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William S. Burroughs
The Electronic Revolution
FEEDBACK FROM WATERGATE TO THE GARDEN OF EDEN
In the beginning was the word and the word was god and has remained one of the
mysteries ever since. The word was God and the word was flesh we are told. In
the beginning of what exactly was this beginning word? In the beginning of
WRITTEN history. It is generally assumed that spoken word came before the
written word. I suggest that the spoken word as we know it came after the
written word. In the beginning was the word and the word was God and the word
was flesh ... human flesh ... In the beginning of WRITING. Animals talk and
convey information but they do not write. They cannot make information available
to future generations or to animals outside the range of their communication
system. This is the crucial distinction between men and other animals. WRITING.
Korzybski, who developed the concept of General Semantics, the meaning of
meaning, has pointed out this human distinction and described man as 'the time
binding animal'. He can make information to other men over a length of time
through writing. Animals talk. They dont write. Now a wise old rat may know a
lot about traps and poison but he cannot write a text book on DEATH TRAPS IN
YOUR WAREHOUSE for the Reader's Digest with tactics for ganging up on digs and
ferrets and taking care of wise guys who stuff steel wool up our holes. It is
doubtful if the spoke word would have ever evolved beyond the animal stage
without the written word. The written word ist inferential in HUMAN speech. It
would not occur to our wise old rat to assemble the young rats and pass his
knowledge along in an aural tradition BECAUSE THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF TIME BINDING
COULD NOT OCCUR WITHOUT THE WRITTEN WORD. The written word is of course a symbol
for something and in the case of hieroglyphic language writing like Egyptian it
may be a symbol for itself that is a picture of what it represents. This is not
true of an alphabet language like English. The word leg has no pictorial
resemblance to a leg. It refers to the SPOKEN word leg. so we may forget that a
written word IS AN IMAGE and that written words are images in sequence that is
to say MOVING PICTURES. So any hieroglyphic sequence gives us an immediate
working definition for spoken words. Spoken words are verbal units that refer to
this pictorial sequence. And what then is the written word? My basis theory is
that the written word was literally a virus that made spoken word possible. The
word has not been recognized as a virus because it has achieved a state of
stable symbiosis with the host... (This symbiotic relationship is now breaking
down for reasons I will suggest later.)
I quote from MECHANISMS OF VIRUS INFECTION edited by Mr. Wilson Smith, a
scientist who really thinks about his subject instead of merely correlating
data. He thinks, that is, about the ultimate intentions of the virus organism.
In an article entitled VIRUS ADAPTIBILITY AND HOST RESISTANCE by G. Belyavin,
speculations as to the biologic goal of the virus species are enlarged ...
'Viruses are obligatory cellular parasites and are thus wholly dependant upon
the integrity of the cellular systems they parasitize for their survival in an
active state. It is something of a paradox that many viruses ultimately destroy
the cells in which they are living..."
And I may add the environment necessary for any cellular structure they could
parasitize to survive. Is the virus then simply a time bomb left on this planet
to be activated by remote control? An extermination program in fact? In its path
from full virulence to its ultimate goal of symbiosis will any human creature
survive? Is the white race, which would seem to be more under virus control than
the black yellow and brown races, giving any indication of workable symbiosis?
'Taking the virus eye view, the ideal situation would appear to be one in which
the virus replicates in cells without in any way disturbing their normal
metabolism.'
This has been suggested as the ideal biological situation toward which all
viruses are slowly evolving...'
Would you offer violence to a well intentioned virus on its slow road to
symbiosis?
'It is worth noting that if a virus were to attain a state of wholly benign
equilibrium with its host cell it is unlikely that its presence would be readily
detected OR THAT IT WOULD NECESSARILY BE RECOGNIZED AS A VIRUS. I suggest that
the word is just such a virus. Doktor Kurt Unruh von Steinplatz has put forth an
interesting theory as to the origins and history of this word virus. He
postulates that the word was a virus of what he calls BIOLOGIC MUTATION
effecting the biologic change in its host which was then genetically conveyed.
One reason that apes cant talk is because the structure of their inner throats
is simply not designed to formulate words. He postulates that alteration in
inner throat structure were occasioned by virus illness ... And not occasion ...
This illness may well have had a high rate of mortality but some female apes
must have survived to give birth to the wunder kindern. The illness perhaps
assumed a more malignant form in the male because of his more developed and
rigid muscular structure causing death through strangulation and vertebral
fracture. Since the virus in both male and female precipitates sexual frenzy
through irritation of sex centers in the brain the males impregnated the females
in their death spasms and the altered throat structured was genetically
conveyed. Having effected alterations in the host's structure that resulted in a
new species specially designed to accomodate the virus the virus can now
replicate without disturbing the metabolism and without being recognized a
virus. A symbiotic relationship has now been established and the virus is now
built into the host which sees the virus as a useful part of itself. This
successful virus can now sneer at gangster viruses like small pox and turn them
in to The Pasteur Institute. Ach jungen what a scene is here ... the apes are
moulting fur steaming off them females whimpering and slobbering over dying
males like cows with aftosa and so a stink musky sweet rotten metal stink of the
forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden...
