Interview w/ Jon Rappoport on MKULTRA Jazz

Investigative journalist Jon Rappoprt's article, 'US Jazz Musicians Were Drafted Into the CIA’s MKULTRA,' caught my ear so he's joining Media Monarchy for some classic 'Acid Dreams'. Why did Chet Baker, Sonny Rollins, Elvin Jones and so many more great musicians take the 'Lexinton Cure' at the CIA-connected 'Narcotic Farm'? Who was Harris Isbell and what did he do at Lex? And the real question: Why do intelligence agencies use art as a weapon?



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'very fond of ska music': secrets of queen mother's record collection

as we take a brief moment away from the chaos...
from daily mail: It is an eclectic – and sometimes eccentric – record collection, spanning Caribbean steel bands, Rodgers & Hammerstein showtunes, Canadian yodelling and Paul Simon’s pop hit You Can Call Me Al. But they were all favourites of the Queen Mother, revealed today as the contents of her private music library is made public for the first time. There are fewer than 100 albums in the collection she kept at her Highland holiday home, the Castle of Mey, but they betray broad, and sometimes surprising, tastes. Alongside the expected classical works, and timeless folk music, the collection also includes the wartime speeches of Winston Churchill, an album of lute music and comedy LPs by Tony Hancock and The Goons.

And although former aides say the Queen Mother was no particular fan of pop music, she was an avid listener of Terry Wogan’s Radio 2 breakfast show... But despite her aversion to modern music, Paul Simon’s acclaimed 1986 album Graceland, which featured a range of African musicians and contained the hit You Can Call Me Al, was apparently a particular favourite. The list of much-loved albums at Mey includes a number of performances by Noel Coward, comedy sketches by Peter Sellers, episodes of BBC radio comedy Hancock’s Half Hour and the soundtracks to both Oklahoma! and, appropriately enough for the wife of a Monarch, The King And I.

related media/memes updates:
'the new production code':
mgm scrubs china from 'red dawn' remake*
'red dawn' take two: from wolverines to wimps*
flashback: 'red dawn' remake starts shooting in michigan*
michael moore's approval rating lower Than bush's during last month of presidency*
neil diamond, alice cooper, love, tom waits, dr. john inducted into rock n roll hall of fame*
bono & spielberg up for gorbachev awards*
'the graduate's katherine ross wins restraining order against daughter*
labour researcher married in las vegas, the very secretive mrs banksy?*
michael gough, alfred the butler in batman, dies at 94*
psychedelic icon owsley stanley dies in australia*
nate dogg, west coast gansta/funk rapper, dies at 41*
video: joe morello, legendary 'take five' drummer with dave brubeck quartet, dies at 82*

interview w/ red ice radio on wikileaks, assange & the pirate party

a huge thanks to red ice creations for having me on the show -
please support their fantastic work by becoming a subscriber!


interview w/ red ice radio: download/subscribe\archive

"James Evan Pilato, based in Portland, Oregon is the Editor of Media Monarchy, Food World Order & CyberSpaceWar. In the first hour of this program, James discusses Wikileaks, hackers, the cyber war and Internet censorship. The Wikileaks story has developed into a mainstream media monster. Then we talk about Julian Assange's strange past and connections to Anne-Hamilton Byrne's "White Brotherhood". Later we discuss Julian's Rape charges and Anna Ardin. Could Julian Assange be controlled opposition? Topics discussed: Media Monarchy, Wikileaks, Julian Assange, funding, operation payback, Open Society Institute, Anne-Hamilton Byrne, Sandoz, Pirate Bay, Pirate Party, Anna Ardin, Sofia Wilen, Valeri Salanos, Luis Posada Corteliaz, Israel and more."

links & sources to the program:

5/13 newspurge: one dose of truth

9/11 updates:
hillary: pakistan officials 'harboring' bin laden*
some pak officials know where osama is*
9/11 families oppose holder proposal to modify miranda*

drugwar:
militarized swat drug raids on the rise*
california cops prepare to waste more money 'eradicating' pot*
govt deals heroin, terrorizes for pot*
video: pelosi says treating drugs cheaper than stopping drugs*
afghan farmers blame nato for opium poppies fungus*
video: columbia, missouri police chief: 'i hate the internet'*

new movie can't beat the real-life men who stare at goats

from danger room: Maybe the greatest conspiracy of all was turning The Men Who Stare at Goats into another middlebrow Hollywood action flick — complete with a saccharine ending.

In a 2004 hilarious and mind-bending book, British journalist Jon Ronson recounts his efforts to uncover a loose network of military investigators with truly wacky ideas — from psychic spies to acoustic weaponeers to commandos who believed that they could stop animal hearts just by concentrating hard enough.

