W. Niederhut

Matt, The conventional wisdom, promoted by such luminaries as Milton Erickson and Martin Orne, is that people can't be hypnotically induced to commit murders. That's why Estabrooks' scholarly 1943 text is such a shocker for me. My wife, a Ph.D. psychologist, was also surprised to hear about Estabrooks' theories.

I just finished reading the out-of-print 1943 Hypnosis textbook by Canadian-American psychologist Dr. George Estabrooks, which may be of interest to people interested in the subject of the Kennedy (MLK, Wallace, Malcolm X) assassinations, "Manchurian candidates," and CIA Operation MK-ULTRA. I had never even heard of George Estabrooks before recently reading Lisa Pease's book, A Lie Too Big to Fail, which is a bit puzzling, since I am a Board Certified psychiatrist familiar with the well known writings of Milton Erickson and the work of Martin Orne, who I met in 1988. I was even more puzzled when I realized that Estabrooks' astonishing 1943 Hypnosis textbook is out-of-print and, apparently, little known in psychiatric circles. Fortunately, I found a copy of the book at SCRIBD. It was so interesting that I couldn't put it down yesterday and today until I had read it cover-to-cover. https://www.scribd.com/document/491428492/G-H-Estabrooks-Hypnotism-ocr The first thing to note is that Estabrooks was a very scholarly, Harvard-educated psychologist (and Rhodes scholar) who had vast knowledge of the 19th and early 20th century scientific literature on hypnosis. He also had extensive clinical experience hypnotizing suitable subjects. Secondly, he had reached out to the U.S. War Department during WWII about his theories regarding the potential military uses of hypnosis, and had, apparently, received a warm welcome. No further details offered, for obvious reasons. The third thing is that he pointedly disagreed with Milton Erickson that hypnosis could not be used to "program" suitable subjects to become military couriers, spies, agents of counter espionage, saboteurs, and even assassins-- in 1943! (Well before the Korean War Chinese "brainwashing" narrative became prominent in the U.S.) Was Estabrooks the intellectual Godfather of MK-ULTRA's assassination ops? Was his work deliberately suppressed, as a consequence? As an aside, his 1943 textbook also contains a truly spellbinding contemporaraneous analysis of Adolph Hitler's use of stage hypnosis techniques to manipulate N-A-Z-I crowds. The parallels with what Donald Trump has been doing in the U.S. are eerie.

I'm currently doing some remedial reading on the history of MK-Ultra, and it sounds like "Dirty Dick" Helms was involved with the project(s) from the beginning.

What a coincidence, Steve. Donald Trump also has no platform other than supporting Donald Trump. 🤪

P.S. I also noticed today that Ron Unz published an uncharacteristically substandard review of A Lie Too Big to Fail in his January 31, 2022 American Pravda article about Robert Kennedy, Jr. Nobody's perfect. American Pravda: Anne Frank, Sirhan Sirhan, and AIDS, by Ron Unz - The Unz Review

Has this Edward Curtin review already been posted here? I just saw it today at the Unz Review. JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass by Oliver Stone A Film Review JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass by Oliver Stone, by Edward Curtin - The Unz Review January 16, 2022

Ron, These are questions I'm asking myself now, after reading Lisa Pease's Mind Games chapter. Did Estabrooks initiate/invent the Manchurian Candidate protocols with the U.S. military-- beginning in the 1940s, prior to the Korean War? Why are his books, apparently scarce and/or out-of-print? And why aren't Estabrooks and Bryan household names, especially in psychiatric circles? I had never heard of these guys during my psychiatry residency training. (My old supervisors were mostly classically trained psychoanalysts who were not really interested in hypnosis or dissociate disorders.) I suspect that Estabrooks' "Manchurian Candidate" work for MK-Ultra was something that the CIA deliberately concealed from the public. We know that the film, Manchurian Candidate, was banned for many years in the U.S., as were public hypnosis demonstrations in many U.S. states. The only public hypnosis exhibition that I ever attended was in Mexico in the summer of 1973-- the same year that Richard Helms destroyed the MK-Ultra archives.

You're missing the forest for the trees, Ben. In fact, you're looking at the shrubs. The issue with yesterday's shocking RNC declaration is that the leadership of a major U.S. political party is; 1) denying the criminality of the violent January 6th attack on Congress, incited by Trump, and 2) denouncing the people investigating Trump's historic crimes.

I wish you knew too, Ben. Just kidding... 🤥 But, when I first heard about the U.S. government outing the Kremlin's false flag op, I wondered if Putin would retaliate by spilling the beans on the 9/11 op.

