"There is likely JEWS involved"

Did we really exhaust every other topic? Are we back to "blame the Jews" again?

Don't you right-wingnuts know any other games to play?

Yes David; someone here asked you what you thought of Cuba, and you said it was a great place. Everyone pretty much knows that foreign tourists to Cuba only are allowed to see and visit what the government of Cuba decides is acceptable for them to see.

I honestly believe there are so many more things which you do not like than there are those you enjoy that it overwhelms you; therein lies the troubling aspect of rebellion. I`ve been there and I am thankful that this mindset only lasted for around four years. All of the student anti war leaders back then were much like what you see today; millonaires dressed like proletariet, spouting off about the need for redistribution of wealth while they themselves capitalize on spreading something they prove they can not accept. Military dictators who`s pockets are bulging with revenues secured from the underpaid workers in cigar factories and sugar cane farms with little or no chance for improving their circumstances. This latest round of fairness doctrine being spread by far left liberals to me is worse than all the TV adds promising men a full head of hair, or a big stiff hardon for only six easy payments of $66.66 per month +shipping and handling. If it sounds too good to be true?

Have you ever heard of Plato`s Problem?
The term “Plato’s Problem” was invented by Noam Chomsky, a famous and ground-breaking linguist. The term is applied to questions regarding how humans know what they know, and how our knowledge relates to our experience. Chomsky invented the term when trying to account for the ability that children have to use language. By the age of four, most children have the ability to construct complex sentences. This ability usually precedes literacy, mathematical skills, and even some motor skills. How is it, then, that children can use language so early in life? This is Plato’s Problem.

The reason that this question has been termed “Plato’s Problem” is that Plato, an aristocratic Athenian who lived from 427 B.C. to 347 B.C., philosophized on the topics of knowledge, experience, and how the two interrelate. The questions behind how language is learned and to what extent experience has to do with that knowledge relate directly to many questions that Plato posed. It is in the philosopher’s work Meno that these issues are addressed. Plato’s Problem is something that is grappled with by scholars and researchers in the fields of linguistics, psychology, and epistemology. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-platos-problem.htm Plato`s problem is not a problem, it is a fact that children develop a quite large vocabulary long before they can construct complex sentences. The concept of brainwashing was first discovered being used by North Korea on captured US servicemen. The Chinese under Mao also practiced what they called,"to wash the brain", but it never really worked.
The only thing that worked was mass murder.

Brainwashing
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For other uses of the term "brainwash", see Brainwashed.
Brainwashing (also known as thought reform or reeducation) consists of any effort aimed at instilling certain attitudes and beliefs in a person — beliefs sometimes unwelcome or in conflict with the person's prior beliefs and knowledge, in order to affect that individual's value system and subsequent thought-patterns and behaviors. In 1987, the American Psychological Association (APA) Board of Social and Ethical Responsibility for Psychology (BSERP) provisionally declined to endorse one particular approach to brainwashing as "lack[ing] the scientific rigor and evenhanded critical approach necessary for APA imprimatur". The debate amongst APA members on this subject continues.[1]

Contents [hide]
1 Terminology
2 Political
2.1 Korean War (1950–1953)
2.2 Criticism of claims
3 Cults
3.1 Proto-brainwashing
3.2 The APA, DIMPAC, and theories of brainwashing
3.3 Other views
4 New religious movements
5 Brainwashing in fiction
5.1 Video media
5.2 Video games
6 See also
7 Footnotes
8 References
9 Further reading
10 External links



[edit] Terminology
The English words "re-educate" and "re-education", which the Oxford English Dictionary attests in general senses from 1808, began in the 1940s to express specifically political connotations. George Orwell mentioned in Animal Farm (1945) "the Wild Comrades' Re-education Committee (the object of this was to tame the rats and rabbits)"; and Arthur Koestler in The Age of Longing (1951) wrote of "revolutionary vigilance,.. and discipline, and re-education camps".

The term "brainwashing" first came into use in the English language in the 1950s. The OED records its earliest known English-language usage of "brain-washing" by E. Hunter in New Leader on 7 October 1950. John D. Marks claimed that Edward Hunter was "later revealed" to have worked undercover for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).[2]

Earlier forms of coercive persuasion occurred for example during the Inquisition and in the course of show trials against "enemies of the state" in the Soviet Union; but no specific term emerged until the methodologies of these earlier movements became systematized during the early decades of the People's Republic of China for use in struggles against internal class enemies and foreign invaders. Until that time, presentations of the phenomenon described only concrete specific techniques.[citation needed]