But that book, The Men Who Stare at Goats, was tragic, as well. These often well-meaning researchers inadvertently triggered a mass suicide in San Diego and contributed to the torture techniques used at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

The movie adaption starts at the same zany place as the book: in the office of a general trying to use his psychic abilities to walk through a wall. But the film quickly adds familiar Hollywood tropes to the book’s sense of absurdism and dread. Ronson is transformed into Bob Wilton (Ewan MacGregor), a heartbroken Michigan newspaperman, trying to prove his manhood to his ex-wife by running off to Iraq. Waiting to cross the border in Kuwait City, he meets ace psychic spy Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), and the two immediately dash off on an improbable mission.

As the pair get deeper and deeper into trouble in Iraq, MacGregor retells in a series of flashbacks the rise and fall of the “New Earth Army,” a group of self-styled Jedi looking to transform the U.S. military (and themselves) into warrior monks — simultaneously more gentle and more lethal than any grunts that came before them...

The Men Who Stare at Goats most definitely has its moments — including what is certainly the funniest improvised bomb blast in the history of modern cinema. But it’s outclassed by Ronson’s book, and by the documentary based on it, The Crazy Rulers of the World. Truth wins this battle over fiction.

related: strategic shamanism & the new world order*
psychic spies, acid guinea pigs, new age soldiers: the true men who stare at goats*

flashback: 'men who stare at goats': ronson's book as fiction film

history/mystery: mothman author, nixon aide, cia, lsd & tests

john keel, 'mothman' author, dead at 79*
keel knew*
herb klein, nixon aide & journalist, dies*
allen klein, former beatles & stones manager dies*
was jimi hendrix murdered?*
video: remember when the cia was into lsd? 'operation midnight climax' does*
"if you go back to the cia's origins ... really nothing but wall st bankers"*
alex constantine on operation blackjack*
video: uk weapons inspector who was found dead was writing expose*
queen elizardbeast is the world's largest landowner*
video: military experiments on civilians? -
poison rains on oakville, washington*

new site details chemical warfare & lsd tests

from danger room: For decades, the U.S. military has been accused of exposing service members and the public to chemical and biological warfare agents and simulants. Fears have been stoked by the Cold War's Shipboard Hazard and Defense (SHAD) project, which, in the process of determining the characteristics of large-area CB agent delivery mechanisms, may have exposed troops to dangerous simulants and nerve agents. Then there's the the Bari incident, when soldiers and sailors were swimming in mustard agent when Germans bombed U.S. ships in that Italian harbor. And let's not forget the late-50's field testing of LSD and other hallucinogens like Agent BZ.

The Department of Defense (DOD) release of information on such efforts has been slow, sporadic, and uncoordinated at times. But now, the DOD is trying to consolidate this information, and ensure that the public -- especially those folks who may have been exposed to bad stuff -- can learn more about these efforts from the horse's mouth, so to speak. The DOD Force Health Protection & Readiness Policy and Program Office is sponsoring an easy-to-use web site that provides information on testing and potential exposure cases associated with chemical and biological warfare agents and simulants. The site breaks out the history into three periods - World War II, Project 112/SHAD cases, and other Cold War cases (which covers testing sites such as Fort Detrick, Edgewood Arsenal, and Dugway Proving Ground). Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, strategic communications director for the Military Health System, explained their intent:

“This is a new Web site that we have created to put together for all those who may have interest in everything that we have been able to uncover and understand about the chemical and biological testing of warfare agents done from probably the early 1940s up through 1975,” said Dr. Michael Kilpatrick... “The CB [chem-bio] exposures Web site explains why the testing was done, where it was done, what was used in the testing, and really what DoD learned from the testing,” he said.

The DOD medical community is doing their best to identify all unclassified information on past CB warfare testing and the personnel involved. And they're using all forms of communication to get the word out on it. That's a pretty rare combo, in the Defense Department. As a history freak who enjoys getting an inside view on how the military developed its CB weapons capability, I'm loving it.

Now some may say that DOD was forced to reveal this information due to Congressional pressure. That may be. But much of this test information was, for a long time, kept clandestine for good reason. These were weapon development activities in which the Soviet Union was very interested. And even today, there's nothing quite as good as the traditional CB warfare agents developed during the Cold War. It could save another nation or terrorist group a good deal of research if the wrong data were released. One might also point out that there's no discussion of the Gulf War illness controversy. But, technically, there's been no agreement that these illnesses were caused by exposure to CB warfare agents. So put aside the critical comments and enjoy the sunshine on these fascinating records.

anthrax updates: leahy, boyle, grassley, coverups & 2 groups

leahy not satisfied with the anthrax investigation
from empty wheel: The biggest news from a blogger chat with Patrick Leahy at the DNC today came in response to a question I threw out as we adjourned - about whether or not he was convinced with the FBI's case in the anthrax case. We had this exchange:

emptywheel: Do you think Ivins acted alone? Are you convinced Ivins sent the anthrax letters?

