s laboratories at Camp Detrick transitioned from R&D on bioweapons—often using unwitting American subjects, such as in 1950 when a US Navy minesweeper “specially equipped with large aerosol hoses” spent six days spraying the Serratia marcescens bacterium into the San Francisco fog, infecting some eight hundred thousand people (pp. 37–38)—to drugs which could be used for mind control. (MKNAOMI, MKULTRA’s sister CIA project, was also tasked with finding poisons and biotoxins which the CIA and the US government could use in various operations.) Gottlieb provided the big ideas into which to fit Blome’s nefarious knowledge of mass murder by bacillus. Gottlieb became, virtually overnight and with the help of former Nazi doctors, America’s “poisoner in chief.”
The CIA’s mind control program, which was assuming a bigger and bigger importance as fears of Soviet brainwashing grew in the US, was originally called Operation Bluebird and was personally overseen by CIA higher-up Allen Dulles. (47) At first, the Bluebird team experimented with “hypnosis, electroshock, and sensory deprivation,” along with drugs like sodium amytal, at CIA sites in “secret prisons in Germany and Japan,” looking for a way to extract information out of POWs and captured spies (pp. 44, 48–49). But Dulles was unsatisfied with the results and decided to give the young CIA recruit Sidney Gottlieb control of Bluebird’s updated iteration: Operation Artichoke (pp. 51–52). The goal of Artichoke was to do whatever it took to get prisoners to divulge military and state secrets to the CIA. The Cold War would brook nothing short of full-scale war against the human mind.
Dulles became deputy director of central intelligence three days after launching Artichoke in 1951, and Gottlieb, invisible to the outside world, was given virtually unlimited rein to carry out any experiments thought necessary to achieve mind control (p. 51). This drive to achieve total operational control over the human psyche eclipsed all reality and tactical limitation. If the US didn’t win the race to the mind control method, many in the CIA thought, the entire American population lay vulnerable to mental enslavement by the Soviets. Dulles, Kinzer writes, despite a disastrously unsuccessful three-year “Artichoke” attack on a Bulgarian political prisoner named Dmitri Dimitrov, “had convinced himself not only that mind control techniques exist but that Communists had discovered them, and that this posed a mortal threat to the rest of the world” (pp. 52–53).
Mind control was the pressing need, but nothing brought it within reach. Technique after technique, drug after drug, was tried on prisoners, but to no avail. In frustration, Artichoke agents under Gottlieb upped the ante, turning to marijuana, cocaine, and then heroin as possible catalysts of CIA-directed, anti-Soviet brainwashing. As part of Artichoke, a University of Rochester psychology professor was given a grant by the US Navy to test heroin on his students. The control of the mind remained as elusive as ever, despite the massive dosing of the Rochester student population with opiates. Nothing seemed to have the potential to crack open the mind for the CIA (p. 59).
Someone in Artichoke suggested using mescaline after the other narcotics failed, and this gave Sidney Gottlieb an idea. He remembered hearing about a drug called LSD which Dr. Albert Hofmann had discovered during an experiment at Sandoz laboratories in Basel, Switzerland, in 1943. Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), an ergot enzyme, produced extraordinary and disturbing psychological effects, Dr. Hofmann found when he ingested some and recorded the drug’s effects. Washington learned of Hofmann’s discovery in 1949, and one of the chemical specialists in the US military complex told Gottlieb of the new substance (pp. 34–35) In 1951, Gottlieb asked Harold Abramson, who had been a physician in the Chemical Warfare Service during World War II, to administer LSD to him. Gottlieb experienced the same psychedelic state as Dr. Hofmann had described. Other subjects were tested, as well, not all of them wittingly, and all seemed to exhibit similar reactions. LSD most definitely altered the mind (pp. 60–61). Gottlieb was convinced that he had found the magical drug which would allow the CIA to control the psyche, and therefore to beat the Soviets at (what Allen Dulles, Gottlieb, and many others at CIA thought, at least, was) the Soviets’ own game.
The experiments on human subjects followed rapidly after Gottlieb’s conversion to belief in the powers of LSD. These experiments often ended in death, often by murder. One study quoted by Kinzer reports that
in 1951 a team of CIA scientists led by Dr. Gottlieb flew to Tokyo….Four Japanese suspected of working for the Russians were secretly brought to a location where the CIA doctors injected them with a variety of depressants and stimulants….Under relentless questioning, they confessed to working for the Russians. They were taken out into Tokyo Bay, shot and dumped overboard. (p. 64)
The CIA carried out similar experimentation and executions in Korea and Germany (p. 64). Gottlieb was usually personally involved.
