Don Juanism by Albert Camus

"There is no noble love but that which recognizes itself to be both short-lived and exceptional.”

- Camus

 

 "Faust craved worldly goods; the poor man had only to stretch out his hand. It already amounted to selling his soul when he was unable to gladden it.  

As for satiety, Don Juan insists upon it, on the contrary. 

If he leaves a woman it is not absolutely because he has ceased to desire her. 

A beautiful woman is always desirable. 

But he desires another, and no, this is not the same thing.

Don Juanism

If it were sufficient to love, things would be too easy. The more one loves, the stronger the absurd grows. It is not through lack of love that Don Juan goes from woman to woman. It is ridiculous to represent him as a mystic in quest of total love. But it is indeed because he loves them with the same passion and each time with his whole self that he must repeat his gift and his profound quest. Whence each woman hopes to give him what no one has ever given him. Each time they are utterly wrong and merely manage to make him feel the need of that repetition. “At last,” exclaims one of them, “I have given you love.” Can we be surprised that Don Juan laughs at this? “At last? No,” he says, “but once more.” 

Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?

Is Don Juan melancholy? This is not likely. I shall barely have recourse to the legend. That laugh, the conquering insolence, that playfulness and love of the theater are all clear and joyous. Every healthy creature tends to multiply himself. So it is with Don Juan.

But, furthermore, melancholy people have two reasons for being so: they don’t know or they hope. 

Don Juan knows and does not hope. 

He reminds one of those artists who know their limits, never go beyond them, and in that precarious interval in which they take their spiritual stand enjoy all the wonderful ease of masters. And that is indeed genius: the intelligence that knows its frontiers. Up to the frontier of physical death Don Juan is ignorant of melancholy. The moment he knows, his laugh bursts forth and makes one forgive everything. He was melancholy at the time when he hoped. Today, on the mouth of that woman he recognizes the bitter and comforting taste of the only knowledge. Bitter? Barely: that necessary imperfection that makes happiness perceptible!

It is quite false to try to see in Don Juan a man brought up on Ecclesiastes. For nothing is vanity to him except the hope of another life. He proves this because he gambles that other life against heaven itself. Longing for desire killed by satisfaction, that commonplace of the impotent man, does not belong to him. That is all right for Faust, who believed in God enough to sell himself to the devil. For Don Juan the thing is simpler. Molina’s Burlador ever replies to the threats of hell: “What a long respite you give me!” What comes after death is futile, and what a long succession of days for whoever knows how to be alive! 

Faust craved worldly goods; the poor man had only to stretch out his hand. It already amounted to selling his soul when he was unable to gladden it. As for satiety, Don Juan insists upon it, on the contrary. If he leaves a woman it is not absolutely because he has ceased to desire her. A beautiful woman is always desirable. But he desires another, and no, this is not the same thing.

This life gratifies his every wish, and nothing is worse than losing it. This madman is a great wise man. But men who live on hope do not thrive in this universe where kindness yields to generosity, affection to virile silence, and communion to solitary courage. And all hasten to say: “He was a weakling, an idealist or a saint.” One has to disparage the greatness that insults.

***

People are sufficiently annoyed (or that smile of complicity that debases what it admires) by Don Juan’s speeches and by that same remark that he uses on all women. But to anyone who seeks quantity in his joys, the only thing that matters is efficacy. What is the use of complicating the passwords that have stood the test? No one, neither the woman nor the man, listens to them, but rather to the voice that pronounces them. They are the rule, the convention, and the courtesy. After they are spoken the most important still remains to be done. Don Juan is already getting ready for it. Why should he give himself a problem in morality? He is not like Milosz’s Manara, who damns himself through a desire to be a saint. Hell for him is a thing to be provoked. He has but one reply to divine wrath, and that is human honor: “I have honor,” he says to the Commander, “and I am keeping my promise because I am a knight.” But it would be just as great an error to make an immoralist of him. In this regard, he is “like everyone else”: he has the moral code of his likes and dislikes. 

Don Juan can be properly understood only by constant reference to what he commonly symbolizes: the ordinary seducer and the sexual athlete. 

He is an ordinary seducer.[16] Except for the difference that he is conscious, and that is why he is absurd. 

A seducer who has become lucid will not change for all that. Seducing is his condition in life. Only in novels does one change condition or become better. Yet it can be said that at the same time nothing is changed and everything is transformed. What Don Juan realizes in action is an ethic of quantity, whereas the saint, on the contrary, tends toward quality. 

Not to believe in the profound meaning of things belongs to the absurd man. As for those cordial or wonder-struck faces, he eyes them, stores them up, and does not pause over them. Time keeps up with him. The absurd man is he who is not apart from time. 

Don Juan does not think of “collecting” women. He exhausts their number and with them his chances of life. “Collecting” amounts to being capable of living off one’s past. But he rejects regret, that other form of hope. He is incapable of looking at portraits.

***

Is he selfish for all that? In his way, probably. But here, too, it is essential to understand one another.

There are those who are made for living and those who are made for loving. At least Don Juan would be inclined to say so. But he would do so in a very few words such as he is capable of choosing. 

For the love we are speaking of here is clothed in illusions of the eternal. As all the specialists in passion teach us, there is no eternal love but what is thwarted. There is scarcely any passion without struggle. Such a love culminates only in the ultimate contradiction of death. One must be Werther or nothing. There, too, there are several ways of committing suicide, one of which is the total gift and forget-fulness of self. Don Juan, as well as anyone else, knows that this can be stirring. But he is one of the very few who know that this is not the important thing. He knows just as well that those who turn away from all personal life through a great love enrich themselves perhaps but certainly impoverish those their love has chosen. A mother or a passionate wife necessarily has a closed heart, for it is turned away from the world. A single emotion, a single creature, a single face, but all is devoured. Quite a different love disturbs Don Juan, and this one is liberating. It brings with it all the faces in the world, and its tremor comes from the fact that it knows itself to be mortal. Don Juan has chosen to be nothing.

For him it is a matter of seeing clearly. We call love what binds us to certain creatures only by reference to a collective way of seeing for which books and legends are responsible. But of love I know only that mixture of desire, affection, and intelligence that binds me to this or that creature. That compound is not the same for another person. I do not have the right to cover all these experiences with the same name. This exempts one from conducting them with the same gestures. The absurd man multiplies here again what he cannot unify. Thus he discovers a new way of being which liberates him at least as much as it liberates those who approach him. There is no noble love but that which recognizes itself to be both short-lived and exceptional. All those deaths and all those rebirths gathered together as in a sheaf make up for Don Juan the flowering of his life. It is his way of giving and of vivifying. I let it be decided whether or not one can speak of selfishness.

***

I think at this point of all those who absolutely insist that Don Juan be punished. Not only in another life, but even in this one. I think of all those tales, legends, and laughs about the aged Don Juan. But Don Juan is already ready. To a conscious man old age and what it portends are not a surprise. Indeed, he is conscious only in so far as he does not conceal its horror from himself. There was in Athens a temple dedicated to old age. Children were taken there. As for Don Juan, the more people laugh at him, the more his figure stands out. Thereby he rejects the one the romantics lent him. No one wants to laugh at that tormented, pitiful Don Juan. He is pitied; heaven itself will redeem him? 

But that’s not it. In the universe of which Don Juan has a glimpse, ridicule too is included. He would consider it normal to be chastised. That is the rule of the game. And, indeed, it is typical of his nobility to have accepted all the rules of the game. Yet he knows he is right and that there can be no question of punishment. A fate is not a punishment.

That is his crime, and how easy it is to understand why the men of God call down punishment on his head. He achieves a knowledge without illusions which negates everything they profess. Loving and possessing, conquering and consuming—that is his way of knowing. (There is significance in that favorite Scriptural word that calls the carnal act “knowing.”) He is their worst enemy to the extent that he is ignorant of them. A chronicler relates that the true Burlador died assassinated by Fransciscans who wanted “to put an end to the excesses and blasphemies of Don Juan, whose birth assured him impunity.” Then they proclaimed that heaven had struck him down. No one has proved that strange end. Nor has anyone proved the contrary. But without wondering if it is probable, I can say that it is logical. I want merely to single out at this point the word “birth” and to play on words: it was the fact of living that assured his innocence. It was from death alone that he derived a guilt now become legendary.

What else does that stone Commander signify, that cold statue set in motion to punish the blood and courage that dared to think? All the powers of eternal Reason, of order, of universal morality, all the foreign grandeur of a God open to wrath are summed up in him. That gigantic and soulless stone merely symbolizes the forces that Don Juan negated forever. But the Commander’s mission stops there. The thunder and lightning can return to the imitation heaven whence they were called forth. The real tragedy takes place quite apart from them. No, it was not under a stone hand that Don Juan met his death. I am inclined to believe in the legendary bravado, in that mad laughter of the healthy man provoking a non- existent God. But, above all, I believe that on that evening when Don Juan was waiting at Anna’s the Commander didn’t come, and that after midnight the blasphemer must have felt the dreadful bitterness of those who have been right. I accept even more readily the account of his life that has him eventually burying himself in a monastery. Not that the edifying aspect of the story can he considered probable. What refuge can he go ask of God? But this symbolizes rather the logical outcome of a life completely imbued with the absurd, the grim ending of an existence turned toward short lived joys. At this point sensual pleasure winds up in asceticism. It is essential to realize that they may be, as it were, the two aspects of the same destitution. What more ghastly image can be called up than that of a man betrayed by his body who, simply because he did not die in time, lives out the comedy while awaiting the end, face to face with that God he does not adore, serving him as he served life, kneeling before a void and arms outstretched toward a heaven without eloquence that he knows to he also without depth?

I see Don Juan in a cell of one of those Spanish monasteries lost on a hilltop. And if he contemplates anything at all, it is not the ghosts of past loves, but perhaps, through a narrow slit in the sun- baked wall, some silent Spanish plain, a noble, soulless land in which he recognizes himself. Yes, it is on this melancholy and radiant image that the curtain must be rung down. The ultimate end, awaited but never desired, the ultimate end is negligible.

