NY Times Article Addresses Psychotronic Torture & Harassment
[Editor's Note: You will note that this article, while attempting to uncover the facts, does more to obfuscate and sow the seeds of disbelief and ridicule, then reveal the horrendous truth of this inhumane and vicious form of torture. As always, reference for authoritative opinion is
given to the 'doctor' from Yale or Columbia in a rather condescending tone, while the 'janitor' from Cincinnati tells the victims' side of the story. It's typical of the New York Times, the "newspaper of record", giving us "All the News That's Fit to Print". Notice how many times the word "delusional" is repeated within this article and how the victim's reference to being a targeted victim is placed in quotes. . ..Ken Adachi]
By Sarah Kershaw
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/nytimeselectronicharassment13nov08.shtml
November 13, 2008
November 13, 2008
Sharing Their Demons on the Web
By SARAH KERSHAW
FOR years they lived in solitary terror of the light beams that caused
searing headaches, the technology that took control of their minds and
bodies. They feared the stalkers, people whose voices shouted from the
walls or screamed in their heads, "We found you" and "We want you dead."
When people who believe such things reported them to the police,
doctors or family, they said they were often told they were crazy.
Sometimes they were medicated or locked in hospital wards, or fired
from jobs and isolated from the outside world.
But when they found one another on the Internet, everything changed.
So many others were having the same experiences.
Type "mind control" or "gang stalking" into Google, and Web sites
appear that describe cases of persecution, both psychological and
physical, related with the same minute details: red and white cars
following victims, vandalism of their homes, snickering by those
around them.
Identified by some psychologists and psychiatrists as part of an
"extreme community" on the Internet that appears to encourage
delusional thinking, a growing number of such Web sites are filled
with stories from people who say they are victims of mind control and
stalking by gangs of government agents. The sites are drawing the
concern of mental health professionals and the interest of researchers
in psychology and psychiatry.
Although many Internet groups that offer peer support are considered
helpful to the mentally ill, some experts say Web sites that amplify
reports of mind control and group stalking represent a dark side of
social networking. They may reinforce the troubled thinking of the
mentally ill and impede treatment.
Dr. Ralph Hoffman, a psychiatry professor at Yale who studies
delusions, said a growing number of his research subjects have told
him of visiting mind-control sites, and finding in them confirmation
of their own experiences.
"The views of these belief systems are like a shark that has to be
constantly fed," Dr. Hoffman said. "If you don?t feed the delusion,
sooner or later it will die out or diminish on its own accord. The key
thing is that it needs to be repetitively reinforced."
That is what the Web sites do, he said. Similar concerns have arisen
about a proliferation of sites that describe how to commit suicide, or
others that promote anorexia and bulimia, providing detailed
instructions on restricting food and photographs of skeletal women
meant to be ?thinspiration.?
For people who regularly visit and write on message boards on the
mind-control sites, the idea that others would describe the sites as
promoting delusional and psychotic thinking is simply evidence of a
cover-up of the truth.
"It was a big relief to find the community," said Derrick Robinson,
55, a janitor in Cincinnati and president of Freedom from Covert
Harassment and Surveillance, a group that claims several hundred
regular users of its Web site. "I felt that maybe there were others,
but I wasn't real sure until I did find this community," Mr. Robinson
said.
There is no concise survey of mind-control sites or others describing
gang stalking " whose users believe that groups of people are
following and controlling them, as part of a test of neurological or
other kinds of weapons likely conducted by the government " on the
Net. But they are easy to find. Some have hundreds of postings, along
with links to dozers of similar sties. One, www.Gangstalkingworld.com,
welcomes visitors with this description: "Gang Stalking is a systemic
form of control, which seeks to destroy every aspect of a Targeted
Individual's life. The target is followed around and placed under
surveillance by Civilian Spies/Snitches 24/7."
The site lists more than 71,000 visitors, and it has links to several
other sites, including www.Harrassment101.com, which has 965 posts.
One poster to Gang Stalking World wrote in August: "It's insane that I
daily have to come home and try to figure out if my Web sites will
still be up or shut down. This week they have really been playing with
me, and so it was my time to play back." The post directs readers to
other gang-stalking sites should their favorite sites be shut down.
Mr. Robinson said in an interview that that he has been tortured and
abused by gang stalkers and by "neurological weaponry" since leaving
the Navy in 1982. "To read the stories and the similarity of the
harassment techniques that were going on, to hear about the vandalism,
appliance tampering and all the other things were designed to drive a
person crazy, who do you go to with this?" he said. "People will say
you are delusional."