Throughout the 1950s the experimentation continued. An American artist named Stanley Glickman was lured to a bar near his studio in Paris by CIA agents in 1951 and a chemical was slipped into his drink. Glickman began to hallucinate wildly. He fled in a state of panic and remained in his Paris apartment for the next ten months in paranoid hiding until his family came to take him home, and then he spent the rest of his life as a near invalid. The chemical which the CIA had slipped into Glickman’s drink was almost certainly LSD, and Glickman, Kinzer suggests, had been chosen by the CIA because he had just recovered from hepatitis and the Artichoke team was conducting an experiment on the effects of hepatic infection on the efficacy of LSD (pp. 66–67)
Things got worse from there. In 1952, the CIA commissioned underworld denizen and former vice cop George Hunter White to run a human-subjects experiment site at 81 Bedford Street in Greenwich Village, New York (pp. 74–75). White’s job was to bring to the CIA’s apartment “expendables” on whom Gottlieb and his team could test LSD. White “knew the whores, the pimps, the people who brought in the drugs,” as one of Gottlieb’s MKULTRA colleagues later explained, and this made him invaluable for procuring the “drug users, petty criminals, and others who could be relied upon not to complain about what had happened to them” when the CIA’s experiments were finished (pp. 76–77). Many of these “expendables” suffered nervous breakdowns, and some died.
In order to keep the supply of LSD flowing, CIA agents went to Basel, where LSD had been discovered, and tried to buy all the LSD in stock. Allen Dulles authorized a $240,000 outlay to pay for it (p. 86). Sandoz held the patent for Hofmann’s 1943 discovery, but Sandoz wanted nothing to do with the troublesome substance and so Gottlieb, freed of any need to scruple over IP infringement, tasked US pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly with making LSD in the States (pp. 85–86) With their mind control serum in production, MKULTRA agents could focus on how to dose experimental subjects. The CIA even hired a professional magician, John Mulholland, to teach Gottlieb and his agents how to deliver LSD into unsuspecting subjects’ drinks and food without being detected (pp. 89–94)
Gottlieb recruited a Kentucky addiction specialist, Dr. Harry Isbell, to test LSD and new mind-altering drugs on prisoners and patients. More lives were destroyed (pp. 94–96). Among the victims of another of Gottlieb’s agent-doctors was none other than James “Whitey” Bulger, the mafioso who, along with “nineteen other inmates” at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, beginning in 1957 “was given LSD nearly every day for fifteen months, without being told what it was” (pp. 98–99). Bulger was plagued for the rest of his life with nightmares, suicidal thoughts, and “deep depression” (p. 98). Bulger, who had been told that he was taking part in experiments designed to find a cure for schizophrenia, did not learn the truth about what had happened until 1979 (pp. 263–64).
The human toll of Gottlieb’s MKULTRA experiments continued to mount. One of Gottlieb’s closest associates in the project, Frank Olson—a bacteriologist trained at the University of Wisconsin who had also been recruited for the CIA by Gottlieb’s mentor Ira Baldwin—began to express doubts about what the MKULTRA team was doing. He told his wife that he had made a “terrible mistake” in his work (p. 114). He shared his misgivings with his CIA colleagues as well. Olson’s conscience appeared to be getting the better of him, and he became a liability to the team.
In late 1953, Gottlieb surreptitiously dosed Olson with LSD at a backwoods MKULTRA gathering, “Deep Creek Rendezvous,” outside Camp Detrick (p. 113). Olson spiraled into a frightening disorientation, and early in the morning on November 28, 1953—a few days after Thanksgiving—Olson “fell or jumped” from a window of the Statler Hotel in Manhattan, dying few moments after hitting the concrete below. Another MKULTRA agent, Gottlieb’s lieutenant Robert Lashbrook, was the only other person in the room when Olson “fell or jumped” (pp. 120–21). Lashbrook told the New York City police that Olson had jumped out of the window and Olson’s death was originally designated a suicide, but the Olson family eventually grew suspicious and an investigation was carried out, including a new autopsy on Olson’s body. The forensic pathologist, after a month’s examination of the corpse, declared: “I think Frank Olson was intentionally, deliberately, with malice aforethought, thrown out of that window” (p. 250). Wounds on Olson’s body were consistent with methods taught in CIA manuals for incapacitating people and then killing them in order to make their deaths look self-inflicted.