Drama

“The play’s the thing,” says Hamlet, “wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”

“Catch” is indeed the word. For conscience moves swiftly or withdraws within itself. It has to be caught on the wing, at that barely perceptible moment when it glances fleetingly at itself. The everyday man does not enjoy tarrying. Everything, on the contrary, hurries him onward. But at the same time nothing interests him more than himself, especially his potentialities. Whence his interest in the theater, in the show, where so many fates are offered him, where he can accept the poetry without feeling the sorrow. There at least can be recognized the thoughtless man, and he continues to hasten toward some hope or other. The absurd man begins where that one leaves off, where, ceasing to admire the play, the mind wants to enter in. Entering into all these lives, experiencing them in their diversity, amounts to acting them out. I am not saying that actors in general obey that impulse, that they are absurd men, but that their fate is an absurd fate which might charm and attract a lucid heart. It is necessary to establish this in order to grasp without misunderstanding what will follow.

The actor’s realm is that of the fleeting. Of all kinds of fame, it is known, his is the most ephemeral. At least, this is said in conversation. But all kinds of fame are ephemeral. From the point of view of Sirius, Goethe’s works in ten thousand years will be dust and his name forgotten. Perhaps a handful of archaeologists will look for “evidence” as to our era. That idea has always contained a lesson. Seriously meditated upon, it reduces our perturbations to the profound nobility that is found in indifference. Above all, it directs our concerns toward what is most certain— that is, toward the immediate. Of all kinds of fame the least deceptive is the one that is lived.

Hence the actor has chosen multiple fame, the fame that is hallowed and tested. From the fact that everything is to die someday he draws the best conclusion. An actor succeeds or does not succeed. A writer has some hope even if he is not appreciated. He assumes that his works will bear witness to what he was. At best the actor will leave us a photograph, and nothing of what he was himself, his gestures and his silences, his gasping or his panting with love, will come down to us. For him, not to be known is not to act, and not acting is dying a hundred times with all the creatures he would have brought to life or resuscitated.

***

Why should we be surprised to find a fleeting fame built upon the most ephemeral of creations? The actor has three hours to be Iago or Alceste, Phedre or Gloucester. In that short space of time he makes them come to life and die on fifty square yards of boards. Never has the absurd been so well illustrated or at such length. What more revelatory epitome can be imagined than those marvelous lives, those exceptional and total desti—

nies unfolding for a few hours within a stage set? Off the stage, Sigismundo ceases to count. Two hours later he is seen dining out. Then it is, perhaps, that life is a dream. But after Sigismundo comes another. The hero suffering from uncertainty takes the place of the man roaring for his revenge. By thus sweeping over centuries and minds, by miming man as he can be and as he is, the actor has much in common with that other absurd individual, the traveler. Like him, he drains something and is constantly on the move. He is a traveler in time and, for the best, the hunted traveler, pursued by souls. If ever the ethics of quantity could find sustenance, it is indeed on that strange stage. To what degree the actor benefits from the characters is hard to say. But that is not the important thing. It is merely a matter of knowing how far he identifies himself with those irreplaceable lives. It often happens that he carries them with him, that they somewhat overflow the time and place in which they were born. They accompany the actor, who cannot very readily separate himself from what he has been. Occasionally when reaching for his glass he resumes Hamlet’s gesture of raising his cup. No, the distance separating him from the creatures into whom he infuses life is not so great. He abundantly illustrates every month or every day that so suggestive truth that there is no frontier between what a man wants to be and what he is. Always concerned with better representing, he demonstrates to what a degree appearing creates being. For that is his art—to simulate absolutely, to project himself as deeply as possible into lives that are not his own. At the end of his effort his vocation becomes clear: to apply himself wholeheartedly to being nothing or to being several. The narrower the limits allotted him for creating his character, the more necessary his talent. He will die in three hours under the mask he has assumed today. Within three hours he must experience and express a whole exceptional life. That is called losing oneself to find oneself. In those three hours he travels the whole course of the dead-end path that the man in the audience takes a lifetime to cover.

***

A mime of the ephemeral, the actor trains and perfects himself only in appearances. The theatrical convention is that the heart expresses itself and communicates itself only through gestures and in the body—or through the voice, which is as much of the soul as of the body. The rule of that art insists that everything be magnified and translated into flesh. If it were essential on the stage to love as people really love, to employ that irreplaceable voice of the heart, to look as people contemplate in life, our speech would be in code. But here silences must make themselves heard. Love speaks up louder, and immobility itself becomes spectacular. The body is king, Not everyone can be “theatrical,” and this unjustly maligned word covers a whole aesthetic and a whole ethic. Half a man’s life is spent in implying, in turning away, and in keeping silent. Here the actor is the intruder. He breaks the spell chaining that soul, and at last the passions can rush onto their stage. They speak in every gesture; they live only through shouts and cries. Thus the actor creates his characters for display. He outlines or sculptures them and slips into their imaginary form, transfusing his blood into their phantoms. I am of course speaking of great drama, the kind that gives the actor an opportunity to fulfill his wholly physical fate. Take Shakespeare, for instance. In that impulsive drama the physical passions lead the dance. They explain everything. Without them all would collapse. Never would King Lear keep the appointment set by madness without the brutal gesture that exiles Cordelia and condemns Edgar. It is just that the unfolding of that tragedy should thenceforth be dominated by madness. Souls are given over to the demons and their saraband. No fewer than four madmen: one by trade, another by intention, and the last two through suffering—four disordered bodies, four unutterable aspects of a single condition.

The very scale of the human body is inadequate. The mask and the buskin, the make-up that reduces and accentuates the face in its essential elements, the costume that exaggerates and simplifies— that universe sacrifices everything to appearance and is made solely for the eye. Through an absurd miracle, it is the body that also brings knowledge. I should never really understand Iago unless I played his part. It is not enough to hear him, for I grasp him only at the moment when I see him. Of the absurd character the actor consequently has the monotony, that single, oppressive silhouette, simultaneously strange and familiar, that he carries about from hero to hero. There, too, the great dramatic work contributes to this unity of tone.[17] This is where the actor contradicts himself: the same and yet so various, so many souls summed up in a single body. Yet it is the absurd contradiction itself, that individual who wants to achieve everything and live everything, that useless attempt, that ineffectual persistence. What always contradicts itself nevertheless joins in him. He is at that point where body and mind converge, where the mind, tired of its defeats, turns toward its most faithful ally. “And blest are those,” says Hamlet, “whose blood and judgment are so well commingled that they are not a pipe for fortune’s finger to sound what stop she please.”

How could the Church have failed to condemn such a practice on the part of the actor? She repudiated in that art the heretical multiplication of souls, the emotional debauch, the scandalous presumption of a mind that objects to living but one life and hurls itself into all forms of excess. She proscribed in them that preference for the present and that triumph of Proteus which are the negation of everything she teaches. Eternity is not a game. A mind foolish enough to prefer a comedy to eternity has lost its salvation. Between “everywhere” and “forever” there is no compromise. Whence that much maligned profession can give rise to a tremendous spiritual conflict. “What matters,” said Nietzsche, “is not eternal life but eternal vivacity.” All drama is, in fact, in this choice. Celimene against Elianthe, the whole subject in the absurd consequence of a nature carried to its extreme, and the verse itself, the “bad verse,” barely accented like the monotony of the character’s nature.

Adrienne Lecouvreur on her deathbed was willing to confess and receive communion, but refused to abjure her profession. She thereby lost the benefit of the confession. Did this not amount, in effect, to choosing her absorbing passion in preference to God? And that woman in the death throes refusing in tears to repudiate what she called her art gave evidence of a greatness that she never achieved behind the footlights. This was her finest role and the hardest one to play. Choosing between heaven and a ridiculous fidelity, preferring oneself to eternity or losing oneself in God is the age-old tragedy in which each must play his part.

The actors of the era knew they were excommunicated. Entering the profession amounted to choosing Hell. And the Church discerned in them her worst enemies. A few men of letters protest: “What! Refuse the last rites to Moliere!” But that was just, and especially in one who died onstage and finished under the actor’s make-up a life entirely devoted to dispersion. In his case genius is invoked, which excuses everything. But genius excuses nothing, just because it refuses to do so.

The actor knew at that time what punishment was in store for him. But what significance could such vague threats have compared to the final punishment that life itself was reserving for him? This was the one that he felt in advance and accepted wholly. To the actor as to the absurd man, a premature death is irreparable. Nothing can make up for the sum of faces and centuries he would otherwise have traversed. But in any case, one has to die. For the actor is doubtless everywhere, but time sweeps him along, too, and makes its impression with him.

It requires but a little imagination to feel what an actor’s fate means. It is in time that he makes up and enumerates his characters. It is in time likewise that he learns to dominate them. The greater number of different lives he has lived, the more aloof he can be from them. The time comes when he must die to the stage and for the world. What he has lived faces him. He sees clearly. He feels the harrowing and irreplaceable quality of that adventure. He knows and can now die. There are homes for aged actors.

Conquest

“No,” says the conqueror, “don’t assume that because I love action I have had to forget how to think. On the contrary I can throughly define what I believe. For I believe it firmly and I see it surely and clearly. Beware of those who say: ‘I know this too well to be able to express it.’ For if they cannot do so, this is because they don’t know it or because out of laziness they stopped at the outer crust.

“I have not many opinions. At the end of a life man notices that he has spent years becoming sure of a single truth. But a single truth, if it is obvious, is enough to guide an existence. As for me, I decidedly have something to say about the individual. One must speak of him bluntly and, if need be, with the appropriate contempt.

“A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says. There are many that I shall keep to myself. But I firmly believe that all those who have judged the individual have done so with much less experience than we on which to base their judgment. The intelligence, the stirring intelligence perhaps foresaw what it was essential to note. But the era, its ruins, and its blood overwhelm us with facts. It was possible for ancient nations, and even for more recent ones down to our machine age, to weigh one against the other the virtues of society and of the individual, to try to find out which was to serve the other. To begin with, that was possible by virtue of that stubborn aberration in man’s heart according to which human beings were created to serve or be served. In the second place, it was possible because neither society nor the individual had yet revealed all their ability.