For Mr. Robinson and several other Web site users interviewed for this
article "all of whom insisted they were not delusional, including one
man who said he had been hospitalized in psychiatric wards" the sites
provide the powerful, unfamiliar experience of being understood by
others.
"By and large, most people are sane and coherent and can relate
exactly what's happening to them," Mr. Robinson said. "They can say
the things that would otherwise get them labeled as delusional."
His group of self-described "targeted individuals" met offline in Los
Angeles last month for their inaugural conference, he said, where they
attended a meeting to share stories, including the humiliating
experiences of being told they are insane.
Mental health experts who have closely looked at the Web sites are
careful to say that there is no way to prove if someone posting on,
say, Mr. Robinson's site, www.Freedomfchs.com, which says its mission is
to seek justice for those singled out by "organized stalking and
electromagnetic torture," is suffering from mental illness.
Vaughan Bell, a British psychologist who has researched the effect of
the Internet on mental illness, first began tracking sites with
reports of mind control in 2004. In 2006 he published a study
concluding that there was an extensive Internet community around such
beliefs, and he called 10 sites he studied "likely psychotic sites."
The extent of the community, Dr. Bell said, poses a paradox to the
traditional way delusion is defined under the diagnostic guidelines of
the American Psychiatric Association, which says that if a belief is
held by a person's "culture or subculture," it is not a delusion. The
exception accounts for rituals of religious faith, for example.
Dr. Bell, whose study was published in the journal Psychopathology,
said that it does not suggest all people participating in mind-control
sites are delusional, and that a firm diagnosis of psychosis could
only be done in person.
For people who say they are the target of mind control or gang
stalking, there may be enough evidence in the scientific literature to
fan their beliefs. Many sites point to MK-ULTRA, the code name for a
covert C.I.A. mind-control and chemical interrogation program begun in
the 1950s.
Recently the sites have linked to an article published in September in
Time magazine, "The Army's Totally Serious Mind-Control Project,"
which described a $4 million contract given to the Army to develop
"thought helmets" that would allow troops to communicate through brain
waves on the battlefield.
And the users of some sites have found the support of Jim Guest, a
Republican state representative in Missouri, who wrote last year to
his fellow legislators calling for an investigation into the claims of
those who say they are being tortured by mind control.
"I've had enough calls, some from credible people, professors, being
targeted by nonlethal weapons," Mr. Guest said in a telephone
interview, adding that nothing came of his request for a legislative
investigation. "They become psychologically affected by it. They have
trouble sleeping at night."
He added: "I believe there are people who have been targeted by this.
With this equipment, you have to test it on somebody to see if it
works."
Dr. Bell and some other mental health professionals say that even if
the users of such sites are psychotic, forging an online connection to
others and being told perhaps for the first time "you are not
crazy" could actually have a positive effect on their illnesses. [Thank You, Dr Bell! How very generous of you --Ken Adachi:]
"We know, for example, that things like social support, all of these
positive social aspects are very good for people's mental illness,"
Dr. Bell said. "I wouldn't say it's entirely and completely positive,
but it can be positive." [What a Swell Guy!..KA]
Some research has shown that when people with delusions undergo group
cognitive therapy, the group process can be helpful in their treatment.
But the Web sites are not moderated by professionals, and many
postings discuss the failure of medication and say that mental health
professionals are part of the conspiracy against them.
"These people lead quietly desperate lives," said Dr. Jeffrey A.
Lieberman, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia
University. "And if they are reinforcing each other and pulling people
toward something, if they are using the Internet and getting
reinforcement, that's good."
The mind-control sites remind some experts of the accounts of those
claiming to have been abducted by aliens in the 1970s and '80s. One
person's story begat another until many insisted they had had
virtually identical experiences of being taken onto space ships by
silvery sloe-eyed creatures.
Some of those now posting on mind-control sites say they are being
remotely "sexually stimulated" by their torturers. Some alien
abductees had said similar things. Subsequent research generally showed that those who believed they had been abducted were not
psychotic, but suffering from severe memory and sleep problems, or
personal traumas, Dr. Bell said.
Psychiatrists and researchers say it is too soon to say whether
communication on the Internet among people who may be psychotic will
negatively effect their illnesses." This is a very complex little
corner," said Dr. Ken Duckworth, the medical director for the National
Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy group. "Some people may find
it's healing, but these are really hard questions. The Internet isn't
a cause of mental illness, it's a complicating new variable."
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