Gottlieb and MKULTRA were shaken by Olson’s demise, but they carried on with their work. They spent the next few years looking for magic mushrooms in Mexico (157); arranging suicide capsules for American agents, including U-2 pilot Gary Powers (who chose not to use his when he was shot down over the Soviet Union) (pp. 172–75); attempting, at the order of then attorney general Robert Kennedy, to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro (after exploding cigars and exploding conch shells were ruled out, Gottlieb tried with a wetsuit laced with fungi and bacteria) (p. 184); and hooking Allen Ginsberg and other radicals on LSD (pp. 188–90). Gottlieb personally delivered to the American embassy in Leopoldville in the Congo poisons that Gottlieb had developed to assassinate Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, but the Belgians and the Africans beat the CIA to it (pp. 176–80).
Gottlieb’s career brought ruin and suffering to untold numbers of people, many of them innocent. He retired from the CIA in 1973 after receiving the Distinguished Intelligence Medal (p. 211). Lifelong devotees of folk dance, Gottlieb and his wife, Margaret, moved to the countryside in rural Virginia and attempted to blend in with the small community there, volunteering, dancing, and experimenting with radical ecology. However, “investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who had won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the My Lai massacre in Vietnam,” learned of the MH-CHAOS program targeting Americans, and the Congress was forced to act. Gottlieb’s career, long a well-kept secret, was being brought into the open, and his retirement would therefore be far from peaceful.
But there were still many who tried to cover up what Gottlieb and the other MKULTRA agents had done. In 1975, after the outcry caused by the Hersh reporting, President Gerald Ford deputized Vice President Nelson Rockefeller to chair a commission on the CIA. The new CIA director, William Colby, was remarkably frank. Colby informed the Rockefeller Commission that “the CIA had conducted LSD experiments that resulted in deaths. Later he referred to assassination plots” (p. 216). Nelson Rockefeller, attempting to prevent the CIA director from revealing too much, buttonholed Colby later: “Bill, do you really have to present all this material to us?” (p. 216).
In 1977, in the wake of the Church Report on further American intelligence excesses, Senator Edward Kennedy, Robert’s brother, spurred on by some documents which had been discovered as the result of a FOIA request (Gottlieb had ordered all MKULTRA files burned, but some undetected copies remained), called Admiral Stansfield Turner to testify before Congress on MKULTRA. The walls were closing in. Gottlieb himself was eventually forced to testify—albeit in a closed-room setting his lawyer had helped arrange—but Gottlieb essentially pleaded amnesia (nearly all of his answers to questions about MKULTRA were some version of “I do not recall”) and the matter seemed to end there.
Still, the skeletons in Gottlieb’s closet would not go away. In 1984 Gottlieb agreed to meet with the family of Frank Olson, the former MKULTRA colleague who had “fallen or jumped” from his Manhattan hotel room in 1953. Eric Olson, Frank Olson’s son, was unconvinced by Gottlieb’s explanation for the “accident,” and, after Frank Olson’s widow and Eric’s mother passed away, ordered Frank’s body exhumed in 1994. As information about MKULTRA built in the public’s awareness, other cases were reopened, including that of Stanley Glickman. (257) The courts were now involved and Gottlieb could not count on the CIA to get him out of his legal trouble. Gottlieb pushed back the trial for Glickman’s murder as long as he could, and then, in early March, 1999, Sidney Gottlieb died.
Like Frank Olson, it was not officially revealed whether or not the death had been a suicide (p. 259).
Stephen Kinzer’s Poisoner in Chief is a highly readable, thoroughly researched introduction to the life and work of one of America’s most unknown, and yet infamous, government agents. Kinzer is to be thanked for his plainspoken, courageous book. Even those who have studied the CIA and the various schemes and crimes which “the Agency” has committed over the past seventy-five years will be surprised by some of the information Kinzer relates. To see in one volume a rendering of just some of the lives ruined by just one CIA program, MKULTRA, is a sobering revelation.