“I have seen bright minds express astonishment at the masterpieces of Dutch painters born at the height of the bloody wars in Flanders, be amazed by the prayers of Silesian mystics brought up during the frightful Thirty Years’ War. Eternal values survive secular turmoils before their astonished eyes. But there has been progress since. The painters of today are deprived of such serenity. Even if they have basically the heart the creator needs—I mean the closed heart—it is of no use; for everyone, including the saint himself, is mobilized. This is perhaps what I have felt most deeply. At every form that miscarries in the trenches, at every outline, metaphor, or prayer crushed under steel, the eternal loses a round. Conscious that I cannot stand aloof from my time, I have decided to be an integral part of it. This is why I esteem the individual only because he strikes me as ridiculous and humiliated. Knowing that there are no victorious causes, I have a liking for lost causes: they require an uncontaminated soul, equal to its defeat as to its temporary victories. For anyone who feels bound up with this world’s fate, the clash of civilizations has something agonizing about it. I have made that anguish mine at the same time that I wanted to join in. Between history and the eternal I have chosen history because I like certainties. Of it, at least, I am certain, and how can I deny this force crushing me?

“There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action. This is called becoming a man. Such wrenches are dreadful. But for a proud heart there can be no compromise. There is God or time, that cross or this sword. This world has a higher meaning that transcends its worries, or nothing is true but those worries. One must live with time and die with it, or else elude it for a greater life. I know that one can compromise and live in the world while believing in the eternal. That is called accepting. But I loathe this term and want all or nothing. If I choose action, don’t think that contemplation is like an unknown country to me. But it cannot give me everything, and, deprived of the eternal, I want to ally myself with time. I do not want to put down to my account either nostalgia or bitterness, and I merely want to see clearly. I tell you, tomorrow you will be mobilized. For you and for me that is a liberation. The individual can do nothing and yet he can do everything. In that wonderful unattached state you understand why I exalt and crush him at one and the same time. It is the world that pulverizes him and I who liberate him. I provide him with all his rights.

“Conquerors know that action is in itself useless. There is but one useful action, that of remaking man and the earth. I shall never remake men. But one must do ’as if.’ For the path of struggle leads me to the flesh. Even humiliated, the flesh is my only certainty. I can live only on it. The creature is my native land. This is why I have chosen this absurd and ineffectual effort. This is why I am on the side of the struggle. The epoch lends itself to this, as I have said. Hitherto the greatness of a conqueror was geographical. It was measured by the extent of the conquered territories. There is a reason why the word has changed in meaning and has ceased to signify the victorious general. The greatness has changed camp. It lies in protest and the blind-alley sacrifice. There, too, it is not through a preference for defeat. Victory would be desirable. But there is but one victory, and it is eternal. That is the one I shall never have. That is where I stumble and cling. A revolution is always accomplished against the gods, beginning with the revolution of Prometheus, the first of modern conquerors. It is man’s demands made against his fate; the demands of the poor are but a pretext. Yet I can seize that spirit only in its historical act, and that is where I make contact with it. Don’t assume, however, that I take pleasure in it: opposite the essential contradiction, I maintain my human contradiction. I establish my lucidity in the midst of what negates it. I exalt man be-fore what crushes him, and my freedom, my revolt, and my passion come together then in that tension, that lucidity, and that vast repetition.

“Yes, man is his own end. And he is his only end. If he aims to be something, it is in this life. Now I know it only too well. Conquerors sometimes talk of vanquishing and overcoming. But it is always ‘overcoming oneself’ that they mean. You are well aware of what that means. Every man has felt himself to be the equal of a god at certain moments. At least, this is the way it is expressed. But this comes from the fact that in a flash he felt the amazing grandeur of the human mind. The conquerors are merely those among men who are conscious enough of their strength to be sure of living constantly on those heights and fully aware of that grandeur. It is a question of arithmetic, of more or less. The conquerors are capable of the more. But they are capable of no more than man himself when he wants. This is why they never leave the human crucible, plunging into the seething soul of revolutions.

“There they find the creature mutilated, but they also encounter there the only values they like and admire, man and his silence. This is both their destitution and their wealth. There is but one luxury for them—that of human relations. How can one fail to realize that in this vulnerable universe everything that is human and solely human assumes a more vivid meaning? Taut faces, threatened fraternity, such strong and chaste friendship among men—these are the true riches because they are transitory. In their midst the mind is most aware of its powers and limitations. That is lucid ones virile and we do not want a strength that is apart from lucidity.”

***

Let me repeat that these images do not propose moral codes and involve no judgments: they are sketches. They merely represent a style of life. The lover, the actor, or the adventurer plays the absurd. But equally well, if he wishes, the chaste man, the civil servant, or the president of the Republic. It is enough to know and to mask nothing. In Italian museums are sometimes found little painted screens that the priest used to hold in front of the face of condemned men to hide the scaffold from them. The leap in all its forms, rushing into the divine or the eternal, surrendering to the illusions of the everyday or of the idea—all these screens hide the absurd. But there are civil servants without screens, and they are the ones of whom I mean to speak. I have chosen the most extreme ones. At this level the absurd gives them a royal power. It is true that those princes are without a kingdom. But they have this advantage over others: they know that all royalties are illusory. They know that is their whole nobility, and it is useless to speak in relation to them of hidden misfortune or the ashes of disillusion. Being deprived of hope is not despairing. The flames of earth are surely worth celestial perfumes. Neither I nor anyone can judge them here. They are not striving to be better; they are attempting to be consistent. If the term “wise man” can be applied to the man who lives on what he has without speculating on what he has not, then they are wise men. One of them, a conqueror but in the realm of mind, a Don Juan but of knowledge, an actor but of the intelligence, knows this better than anyone: “You nowise deserve a privilege on earth and in heaven for having brought to perfection your dear little meek sheep; you nonetheless continue to be at best a ridiculous dear little sheep with horns and nothing more—even supposing that you do not burst with vanity and do not create a scandal by posing as a judge.”

In any case, it was essential to restore to the absurd reasoning more cordial examples. The imagination can add many others, inseparable from time and exile, who likewise know how to live in harmony with a universe without future and without weakness. This absurd, godless world is, then, peopled with men who think clearly and have ceased to hope. And I have not yet spoken of the most absurd character, who is the creator. 

Agents of Chaos

Oh, our government and the press generally won't tell us these things. 

But God told me to tell you this morning. 


The Truth must be told.

God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, 

"You're too arrogant! 

And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power! 

And I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. 

Be still and know that 

I am God.

We, Worshipping God, have destroyed the Whole Earth, from The East to The West, in The Power of God.

And if this were not The Power of God, what could Men have done..?

I'm an Agent of Chaos.

I'm a Dog Chasing Cars.

I am The Warfare of Genghis Khan.

"We give You this for Our Answer : 

Because You did not obey The Word of God and Obey the Command of Genghis Khan, but took counsel to slay Our envoys - Therefore, God ordered Us to destroy Them, and gave Them up into Our hands.

For otherwise, if God had not done this, what could Man do to Man...?

But You Men of The West believe that you alone are Christians, and despise Others - but how can you know who God deigns to confer His Grace....?

But We, Worshipping God, have destroyed the WHOLE EARTH, from The East to The West, in The Power of God.

And if this were not The Power of God, what could Men have done..?

Therefore, if You accept Peace, and are willing to render your fortresses to Us, You, Pope, and Christian Princes in no way delay coming to Me, to conclude Peace, and then We shall know that you wish to have Peace with Us, but if You should not believe Our letters, and the Command of God, nor harken to Our counsel, then We shall know for certain that You wish to have War, and after that, We do no know what will happen.

God Alone Knows.

You must say with a sincere heart: 

"We Will be your subjects; We Will give You Our strength". 

You must in person come with your Kings, all together, without exception, to render Us service and pay Us homage. Only then Will We acknowledge Your SUBMISSION. And if You Do Not follow the Order of God, and go against Our orders, We Will know You as Our Enemy."

— Letter from Güyük to Pope Innocent IV, 1246

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action; for they ask and write me, "So what about Vietnam?" 

They ask if our nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems to bring about the changes it wanted. 

Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: 

My Own Government. 

For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence I cannot be silent. Been a lot of applauding over the last few years. They applauded our total movement; they've applauded me. America and most of its newspapers applauded me in Montgomery. And I stood before thousands of Negroes getting ready to riot when my home was bombed and said, we can't do it this way. They applauded us in the sit-in movement--we non-violently decided to sit in at lunch counters. The applauded us on the Freedom Rides when we accepted blows without retaliation. They praised us in Albany and Birmingham and Selma, Alabama. Oh, the press was so noble in its applause, and so noble in its praise when I was saying, Be non-violent toward Bull Connor;when I was saying, Be non-violent toward [Selma, Alabama segregationist sheriff] Jim Clark. There's something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say, Be non-violent toward Jim Clark, but will curse and damn you when you say, "Be non-violent toward little brown Vietnamese children. There's something wrong with that press!

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964. And I cannot forget that the Nobel Peace Prize was not just something taking place, but it was a commission--a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of Man. This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances. But even if it were not present, I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me, the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the Good News was meant for all men, for communists and capitalists, for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative. Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that he died for them? What, then, can I say to the Vietcong, or to Castro, or to Mao, as a faithful minister to Jesus Christ? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with them my life? Finally, I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be the son of the Living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood. And because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned, especially for His suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come today to speak for them. And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak not now of the soldiers of each side, not of the military government of Saigon, but simply of the people who have been under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know these people and hear their broken cries.