Ben, It sounds like you have discovered the old medical subject of zoonoses-- pathogens that can be transferred from other animal species to humans I had to memorize a lot of that stuff back in my medical school days-- yersinia pestis, brucellosis, tularemia, etc.-- but I've forgotten most of it. Meanwhile, speaking of partisan idiots, the RNC has just declared that the January 6th attack on Congress was "legitimate political discourse." Do you agree?

Addendum: Good news. I found some of G.H. Estabrooks' out-of-print texts and commentaries on hypnosis and MK-Ultra at SCRIBD. His earliest work antedated the Korean War military interest in the Manchurian Candidate phenomenology. https://www.scribd.com/document/491428492/G-H-Estabrooks-Hypnotism-ocr https://www.scribd.com/document/35683278/Brainwashing-Hypnosis-Comes-of-Age-Estabrooks https://www.scribd.com/document/35683505/Brainwashing-MK-Ultra-Thomas-Porter

Interesting stuff, Ron. As always, I learn something new every day here on the Education Forum. BTW, I just finished reading the "Mind Games" chapter in A Lie Too Big to Fail. Great chapter! It has to be one of the most interesting things I've read in quite a while, with a multiple references that I want to explore in more detail. Estabrooks' books are, apparently, out of print, but John Marks' 1991 book, The Search For the Manchurian Candidate, is available at Amazon. (William Joseph Bryan hasn't published anything that I can find.) One subject that Lisa Pease did not explore in much detail is the common relationship between childhood trauma and dissociative disorders, including psychogenic amnesia, fugue states, and dissociative identity disorder (i.e., multiple personality disorder.) I treated a number of patients with MPD over the years. The best book I've read on that subject is Multiple Personality Disorder, by Frank Putnam. It sounds like Sirhan experienced horrific trauma in childhood, which must have played a significant role in his enhanced dissociative tendencies (and hypnotizability.) It's not clear that he had identifiable alters prior to his "treatment" at the Corona facility, but the descriptions of Sirhan's psychogenic amnesia and induced "Range Mode" post-hypnotic alter state sound accurate. It also sounds like Sirhan may have experienced some kind of torture at the Corona facility-- the Manchurian Candidate regimen?

Well, kudos to Pence for finally declaring that the Orange Emperor has no clothes. Will he be denounced by the Party next?

What should he say-- "I'm sorry that the film JFK was historically accurate regarding the sexual orientation of some key characters who had foreknowledge of the JFK assassination plot in the summer of 1963?"

Paul, There is ample documentation that U.S. COVID deaths in 2021 mainly occurred in the un-vaccinated, and at a higher rate in Trump-voting counties. I agree that vaccination rates, alone, don't account for the disparities, as in the case of Vietnam!

Ben, The Hong Kong hamster story seems to be your new obsession, now that the Fox/"Patriot Purge" narrative has been debunked. You have posted redundant, un-sourced comments this week about the COVID threat posed by animals and illegal immigrants. It's a variation on the old "Yellow Horde" paranoia-- the notion that our society is being threatened by nefarious outsiders-- and also a kind of Trumplican projection of guilt onto the Biden administration, an implication that Biden is not doing enough to protect us from COVID! 🤥 "State-approved experts don't want to talk about animal-to-human transmission or un-vaccinated illegal immigrants?" Huh? Are you hearing this goofy narrative on Fox News? Obama's FDA Director, Peg Hamburg, was a classmate of mine at Harvard Medical School. Highly intelligent, conscientious, and ethical. I met her father, Dr. David Hamburg, back in the day. He was the director of the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Anthony Fauci is a similarly ethical, conscientious physician, as are the docs at the NIH and CDC. Yet, Fauci has become a Fox/Trumplican scapegoat in the eyes of the same MAGA screwballs who have consistently undermined basic U.S. public health measures during the pandemic-- testing, social distancing, vaccination, and the use of effective masks. If any recent POTUS has appointed unethical corporate profiteers to the FDA and other Federal health institutions, it has been Donald Trump. Bush and Cheney were similarly inclined. In contrast, Obama and Biden have appointed reputable, conscientious physicians, and have based their health policy decisions on the advice of America's top docs. As an example, Biden has pushed hard for legislation to reduce pharmaceutical costs-- efforts that have been sabotaged by Republicans (along with Manchin and Sinema.) And let's not forget that Trump abolished Obama's White House pandemic-response team in 2018, and pulled our public health monitors out of China before the COVID-19 pandemic commenced.