Sidney Gottlieb, the person directly responsible for much, if not most, of the MKULTRA devastation over more than twenty years, remains as mysterious at the end of Kinzer’s volume as at the beginning, however. By all accounts, Gottlieb was a good student from a stable family. Kinzer speculates that perhaps Gottlieb’s having been rejected for military service in World War II—Gottlieb stuttered and had a clubfoot—left him unsatisfied and impatient to prove his patriotism, an urgent task for the son of immigrant Jews (p. 50). Gottlieb was heavily involved in New Age mysticism and meditation and appears to have expended considerable energy psychologically compartmentalizing his “work,” so there are indications that he was aware that the experiments he and his MKULTRA team were carrying out were, at best, unethical, and objectively speaking often outright crimes.
But Gottlieb was hardly alone in his endeavors, and the explanation that Gottlieb, Allen Dulles, and many others in the CIA gave—to themselves and to each other, and to the world around when pressed—makes the most sense. They had a country to defend, they faced an enemy of unprecedented cruelty in the Soviet Union, and they were willing to do whatever it took, even sacrificing innocent people, to keep Americans as a whole from falling under the spell of communist mind control.


thewashingtonstandard--2020-09-08--The Demonic Spirits Behind Black Lives Matter (Video)

On Friday , I reported on the unveiling of the evidence that Black Lives Matter is not only Marxists , but they are occultists , not atheists as many believe .
Then , on Tuesday , I interviewed Alex Newman of The New American , whom I drew heavily on in that Friday article and he expounded upon the demonic nature of the BLM movement and how it is intricately tied to the coming Great Reset .
Alex has also produced a brand new video expose on the demonic spirits behind BLM .
• The Witches Of BLM & The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Common In this episode of Behind the Deep State , host Alex Newman explores the spiritual nature of Black Lives Matter , showing that BLM founders and leaders openly admit they are conjuring spirits and supposed dead ancestors that are “ working ” through them .
As Alex explains , the Bible condemns this as witchcraft , sorcery , necromancy , communication with demons , and more , all of which the Bible calls detestable .
The dark spiritual nature of BLM should have been obvious from the fruit of the movement : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , looting , hate , division , and even murder .
Now , these same BLM activists are training teachers to summon “ ancestor spirits ” into the classrooms with school children .
Obviously , this is a spiritual war .
It is time for churches to take their rightful place at the front lines of the battle .
This is not merely an ideological war , it is spiritual warfare ( Ephesians 6:12ff ) .
“ I ’ ve been saying for years : that America is in a spiritual war and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same thing , ” said Newman .
“ Even the co-founder of black lives matter admits this is a spiritual war , ” Newman continued .
“ She ’ s communicating with spiritual entities by our own admission and it gets worse from there.
” According to Newman , “ At the highest levels of the Black Lives Matter movement , these people are openly admitting that they are communicating with spiritual entities , they ’ re resurrecting ancestor spirits and all the rest of it.
” While this may seem crazy to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Scriptures find it right in line with exactly what they are engaged in .
“ The leaders , the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement admit this , ” said Newman .
Patrice cullers , Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi admit to being trained Marxists .
These are the three co-founders of the movement .
By the way , Tometi is a Nigerian-American who supports the mass murdering , communist dictator of Venezuela , Nicolas Maduro .
These people are not content with just indulging in that which God calls an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going after your kids with this stuff in the public indoctrination centers we call public schools too .
Check out the video to be informed and then act on that information .
Also , check out The Hamilton Corner ’ s coverage of this subject .
Article posted with permission from Sons of Liberty Media

On Friday, I reported on the unveiling of the evidence that Black Lives Matter is not only Marxists, but they are occultists, not atheists as many believe. Then, on Tuesday, I interviewed Alex Newman of The New American, whom I drew heavily on in that Friday article and he expounded upon the demonic nature of the BLM movement and how it is intricately tied to the coming Great Reset. Alex has also produced a brand new video expose on the demonic spirits behind BLM.
In this episode of Behind the Deep State, host Alex Newman explores the spiritual nature of Black Lives Matter, showing that BLM founders and leaders openly admit they are conjuring spirits and supposed dead ancestors that are “working” through them. As Alex explains, the Bible condemns this as witchcraft, sorcery, necromancy, communication with demons, and more, all of which the Bible calls detestable. The dark spiritual nature of BLM should have been obvious from the fruit of the movement: riots, destruction, death, burning, looting, hate, division, and even murder. Now, these same BLM activists are training teachers to summon “ancestor spirits” into the classrooms with school children. Obviously, this is a spiritual war. It is time for churches to take their rightful place at the front lines of the battle.