Now, let me tell you the truth about it. They must see Americans as strange liberators. Do you realize that the Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation. And incidentally, this was before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. And this is a little-known fact, and these people declared themselves independent in 1945. They quoted our Declaration of Independence in their document of freedom, and yet our government refused to recognize them. President Truman said they were not ready for independence. So we fell victim as a nation at that time of the same deadly arrogance that has poisoned the international situation for all of these years. France then set out to reconquer its former colony. And they fought eight long, hard, brutal years trying to re-conquer Vietnam. You know who helped France? It was the United States of America. It came to the point that we were meeting more than eighty percent of the war costs. And even when France started despairing of its reckless action, we did not. And in 1954, a conference was called at Geneva, and an agreement was reached, because France had been defeated at Dien Bien Phu. But even after that, and after the Geneva Accord, we did not stop. We must face the sad fact that our government sought, in a real sense, to sabotage the Geneva Accord. Well, after the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come through the Geneva agreement. But instead the United States came and started supporting a man named Diem who turned out to be one of the most ruthless dictators in the history of the world. He set out to silence all opposition. People were brutally murdered because they raised their voices against the brutal policies of Diem. And the peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States influence and by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown, they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace. And who are we supporting in Vietnam today? It's a man by the name of general Ky [Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky] who fought with the French against his own people, and who said on one occasion that the greatest hero of his life is Hitler. This is who we are supporting in Vietnam today. 

Oh, our government and the press generally won't tell us these things. 

But God told me to tell you this morning. 

The Truth must be told.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support and all the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps, where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go, primarily women, and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the towns and see thousands of thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the United Buddhist Church. This is a role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolutions impossible but refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that comes from the immense profits of overseas investments. I'm convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be changed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

Oh, my friends, if there is any one thing that we must see today is that these are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. They are saying, unconsciously, as we say in one of our freedom songs, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around!" It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo, we shall boldly challenge unjust mores, and thereby speed up the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing, unconditional love for all men. This oft misunderstood and misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of mankind. And when I speak of love I'm not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of John: "Let us love one another, for God is love. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us."

Let me say finally that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. The home that all too many Americans left was solidly structured idealistically; its pillars were solidly grounded in the insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage. All men are made in the image of God. All men are bothers. All men are created equal. Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Every man has rights that are neither conferred by, nor derived from the State--they are God-given. Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious and healthy place to inhabit. But America's strayed away, and this unnatural excursion has brought only confusion and bewilderment. It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with irrationality.

It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home. Come home, America. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on." I call on Washington today. I call on every man and woman of good will all over America today. I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close.

"I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close. And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, 

"You're too arrogant! 

And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power! 

And I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. 

Be still and know that 

I am God.

Martin Luther King Jr.: 

"Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam"

Sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967

SOLVE ET COAGULA

Modernity and Modernism

“Numerology…we’re all becoming ciphers.” 

-Patrick McGoohan

“In short, The Prisoner attacks modernity on the following grounds:

1. Modernity rests upon a materialistic metaphysics (all is matter), and champions materialism as a way of life (the focus on material comfort and satisfaction).

2. Modernity is spiritually empty (again, no church in the Village); it must deny or destroy what is higher in man.

3. Modernity destroys culture, tradition, and ethnic and national identity in the name of “progress” (called “multiculturalism” and “globalization” today). It is significant that we do not know where the Village is, for modern people are really “nowhere.” As Nietzsche’s “Madman” said, “Where are we headed? Are we not endlessly plunging—backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there an up and a down anymore? Do we not wander as if through an endless nothingness? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Hasn’t it grown colder?” (The Gay Science).

4. Modernity promises only trivial freedoms (e.g., the freedom to shop) while suppressing freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of association.

5. Modernity involves the belief that nature (including human nature) is infinitely malleable, open to the endless manipulation and “improvement” of science. In a 1977 interview with Canadian journalist Warner Troyer, McGoohan said, “I think we’re progressing too fast. I think that we should pull back and consolidate the things that we’ve discovered.”

5. Modernity systematically suppresses ideals that rise above material concerns: ideals like honor, and dignity, and loyalty (the Village is filled with traitors).

6. Modernity preaches a contradictory ethos of collectivism, and “looking out for No. 1.”

7.Modernity banishes the sacred, and profanes all through oppressive levity, irony, and irreverence (masking cynicism).

8. Modernity places physical security and comfort above the freedom to be self-determining, to be let alone, and to take risks.

9. Modernity fills the emptiness in people’s lives with noise (the TV and radio you can’t turn off). Silence might start people thinking, which could make them unhappy.

In addition to the hostility to religion, the Village also seems to be hostile to marriage, sex, and procreation. It is not clear whether there are any married couples in the Village. Sex is probably forbidden. No children are seen until “The Girl Who Was Death,” and those children are depicted as living in a kind of barracks. There is a touch of Plato’s Republic in The Prisoner.”

In the final analysis, The Prisoner is about modern man as a dead man.  In his final revolution, the revolution of the solitary, atomized individual unit, there is no “Why?” for this man to be the free individual he imagines himself to be.  He is just as much a prisoner of the dialectic as the collective he opposes, as he has no other higher aims than himself.  When he is enthroned as king, his final revolution results in the launching of a revolution that destroys The Village and launches an ICBM that will presumably destroy London.  Having overcome all his inner demons and the prison of his conscience (that is, the Village and its rovers are 6 grappling with his conscience in the afterlife), and realizing his worst enemy is not the system, the people, or the world, but himself, 6 returns to his old life as No. 1.

In fact, the address to 6’s apartment was always “No. 1.”  In like manner, modernity’s “revolution” in the global village, is the revolution of a meaningless numerological quantification where being “No. 1” means nothing more than being No. 2 or No. 86 in a world divested of any meaning beyond the individual’s competing ego desires.  While The Prisoner is a treatise against the collective, it is also a warning to unfettered, meaningless individualism. 

McGoohan foresaw the coming age of dystopian control where all of us would be tracked by a numerological cipher, under the “wandering stars” of the stellar luminaries that emblazon the heavens of the surveillance dome of the Village.  In biblical symbology, the celestial luminaries are guided by angelic intelligences, or Watchers that correspond to earthly potentates. 

In the Village, the control grid of the Watchers is primarily technological and scientific, where man has been converted into a generic number in a long set of numbers, as if he were himself a cipher to be decoded and programmed.

“Numerology…we’re all becoming ciphers.” 

-Patrick McGoohan

Oppositional and defiant. No. 6 

Oppositional and defiant. No. 6 “Fights The System.”

By: Jay Dyer

Bluebird

Via: Mirror.co.uk

Look up here, I'm in heaven

I've got scars that can't be seen

I've got drama, can't be stolen

Everybody knows me now

Look up here, man, I'm in danger

I've got nothing left to lose

I'm so high it makes my brain whirl

Dropped my cell phone down below

Ain't that just like me?

By the time I got to New York

I was living like a king

Then I used up all my money

I was looking for your ass

This way or no way

You know, I'll be free

Just like that bluebird

Now ain't that just like me?

Oh I'll be free

Just like that bluebird

Oh I'll be free

Ain't that just like me?

Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane or Thin White Duke: Which David Bowie are you? Find out with our outstanding flowchart

by: Matt Goddard16:47, 11 Mar 2013

Everyone's favourite musical innovator has some new tunes out today... but which period of his work matches your personality the closest?

You’re an international globe-trotting superstar renowned for your diversity, money-spinning extravaganzas, ultimate cool and legendary tunes. 

You’re a star of the screen and enigma of music with six decades of influential work. 

All that is true. But one question still remains...  Just which Bowie are you?

So, which Bowie did you end up as and what does it all mean? Here's a handy guide...

2000s Bowie (As heard on ‘Heathen’ and’ Reality’) 

“All things must pass” 

Hung-over from the eclectic drum n’ bass days, you’re the older, reflective Bowie; contemplating his life work, acknowledging the past but still wonderfully "struggling for Reality!" Often ripping into classic covers of bands you inspired, no wonder you’re prone to smile on camera a bit more than you used to.

Aladdin Sane (As heard on ‘Aladdin Sane’) 

“Cold fire, you've got everything but cold fire” 

The older Ziggy? Cousin of Ziggy? Something else..? Spinning out from the Spiders of Mars' web, A Lad Insane you may be, but also the most definitive Bowie look. Cast an eye over your people and bask in the red glow of the lightning bolts blazing across their faces.

Diamond Dog (As heard on ‘Diamond Dogs’) 

“Hot tramp, I love you so!”

Finding yourself in a dystopian future with remarkable similarities to Orwell’s 1984, it may be no surprise that you’re the swansong of glam. You may look like Ziggy with all the trappings and, er, a bit more on display, but revolution is in the air. At least you’ve got a tail. Prone to belting out what is possibly the ultimate Bowie track, ‘Rebel Rebel’ you truly are the dog's.

David Bowie (Pic: Rex Features)

1964: A young and fresh-faced David Bowie

Image 8 for 'David Bowie at 65' gallery

1965: David Bowie when he was known as Davy Jones outside the BBC television centre with his band The Mannish Boys where they are to perform 'I Pity The Fool' on the BBC show Gadzooks! It's All Happening.

Earthling Bowie (As heard on ‘Earthling’) 

“Sending me so far away, so far away” 

After a prolonged grounding, you’re the one who went back to space. Beating Britpop at its own game with glorious McQueen stylings, you’re the most zeitgeisty Bowie, hitting the fastest crazed and basking in a new level of cool. You may not be leading the pack this time, but "Little Wonder" you’re a commercial giant.

Hunky Dory Bowie (As heard on Hunky Dory) 

"Hung up on romancing"

Dreaming of sailors fighting in the dance hall while immersing yourself in the works of Aleister Crowley and Nietzsche, you’re the complicated Bowie from which the seeds of personas flourished. Dark and literate you may be, but still with the tendency to wear a good dress and fully aware that you're "not much cop at punching other people's dads ".

Jareth the Goblin King (As seen in Labyrinth) 

"Nothing, nothing, tra-la-la"

King of Goblin.... Muppets. You're the star of show in the cult 80s classic with lots of hair and very little trouser fabric. Any slights at your appearance should be met with a resounding play through of the film soundtrack. On a loop. “I... can't...  live... within you...”

John Blaylock (As seen in The Hunger)

“Forever...?”

Bound to have fun for longer than the average person, you may want to be a little less trusting in your love life.  The tragic victim of Tony Scott's directorial debut. Aging before our eyes in just hours, the doomed vampire was a part Bowie was destined to play during his rather eclectic acting career. The fact the last Twilight film emerges DVD at the same time as Bowie's new album is surely no coincidence.  