The creation of Adam, the Garden of Eden, Adam's fainting spell during which God
made Eva from his body, the forbidden fruit which was of course knowledge of the
whole stinking thing and might be termed the first Watergate scandal, all slots
neatly into Doc Steinplatz's theory. And this was a white myth. This leads to
the supposition that the word virus assumed a specially malignant and lethal
form in the white race. What then accounts for this special malignance of the
white word virus? Most likely a virus mutation occasioned by radioactivity .All
animal and insect experiments so far carried out indicate that mutations
resulting from radiation are unfavorable that is not conductive to survival.
These experiments relate to the effects of radiation on autonomous creatures.
What about the effects of radiation on viruses? Are there not perhaps some so
classified and secret experiments hiding behind national security? Virus
mutations occasioned by radiation may be quite favorable for the virus. And such
a virus might well violate the equilibrium with the host cell. So now with the
tape recorders of Watergate and the fall out from atomic testing the virus stirs
uneasy in all your white throats. It was a killer virus once. It could become a
killer virus again and rage through cities of the world like a topping forest
fire.
"It is the beginning of the end." That was the reaction of a science attache' at
one of Washington's major embassies to reports that a synthetic gene particle
had been produced in the laboratory ..."Any small country can now make a virus
for which there is no cure. It would only take a small laboratory. Any small
country with good biochemists could do it."
And presumeably any big country could do it quicker and better.
In the Electronic Revolution I advance the theory that a virus IS a very small
unit of word and image. I have suggested now such units can be biologically
activated to act as communicable virus strains. Let us start with three tape
recorders in The Garden of Eden. Tape recorder 1 is Adam. Tape recorder 2 is
Eve. Tape recorder 3 is God, who deteriorated after Hiroshima into the Ugly
American. Or to return to our primevil scene: Tape recorder 1 is the male ape in
a helpless sexual frenzy as the virus strangles him. Tape recorder 2 is a cooing
female ape who straddles him. Tape recorder 3 is DEATH.
Steinplatz postulates that the virus of biologic mutation, which he calls Virus
B-23, is contained in the word. Unloosing this virus from the word could be more
deadly that loosing the power of the atom. Because all hate all pain all fear
all lust is contained in the word. Perhaps we have here in these three tape
recorders the virus of biologic mutation which once gave us the word and has
hidden behind the word ever since. And perhaps three tape recorders and some
good biochemists can unloose this force. Now look at these three tape recorders
and think in terms of the virus particle. Recorder 1 is the perspective host for
an influenza virus. Tape recorder number 2 is the means by which the virus gains
access to the host, in the case of a flu virus by disolving a hole in cells of
the host's respiratory tract. Number 2, having gained access to the cell. leads
in number 3. Number 3 is the effect produced in the host by the virus: coughing,
fever, inflamation. NUMBER 3 IS OBJECTIVE REALITY PRODUCED BY THE VIRUS IN THE
HOST Viruses make themselves real. It's a way viruses have. We now have three
tape recorders. So we will make a simple word virus. Let us suppose that our
target is a rival politician. On tape recorder 1 we will record speeches and
conversation carefully editing in stammers mispronouncing, inept phrases ... the
worst number 1 can assemble. now on tape recorder 2 we will make so a love tape
by bugging his bed room. We can potentiate this tape by splicing it in with a
sexual object that is inadmissible or inaccessible or both, say the senator's
teen age daughter. On tape recorder 3 we will record hateful disapproving voices
and splice the three recordings together at very short intervals and play them
back to the senator and his constituents. This cutting and playback can be very
complex involving speech scramblers and batteries of tape recorders but THE
BASIC PRINCIPAL IS SIMPLY SPLICING SEX TAPE AND DISAPPROVAL TAPES IN TOGETHER.
Once the associations lines are established they are activated every time the
senator's speech centres are activated which is all the time heavan help that
sorry bestard if anything happened to his big mouth. So his teen age daughter
crawls all over him while Texas rangers and decent church going women rise from
tape recorder 3 screaming "WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN FRONT OF DECENT PEOPLE."
The teen age daughter is just a refinement. Basically all you need is sex
recordings on number 2 and hostile recordings on number 3. With this simple
formula any CIA sonofabitch can become God that is tape tape recorder 3. Notice
the emphasis on sexual material in burglaries and bugging in the Watergate cess
pool ...Bugging Martin Luther King's bed room ...Kiss Kiss bang bang ...A deadly
assassination technique. At the very least sure to unerve and put opponents at a
disadvantage. So the real scandal of Watergate that has not come out yet is not
that bed rooms were bugged and the offices of psychiatrists ransaked but THE
PRECISE USE THAT WAS AND IS MADE OF THIS SEXUAL MATERIAL. This formula works
best on a closed circit. If sexual recordings and film are widespread, tolerated
and publicaly shown tape recorder 3 losses ist power. Which perhaps explains why
the Nixon administration is out to close down set films and reestablish
censorship on all films and books. to keep close circit on tape recorder 3.