Here’s Alex’s video.
This is not merely an ideological war, it is spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6:12ff).
“I’ve been saying for years: that America is in a spiritual war and now the other side is saying the same thing,” said Newman.
“Even the co-founder of black lives matter admits this is a spiritual war,” Newman continued. “She’s communicating with spiritual entities by our own admission and it gets worse from there.”
According to Newman, “At the highest levels of the Black Lives Matter movement, these people are openly admitting that they are communicating with spiritual entities, they’re resurrecting ancestor spirits and all the rest of it.”
While this may seem crazy to some, those of us who know the Scriptures find it right in line with exactly what they are engaged in.
“The leaders, the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement admit this,” said Newman.
Patrice cullers, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi admit to being trained Marxists. These are the three co-founders of the movement.
By the way, Tometi is a Nigerian-American who supports the mass murdering, communist dictator of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro.
These people are not content with just indulging in that which God calls an abomination, but they are hellbent on going after your kids with this stuff in the public indoctrination centers we call public schools too.
Check out the video to be informed and then act on that information.
Also, check out The Hamilton Corner’s coverage of this subject.
Article posted with permission from Sons of Liberty Media


thewashingtonstandard--2020-09-08--John Pilger: The Stalinist Trial of Julian Assange

In the past few weeks , we ’ ve been reporting and commenting on Wikileaks ’ co-founder Julian Assange and what is taking place concerning the position he is in for exposing the corruption and criminality in government around the world , but mostly in the US .
In another edition to those reports , award-winning journalist John Pilger , who has reported on Assange ’ s long , epic ordeal , gave this address outside the Central Criminal Court in London on September 7 as the WikiLeaks Editor ’ s extradition hearing entered its final stage .
• Snowden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or any “ Hacked Information ” Banned Under New YouTube Rules • Should Edward Snowden & Julian Assange Pardon The US Government ?
• Supporters Rally To Defeat Extradition Of Julian Assange To The US • Mother Of Julian Assange ’ s Children Warns About His Fate Pilger ’ s statements come by way of MintPress News .
When I first met Julian Assange more than ten years ago , I asked him why he had started WikiLeaks .
He replied : “ Transparency and accountability are moral issues that must be the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I had never heard a publisher or an editor invoke morality in this way .
Assange believes that journalists are the agents of people , not power : that we , the people , have a right to know about the darkest secrets of those who claim to act in our name .
If the powerful lie to us , we have the right to know .
If they say one thing in private and the opposite in public , we have the right to know .
If they conspire against us , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , then pretend to be democrats , we have the right to know .
It is this morality of purpose that so threatens the collusion of powers that want to plunge much of the world into war and wants to bury Julian alive in Trump ’ s fascist America .
In 2008 , a top secret US State Department report described in detail how the United States would combat this new moral threat .
A secretly-directed personal smear campaign against Julian Assange would lead to “ exposure [ and ] criminal prosecution ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ criminalise WikiLeaks and its founder .
Page after page revealed a coming war on a single human being and on the very principle of freedom of speech and freedom of thought , and democracy .
The imperial shock troops would be those who called themselves journalists : the big hitters of the so-called mainstream , especially the “ liberals ” who mark and patrol the perimeters of dissent .
And that is what happened .
I have been a reporter for more than 50 years and I have never known a smear campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a man who refused to join the club : who believed journalism was a service to the public , never to those above .
Assange shamed his persecutors .
He produced scoop after scoop .
He exposed the fraudulence of wars promoted by the media and the homicidal nature of America ’ s wars , the corruption of dictators , the evils of Guantanamo .
He forced us in the West to look in the mirror .
He exposed the official truth-tellers in the media as collaborators : those I would call @ @ @ @ @ @ @ believed Assange when he warned that his life was in danger : that the “ sex scandal ” in Sweden was a set up and an American hellhole was the ultimate destination .
And he was right , and repeatedly right .
The extradition hearing in London this week is the final act of an Anglo-American campaign to bury Julian Assange .
It is not due process .
It is due revenge .
The American indictment is clearly rigged , a demonstrable sham .
So far , the hearings have been reminiscent of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Today , the land that gave us Magna Carta , Great Britain , is distinguished by the abandonment of its own sovereignty in allowing a malign foreign power to manipulate justice and by the vicious psychological torture of Julian – a form of torture , as Nils Melzer , the UN expert has pointed out , that was refined by the Nazis because it was most effective in breaking its victims .
