I MUST BE doing something right. I get hate mail. There are people out there who are saying I am a paranoid-schizophrenic. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. It does us good to have opinions. I have some myself. Opinions on any topic vary widely, but they fall into two basic categories, mine and wrong. Let's talk about mine for a while.
OK, OK, so I live in a fortified bunker. So I'm heavily armed. So I don't tell you my name. So I look over my shoulder on a regular basis. Does this make me paranoid? I think not. I'm just trying to avoid being murdered. In my opinion, to not try to avoid being murdered is sure sign something is amiss with one's thought processes. Any journalist who covers my beat and doesn't fear for his or her life isn't doing much of a job. Writing this column puts me in a position not at all unlike that of the late Alan Berg. Unlike Berg, I habitually watch my back. His murderers have all too many fans. Hopefully they don't have as many fans as I do, but it only takes one.
And that's just the yahoos. Then there's the government. Is the government interested in me, my column, my whereabouts, and my call detail register log? Well, all I can say is if they kept track of Herb Caen, but they just ignore me, then someone's not doing their job.
Fortunately I'm not a leader. I just like to shoot off my mouth, that's all. But you don't have to be a leader to need fear that jackboots, or worse yet gumshoes, might come through your door one day. All you have to do is to be a journalist who covers a sensitive beat. That's all it took for Danny Casolaro to buy the farm. "If they can get you asking the wrong questions," said Thomas Pynchon in Gravity's Rainbow, "they don't have to worry about the answers." Danny Casolaro had finally begun asking the right questions. That smart he was. But then he allowed himself to be lured into a lonely hotel room and "suicided." Dumber moves don't exist. If Danny Casolaro had been a little more paranoid, he'd be alive today. So far at least, I haven't been murdered (knock on wood), but just because I actively avoid being murdered doesn't make me a paranoid. It makes me prudent. Prudence is a cardinal virtue.
Threats to people who speak out in public against the dominant paradigm are nothing new. To take seriously the possibility that one is being spied upon, perhaps even stalked, because of one's political convictions is not paranoid. It's pragmatic. Hell, you don't even need to have political convictions. You could be being stalked right now solely by virtue of having once been in the wrong place at the wrong time or having fit a behavioral profile. Enemy of the State was fiction, but the technology it showcased is not. It's not even new.
High-tech stalkers need not even be working on behalf of the intelligence community, the military, or law enforcement. Technology has opened the field up to include even the proverbial "lone nuts" of the world. All it takes is a little cash, a willingness to do a little research, a catalog perhaps, and a deep-felt desire to "reach out and touch someone." Neighbors, ex-spouses, even business rivals are all suspect.
If the want, they can see right through your wall. Longtime defense contractor Raytheon recently began marketing a law enforcement version of its through-the-wall, portable radar. To see what it looks like, click here. As you watch the infomercial remember that this technology is in all probability at least a decade or two behind what the military and intelligence community is using right now. Another possibility is that they wish to delude us into thinking that motion detection is all the technology is capable of. This is far from the truth. Has an effective through-the-wall weapons sight been developed? Probably. Will they sell it to us? Don't hold your breath.
Want to see through somebody's clothes? Those X-Ray Spex you ordered from the back of the comic book didn't work out? Then check out Millivision. Nor is through-the-wall radar anything new. Who knows how long the technology has been around and in use? Reassuring, isn't it, to know that your most intimate moments in the privacy of your bedroom can be observed from afar, probably even from space? If they can see beneath the surface of Mars, how much trouble do you think they would have looking through your roof from low orbit? Remember last installment, when I told you about the low-orbiting surveillance telescopes? I suggested that you go outside, look up at them, and wave. But hey, why bother to go outside first? Just look up. Smile. Wave. Big Brother is watching.
Then there's the ion scanner. These super-sensitive gizmos can be programmed to detect tiny molecular substances, including cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and even bomb material. They can already be found operating unobtrusively in airports and at border crossings around the world. The Iowa state Department of Transportation is currently using scanners provided by the Iowa National Guard to randomly test truck drivers.
If I were really paranoid, I would be wondering right now if ion scanners can be programmed to detect human pheromones. By surreptitiously monitoring pheromone levels in your bedroom, the high-tech voyeur would be able to tell when you were having sex. That would mean it was time for him to turn on his through-the-wall radar, his previously installed wireless video monitor ($79.99), or better still, his pinhole camera ($35.95), and reach for a jar of lube.
It's not as if the CIA doesn't have a history of spying on citizens' sex acts. Au contraire. As part of mind control research that the CIA has since admitted to, agent George White watched and filmed through a two-way mirror in a San Francisco safe house while prostitutes in his employ dosed unwitting customers with LSD and then had sex with them. This was nearly half a century ago and used primitive technology. Imagine what they can do today.
Short of true mind-reading technology, the ultimate in individual monitoring technology is the subcutaneous, injectable transponder. Civilian versions have already reached the market. First we saw the introduction of livestock and pet-tracking models. How long before we ourselves are tagged at birth?