Major Tom (As first heard in Space Oddity)

“Tell My Wife I Love her Very much” “She knows”

The tale of the doomed astronaut that launched possibly the most influential career in music. A recurring character in the catalogue, you're another tragic character and the first, but by no means the last Bowie persona to have a suspected hedonistic streak... Presumed lost in 1969 in the hype of the moon landings frenzy, your demise may have been greatly exaggerated in ‘Ashes to Ashes’ 11 years later or when popping up later to say ‘Hello Spaceboy’. You can never be sure. You're the oldest and most lasting Bowie with a title track still ripe for influence and Conchord parody in equal measure. 

New Romantic Bowie (As first heard on ‘Scary monsters (And Super Creeps)’)

“I know when to go out and when to stay in. Get things done”

You're the most successful Bowie, reaching huge heights of success and shrugging off the increased criticism. Whether waxing on about red shoes, Blue Jean or Modern Love in general you can lead from the front while your former child fans, including Culture Club, Duran Duran and countless others, nip at your lime suit trousers. Watch out for tour managers bearing glass spiders...

Nikolas Tesla (As seen in The Prestige)

“Nothing is impossible”

One of the most prominent roles of the Bowie-lite past decade. Who better than this legendary inventor? You're the Bowie who sports a moustache that can only be described as 'fine', just don't expect anyone to leave you their cat to look after.  A quiet man of reason you may be but also acutely aware of the phenomenal power you can harness -  unlikely to stay put in one place for long.

Thin White Duke (as heard on Station to Station)

“The European Canon is here”

Terrestrial or not, you're the surely the dark character made flesh from the film ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth'. With an alien dissociation from humanity, you're really not expected to put recyclable rubbish out on the right day.  Dark, menacing and all together rather unpleasant as you wander from Station to Station. Even with one thin white foot touching the ground, your paranoid mind is caught between everything from kabbalah to Norse mythology despite the dawning 'Golden Years'.

Tin Machine Bowie (As heard on Tin Machine I and Tin Machine II)

“Tin Machine, Tin Machine, take me anywhere”

Every once in a while, a man just needs to be part of a band. You can't be a solo singing sensation forever, right? You are the democratic Bowie, lead singer and co-writer with in the four-piece combo Tin Machine. The glam of The Spider from Mars is far behind you as you belt out hard rock anthems. The Bowie least likely to invite critics around for afternoon tea.

Ziggy Stardust (As heard on Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars)

“Wham, bam, thank you Ma’am”

What is there to say about the biggest and best Bowie persona - the alien who came to Earth for rock music and fun (though not necessarily in that order)?  Tune-meister, fashionista and Top of the Pops ground-breaker all the way from your ‘Starman’ to your ‘Queen Bitch’ – you are a legend.  One word of warning though: you’re very likely to take it” all too far”. 