Leahy: No, I'm not satisfied. I think someone was involved either before or after. I'm not satisfied with the answers I've gotten.

I suggested that he had seen significantly more evidence than the public had seen-he gave me a funny look; I'm not sure what that meant. He said SJC will do a hearing with Mueller in mid-September. Leahy expects some hard questions from both Democrats and Republicans.

govt biological weapons legislator: anthrax inside job coverup continuing
from steve watson: A former government biological weapons legislator appeared on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones show yesterday to discuss his detailed knowledge of the cover up of the 2001 anthrax attacks, which he is adamant were perpetrated by criminal elements of the US government in an attempt to foment a police state by killing off opposition to hardline post 9/11 legislation. Dr Francis A. Boyle literally helped write the law with regards to terrorism, as he was responsible for drafting the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 that was passed unanimously by both Houses of Congress and signed into law by President Bush Snr.

charles grassley on the anthrax investigation
from glenn greenwald: For today's edition of Salon Radio, I spoke with GOP Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa who, to his credit, has been the leading critic in the Senate of the FBI's anthrax investigation. Sen. Grassley wrote an August 7 letter to Attorney General Mukasey and FBI Director Mueller complaining about the FBI's secrecy and botched investigation and demanding answers to multiple key questions. In the interview, Sen. Grassley reveals that the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Pat Leahy (of which Grassley is a member), will now hold hearings to investigate the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins.

project anthrax & the coverup (part6): vaxgen's donald francis & aids; the thai experiments; the mailings as fascist 'cinical trials'
from alex constantine: The anthrax mailings and the development of vaccines were inseparable projects - these involved animal and human experimentation. On August 3, 2008, USA Today explained the work that Dr. Ivins did at Ft. Detrick, specificially - terminal animal experiments:

"Ivins performed research that required exposing research animals to airborne anthrax, according to a 1998 report in the journal Vaccine. The goal was to test whether a new vaccine could guard against anthrax inhaled in a bioterrorist attack." The strain of anthrax employed "in Ivins' vaccine experiments was a wet form sprayed into the faces of macaque monkeys through a mask."

top anthrax expert: 'maybe there's 2 groups' of anthrax killers
from george washington: William Patrick is the leading U.S. expert on weaponizing anthrax, and has multiple patents in anthrax weaponization. Patrick made an interesting point in a November 2001 article in USA Today:

Further complicating things, the spores contained in the first attack, on a Florida media company, have been described by investigators as a clumpy powder, which would make a poor aerosol. Only two weeks later, the finely prepared Daschle-letter spores appeared. Those spores were ground so fine that they apparently drifted across offices and contaminated other letters in the mail. The same strain of anthrax was used in all the attacks, suggesting a common source.

The bioterrorists "must have had a hell of a short learning curve," says Patrick, who headed U.S. bioweapons work until the program's halt in 1969. "Or maybe there's two groups."

In other words, either a single killer or group of killers went from a crude anthrax preparation to an extremely advanced weaponized form of anthrax in 2 weeks, or there were two groups of killers.

The anthrax sent in the first letters was coarse, brown, "sandlike", and clumpy. The anthrax sent to Daschle and Leahy was white and very fine.

ivins tried to mislead fbi on anthrax
from usa today: The FBI said Monday that Bruce Ivins, the bioscientist whom they say launched the 2001 anthrax attacks, helped them figure out how to collect the anthrax samples needed for the investigation. On Feb. 27, 2002, Ivins submitted a sample that didn't meet those standards. The FBI destroyed his sample without testing it, said Vahid Majidi, assistant director for the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.

fbi admits it destroyed evidence in anthrax case
from ap: FBI scientists early on had — but destroyed — the unique strain of anthrax used in the deadly 2001 attacks that years later would lead them to Dr. Bruce Ivins, now the government's top suspect. FBI Assistant Director Vahid Majidi (vah-HID muh-JI-dee) said the initial anthrax sample that Ivins took from his Army lab in February 2002 and gave investigators did not meet court-ordered conditions for its preparation and collection. Majidi said the sample kept at the FBI lab was destroyed because the bureau believed it might not have been allowed as evidence at trial. Not until after April 2004 did investigators trace strains of genetically-unique anthrax back to Ivins' lab at Fort Detrick, Md. (This version CORRECTS that sample might NOT have been allowed.))

why people who question the anthrax attacks won't question 9/11
from 9/11 blogger: I think I've figure out why many people who question the government's explanation for the anthrax attacks don't question the official story about 9/11.