These insidious little devices are becoming ever more sophisticated. One uses the orbiting Global Positioning System to locate the "wearer" precisely. When implanted within the human body, the transceiver is powered electromechanically through the movement of muscles. These features enable the device to remain implanted and functional for years without maintenance. This transceiver sends and receives data and can be continuously tracked. It can be activated either by the "wearer" or by a remote monitoring facility. The device also can monitor certain biological functions of the human body – such as heart rate – and send a distress signal to a monitoring facility when it detects a medical emergency. It would come in handy for keeping track of heart patients or straying senior citizens.
It is equally handy for tracking political dissidents. It is entirely possible to have one of these things implanted in your body and not even know it. All that is necessary is that you be unconscious when the implantation takes place. Have you ever been unconscious? I know I have. Does this mean I have been tagged? Maybe. But I refuse to let the possibility deter me from doing what I do. If I mysteriously disappear one day, or they say I "jumped," "fell," or "was pushed," you needn't wonder too much about why.
There is an even more sinister application for injectable transponders. They can be used to track those innocent, unlucky few, seemingly chosen at random, who are unwitting human guinea pigs in the government's biological warfare and mind control experiments. It sounds Belsen-esque, but such things happen. Click here or here or here and get started researching the topic on your own. Remember, you don't need me to teach you the ways of the world. You have a brain. You have a modem. Use them.
But whatever you learn, think twice before you talk about it in public. If you claim "they" are watching you through your walls and/or have injected you with an implantable transponder so they can track you from space, you can be legally declared a paranoid-schizophrenic, with all that entails. If you complain to the police, you will get the brush-off. If you're pushy about it, you'll get 5150-ed, i.e., locked up for 72 hours for psychiatric observation. If you don't change your story by 72 hours, you could conceivably face life in the bin, locked in a chemical straitjacket, with no hope of release and no recourse to habeas corpus. You could have your brain legally fried with electro-convulsive therapy. You could be subjected to psycho-surgery. You could even have brain implants installed against your will. Now wouldn't that be ironic? So watch what you say. You never know who's listening. Even the walls have ears.
Many people who make such claims are in fact actually deluded. Others are lying. Yet, as we have seen, advancements in the technologies of surveillance make even some of the most paranoid-sounding of these claims well worth considering.
Schizophrenia is quite a different thing than paranoia. That the American Psychiatric Association insists on linking the two is, I feel, a blatant attempt to discredit paranoids. Why? Because people that the APA call paranoids are telling the truth about the APA, i.e., that they are evil. If some guy in a lab coat, clipboard in hand, tells you I'm "crazy" because I tell you we're being lied to, manipulated, and experimented upon, the powers that be can no longer be sure you'll believe him. After all, history has proved paranoids are not out of touch with reality, only with the official version of reality. And we all know what that's worth: bupkis.
Nor does an official diagnosis of schizophrenia guarantee that you are actually schizophrenic, whatever that means. Far from it. Psychiatrists diagnose schizophrenia by a set of criteria listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV). Cardinal symptoms of schizophrenia include delusions and hallucinations, i.e., hearing voices and seeing unreal images. The symptoms of schizophrenia can, however, be artificially induced by both electronic and chemical means.
Drugs, including colorless, odorless, tasteless LSD, can be surreptitiously introduced into your diet. You would then, through no fault of your own, experience and display some of the classic symptoms of schizophrenia. Over the years, LSD had been administered to numerous unwitting human guinea pigs. Most of them we never hear about. Next installment I'll tell you about some of the most egregious.
Now let's look at electronics. I already told you last time how Canadian researcher Michael Persinger has used electromagnetic fields to induce hallucinations. At what distance this can be accomplished is apparently classified. But the mere fact that it can be done at all proves that just because you are having hallucinations doesn't mean you are schizophrenic. You could instead be an unwitting guinea pig in a covert mind-control experiment.
For nearly half a century electronic means have existed that can cause a person to hear voices. Even a cursory perusal of a 1962 article by researcher Allan Frey should convince you. Check it out. So much for "hearing voices" as a reliable diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia.
People joke about this stuff, but it's no joking matter. The mind has no firewalls, and the last vestiges of privacy are rapidly evaporating. Today we face being absorbed into a Borg-like communal brain if certain people in power have their way. Resistance, however, is not futile. But we have to get up off our butts and actually resist, now before it's too late.
Step one: we must educate ourselves and one another as to what is being done to us. To understand why it is wholly rational to fear becoming an unwitting human guinea pig, we must study the history of both mind control and biological warfare. They are inextricably intertwined. This has been evident at the very least since Allen "Sunrise" Dulles gave that infamous speech to the Princeton alumni.
I'd tell you all about it right now, but I'm out of time. If you can't wait for the next installment, go to the library, find the microfilm section and read the Thursday, April 16, 1953, New York Times. Remember, the truth is out there. You don't need me to find it for you. But it won't drop into your lap, either.
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