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Mind War
by
William S. Burroughs
Earlier I have suggested that the CIA, the Russians, and the
Chinese have all set up top secret centers to study and apply
psychic techniques to political ends. Those of you who have read
Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain will infer that the
Russians are ahead of us.
Now anyone who has lived for any time in countries like Morocco
where magic is widely practiced has probably seen a curse work. I
have. However, curses tend to be hit or miss, depending on the
skill and power of the operator and the susceptibility of a
victim. And that isn't good enough for the CIA or any similar
organization: `Bring us the ones that work not sometimes but every
time.' So what is the logical forward step? To devise machines
that can concentrate and direct psychic force with predictable
effects. I suggest that what the CIA is, or was working on, at
their top secret Nevada installation may be described as
computerized black magic. If Curse A doesn't make it, Curse
Program B automatically goes into operation -- and so on.
I recommend to your attention a book called The Mind Masters by
John Rossmann. This is ostensibly a fanastic science fiction
novel, interesting more for its content than its style, that may
well contain some real inside information. The story concerns a
researcher who has been disillusioned by his work on Project
Pandora, an American psychic training center run by a Colonel
Pickett, who is stronly reminiscent of the mad General Ripper in
Doctor Strangelove, right down to the cigar. Only he is unloosing
psychic warfare rather than nuclear more effective and more easily
controlled for elitiest objectives. The disillusioned researcher,
one Britt St. Vincent, is contacted by Mero, a private institute
dedicated to opposing these black magic centers. (It should be
obvious that only black magic has `military applications.')
After he has been taken to Mero's secret hearquarters, Britt is
briefed by Dr Webster on the purposes of Mero. Dr. Webster cites
an early report by columnist Jack Anderson that the reason the
Johnson-Kosygin summit conference in 1967 at Glassboro, New
Jersey, was held in such a remote spot was that this was the
world's first summit conference on psychic warfare. He recalls
for Britt how the CIA, while making an electronic sweep of the
U.S. Embassy in Moscow for listening devices, discovered some very
unusual electromagnetic emanations pulsing through the building.
(Later it came out that the Soviets had stepped up the power to a
point where Embassy officials and their families were in danger
from the high-voltage microwave radiation, which can cause
confusion, migraines, and even death.) Not long after, the CIA
confirmed that this was in fact part of a much larger psychic
attack on the Embassy. When the Defense Department launched its
top-secret psychic counter attack, according to columnist
Anderson, it was code-named Project Pandora.
Dr. Webster goes on to tell Britt: `Glassboro wasn't the end of
it, Britt ... obviously. By easily diverting funds within their
mammoth defense budgets, small groups of supermilitarists here and
in Russia covertly continued psychic programs...
The violent student rioting of the late Sixties was largely
instigated by electronic mood-control devices that were derived
from the psychic discoveries of Project Pandora. The riots, it is
now evident, were the first phase of a massive plot. The students
were used by U.S. military extremists for two purposes. First,
the riots tended to discredit the student causes. Secondly, the
civil disturbances conveniently provided the plotters with the
necessary reasons to reinstate some of their psychic weapons
programs under the guise of `crowd control' research. Britt
learns that similar secret psychic research is still advancing
rapidly in China, France, Israel, Egypt, South Africa, and Chile,
in addition to the United States and Russia.
`Although these scattered groups are currently working to beat
each other to the secret of powers that will give them world
control, there is a good possibility that they could even now join
forces and make a combined psychic bid for world control - of
succeeding if they joined forces.'
And what would the future look like if such groups actually
exist and if they do combine and take over? An elitist world
state very much along the lines laid down by the Nazis. At the
top wold be a theocracy trained in psychic control techniques
implemented by computerized electronic devices that would render
oppostion psychologically impossible. Entry to this privileged
class would be permitted only to those whose dedication to the
world state was absolute and unquestioning. In short, you don't
get in by merit or ability but by being an all around one hundred
percent shit. Under this ruling, elite of power addicts would
consist of an anonymous service collective of functionaries,
managers, and bureaucrats. And below them the slave workers.
The troublesome artist would be eliminated or absorbed. The
elite lives happily ever after, at the top of a control state that
makes 1984 seem cozy and nostalgic.