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#torture

30 posts27 participants4 posts today

Today in Labor History April 13, 1953: CIA Director Allen Dulles launched the MKUltra mind control program. The program ran from 1953 to 1973. It involved giving human subjects LSD and other drugs, often without their knowledge. Then, researchers would try to “weaken” their minds and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. Over 7,000 U.S. war veterans were unwitting test subjects, as well as many Canadian and U.S. civilians. The program was a continuation of Nazi mind-control experiments, which utilized mescaline against Jews and Soviet prisoners, hoping it could be exploited as a “truth” serum. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor of the CIA, recruited many of these Nazi torturers in the wake of World War II to exploit their knowledge and research. MKUltra was headed by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, who later devised plans to kill Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar, and saturating his shoes with radioactive thallium to make his beard fall out. He also tried to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of Congo, with poison. Several well-known liberals and radicals knowingly participated in MKUltra and its OSS predecessors, either as test subjects (e.g., Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Hunter), or as researchers (e.g., anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson). Others who have been alleged to have been victims or volunteers include Sirhan Sirhan, Ted Kaczyinski, Charles Manson, and Whitey Bulger.

For a really fascinating look at Margaret Mead's and Gregory Bateson’s exploration with hallucinogens and their connection to MKUltra, check out the recent book, Tripping on Utopia, by Benjamin Breen. And for a truly amazing documentary on the 1961 CIA-supported coup in Congo, check out the 2024 documentary, “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat.” But the film is really about so much more than the coup. It covers Cold War machinations, propaganda, and covert operations in the early 1960s; the superpowers’ jockeying for control of puppet regimes and spheres of influence in the global south; the Pan-African movement; racism in the U.S., the Civil Rights movement, and the repression against it; and, of course, jazz music, including tons of interviews and live footage of Lumumba, Ghanian president and revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah, activist and writer Andree Madeleine Blouin, Malcolm X, Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Miriam Makeba, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, surrealist artist Rene Magritte.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #cia #mindcontrol #torture #lsd #mkultra #castro #nazis #oss #allenginsberg #lumumba #malcolmx #coltrane #jazz #imperialism #kenkesey #margaretmead #charlesmanson #mescaline #castro #soviet #coldwar #books #nonfiction #ussr #communism #film #documentary @bookstadon

“Judge rules Mahmoud Khalil can be deported for trying to stop a genocide - as well as expressing an opinion whole brown...”

by Laura and Normal Island News on Substack

“The US is keen to hand Khalil over to Al Qaida leader Al Golani who is keen to torture him to death for his previous work at the British embassy [in Syria]”

open.substack.com/pub/normalis

Normal Island News · Judge rules Mahmoud Khalil can be deported for trying to stop a genocideBy Normal Island News
#Press#US#Israel

#palestine
#prisoners #torture
#IsraelTerroristState
@palestine

This is the story of Ahmad Manasra, arrested when he was 13 and held in an Israeli prison for 10 years.
"Israeli authorities deliberately released Ahmad Manasra away from the main gate of Nafha Prison, where his family had been waiting to welcome him"
Ahmad, now 23, "was released in a highly fragile mental state, having endured torture and solitary confinement from 2021"

english.almayadeen.net/news/po

Palestinian prisoner Ahmad Manasra when he was first detained, April 10 2015 (Social Media)
Al Mayadeen English · Detainee Ahmed Manasra Freed After 10 Years in Israeli PrisonsBy Al Mayadeen English

BBC News - 'Brutal' restraint of #autistic boy in calming room

Traumatised children grow into deeply traumatised adults with deep #CPSD FOR LIFE. It never EVER goes away.
I experienced a LOT of #Trauma but NEVER had to endure THIS.

If I had I wouldn't have Failed when I tried to free myself from life at aged 12
I wouldn't have ever TRIED to live WITH it -- but I did & it tore into every facet of my being. Destroyed me over & over again.
#Torture in any guise is TORTURE.
bbc.com/news/articles/c4g019x7

A grab from a video shows two people holding down another person while a fourth looks on in the background, it's very blurry and hard to make out
www.bbc.comAutistic 12-year-old 'brutally' restrained in school calming roomThe way the boy was held on the floor in a special school was unlawful, a use-of-force expert tells BBC.

RE: Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), the prison in El Salvador where the Trump admin is sending men.

THIS IS SO FUCKED UP.
Trump and the rest of his bozos should be at the Hague for crimes against humanity, like tomorrow.

Look at this image, read the text. This is pure life until death torture. And US taxpayers pay for this.

#Felon47 #Nazi #Torture #Fascist #Criminal

Sorry, it is too large for alt-txt but I uploaded the whole txt file here:
turtleisland.blog/2025/04/11/t

"We have conducted in-depth interviews with five released detainees, all of whom were arrested in Gaza in the months after Hamas and other groups killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 hostage. The men were held under Israel's Unlawful Combatants Law, a measure by which people suspected of posing a security risk can be detained for an unspecified period without charge, as Israel set out to recover the hostages and dismantle the proscribed terror group.

The men say they were accused of having links with Hamas and questioned over the location of hostages and tunnels, but were not found to be involved in the 7 October 2023 attacks - a condition Israel had set for anyone released under the recent ceasefire deal.

Some of those freed under the deal were serving sentences for other serious crimes, including the killing of Israelis, but that was not the case for our interviewees. We also asked the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israel Prison Service (IPS) if there were any convictions or accusations against the men but they did not respond to that question.

In the men's testimony:

- They each describe being stripped, blindfolded, cuffed and beaten
- Some also say they were given electric shocks, menaced by dogs, and denied access to medical care
- Some say they witnessed the deaths of other detainees
- One says he witnessed sexual abuse
- Another says he had his head dunked in chemicals and his back set on fire"

bbc.com/news/articles/cn7vje36

Graphic shows Hamad al-Dahdouh, Mohammad Abu Tawileh, and Abdul Karim Mushtaha, against a background of barbed wire and Sde Teiman detention centre gates
www.bbc.comGazan detainees tell BBC of torture by IDF and Israel Prison ServiceInterviews with five men held in the months after the Hamas attacks reveal allegations of violence and abuse, adding to reports of misconduct by military and prison staff.

Inside El Salvador's Prisons, Where Trump Is Sending Deported Migrants

Exposé of Trump & Rubio's #ElSalvador #torture #prison to which random US-residents of Nicaraguan heritage were sent after being kidnapped by Kristi Noem's #ICE thugs, making every citizen of the US and the world FAR less safe & secure by eliminating due process and implementing summary, extralegal/wrongful #imprisonment. Documented by Noah Bullock, Executive Director of #Cristosal, a #humanRights organization based in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

#authoritarianism #colonization #humanTrafficking #slavery #crimesAgainstHumanity #habeuscorpus #DHS #stateTerror #romeStatute #constitution #ICC #humanSecurity #prisonState #rendition #kidnapping #Sturmabteilung #deportations #refugees #roundups

foreignpolicy.com/2025/03/20/t

Foreign Policy · The Horror Inside the Salvadoran Prisons Where Trump Is Sending MigrantsBy Noah Bullock