* Infographic designed by David Tarbox

BLUEBIRD Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists Colin A. Ross, M.D. Richardson, Texas: Manitou Communications, 2000 Overview BLUEBIRD is the cryptonym for a CIA mind control program that ran from 1951 to 1953. Other mind control programs include ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA, and MKSEARCH. The purpose of the book BLUEBIRD is to prove that the military and the CIA have been creating “Manchurian Candidates” for operational use since the second world war. This fact is described repeatedly by G.H. Estabrooks and in CIA documents on BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.  By research at the medical school library, ordering out-of-print books, and requests filed through the Freedom of Information Act, Dr. Ross has built up compellingdocumentation of the fact that the CIA and military intelligence agencies have been creating multiple personality experimentally, and using these subjects in courier and infiltration operations. The Appendices to BLUEBIRD provide full proof of the fact that the “Manchurian Candidate” is real, and has been created by the CIA and military. The documented mind control research includes putting brain electrodes in children as young as 11 years old and controlling their behavior from remote transmitters; giving 150 mcg of LSD per day to children age 7-11 for weeks and months at a time; building safe houses where CIA personnel watched prostitutes turn tricks with customers — the prostitutes gave their customers LSD without the customers’ knowledge; wiping out memories with electric shock, and using animals with implanted brain electrodes as delivery systems for chemical and biological weapons. A complete listing of MKULTRA Subprojects, correspondence between Estabrooks and J. Edgar Hoover and other documents are included in the Appendices to BLUEBIRD.[Note:1] Synopsis In BLUEBIRD: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists, Dr. Ross provides proof, based on 15,000 pages of documents obtained from the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act, that the “Manchurian Candidate” is fact, not fiction. He describes the experiments conducted by psychiatrists to create amnesia, new identities, hypnotic access codes, and new memories in the minds of experimental subjects. The funding of the experiments by the CIA, Army, Navy, and Air Force is proven from CIA documents and the doctors’ own publications. BLUEBIRD proves that there was extensive political abuse of psychiatry in North America throughout the second half of the twentieth century, perpetrated not by a few renegade doctors, but by leading psychiatrists, psychologists, pharmacologists, neurosurgeons and medical schools.[Note:2] Chapter 4 BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE BLUEBIRD was approved by Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Director of the CIA, on April 20, 1950. In August 1951, the Project was renamed ARTICHOKE. The Korean War began in June, 1950. The CIA already had mind control programs in operation prior to the Korean War, therefore such programs were not a defensive reaction to the activities of the North Koreans, Russians, or Communist Chinese during the Korean War, as claimed by CIA career officer Edward Hunter.136 BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE included a great deal of work on the creation of amnesia, hypnotic couriers and the Manchurian Candidate.66 184 The Manchurian Candidate is generally regarded as fiction. However, ARTICHOKE documents prove that hypnotic couriers functioned effectively in real-life simulations conducted by the CIA in the early 1950’s. The degree to which such individuals were used in actual operations is still classified. Physicians were an integral part of the ARTICHOKE Team that conducted interrogations on U.S. soil. These interrogations were in part designed to detect mind-controlled agents of other Agencies and governments. The documents establish that Manchurian Candidate-related methods were part of CIA counter-intelligence work in the 1950’s. The basic premise of the book The Manchurian Candidate66 is that a group of American POWs in the Korean War is brainwashed while crossing through Manchuria to freedom. They arrive back in the U.S. amnesic for the period of brainwashing and one of them has been programmed to be an assassin. His target is a candidate for President of the United States. His handlers at home control him with a hypnotically implanted trigger, a particular playing card. A MEMORANDUM dated 15 July 1953 from the Chief, Bio-Chemistry & Pharmacology Branch, Medicine Division OSI [Office of Scientific Intelligence] to the Chief, Technical Branch, SO [Special Operations] includes a paragraph summarizing discussions about recently returned Korean War POWs who had been brainwashed: Following this [whited out] commented on the very interesting angle that interrogations of the individuals who had come out of North Korea across the Soviet Union to freedom recently had apparently had a “blank” period or period of disorientation while passing through a special zone in Manchuria.  [Whited out] pointed out that this had occurred in all individuals in the party after they had had their first full meal and their first coffee on the way to freedom.  [Whited out] pointed out that [whited out] was attempting to secure further confirmatory facts in this matter since drugging was indicated. In another memo dated 17 September 1953 the Scientific Adviser, Scientific Intelligence states that, “Detailed and valuable information has been obtained by [whited out] on “Big Switch” as a result of his interrogations of POW’s on the return voyage from Korea.” “Big Switch” was the code name for a prisoner exchange program during the Korean War; repatriated American prisoners of war released in Big Switch were interviewed by American psychiatrists including Robert Lifton,163 Lifton writes: ... I arrived in Hong Kong in late January, 1954. Just a few months before, I had taken part in the psychiatric evaluation of repatriated American prisoners of war during the exchange operations in Korea known as Big Switch: I had then accompanied a group of these men on the troopship back to the United States. It appears that American psychiatrists including or known to Robert Lifton, Louis Jolyon West and Margaret Singer must have been knowledgeable about the Chinese Manchurian Candidate program by 1953. According to my definition, the Manchurian Candidate is an experimentally created dissociative identity disorder that meets the following four criteria: ●    Created deliberately ●    A new identity is implanted ●    Amnesia barriers are created ●    Used in simulated or actual operations BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE were administered in a compartmented fashion. The details of the Programs were kept secret even from other personnel within the CIA. When asked why LSD research done under ARTICHOKE was hidden from the CIA Committee in charge of ARTICHOKE, Sydney Gottlieb, 1977, (page 410), Chief, Medical Staff, Technical Services Division, CIA responded, “I imagine the only reason would have been concern for broadening awareness of its existence.” The creation of Manchurian Candidates by the CIA was probably not subject to the usual chain of operational command. Such breaches in the chain of command are an inherent structural risk of the compartmented nature of intelligence agencies. For security reasons, CIA operations including internal counter-intelligence investigations182are routinely kept secret from other divisions of the CIA. Although effective intelligence work could not be carried out without compartmentation, the structure makes it easier for CIA officers in charge of mind control to contract with unethical doctors. Loss of central control occurred in the CIA’s OPERATION CHAOS and probably in BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE. OPERATION CHAOS was a CIA program designed to collect information on foreign influence on student and civil unrest in the United States. It was created by the Director of the CIA in 1967 and ran until 1974. CHAOS developed files on 7,200 American citizens, and the files included mention of a total of 300,000 named U.S. citizens and organizations, all of which were entered into a computerized index (Rockefeller, 1975). CHAOS intelligence generated 3,500 internal CIA memoranda, 3,000 memoranda for the FBI, and 37 for distribution to the White House and other top levels of government. The maximum CHAOS staff was 52 persons in 1971. Informants were recruited from student and dissident groups, and were instructed to infiltrate such groups in the United States.  According to the Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities (Rockefeller, 1975): The isolation of Operation CHAOS within the CIA and its independence from supervision by the regular chain of command within the clandestine services made it possible for the activities of the Operation to stray over the bounds of the Agency’s authority without the knowledge of senior officials.  The absence of any regular review of these activities prevented timely correction of such missteps as did occur: In other instances, senior administrators within the CIA participated in plausible denial and other disinformation and cover-up strategies concerning CIA operations run on U.S. soil. Like the activities of the ARTICHOKE Team within the United States, such operations had to be kept secret because the CIA was prohibited by its Charter from carrying out operations in the United States. In 1952, the CIA began to survey mail between the U.S. and the Soviet Union at a New York postal facility. In 1953 it began to open and read mail (Rockefeller, 1975). The Program was approved by the Director of the CIA and at least three Postmasters General, Summerfield, Day, and Blount, as well as by Attorney General Mitchell. From 1958 to 1973, the FBI received 57,000 pieces of mail from the CIA in this Program. In the final year of the operation, out of 4,350,000 pieces of mail between the U.S. and Soviet Union, the CIA examined the outside of 2,300,000 pieces, photographed 33,000 and opened 8,700. Smaller mail intercept operations were run in San Francisco from 1969 to 1971, in Hawaii from 1954 to 1955, and in New Orleans in 1957. The CIA’s strategy for dealing with leaks about the Program is described in a February 1, 1962 memo sent from the Deputy Chief of Counterintelligence to the Director of Security: Unless the charge is supported by the presentation of interior items from the project, it should be relatively easy to “hush up” the entire affair; or to explain that it consists of legal mail cover activities conducted by the Post Office at the request of authorized Federal Agencies.  Under the most unfavorable circumstances, including the support of charges with interior items from the project it might become necessary, after the matter has cooled off during an extended period of investigation, to find a scapegoat to blame for unauthorized tampering with the mails. The BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE documents available through the Freedom or Information Act, like all such documents, are heavily redacted. A great deal of text has been whited out, and other documents must still be entirely classified. Nevertheless, the available documents prove that ARTICHOKE operations involving physicians were carried out on U.S. soil at least until the mid-1950’s.  A memo to the Director of Security of the CIA is entitled a “report of ARTICHOKE Operations, 20 to 23 January, 1955” (see Appendix B). Paragraph two of the memo states that “these operations were the first ARTICHOKE operations undertaken in the United States.” The operation described in the memo involved the interrogation of a foreign national CIA agent who “speaks and understands English quite well.” The Subject had previously provided high quality intelligence through penetration actions carried out in an unspecified country. The purpose of the ARTICHOKE Team’s interrogation was to provide confirmation that the Subject was not a double agent. The ARTICHOKE Team must have been under the command of James Angleton, who was Chief of the CIA Counterintelligence Staff from December 1954, until 1974. Angleton was also involved in MKULTRA, as described in an article in the February 18, 1979 Wilmington Sunday News Journal entitled “UD prof helps concoct ‘mind control’ potions.” The article focuses on MKULTRA Subproject 51 contractor James Moore, a chemistry professor at the University of Delaware, but mentions Angleton’s involvement in MKULTRA. Angleton’s name appears in “a list of all persons who have been briefed on “Bluebird”,” in a 2 July 1951 MEMORANDUM; the list also identifies three future Directors of the CIA, Allen Dulles, Richard Helms and William Webster. The ARTICHOKE interrogation was conducted in a safe house in the remote countryside staffed by security-cleared personnel. It was conducted under medical cover of a routine physical and psychological assessment. The Subject was transported to the safe house in a “covert car” which picked him up at a secure location. At the safe house he was given a conventional interrogation and then some whiskey. This was followed by two grams of phenobarbital, which put him to sleep. The next day a lie detector test was given, and the Subject was given intravenous chemicals. Following the chemically-assisted interrogation, according to CIA terminology, the “ARTICHOKE techniques were applied” in three stages: A false memory was introduced into the Subject’s mind without his conscious control of the process, which took 15 to 20 minutes.  The procedure was repeated, this time taking 40 to 45 minutes.  The procedure was repeated again with interrogation added. The ARTICHOKE Team used medications including barbiturates, amphetamines and scopolamine, hypnosis, interrogation, and the deliberate introduction of false memories of the procedure. The Subject was told that part of what he remembered was actually a dream. The ARTICHOKE Team concluded that the procedure was successful; “the subject, although not having specific amnesia for the ARTICHOKE treatment, nevertheless was completely confused and memory was vague and faulty.” CIA career officer Edward Hunter136 described the implantation of false memories by Chinese intelligence agencies in his book Brain-Washing in Red China. He wrote (page 11): The Chinese masses were right in coining the phrases brain-washing and brain-changing.  There is a difference between the two. Brain-washing is indoctrination, a comparatively simple procedure, but brain-changing is immeasurably more sinister and complicated.  Whereas you merely have to undergo a brain-cleansing to rid yourself of“imperialist poisons,” in order to have a brain changing you must empty your mind of old ideas and recollections... in a brain-changing, a person’sspecific recollections of some past period in his lifeare wiped away, as completely as if they never happened.  Then, to fill these gaps in memory, the ideas which the authorities want this person to “remember” are put into his brain.  Hypnotism and drugs and cunning pressures that plague the body and do not necessarily require marked physical violence are required for a brain-changing.  China evidently was not so “advanced” as yet.  She was using brain-washing, and when that didn’t  work, resorted to the simpler purge system.  But in time she will use the brain-changing system too. Since, according to Hunter, the Communist Chinese had not yet perfected the methods used by the CIA’s ARTICHOKE Team, it is evident that his knowledge of these methods was derived from their use by American doctors. An interrogation involving ARTICHOKE techniques and physicians was conducted on Russian defector Yuriy Nosenko under James Angleton’s administration.182Angleton suspected Nosenko of being a triple agent. A triple agent is someone who pretends to be a defector or double agent but is actually working for his original, native country. Nosenko was born in Nikolayev, Ukraine in 1927. He was trained by Russian Naval Intelligence before being transferred to MVD, the precursor of the KGB, in 1953. On June 5, 1962 Nosenko made secret contact with a U.S. State Department official in Geneva, a meeting which resulted in his being recruited by the CIA as a mole. Nosenko provided a rich fund of intelligence information to the CIA until he defected in February, 1964. Angleton thought that Nosenko had been feeding the CIA a little bit of real information in order to cover up the fact that he was a triple agent. In late March, 1964 a decision was made to apply ARTICHOKE-like techniques to him. Whether these were administered under ARTICHOKE or some other still-classified cryptonym is unknown. Nosenko was strip-searched, given a lie detector test and then placed in solitary confinement in a 10 foot by 10 foot cell in a safe house in Washington for sixteen months. One of his interrogators was Dr. John Gittinger, the lead psychologist for MKULTRA, who describes taking LSD himself in a documentary film.210 From April 4, 1964 to August 13, 1965, Nosenko was held at the safe house and subjected to repeated interrogations. From August 14, 1965 to October 28, 1967 Nosenko was held in solitary confinement in a tiny, windowless concrete cell at the CIA’s training facility at Camp Peary, Virginia. He was subjected to sleep and food deprivation and there was neither heat nor air conditioning in his cell. He was monitored by closed-circuit television 24 hours a day. In an interview with Tom Mangold177 on June 12, 1990, John Gittinger described being asked by CIA personnel to administer LSD to Nosenko. Gittinger claimed he did not do so. Nosenko, however, described being drugged on a number of occasions at Camp Peary. Due to administrative changes inside the CIA, Nosenko was released from confinement in 1967 and later became a U.S. citizen. Whoever the Nosenko interrogators were, and whatever cryptonym they worked under, it is clear that physicians and mind control specialists were directly involved. It is also clear that the actions of these physicians were unethical and inhumane. The BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE documents prove that the Nosenko interrogation was not an isolated incident. If such an interrogation was conducted by physicians in a third world country it would be decried as a human rights violation and a political abuse of psychiatry. We have been lax as a medical profession in applying the same standards at home. The need for applying the ARTICHOKE technique to Nosenko can be inferred from an undated document entitled, “IMPLICATIONS OF SOVIET SUPPLEMENTS TO STANDARD PSYCHIATRIC INTERROGATION”, which includes the statement that: Hypnotism appears to have been used in some cases by the Soviets.  It has the possibilities of (a) lowering resistance against telling the truth and (b) inducing specific action or behavior in the subject.  In certain cases it would be possible for a skilled Russian operator to bring about condition (a) yet leave the subject with no specific recollection of having been interrogated.  Under condition (b) it would be possible to brief an American, other prisoner or person, subsequently dispatch him on a mission, and successfully debrief him upon return home without his recollection of the briefing or debriefing. Another undated document entitled, “DEFENSE AGAINST SOVIET MEDICAL INTERROGATION AND ESPIONAGE TECHNIQUES” echoes this point: This proposed investigation appears to be more essential when documentary evidence leads to the belief that Russia has been conducting medical research on the subject, has actually used various techniques, and has made provision for large scale production of uncommon special drugs for their speech-producing effects on prisoners of war.  Adequate evidence is available to indicate that the Soviet has used physical duress and/or a large number of different drugs in their attempts to enhance results of standard psychiatric interrogation. Evidence of subconscious isolation, amnesia, and destruction of mental function have been noted in some of the victims of Soviet methods. All of these methods were also employed in experiments conducted under BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA, MKSEARCH, MKNAOMI and other Programs. ARTICHOKE operations involved detailed, systematic creation of specific amnesia barriers, new identities and hypnotically implanted codes and triggers. An untitled ARTICHOKE document dated 7 January 1953 with a section heading Outline of Special H Cases describes the experimental creation of multiple personality in two nineteen-year old girls by the CIA, in an extended series of hypnotic sessions beginning on January 9, 1952. “H” is used as shorthand for hypnotic, hypnotized or hypnotism in these documents: In all of these cases, these subjects have clearly demonstrated that they can pass from a fully awake state to a deep H controlled state via the telephone, via some very subtle signal that cannot be detected by other persons in the room and without the other individual being able to note the change.  It has been clearly shown that physically individuals can be induced into H by telephone, by receiving written matter, or by the use of code, signal, or words and that control of those hypnotized can be passed from one individual to another without great difficulty.  It has also been shown by experimentation with these girls that they can act as unwilling couriers for information purposes and that they can be conditioned to a point where they believe a change in identity on their part even on the polygraph. Another untitled ARTICHOKE document describes a series of cases of which the following, called “Analogous Case #3,” is most compelling: A CIA Security Office employee was hypnotized and given a false identity.  She defended it hotly, denying her true name and rationalizing with conviction the possession of identity cards made out to her real self.  Later, having had the false identity erased by suggestion, she was asked if she had ever heard of the name she had been defending as her own five minutes before.  She thought, shook her head and said, “That’s a pseudo if I ever heard one.” Apparently she had a true amnesia for the entire episode. The creation of new identities and the detection of foreign agents with hypnotically programmed new identities is mentioned in various locations in the BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE documents. As well, deconditioning of subjects is addressed. For instance, one document entitled, “CONDITIONING (& Deconditioning)” states: Jones learns to respond to stimuli intended for a Smith, as though he were that Smith.  He has been “conditioned” to Smith, “deconditioned” to Jones. Such trainings are integrated on all levels, conscious and subconscious.  Hypnosis can assist in establishing the desired conditioned responses. A C.R. (condit. resp.) is meant to stick.  It can be interfered with, or abolished, by new training in another direction, or back to the earlier state. Deconditioning can probably be expedited by hypnotizing procedures.  