The term xǐ năo (洗腦, the Chinese term literally translated as "to wash the brain") originally referred to methodologies of coercive persuasion used in the "reconstruction" (改造 gǎi zào) of the so-called feudal (封建 fēng jiàn) thought-patterns of Chinese citizens raised under pre-revolutionary régimes; the term punned on the Taoist custom of "cleansing/washing the heart" (洗心 xǐ xīn) prior to conducting certain ceremonies or entering certain holy places, and in Chinese, the word "心" xīn also refers to the soul or the mind, contrasting with the brain. The term first came into general use in the United States in the 1950s during the Korean War (1950–1953) to describe those same methods as applied by the Chinese communists to attempt deep and permanent behavioral changes in foreign prisoners, and especially during the Korean War to disrupt the ability of captured United Nations troops to effectively organize and resist their imprisonment.[3]

The word brainwashing consequently came into use in the United States of America to explain why, unlike in earlier wars, a relatively high percentage of American GIs defected to the enemy side after becoming prisoners-of-war in Korea. Later analysis determined that some of the primary methodologies employed on them during their imprisonment included sleep-deprivation and other intense psychological manipulations designed to break down the autonomy of individuals. American alarm at the new phenomenon of substantial numbers of U.S. troops switching their allegiance to support foreign Communists lessened after the repatriation of prisoners, when it emerged that few of them retained allegiance to the Marxist and "anti-American" doctrines inculcated during their incarcerations. When rigid control of information ceased and the former prisoners' "natural" cultural methods of reality-testing could resume functioning, the superimposed values and judgments rapidly decreased[clarification needed].

Although the use of brainwashing on United Nations prisoners during the Korean War produced some propaganda-benefits to the forces opposing the United Nations, its main utility to the Chinese lay in the fact that it significantly increased the maximum number of prisoners that one guard could control, thus freeing other Chinese soldiers for front-line battlefield duties[citation needed].

After the Korean War the term "brainwashing" came to apply to other methods of coercive persuasion and even to the effective use of ordinary propaganda and indoctrination. Formal discourses of the Chinese Communist Party came to prefer the more clinical-sounding term sī xǐang gǎi zào 思想改造 ("thought reform"). Metaphorical uses of "brainwashing" extended as far as the memes of fashion-following.


[edit] Political

[edit] Korean War (1950–1953)
The Communist Party of China used the phrase "xǐ nǎo" ("wash brain", 洗脑) to describe its methods of persuading into orthodoxy those members who did not conform to the Party message. The phrase played on xǐ xīn (洗心"wash heart"), an admonition — found in many Daoist temples — which exhorted the faithful to cleanse their hearts of impure desires before entering.

In September 1950, the Miami Daily News published an article by Edward Hunter titled "'Brain-Washing' Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of Communist Party". It contained the first printed use of the English-language term "brainwashing", which quickly became a stock phrase in Cold War headlines. Hunter, identified by some[by whom?] as "a CIA propaganda operator", turned out a steady stream of books and articles on the theme.[4] An additional article by Hunter on the same subject appeared in New Leader magazine in 1951.[5] In 1953 Allen Welsh Dulles, the CIA director at that time, explained that "the brain under [Communist influence] becomes a phonograph playing a disc put on its spindle by an outside genius over which it has no control."[citation needed]

In his 1956 book Brain-Washing: The Story of Men Who Defied It (Pyramid Books), Hunter described "a system of befogging the brain so a person can be seduced into acceptance of what otherwise would be abhorrent to him". According to Hunter, the process became so destructive of physical and mental health that many of his interviewees had not fully recovered after several years of freedom from Chinese captivity.

In 1954 and 1956, two studies of the Korean War defections by Robert Lifton[6] and by Edgar Schein[7] concluded that brainwashing had a transient effect when used on prisoners-of-war. Lifton and Schein found that the Chinese did not engage in any systematic re-education of prisoners, but generally used their techniques of coercive persuasion to disrupt the ability of the prisoners to organize to maintain their morale and to try to escape. The Chinese did, however, succeed in getting some of the prisoners to make anti-American statements by placing the prisoners under harsh conditions of physical and social deprivation and disruption, and then by offering them more comfortable situations such as better sleeping quarters, quality food, warmer clothes or blankets. Nevertheless, the psychiatrists noted that even these measures of coercion proved quite ineffective at changing basic attitudes for most people. In essence, the prisoners did not actually adopt Communist beliefs. Rather, many of them behaved as though they did in order to avoid the plausible threat of extreme physical abuse. Moreover, the few prisoners influenced by Communist indoctrination apparently succumbed as a result of the confluence of the coercive persuasion, and of the motives and personality characteristics of the prisoners that already existed before imprisonment. In particular, individuals with very rigid systems of belief tended to snap and realign, whereas individuals with more flexible systems of belief tended to bend under pressure and then restore themselves after the removal of external pressures.