Specifically:

* 9/11 involved much greater loss of life - while 5 people died in the anthrax attacks, close to 3,000 died on 9/11

* While none of us have seen gruesome images of the victims of the anthax attacks, we watched horrific images of 9/11: planes slamming into buildings, people jumping out of the Twin Towers, the Towers collapsing . . .

* 9/11 was the first attack on the U.S. by "foreign terrorists". As such, it was the point at which America took the fork in the road away from traditional notions of liberty, justice and the Geneva Convention and towards the "war on terror"

9/11 and the anthrax attacks - and the government's "investigation" into both - were actually very similar in many ways, as I will show in my next essay.

However, while many people can see how ridiculous the government's case against Dr. Bruce Ivins as the "sole culprit" is, they are so traumatized by the 3,000 dead, the horrible images, and the status of 9/11 as the "day when everything changed", that they simply will not allow themselves to honestly and fully investigate 9/11.

anthrax, hatfill & more: additions to the complete 9/11 timeline
from history commons: Most of the new entries published by the 9/11 Timeline this week deal with the anthrax scare. The main drug used to combat anthrax was Cipro, which a high government official advised some reporters to take shortly after 9/11. Although an inquiry was launched into a coverup of problems with it in May 2000, the FDA endorsed the drug two months later. Hoax letters similar to the later anthrax mailings were sent to Fox News from 2000, and one may have been received by a Florida tabloid in mid-September 2001. The anthrax attacks are associated with the Patriot Act, which Democratic Senator Russ Feingold blocked on October 9. Two other Democratic senators were then targeted by the killer, and 28 congressional staffers tested positive for the disease. Congress then passed the bill without reading it.

anthrax fall guy ivins reminds frederick, maryland locals of the frank olson 'suicide' case of 50yrs ago
from peters new york: The story of Frank Olson was documented in the months before 9/11 in an article in the New York Times magazine section. Written by his son's Harvard schoolmate, Michael Ignatieff, we learn from the story that "Frank Olson's specialty... had been the development of aerosols for the delivery of anthrax." In the years immediately preceding his death, Olson was one of the top officials at the government's biological weapons laboratory at Fort Detrick.

In 1953, Olson was found on a New York City sidewalk, his body bloodied and broken, apparently after a fall from his hotel room. The details of his death, ruled a suicide, remained a mystery for more than twenty years. But in 1975, an article in the Washington Post revealed that, contained in a report issued by the then-recently concluded U.S. President's Commission on CIA Activities was an account of a scientist who had been administered a dose of LSD without his knowledge, suffered side-effects from the drug, went to New York under CIA escort for psychological treatment, and jumped out of a hotel room window.

'manchurian candidates' to gather in connecticut

from danger room: For some, the horrors of the CIA's secret, Cold War-era mind control research has never really ended. Next month in Connecticut, self-described victims of MK ULTRA will attend “The Eleventh Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference.” There, attendees will discuss their memories of being unwitting participants in the CIA's experiments, which often involved slipping LSD to ordinary people.

Are all the people who attend the meeting really victims of MK ULTRA? No, as the organizer himself notes. Some are suffering from other, no doubt serious, mental issues. But as Jeff Stein elegantly points out in a piece for Congressional Quarterly, that's not the point. There were very real victims of MK ULTRA, and the CIA's decision to destroy most of the records means we will never have a final accounting. "CIA Director Richard M. Helms ordered the destruction of boxes upon boxes of documents, including the treatment records of unknown numbers of 'patients' agency 'doctors' experimented on in psychiatric hospitals (including a wing of Georgetown University Medical Center), and secret locations, including military bases," Stein writes.

The more contemporaneous issue is that the U.S. government is again being accused of using mind altering drugs. "Just as in the 1970s, however, as I wrote in April, evidence to the contrary is mounting," Stein writes. "The Washington Post’s Joby Warrick also tracked down former prisoners at Guantanamo who said their minds were destabilized by repeated drug injections."

pioneer chemist albert hofmann dies at age 102

from wikinews: Albert Hofmann, a scientist who discovered and created the drug Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) in 1938, has died today at the age 102. StopTheDrugWar.com reports that Hofmann died of a heart attack in his house located in Basel, Switzerland...

He is now known as the first person to experience a 'trip' from taking it. Since then, LSD aficionados around the world unofficially proclaimed April 19, 1943 as Bicycle Day... Hofmann is also credited with the discovery of psilocybin, which is the main hallucinogenic found in Psilocybin mushrooms. He also discovered the make-up of Ololiuqui.