Also, a C.R. can be interfered with or abolished by violent physical shocks (e.g., electric shocks to the brain) although this reporter has not found a specific electric-shock procedure that would assuredly decondition any particular kind or number of C.R.’s. Still problematic is the use of drugs for deconditioning.  Chlorpromazine ought theoretically to have some value, and some deconditioning effect has been produced in laboratory animals.  However, hospitalized patients taking daily doses of this drug seem to have been deconditioned only selectively; against certain psychotic behavior.  It may be that this property is exactly what we are looking for; perhaps it could decondition an enemy agent out of his simulated personality and back to his real one. It is evident from this passage that the CIA was seeking to improve its techniques for detecting and successfully penetrating the amnesia barriers of enemy Manchurian Candidates over five years before the book The Manchurian Candidate66 was written. A MEMORANDUM dated 25 January 1952 describes another case in which problems of reconditioning and the disposal of subjects arose: On Friday, 25 January 1952, the writer was called to the office [whited out] for the purpose of a conference with one [whited out] concerning the instant case. [Whited out] explained in substance the [whited out] case as follows: [whited out] (whose real name is [whited out], is a 29-year old [whited out] and was the head of a small political party based in [whited out] and ostensively working for [whited out]independence.  [Whited out] was described by [whited out] as being young, ambitious, bright (elementary college education), a sort of “man-on-a-horse” type but a typical [whited out] politician.  According to [whited out] our people discovered that [whited out]  Intelligence Service were attempting to bribe [whited out] and make him a double agent and [whited out] was looking with favor upon the [whited out] offers.  Accordingly, a plot was rigged in which [whited out] was told he was going to be assassinated and as a “protection”, he was placed in custody of the [whited out] Police who threw [whited out] into a [whited out] prison.  [Whited out] was held in the [whited out] prison for six months until the [whited out] authorities decided that [whited out]was a nuisance and they told our people to take him back. Since our people were unable to dispose of [whited out] they flew him to [whited out] where, through arrangement, he was placed in a [whited out] as a psychopathic patient.  [Whited out] now has been in the [whited out] hospital for several months and the hospital authorities now want to get him out since he is causing a considerable trouble, bothering other patients, etc.  [Whited out] is not a psychopathic personality. [Whited out] explained that they can dispose of [whited out] by the simple process of sending him to a friend of his in [whited out], and as far as they are concerned, that type of disposal is perfectly o.k.  However, because of his confinement in [whited out]prison and his stay in [whited out] hospital, [whited out] has become very hostile toward the [whited out]and our intelligence operations in particular.  Hence [whited out] considering an “Artichoke” approach to [whited out] to see if it would be possible to reorient [whited out] favorably toward us.  This operation, which will necessarily involve the use of drugs is being considered by [whited out] with a possibility that [whited out] will carry out the operation presumably at the [whited out] hospital in [whited out]  Also involved in this would be a [whited out] interpreter who is a consultant to this Agency since neither [whited out] [Whited out] pointed out to [whited out] that this type of operation could only be carried out with the authorization of Security and that, under no circumstances whatsoever, could anyone but an authorized M.D. administer drugs to any subject of this Agency of any type.  [Whited out] pointed out that there was a strong possibility that the military authorities would not permit their hospital to be used for this type of work and also that a re-conditioning operation of this type might take 30-60 days.  [Whited out] further pointed out that if such an operation were carried on, Security would have to be cognizant of it, would have to be co-ordinated into the organization and would possibly take over and run the operation themselves since this type of work is one which Security handles.  It was agreed between [whited out] and the writer that a conference would be laid on Monday afternoon when [whited out] representatives and the [whited out] interpreter return from [whited out] and their talk with [whited out]  At which time, the angles would be explored and a dispatch would be forwarded to our people in [whited out] directing them to find out whether the [whited out] would permit such an operation and whether the [whited out] would allow the Agency to have the use of the necessary rooms, medical facilities, etc. as would be required for this type of operation.  At this time, it was also to be determined whether the disposal of [whited out] could in fact be laid on. Comment: This particular operation was mentioned in general terms to the writer by [whited out]approximately thirty days ago on an informal basis but no significant details were given at this time. While the technique that [whited out] are considering for use in this case is not known to the writer, the writer believes the approach will be made through the standard narco-hypnosis technique.  Re-conditioning and re-orienting an individual in such a matter, in the opinion of the writer, cannot be accomplished easily and will require a great deal of time and the fact that an interpreter is necessary in the case complicates it considerably more.  It is also believed that with our present knowledge, we would have no absolute guarantee that the subject in this case would maintain a positive friendly attitude toward us even though there is apparently a successful response to the treatment.  The writer did not suggest to [whited out] that perhaps a total amnesia could be created by a series of electric shocks, but merely indicated that amnesias under drug treatments were not certain. A document entitled, “Hypnotic Experimentation and Research, 10 February 1954” describes a simulation experiment of relevance to the creation of Manchurian Candidate assassins: Miss [whited out] was then instructed (having previously expressed a fear of firearms in any fashion) that she would use every method at her disposal to awaken Miss [whited out] (now in a deep hypnotic sleep) and failing in this, she would pick up a pistol nearby and fire it at Miss [whited out].  She was instructed that her rage would be so great that she would not hesitate to “kill” [whited out] for failing to awaken.  Miss [whited out] carried out these suggestions to the letter including firing the (unloaded pneumatic pistol) gun at [whited out] and then proceeding to fall into a deep sleep.  After proper suggestions were made, both were awakened and expressed complete amnesia for the entire sequence.  Miss [whited out] was again handed the gun, which she refused (in an awakened state) to pick up or accept from the operator.  She expressed absolute denial that the foregoing sequence had happened. In another experiment described in a document entitled “SI and H Experimentation (25 September 1951),” two of the female subjects took part in an exercise involving the planting of a bomb. SI means “Special Interrogations.”[Note:3] Both Subjects performed perfectly and were fully amnesic for the exercise: [Whited out] was instructed that upon awakening, she would proceed to [whited out] room where she would wait at the desk for a telephone call.  Upon receiving the call, a person known as “Jim” would engage her in normal conversation.  During the course of the conversation, this individual would mention a code word to [whited out].  When she heard this code word she would pass into a SI trance state, but would not close her eyes and remain perfectly normal and continue the telephone conversation.  She was told that thereafter upon conclusion of the telephone conversation, she would then carry out the following instructions: [Whited out] being in a complete SI state at this time, was then told to open her eyes and was shown an electric timing device.  She was informed that this timing device was an incendiary bomb and was then instructed how to attach and set the device.  After [whited out] had indicated that she had learned how to set and attach the device, she was told to return to a sleep state and further instructed that upon concluding of the aforementioned conversation, she would take the timing device which was in a briefcase and proceed to the ladies room.  In the ladies room. she would be met by a girl whom she had never seen who would identify herself by the code word “New York”.  After identifying herself, [whited out] was then to show this individual how to attach and set the timing device and further instructions would be given the individual by [whited out] that the timing device was to be carried in the briefcase to [whited out] room, placed in the nearest empty electric-light plug and concealed in the bottom, left-hand drawer of [whited out] desk, with the device set for 82 seconds and turned on.  [Whited out] was further instructed to tell this other girl that as soon as the device had been set and turned on, she was to take the briefcase, leave [whited out] room, go to the operations room and go to the sofa and enter a deep sleep state.  [Whited out] was further instructed that after completion of instructing the other girl and the transferring to the other girl of the incendiary bomb, she was to return at once to the operations room, sit on the sofa, and go into a deep sleep state. Hypnosis was not the mind control doctors’ only method for creation of controlled amnesia, however. Drugs, magnetic fields, sound waves, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and many other methods were studied under BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE. The amnesia was often tested through memorization tasks of various kinds, and experiments were conducted to amplify subjects’ memory for information hidden behind amnesia barriers. As well as being potential couriers and infiltration agents, the subjects could function in effect as hypnotically controlled cameras. They could enter a room or building, memorize materials quickly, leave the building, and then be amnesic for the entire episode. The memorized material could then be retrieved by a handler using a previously implanted code or signal, without the amnesia being disturbed. The research and its applications were both offensive and defensive, as evidenced by the following untitled and undated passage from the documents: For instance, Metrozal, which has been very useful in shock therapy, is no longer popular because, for one thing it produces feelings of overwhelming terror and doom prior to the convulsion. But terror, anxiety, worry would be valuable for many purposes from our point of view.  We have some information (not in detail and not confirmed) that the Soviets and their satellites have used drugs which work along these lines.  Therefore, this should be studied both from our use offensively and defensively and to find antidotes or counteracting agents. The many different physical means for assisting interrogators were often combined with or amplified by hypnosis: Quite often amnesia occurs for events just prior to the convulsion, during the convulsion and during the post seizure state.  It is possible that hypnosis or hypnotic activity induced during the post-seizure state might be lost in amnesia.  This would be very valuable. The fact that complex Manchurian Candidate experiments were conducted can be inferred from an untitled February 6, 1957 document in which the writer states that: Since the international situation is in its present state, I feel the need for positive action in the military application of hypnosis is imperative.  In a field such as this you need an individual, such as myself, who has lived with the problems of hypnotism and its military applications for many years... Please look over the enclosed proposal and give me your reaction.  The hypnotic messenger technique is relatively uncomplicated.  There are several other projects which I could submit to you for consideration which are, in my opinion, even more important than this but involve much more complicated techniques. Similarly, a MEMORANDUM from the Chief, Security Research Staff to the Chief, Technical Branch dated 15 July 1954 states that: The idea of a courier that has been hypnotized is not new and I am absolutely certain that [whited out] did not invent this idea. We ourselves have carried out much more complex problems than this and in a general sense I will agree that it is feasible... [Whited out] proposal about using hypnotized individuals as counteragents is also not new and we, of course, have discussed this many times. Whether in fact it can be demonstrated we are not sure and it is hoped that the field tests we are working on may help us along these lines. Yet another document entitled “STUDIES IN THE MILITARY APPLICATION OF HYPNOTISM: I. The Hypnotic Messenger” is a proposal for a grant of $10,000.00 to create hypnotic messengers out of twenty selected highly hypnotizable military personnel. The subjects would be sent to foreign countries to deliver their messages and then would be interrogated to determine if the amnesia barriers could be breached. Interrogation methods were to include “use of his wife, girl friend, alcohol, amytal or even physical duress.” Another prospective mind control doctor wrote a handwritten note to the CIA on a ruled notepad that has been labeled “A/B 5, 264/1” by hand by someone responsible for filing the document. “A/B” stands for ARTICHOKE/BLUEBIRD. The document reads: I have developed a technic which is safe and secure (free from international censorship).  It has to do with the conditioning of our own people.  I can accomplish this as a one man job. The method is the production of hypnosis by means of simple oral medication.  Then (with no further medication) the hypnosis is re-enforced daily during the following three or four days. Each individual is conditioned against revealing any information to an enemy, even though subjected to hypnosis or drugging.  If preferable, he may be conditioned to give false information rather than no information. This should be repeated every six months in each case, in order to be sure that the suggestions established have not “worn off.” I would be glad to go anywhere in the world (including Korea) to accomplish this for you.  I think that the greatest security would be in my travelling as a naval flight surgeon doing research in aviation medicine, especially with the project of “motion sickness” in mind. Of course I would be willing to undertake more hazardous investigative methods if you should deem them advisable. Another problem addressed repeatedly in the documents is called “The Problem of Disposal of Subjects.”  Several personnel recommended the use of lobotomies for this purpose, but according to the documents this was rejected as too unethical and too high a negative publicity risk for the CIA. Another document describes an alternative strategy for disposing of ARTICHOKE subjects: Among the important security problems, which will be discussed in detail later and which are mentioned only briefly now for a matter of record, were the problems of disposal of subjects after Artichoke treatment and the important questions as to whether or not amnesias had been obtained.  In connection with Case #1, in the professional opinion of [whited out] and as far as the writer is able to determine, a total amnesia was produced.  Disposal of Case #1 (which was not a problem of the Artichoke team) was apparently handled as follows:  Since the Artichoke technique had shown that, from an operational point of view the subject had no further value to the Agency, the subject was to be returned to [whited out] and after a period of time, removed from solitary and gradually permitted to mingle with larger and larger prison groups.  Ultimately, and after a considerable lapse of time (perhaps as much as two years), the subject would be released. The Artichoke Team recommended some observation in this case with a later recheck on the amnesia, if possible. In Case #2 on the first test, an almost total amnesia was reached with the exception of the last ten or twelve minutes of interrogation under the hypnotic technique.  In the opinion of [whited out]and as far as the writer was able to determine, a total amnesia was produced at the end of the test on the second day after the Artichoke treatment of sodium pentothal and Desoxyn (full medication without hypnosis). Again in so far as disposal of Case #2 was concerned (which was not a problem of the Artichoke Team), disposition was apparently to be made as follows:  it had been decided that the subject would be moved as a prisoner to some place in [whited out]and held there until any possible usefulness to anyone had completely disappeared. As noted above, both of the subjects were [whited out] speaking only and neither subject had any working knowledge of the English language.  This, of course, involved the use of an interpreter and, in both cases, [whited out] the case officer involved in Case #1, acted as a general interpreter and [whited out] acted as a specific interpreter in the application of the hypnotic technique (under the direct guidance of [whited out] in hypnotic matters) and also acted as general interpreter in both cases. Physicians including psychiatrists were directly involved in all of the ARTICHOKE team operations. Documents refer to psychiatrists “of considerable note” who were professors at prominent medical schools, who had TOP SECRET CIA clearance and who were involved as consultants on the development of the ARTICHOKE techniques. In summarizing the role of physicians in providing cover for ARTICHOKE interrogations, a writer stated that: At the present time, the use of a carefully laid on medical cover to obtain either a narco-interrogation or narco-hypnotic interrogation appears to be the best weapon presently available. It is not necessary to go into detail as to how this is done but experience indicates it is our best technique. The use of electric shock to the brain for creation of amnesia, and amplification of the amnesia with hypnosis were discussed by the author of an ARTICHOKE document dated 3 December 1951: Immediately after the conference on Friday, 30 November 1951, [whited out] succeeded in finding [whited out] and [whited out], and the writer discussed electric-shock devices and certain related matters from about 3:30 to 4:45 with [whited out]. [Whited out] is reported to be an authority on electric shock.  He is a professor at the Medical School of the [whited out] and, in addition, is a psychiatrist of considerable note. Pro-[whited out]is, in addition, a fully cleared Agency consultant. [Whited out] explained that he felt that electric shock might be of considerable interest to the “Artichoke” type of work.  He stated that the standard electric-shock machine (Reiter) could be used in two ways.  One setting of this machine produced the normal electric-shock treatment (including convulsion) with amnesia after a number of treatments.  He stated that using this machine as an  electro-shock device with the convulsive treatment, he felt that he could guarantee amnesia for certain periods of time and particularly he could guarantee amnesia for any knowledge of use of the convulsive shock. [Whited out] stated that the other or lower setting of the machine produced a different type of shock.  He said that he could not explain it, but knew that when this lower current type of shock was applied without convulsion. it had the effect of making a man talk.  He said, however, that the use ofthis type of shock was prohibited because it produced in the individual excruciating pain and he stated that there would be no question in his mind that the individual would be quite willing to give information if threatened with the use of this machine.  He stated that this was a third-degree method but, undoubtedly, would be effective.  [Whited out] stated that he had never had the device applied to himself, but he had talked with people who had been shocked in this manner and stated that they complained that their whole head was on fire and it was much too painful a treatment for any medical practice.  He stated that the only way it was ever used was in connection with sedatives and even then it was extremely painful.  The writer asked [whited out] whether or not in the “groggy” condition following the convulsion by the electro-shock machine anyone had attempted to obtain hypnotic control over the patient, since it occurred to the writer that it would be a good time to attempt to obtain hypnotic control.  [Whited out]stated that, to his knowledge, it had never been done, but he could make this attempt in the near future at the [whited out] and he would see whether or not this could be done. [Whited out] and [whited out], as well as all others present, discussed the use of electro-shock at considerable length and it was [whited out] opinion that an individual could gradually be reduced through the use of electro-shock treatment to the vegetable level.  He stated that, whereas amnesia could be guaranteed relative [to] the actual use of the shock and the time element surrounding it, he said it would obtain perfect amnesia for periods further back.  He stated several instances in which people who had been given the electro-shock treatment remembered some details of certain things and complete blanks in other ways. [Whited out] said that a [whited out], who is practicing in [whited out] has perfected a battery-driven machine which, according to [whited out] is portable.  [Whited out] said that the standard electro-shock machine is a very common machine in medical offices and in the major cities there must be several hundred of them in use at all times. The use of electro-shock to produce amnesia was subsequently successfully demonstrated in a series of cases by Dr. Ewen Cameron at McGill, who received CIA money through MKULTRA Subproject 68 in 1957. Many of the discussions, literature reviews and experiments conducted under BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE were followed up on in MKULTRA and MKSEARCH. The involvement of physicians including psychiatrists in BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE was extensive, systematic and fundamental to the Programs. The involvement included consultation, literature reviews, experimentation and direct participation in field operations. The full extent of this involvement is unknown because the names of the mind control doctors who built Manchurian Candidates are redacted from documents provided under the Freedom of Information Act, and because there are undoubtedly other documents which are still classified.

