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Edited by Noah Shachtman | Contact

200 Years of "Mind Control"

My Popular Mechanics piece on €˜bioelectromagnetic€™ weapon reseach is now online, and as Sharon Weinberger€™s intriguing Washington Post article last week made clear, there has been a great deal of military research into the area of "mind control" (though they would prefer to use the term "behavior modification.")

Many people believe they are being targeted by such weapons. Certainly it's a growing phenomenon in the U.S.:

''In the United States, you don't see nearly as many mentally ill people anymore who have delusions and hallucinations with regard to God and the saints as you did 20 or 30 years ago, when I first doing this work. In our secular society, it's more a matter of, well, the President or the C.I.A. is affecting my behavior by radio waves or microwave receivers in my teeth.''

But the problem goes way back. One case from London was James Matthews, who said he was being influenced by an implant in his head by a gang using a weird electromagnetic device. This group, one of many, he called the Air Loom Gang, and among the tortures they inlicted on him were implanting thoughts ('kiteing'), stopping him from speaking ('fluid locking€™), cutting his circulation ('sudden death squeezing€™) and €˜brain lengthening€™ which would 'cause good sense to appear as insanity, and convert truth to libel'.

bedlam.JPGSo far so typical, except that the case was described in 1810 by John Haslam, the apothecary at the notorious €˜Bedlam€™ €“ correctly the Bethlehem Hospital , the original lunatic asylum. This was the first ever full length clinical description of a single patient, one apparently suffering from delusions of control.

So was Matthews simply a lunatic? Bedlam staff said so, but two doctors declared him completely sane. It seems that Matthews was not incarcerated on medical grounds but on the orders of Lord Liverpool, the Home Office minister, who Matthews had accused of being part of a nefarious plot.

Matthews claimed he had been negotiating a peace settlement with France and had been betrayed. Oddly enough, some of Matthews€™s story appears to be true; when his mission to Paris failed the French threw him into prison. He behaved quite sanely; in Bedlam Matthews learned architectural drawing, and drew up plans a new hospital building. The Governors gave him £30 for his work and some of the features of his design were incorporated into the new Bedlam. His family maintained he was eccentric but sane.

Haslam€™s account of Matthews €“ €œIllustrations of Madness: Exhibiting a Singular Case of Insanity€€ was intended to prove that Matthews really was mad. But Matthews kept his own notes on his treatment, notes which found their way to a committee investigating Bedlam some time after his death. These undoubtedly influenced the committee's decision to dismiss Haslam and order that patients should be treated more humanely in future.

Lord Liverpool went on to become Prime Minister. His approach to dealing with dissent included the Peterloo Massacre, the Cato Street Conspiracy - a plot to kill the king which was actually a set-up by a government spy - and the Derbyshire Insurrection, which was also incited by government agents provocateur.

If Matthews was the victim of a plot, what about the infernal engine which afflicted him, the mind-control machine he called the Air Loom? According to Matthews, it sent out €˜invisible magnetic rays€™ which influenced a magnet implanted in his head and produced many diagrams of it . We may fairly assume that this was a reflection of the fashionable interest in mesmerism and €˜animal magnetism€™ of this period. The alternative is that he was trying to describe advanced technology in an age before the discovery electromagnetic radiation or the electrical nature of the nervous system - and that way surely lies madness.

The case has many parallels with the modern descriptions of 'gang stalking' recounted in Sharon's article and suggests that the situation is a complex one. And if bioelectromagnetic weapons ever actually reach the stage of being fielded, then simply labeling people who claim they are being targeted as 'crazy' will no longer be an option.

-- David Hambling

UPDATE 3:20 PM: These days lots of people are also worried about the effects of electromagnetic smog. Until scientists like the bioelectromagnetics researchers get to grips with this it will reamin with the fringe, like the makers of this anti-EM spray.

And for an musical last word, it's hard to beat this.

ALSO:
* Inside the Mind Control Conspiracy, Part I
* Inside the Mind Control Conspiracy, Part II
* U.S. Bioelectromagnetic Weapons Research
* Air Force Plan: Hack Your Nervous System
* Moscow's Remote-Controlled Heart Attacks

Latest Comments

Horrible,horrific,terrible mind control experiments with the use of electropsychotronics weapons are being conducted on jewish political refugee.Man-machine interface is being created.some experiments are being conducted for the creation of artificial intelligence.jews are being tortured by somebody who is using the latest electropsychotronics weapons.Functions and emotions are being control by someone on a distance,including speech.It' 2007,not 1941.
Please,help.
(718)982-5416
176 harold street
staten island,ny,10314
Eugene

Posted by: eugene kapustin at February 18, 2007 10:02 PM


This article is NO major headliner. It IS a Legend, however.
The Air Force was using bioFeedback and Nuero-pathological feedback............thats where you control a computerized/desktop airplane up/down, speed and level and course heading with mind/brain electrical impulses. Bio-Feedback is a little more suddle than NPF. We had training and evaluation schedules based on our specific Bio-FeedBack reports, per each person in my squadron from the colonel to us, the lowley missile monkeys.
That was also back in the days when the iNternet was a single line of LED's spelling out words and numbers on a huge CRT, running from left to right.
So, go figure the gap between mind control/reading capibility and where we were scientificly, in technology 35+ years ago.
This was being done in 1973-78. 351st SAC Wing/Minuteman MMT, Whiteman AFB, MO

I kid you NOT.

Posted by: campkitchen at January 25, 2007 4:37 AM


Mr. Hambling, In your 200 years article, you asked the bioelectromagnetics community to work on the issue of electrosmog. I tried to email you directly, this is all I could find.

Louis Slesin of Microwave News provides an explanation for why there have been no public comments/research and surely won't be, over the EMR bioeffects controversy, let alone electrosmog by those in the bioelectromagnetic scientific community. Slesin wrote:

EMF research is an underfunded backwater of the scientific community. Before the congressionally mandated $65 million RAPID program got under way last year, most of the available research funds came from the electric utility industry through EPRI and from the DOE, an agency not known for putting radiation safety ahead of its other program objectives. EPRI and the DOE do not look kindly on those who publicly highlight possible health risks.

This is the grubby side of science, where many researchers are as interested in securing contracts and grants —even if it means making compromises along the way— as they are in doing the actual scientific work."

Obviously electrosmog and military EMR research are too controversial and so never get reported/commented on by the bioelectromagnetics science community.

The consequences to public health are serious!!For further unreported info: The history of EMR bioeffects (including so called 'nonthermal') research is intertwined with military research, very classified. Citations, etc. and a brief summary are posted here. http://mindjustice.org/06-12-romero-book.htm#14

Thank you for your time on this, Cheryl Welsh

Posted by: Cheryl Welsh at January 23, 2007 10:28 AM


I have to ask, with all these stories has anyone ever done a double-blind study scanning the environment of these people with appropriate EM/ultrasound detectors? I mean, if someone claims they are being controlled and you get them to talk about it in a room with detectors (of which they are unaware) and they claim an instance of control without a flicker on the detectors then that could be useful ammunition in convincing them that this is psychological.
And if you DO get a flicker on the detectors, you've already got a bunch of people who will be glad to publicize this. It seems pretty win-win.

Posted by: Eric at January 22, 2007 10:11 AM


I've written about Charles Bonnet Syndrome before (nb, you have to say it with a French accent) - and although delusions of control might be related they are clearly very different.

The proof is that people have been having these experiences for over 200 years. As to the cause, that's what we need to find.

Death rays are another matter...

Posted by: David Hambling at January 22, 2007 2:34 AM


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