Shocker. It looks like Parnell will not leave his Trail of Delusion to respond to the historical evidence from Oliver Stone's filmography that Stone is no homophobe.

There has been a recurrent narrative in the M$M and on social media lately accusing Jim Garrison of homophobia, and Oliver Stone of being homophobic in his depiction of Jim Garrison's prosecution of Clay Shaw in the film JFK. Fred Litwin was an early promulgator of this homophobia narrative about Garrison's prosecution of Clay Shaw, and Oliver Stone's movie, JFK. But the homophobia narrative has also been repeated in the Washington Post by Louisiana State University historian Alecia P. Long, and, more recently, by James Kirchick. This homophobia narrative appears to be an obvious straw man-- an attempt to deflect attention from Clay Shaw's work for the CIA, and his association with Oswald in the summer of 1963. Instead of being a known CIA asset who committed perjury in the Garrison trial, Shaw is made out to be a victim of homophobic persecution by Garrison and Stone. My own take on the depiction of homosexuality in the film, JFK, is that it was historically accurate and of secondary importance to the central plot, about men in New Orleans who had apparent foreknowledge of JFK's assassination in the summer of '63. The characters might just as well have been heterosexual, if history dictated as much. As for the more general issue of Oliver Stone being accused of homophobia, there are two Stone films I know of that debunk that narrative. One is Alexander, which prominently features a sympathetic, historical narrative about Alexander's relationship with Hephaestion. Where's the homophobia? Another is the more subtle depiction of the relationship between Chris (Charlie Sheen) and Sgt. Elias (William Dafoe) in Platoon.

Not sure which is the more onerous task this morning-- shoveling snow in -4 F weather or reading Parnell's Litwin-esque propaganda. At least there's an end to shoveling the snow... 🤥

Paul, Here are a few references about technical issues related to the identification of Omicron, and its differentiation from Delta. Omicron SARS-CoV-2 new variant: global prevalence and biological and clinical characteristics - PubMed (nih.gov) Wastewater Based Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2: Challenges and Perspective from a Canadian Inter-laboratory Study (nih.gov) Omicron (B.1.1.529) - variant of concern - molecular profile and epidemiology: a mini review - PubMed (nih.gov)

Paul, Omicron has been the prevalent new variant in the U.S. during the past month. Western Europe and the UK experienced the Omicron wave earlier. The most disturbing thing about the latest Omicron death stats (in the NYT article I posted this morning, and below) is that Omicron death rates in the U.S. have exceeded death rates in Europe-- mainly because of our relatively low vaccination rates. Those numbers are in this article. Coronavirus Briefing: Omicron’s Death Toll - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Ben, Omicron is, in fact, killing adults in the U.S. The Meat Loaf Syndrome. I recently posted that disturbing U.S. mortality data (above.) And the UK data has shown a dramatically reduced Omicron death risk for the fully vaccinated. It's all about the science, if we pay attention.

LOL. I'm sure Glenn Kessler was thrilled to read Peter Janney's letter questioning Ann Hornaday's nonsense. (Nothing like fact checking the sanctimonious fact checkers.) I wonder if Kessler knows that Janney's father was a friend of Ben Bradlee back in the day. As a rule, Kessler's Fact Checker column at WaPo is excellent. I read it regularly. But, when it comes to honesty about covert CIA and military ops, does any newspaper have a more ludicrous slogan than WaPo's, "Democracy Dies in Darkness?"

Paul, I'm a social democrat. IMO, the vaccine technology should be shared with the human race. As for childhood vaccinations, the risk/benefit ratio is, obviously, higher than for adults, so the decision is less clear cut. At risk children should be vaccinated, to prevent death. But, since the vaccines haven't prevented Omicron infections, there seems to be a less compelling case for vaccinating children to protect the general population. I'll defer to the judgment of infectious disease experts. Not my area of expertise. If children are un-vaccinated, other public health interventions seem all the more important.

Paul, Vaccination is, obviously, only one aspect of a constructive social response to a pandemic. Other measures include testing, quarantine, social distancing, and the use of effective masks. In that context, let's not forget that Trump held deadly, super spreader MAGA rallies during the pandemic and criticized testing, lock downs, and the use of masks in his Fox News echo chamber. My brother-in-law got a phone call from an old college buddy who had attended Trump's MAGA rally in Tulsa in the summer of 2020. The guy was dying of COVID after the rally, and called Dennis to say goodbye. True story.