---

[Note:1] Overview from Colin A. Ross Institute, 2001.

[Note:2] Synopsis from BLUEBIRD: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrists, Colin A. Ross, M.D., Richardson, Texas: Manitou Communications, 2000.

136 Hunter, E. Brain-Washing in Red China. The Calculated Destruction of Men’s Minds. New York: Vanguard Press, 1951.

66 Condon, R. The Manchurian Candidate. New York: Jove Books, 1959/1988.

184 Marks, J. The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. New York: W.W. Norton, 1988. [New York: Times Books, 1979.]

66 Condon, op. cit.

163 Lifton, R.J. Thought Reform of Chinese Intellectuals: A Psychiatric Evaluation. Journal of Social Issues, 3, 5-20, 1957.

182 Mangold, T. Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton: The CIA’s Master Spy Hunter. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.

136 Hunter, op. cit.

182 Mangold, op. cit.

210 Naylor, D. Mind Control. Los Angeles: ZM Productions, 1998.

177 Malitz, S. The Role of Mescaline and DO Lysergic Acid in Psychiatric Treatment. Diseases of the Nervous System, 27, 39-42, 1966.

66 Condon, op. cit.

[Note:3] CIA files confirm that SI is “Subconscious Isolation” or a dissociative state. See, e.g., CIA MORI ID 144823, pp. 1-5, circa 1951. SI involves procedures that create dissociation or a split personality to interrogate and control individuals outside their normal consciousness.