Every time I have visited Assange in Belmarsh prison , I have seen the effects of this torture .
When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lost more than 10 kilos in weight ; his arms had no muscle .
Incredibly , his wicked sense of humor was intact .
As for Assange ’ s homeland , Australia has displayed only a cringeing cowardice as its government has secretly conspired against its own citizen who ought to be celebrated as a national hero .
Not for nothing did George W. Bush anoint the Australian prime minister his “ deputy sheriff ” .
It is said that whatever happens to Julian Assange in the next three weeks will diminish if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the West .
But which press ?
The Guardian ?
The BBC , The New York Times , the Jeff Bezos Washington Post ?
No , the journalists in these organisations can breathe freely .
The Judases on the Guardian who flirted with Julian , exploited his landmark work , made their pile then betrayed him , have nothing to fear .
They are safe because they are needed .
Freedom of the press now rests with the honourable few : the exceptions , the dissidents on the internet who belong to no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ laden with Pulitzers , but produce fine , disobedient , moral journalism – those like Julian Assange .
Meanwhile , it is our responsibility to stand by a true journalist whose sheer courage ought to be inspiration to all of us who still believe that freedom is possible .
I salute him .

In the past few weeks, we’ve been reporting and commenting on Wikileaks’ co-founder Julian Assange and what is taking place concerning the position he is in for exposing the corruption and criminality in government around the world, but mostly in the US. In another edition to those reports, award-winning journalist John Pilger, who has reported on Assange’s long, epic ordeal, gave this address outside the Central Criminal Court in London on September 7 as the WikiLeaks Editor’s extradition hearing entered its final stage.
Pilger’s statements come by way of MintPress News.
When I first met Julian Assange more than ten years ago, I asked him why he had started WikiLeaks. He replied: “Transparency and accountability are moral issues that must be the essence of public life and journalism.”
I had never heard a publisher or an editor invoke morality in this way. Assange believes that journalists are the agents of people, not power: that we, the people, have a right to know about the darkest secrets of those who claim to act in our name.
If the powerful lie to us, we have the right to know. If they say one thing in private and the opposite in public, we have the right to know. If they conspire against us, as Bush and Blair did over Iraq, then pretend to be democrats, we have the right to know.
It is this morality of purpose that so threatens the collusion of powers that want to plunge much of the world into war and wants to bury Julian alive in Trump’s fascist America.
In 2008, a top secret US State Department report described in detail how the United States would combat this new moral threat. A secretly-directed personal smear campaign against Julian Assange would lead to “exposure [and] criminal prosecution”.
The aim was to silence and criminalise WikiLeaks and its founder. Page after page revealed a coming war on a single human being and on the very principle of freedom of speech and freedom of thought, and democracy.
The imperial shock troops would be those who called themselves journalists: the big hitters of the so-called mainstream, especially the “liberals” who mark and patrol the perimeters of dissent.
And that is what happened. I have been a reporter for more than 50 years and I have never known a smear campaign like it: the fabricated character assassination of a man who refused to join the club: who believed journalism was a service to the public, never to those above.
Assange shamed his persecutors. He produced scoop after scoop. He exposed the fraudulence of wars promoted by the media and the homicidal nature of America’s wars, the corruption of dictators, the evils of Guantanamo.
He forced us in the West to look in the mirror. He exposed the official truth-tellers in the media as collaborators: those I would call Vichy journalists. None of these imposters believed Assange when he warned that his life was in danger: that the “sex scandal” in Sweden was a set up and an American hellhole was the ultimate destination. And he was right, and repeatedly right.
The extradition hearing in London this week is the final act of an Anglo-American campaign to bury Julian Assange. It is not due process. It is due revenge. The American indictment is clearly rigged, a demonstrable sham. So far, the hearings have been reminiscent of their Stalinist equivalents during the Cold War.
Today, the land that gave us Magna Carta, Great Britain, is distinguished by the abandonment of its own sovereignty in allowing a malign foreign power to manipulate justice and by the vicious psychological torture of Julian – a form of torture, as Nils Melzer, the UN expert has pointed out, that was refined by the Nazis because it was most effective in breaking its victims.
Every time I have visited Assange in Belmarsh prison, I have seen the effects of this torture. When I last saw him, he had lost more than 10 kilos in weight; his arms had no muscle. Incredibly, his wicked sense of humor was intact.