Working individually, Lifton and Schein discussed coercive persuasion in their published analyses of the treatment of Korean War POWs. They defined coercive persuasion as a mixture of social, psychological and physical pressures applied to produce changes in an individual's beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Lifton and Schein both concluded that such coercive persuasion can succeed in the presence of a physical element of confinement, "forcing the individual into a situation in which he must, in order to survive physically and psychologically, expose himself to persuasive attempts"[cite this quote]. They also concluded that such coercive persuasion succeeded only on a minority of POWs, and that the end-result of such coercion remained very unstable, as most of the individuals reverted to their previous condition soon after they left the coercive environment.

Following the armistice that interrupted hostilities in the Korean War (July 1953), a large group of intelligence-officers, psychiatrists, and psychologists received assignments to debrief United Nations soldiers in the process of repatriation. The government of the United States wanted to understand the unprecedented level of collaboration, the breakdown of trust among prisoners, and other such indications that the Chinese had achieved something new and effective in their handling of prisoners of war. Formal studies in academic journals began to appear in the mid-1950s, as well as some first-person reports from former prisoners. In 1961, two specialists in the field published books which synthesized these studies for the non-specialists concerned with issues of national security and social policy. Edgar H. Schein wrote on Coercive Persuasion and Robert J. Lifton wrote on Thought Control and the Psychology of Totalism. Both books focused primarily on the techniques called xǐ nǎo, or more formally sī xiǎng gǎi zào (reconstructing or remodeling thought). The following discussion largely builds on their studies.

Although the attention of Americans came to bear on thought reconstruction or brainwashing as one result of the Korean War (1950–1953), the techniques had operated on ordinary Chinese citizens after the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in October 1949[citation needed]. The PRC had refined and extended techniques earlier used in the Soviet Union to prepare prisoners for show-trials, and they in turn had learned much from the Inquisition[citation needed]. In the Chinese context, these techniques had multiple goals that went far beyond the simple control of subjects in the prison camps of North Korea. They aimed to produce confessions, to convince the accused that they had indeed perpetrated anti-social acts, to make them feel guilty of these crimes against the state, to make them desirous of a fundamental change in outlook toward the institutions of the new communist society, and, finally, to actually accomplish these desired changes in the recipients of the brainwashing/thought-reform. To that end, brainwashers desired techniques that would break down the psychic integrity of the individual with regard to information processing, with regard to information retained in the mind, and with regard to values. Chosen techniques included:

dehumanizing of individuals by keeping them in filth
sleep deprivation
partial sensory deprivation
psychological harassment
inculcation of guilt
group social pressure
The ultimate goal that drove these extreme efforts consisted of the transformation of an individual with an ostensible "feudal" or capitalist mindset into a "right-thinking" member of the new social system, or, in other words, to transform what the state regarded as a criminal mind into what the state could regard as a non-criminal mind.

The methods of thought-control proved extremely useful when deployed for gaining the compliance of prisoners-of-war. Key elements in their success included tight control of the information available to the individual and tight control over the behavior of the individual. When, after repatriation, close control of information ceased and "reality"-testing could resume, former prisoners fairly quickly regained a close approximation of their original picture of the world and of the societies from which they had come.[citation needed] Furthermore, prisoners subject to thought-control often had simply behaved in ways that pleased their captors, without changing their fundamental beliefs.[citation needed] So the fear of brainwashed sleeper agents, such as that dramatized in the novel and in the two films called The Manchurian Candidate, never materialized.

Terrible though the process frequently seemed to individuals imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party, these attempts at extreme coercive persuasion ended with a reassuring result: they showed that the human mind has enormous ability to adapt to stress (not a recognized term in common use with reference to psychology in the early 1950s) and also a powerful homeostatic capacity. John Clifford, S.J. gives an account of one man's adamant resistance to brainwashing in In the Presence of My Enemies[8] that substantiates the picture drawn from studies of large groups reported by Lifton and Schein. Allyn and Adele Rickett[9] wrote a more penitent account of their imprisonment (Allyn Rickett had by his own admission broken PRC laws against espionage) in "Prisoners of the Liberation",[10] but it too details techniques such as the “struggle groups” described in other accounts. Between these opposite reactions to attempts by the state to reform them, experience showed that most people would change under pressure and would change back following the removal of that pressure.[original research?] Interestingly, some individuals derived benefit from these coercive procedures due to the fact that the interactions, perhaps as an unintended side effect,[original research?] actually promoted insight into dysfunctional behaviors that the subjects then abandoned.[citation needed]