As for Assange’s homeland, Australia has displayed only a cringeing cowardice as its government has secretly conspired against its own citizen who ought to be celebrated as a national hero. Not for nothing did George W. Bush anoint the Australian prime minister his “deputy sheriff”.
It is said that whatever happens to Julian Assange in the next three weeks will diminish if not destroy freedom of the press in the West. But which press? The Guardian? The BBC, The New York Times, the Jeff Bezos Washington Post?
No, the journalists in these organisations can breathe freely. The Judases on the Guardian who flirted with Julian, exploited his landmark work, made their pile then betrayed him, have nothing to fear. They are safe because they are needed.
Freedom of the press now rests with the honourable few: the exceptions, the dissidents on the internet who belong to no club, who are neither rich nor laden with Pulitzers, but produce fine, disobedient, moral journalism – those like Julian Assange.
Meanwhile, it is our responsibility to stand by a true journalist whose sheer courage ought to be inspiration to all of us who still believe that freedom is possible. I salute him.


thewashingtonstandard--2020-09-08--Pope’s New Encyclical to Praise Jihad Terror Supporter as Example of ‘Peace’ and ‘Fraternity’

Pope Francis ’ new encyclical , Fratelli tutti : sulla fraternità e l ’ amicizia sociale ( “ All Brothers : On Fraternity and Social Friendship ” ) will be issued on October 3 , the Vatican confirmed Saturday .
According to Church Militant , the encyclical is “ a sequel to his controversial Abu Dhabi pact with Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayyeb last year , and will cite Abu Mazen [ Mahmoud Abbas ] , a Palestinian backer of terrorism , as an example of ‘ peace ’ and ‘ fraternity.
’ ” No , this is not the Babylon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gets even worse .
According to Vatican News , “ The theme of fraternity is also present in [ the Pope ’ s ] constant embrace of migrants , epitomized in his pastoral visit to Lampedusa .
His signing of the Document on Human Fraternity in Abu Dhabi in 2019 marks one more example of Pope Francis ’ dedication to promoting brotherly love.
” Brotherly love .
As I told Church Militant , Mahmoud Abbas has made it abundantly clear over the years that he doesn ’ t want peace , but the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state and the eradication of all Jews from the region .
After two jihad groups , the Mourabitoun and the Mourabitat , began violent riots on the Temple Mount in September 2015 , he applauded : “ We bless you ; we bless the Mourabitoun and the Mourabitat .
We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem .
This is pure blood , clean blood , blood on its way to Allah .
With the help of Allah , every shaheed ( martyr ) will be in heaven , and every wounded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their steps , we will not allow them .
All these divisions , Al-Aqsa is ours , and the ( Church of the ) Holy Sepulcher is ours , everything is ours , all ours .
They ( the Jews ) have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet and we won ’ t allow them to.
” Abbas envisions the total expulsion of Jews from a Palestinian state : “ In a final resolution , we would not see the presence of a single Israeli – civilian or soldier – @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regarding all human beings as brothers , both Sunni and Shi ’ ite Islam teach that the lives of non-Muslims are not worth as much as the lives of Muslims .
, a classic Sunni manual of Islamic sacred law , explains matter-of-factly that “ the indemnity for the death or injury of a woman is one-half the indemnity paid for a man .
The indemnity paid for a Jew or Christian is one-third the indemnity paid for a Muslim .
The indemnity paid for a Zoroastrian is one-fifteenth that of a Muslim @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ an calls “ the unbelievers among the People of the Book , ” that is , Jews and Christians who do not accept Islam , “ the most vile of created beings ” ( Qur ’ an 98:6 ) .
Sultan Hussein Tabandeh , the Shi ’ ite author of A Muslim Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , agrees , stating : Thus if [ a ] Muslim commits adultery his punishment is 100 lashes , the shaving of his head , and one year of banishment .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and commits adultery with a Muslim woman his penalty is execution .
… Similarly if a Muslim deliberately murders another Muslim he falls under the law of retaliation and must by law be put to death by the next of kin .
But if a non-Muslim who dies at the hand of a Muslim has by lifelong habit been a non-Muslim , the penalty of death is not valid .
Instead the Muslim murderer must pay a fine and be punished with the lash .