In Tibet in the 1950s the invading Chinese army arrested Robert W. Ford, a British radio-operator working there. Ford spent nearly 5 years in jail, in constant fear of execution, and experienced interrogation and thought-reform. He published a book, Captured in Tibet, about his experience in Tibet, describing and analyzing thought-reform in practice.[11]


[edit] Criticism of claims
According to forensic psychologist Dick Anthony[citation needed], the CIA invented the concept of "brainwashing" as a propaganda strategy to undercut communist claims that American POWs in Korean communist camps had voluntarily expressed sympathy for communism. Anthony stated that definitive research demonstrated that fear and duress, not brainwashing, caused western POWs to collaborate.[citation needed] He argued that the books of Edward Hunter (whom he identified as a secret CIA "psychological warfare specialist"[citation needed] passing as a journalist) pushed the CIA brainwashing-theory onto the general public. He further asserted that for twenty years, starting in the early 1950s, the CIA and the Defense Department conducted secret research (notably including Project MKULTRA) in an attempt to develop practical brainwashing techniques, and that their attempt failed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwashing

If you start a thread; in the future, I reccomend that you make certain that you aren`t publishing an intellectual brain fart. Anti communist sentiment does not arise from a policy of brainwashing, it arises from documented facts about the horrors and deprivations caused by communist regimes. End of story.

In closing this post, I`ll leave you a bitter herb to ruminate on; did Castro, Chavez, Nazrallah any or all dump money into an offshore bank account in exchange for Noam Chomsky`s support?

Perhaps we should concede power corrupts?
I don't claim to be an expert of any of what is being said in this thread, but from what DML has said and then the response from benjamin (note: that is 2 of his posts prior to this, the second one came as I was typing) would lead me to believe that both sides are as bad as each other.
Both sides may well have initially been trying to do the best for others, but when they achieved the position of power and found they could cement it and make themselves better of they chose to keep it?
Likesay I'm no expert but I believe in the statement 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutly' and that this is just an example of it.
Feel free to find holes in this argument. =)

"Yes David; someone here asked you what you thought of Cuba, and you said it was a great place."

Despite Fidel, not because of him.



"Everyone pretty much knows that foreign tourists to Cuba only are allowed to see and visit what the government of Cuba decides is acceptable for them to see."

I've never been one to obey governments, be they capitalist or communist. While I was in Havana I bought weed and lived on the black market and went to all the places the government didn't want me to go.







"Anti communist sentiment does not arise from a policy of brainwashing, it arises from documented facts about the horrors and deprivations caused by communist regimes. End of story."

Not end of story. Anti-communist sentiment is based upon the completely rational rejection of the tyranny of authoritarian socialism. But much of it is an attempt to confuse authoritarian socialism with libertarian socialism - and libertarian socialism has no "horrors and deprivations" to speak of.

"...both sides are as bad as each other."

"Way back in the early 80s, when I was first kicking off writing V for Vendetta for the English magazine Warrior, the story was very much a result of me actually sitting down and thinking about what the real extreme poles of politics were. Because it struck me that simple capitalism and communism were not the two poles around which the whole of political thinking revolved. It struck me that two much more representative extremes were to be found in fascism and anarchy."

http://www.birdsbeforethestorm.net/2009/02/mythmakers-lawbreakers-alan-moore-on-anarchism/

Making excuses for Anarchy is all the rave. Bluntly, Anarchy in simple down to earth layman`s terms is lawlessness. Hitler used Anarchy to gain power, the Bolsheviks used Anarchy to gain power. Mao ZE Dong used Anarchy. Fidel used Anarchy. To legitimize Anarchy as a viable peaceful means to obtain peaceful cooperation for the purpose of creating anything but a really shitty situation is premeditated heresy. Anarchism will never be anything but a tool in the pocket of despotic tyrants. End of story; anyone who professes otherwise is a deceiver.

"Power corrupts." Absolute power absolutely corrupts." I will always side with Democracy over any other form of government. While David rants about anti communist sentiment being directed only against authoritarian socialism, I would love to see how many examples of voluntary socialism have lasted for any length of time without devolving into communism or some form of military dictatorship where the wealth is spread unequally among a minority of elites, and the rest remain needy.Democracy allows for a middle class to grow and flourish, and that through wealth accumulation to be passed on either to siblings, family members or, if nothing else, charitable foundations, that there might remain a continuity of a sizeable portion of the population within this broad range of middle class workers.

Noam Chomsky, the great Socialist pretender in the upper class abides by the rules of capitalism in his private life, while he extolls the virtues of Socialism in the public eye. I especially like that picture of Hugo Chavez holding up a Chomsky propaganda rag. Hugo and DML have a lot in common which bodes evil for Venezuela.

I`m afraid you`re going to have to come up with a source as credible as mine which proves Chomsky`s hypocrisy before intelligent and wary people believe your spouts. There has to be a trial and a conviction or, as in Clinton`s perjury, an impeachment before you can make any of those accusations anything other than propaganda bullshit.We don`t yet live under Napoleanic Law, David. I would not like to see the kangaroo courts and summary executions your politics become.

"Bluntly, Anarchy in simple down to earth layman`s terms is lawlessness."

The Spanish Revolution, Christiania, and even the etymology of the word "anarchy" all point to the fact that anarchy means "no rulers", it doesn't mean "no rules".




"Hitler used Anarchy to gain power, the Bolsheviks used Anarchy to gain power. Mao ZE Dong used Anarchy. Fidel used Anarchy."

Hitler used money from corporations like Bayer and the Skull and Bones bankers that Prescott Bush hung out with, along with trickery such as the Reichstag fire and Operation Canned Goods. Hitler even used laws to gain power - having more laws does not equal having more justice or more democracy.

The Bolsheviks and other commies "used" anarchy in the sense that they promised to provide what only the anarchists could deliver - a system that shared power among the people. The commies only shared the economic power (slightly more evenly than the capitalists did, which is why it was so attractive to so many) but it betrayed the revolution time and time again by not spreading around the political power.

Only anarchists could live up to the promise of the revolution because they started off by sharing power from the beginning. Democracy wasn't a promise put off till later, nor was it a game for rich men - it was how the revolution was being fought.







"To legitimize Anarchy as a viable peaceful means to obtain peaceful cooperation for the purpose of creating anything but a really shitty situation is premeditated heresy."

Ever been to Christiania? I'll make a heretic out of you yet!





"Anarchism will never be anything but a tool in the pocket of despotic tyrants."

Again ... Christiania has proven your opinion wrong through 37 years of direct action.




"End of story; anyone who professes otherwise is a deceiver."

The only deceiver is the guy who comes to a forum to dispute the facts totally unarmed.

"I will always side with Democracy over any other form of government."

Anarchy IS democracy, silly! They mean exactly the same thing!

Anarchy means "without rulers".

Democracy means "authority of the people".

It's the same deal! Democracy is what the political ideal is and anarchy is what the political ideal is not!



Here ... this passage may help you understand:


Fascism is a complete abdication of personal responsibility. You are surrendering all responsibility for your own actions to the state on the belief that in unity there is strength, which was the definition of fascism represented by the original roman symbol of the bundle of bound twigs. Yes, it is a very persuasive argument: “In unity there is strength.” But inevitably people tend to come to a conclusion that the bundle of bound twigs will be much stronger if all the twigs are of a uniform size and shape, that there aren’t any oddly shaped or bent twigs that are disturbing the bundle. So it goes from “in unity there is strength” to “in uniformity there is strength” and from there it proceeds to the excesses of fascism as we’ve seen them exercised throughout the 20th century and into the 21st.

Now anarchy, on the other hand, is almost starting from the principle that “in diversity, there is strength,” which makes much more sense from the point of view of looking at the natural world. Nature, and the forces of evolution—if you happen to be living in a country where they still believe in the forces of evolution, of course—did not really see fit to follow that “in unity and in uniformity there is strength” idea. If you want to talk about successful species, then you’re talking about bats and beetles; there are thousands of different varieties of different bat and beetle. Certain sorts of tree and bush have diversified so splendidly that there are now thousands of different examples of this basic species. Now you contrast that to something like horses or humans, where there’s one basic type of human, and two maybe three basic types of horses. In terms of the evolutionary tree, we are very bare, denuded branches. The whole program of evolution seems to be to diversify, because in diversity there is strength.

And if you apply that on a social level, then you get something like anarchy. Everybody is recognized as having their own abilities, their own particular agendas, and everybody has their own need to work cooperatively with other people. So it’s conceivable that the same kind of circumstances that obtain in a small human grouping, like a family or like a collection of friends, could be made to obtain in a wider human grouping like a civilization.

http://www.birdsbeforethestorm.net/2009/02/mythmakers-lawbreakers-alan-moore-on-anarchism/

Alan Moore, by the way, is the author of "Watchmen" - which has just been released as a major motion picture:

http://missedashow.net/media/1424/Watchmen/

I think you will find that the concept of anarchism is going to be coming back into fashion ... or at least up for discussion.