… Since Islam regards non-Muslims as on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim , then his punishment must not be the retaliatory death , since the faith and conviction he possesses is loftier than that of the man slain…Again , the penalties of a non-Muslim guilty of fornication with a Muslim woman are augmented because , in addition to the crime against morality , social duty and religion , he has committed sacrilege , in that he has disgraced a Muslim and thereby cast scorn upon the Muslims in general , and so must be executed .
… Islam and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and never permit non-Muslims to acquire lordship over them .
But the Pope ’ s encyclical is certain to ignore all of this , and it is likely that the pontiff is completely unaware of it .
The encyclical will mislead millions of Catholics into a complacency that could be fatal .
“ Leave them ; they are blind guides .
And if a blind man leads a blind man , both will fall into a pit ” ( Matthew 15:14 ) .

Pope Francis’ new encyclical, Fratelli tutti: sulla fraternità e l’amicizia sociale (“All Brothers: On Fraternity and Social Friendship”) will be issued on October 3, the Vatican confirmed Saturday. According to Church Militant, the encyclical is “a sequel to his controversial Abu Dhabi pact with Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayyeb last year, and will cite Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas], a Palestinian backer of terrorism, as an example of ‘peace’ and ‘fraternity.’” No, this is not the Babylon Bee; this is real.
It gets even worse. According to Vatican News, “The theme of fraternity is also present in [the Pope’s] constant embrace of migrants, epitomized in his pastoral visit to Lampedusa. His signing of the Document on Human Fraternity in Abu Dhabi in 2019 marks one more example of Pope Francis’ dedication to promoting brotherly love.”
Brotherly love. As I told Church Militant, Mahmoud Abbas has made it abundantly clear over the years that he doesn’t want peace, but the total destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and the eradication of all Jews from the region. After two jihad groups, the Mourabitoun and the Mourabitat, began violent riots on the Temple Mount in September 2015, he applauded: “We bless you; we bless the Mourabitoun and the Mourabitat. We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem. This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah. With the help of Allah, every shaheed (martyr) will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward. All of their steps, we will not allow them. All these divisions, Al-Aqsa is ours, and the (Church of the) Holy Sepulcher is ours, everything is ours, all ours. They (the Jews) have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet and we won’t allow them to.”
Abbas envisions the total expulsion of Jews from a Palestinian state: “In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli – civilian or soldier – on our lands.” And as for regarding all human beings as brothers, both Sunni and Shi’ite Islam teach that the lives of non-Muslims are not worth as much as the lives of Muslims. Reliance of the Traveller , a classic Sunni manual of Islamic sacred law, explains matter-of-factly that “the indemnity for the death or injury of a woman is one-half the indemnity paid for a man. The indemnity paid for a Jew or Christian is one-third the indemnity paid for a Muslim. The indemnity paid for a Zoroastrian is one-fifteenth that of a Muslim” (o4.9). The Qur’an calls “the unbelievers among the People of the Book,” that is, Jews and Christians who do not accept Islam, “the most vile of created beings” (Qur’an 98:6).
Sultan Hussein Tabandeh, the Shi’ite author of A Muslim Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, agrees, stating:
Thus if [a] Muslim commits adultery his punishment is 100 lashes, the shaving of his head, and one year of banishment. But if the man is not a Muslim and commits adultery with a Muslim woman his penalty is execution. … Similarly if a Muslim deliberately murders another Muslim he falls under the law of retaliation and must by law be put to death by the next of kin. But if a non-Muslim who dies at the hand of a Muslim has by lifelong habit been a non-Muslim, the penalty of death is not valid. Instead the Muslim murderer must pay a fine and be punished with the lash. … Since Islam regards non-Muslims as on a lower level of belief and conviction, if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim, then his punishment must not be the retaliatory death, since the faith and conviction he possesses is loftier than that of the man slain…Again, the penalties of a non-Muslim guilty of fornication with a Muslim woman are augmented because, in addition to the crime against morality, social duty and religion, he has committed sacrilege, in that he has disgraced a Muslim and thereby cast scorn upon the Muslims in general, and so must be executed. … Islam and its peoples must be above the infidels, and never permit non-Muslims to acquire lordship over them.
But the Pope’s encyclical is certain to ignore all of this, and it is likely that the pontiff is completely unaware of it. The encyclical will mislead millions of Catholics into a complacency that could be fatal.
“Leave them; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit” (Matthew 15:14).
Article posted with permission from Robert Spencer