And this brings us to the subject of SEX. In the words of the late John O'Hara
I'm glad you came to me instead of one of those quacks on the top floor
...Psychiatrists, priests whatever they call themselves they want to turn in off
and keep tape recorder 3 in business. Let's turn it on. All you swingers use
video cameras and tape recorders to record and photograph your sessions. Now go
over the session and pick out the sexiest pieces you know when it really
HAPPENS. Reich built a machine with electrodes attached to the penis to measure
this orgasm charge. Here is unpleasurable orgasm sagging ominously as tape
recorder 3 cuts in. He just made it. And here is a pleasurable orgasm way up on
the graph. So take the best of your sessions and invite the nabors to see it.
Its the naborly thing to do. Try cutting them in together alternating 24 frames
per second. Try slow downs and speed ups.
Build and experiment with orgone accumulators. Its simply a box of any shape or
size lined with iron. Your intrepid reporter at age 37 achieved spontaneous
orgasm no hands in an orgone accumulator built in an orange grove in
Pharr/Texas. It was the small direct application accumulator that did the trick.
That's what every red blooded boy and girl should be doing in their basement
work shop. The orgone accumulator could be greatly potentiated by using
MAGNETIZED IRON which sends a powerful magnetic field through the body. And
small accumulators like ray guns.
There is Two Gun Maggee going off in his pants. The gun falls from his hand.
Quick as he was he was not quick enough.
For a small directional accumulator obtain six powerful magnets. Arrange your
magnetized squares so they form a box. In one end of the box drill a hole and
insert an iron tube. Now cover the box and tube with any organic material
...rubber,leather,cloth. Now train the tube on your privates and the privates of
your friends and nabors. Its good for young and old man and beast and is known
as SEX. It is also known to have a direct connection with what is known as LIFE.
Let's get St. Paul off our backs and take off the bible belt. And tell tape
recorder 3 to cover his own dirty thing. It stinks from the garden of Eden to
Watergate.
I have said that the real scandal of Watergate is the use made of recordings.
And what is this use? Having made the recordings as described what then do they
do with them?
ANSWER: THEY PLAY THEM BACK ON LOCATION.
They play these recordings back to the target himself is the target is an
individual from passing cars and agents that walk by him in the street. They
play these recordings back in his naborhood. Finally they play them back in
subways, restaurants, air ports and other public places.
PLAYBACK is the essential ingredient.
I have made a number of experiments with street recordings and playback over a
period of years and the startling fact emerges THAT YOU DO NOT NEED SEX
RECORDINGS OR EVEN DOCTORED TAPES TO PRODUCE EFFECTS BY PLAYBACK. ANY RECORDINGS
PLAYED BACK ON LOCATION IN THE MANNER I WILL NOW DESCRIBE CAN PRODUCE EFFECTS.
No doubt sexual and doctored tapes would be more powerful. But some of the power
in the word is released by simple playback as anyone can verify who will take
the time to experiment ...I quote from some notes on these playback experiments.
Friday July 28, 1972 ...Plan 28 at a glance ...First some remarks on the tape
recorder experiments started by Ian Sommerville in 196. these involved not only
street, pub, party, subway recordings but also PLAYBACK on location. when I
returned to London from the States in 1966 he had already accumulated a
considerable body of data and developed a technology. He had discovered that
playback on location can produce definite effects. Playing back recordings of an
accident can produce another accident. In 1966 I was staying at the Rushmore
Hotel, 11 Trebovir Road, Earl's Court, and we carried out a number of these
operations: street recordings, cut in of other material, playback in the streets
...(I recall I had cut in fire engines and while playing this tape back in the
street fire engines passed.) These experiments were summarized in THE INVISIBLE
GENERATION ... ( I wonder if anybody but CIA agents read this article or thought
of putting these techniques into actual operation) Anybody who carries out
similar experiments over a period of time will turn up more 'coincidences' than
the law of averages allows. The tech can be extended by taking still or moving
pictures during playback. I have frequently observed this operation: make
recordings and take pictures of some location you wish to discomode or destroy,
now play recordings back and take more pictures, will result in accidents,
fires, removals. especially the latter The target moves. We carried out this
operation with the Scientology Center at 37 Fitzroy Street. Some months later
they moved to 68 Tottenham Court Road, where a similar operation was carried
out...
Here is a sample operation carried out against The Moka Bar at 29 Frith Street
London W1 beginning on August 3, 1972 ...Reverse Thursday ...Reason for
operation was outrageous and unprovoked discourtesy and poisoned cheese cake...
Now to close in on The Moka Bar. Record. Take pictures. Stand around outside.
Let them see me. They are seething around in there. The horrible old proprietor,
his frizzy haired wife and slack jawed son, the snarling counter man. I have
them and they know it.
"You boys have a rep for making trouble. Well come on out and make some. Pull a
camera breaking act and I'll call a Bobby. I gotta right to do what I like in
the public street."
If it came to that I would explain to the policeman that I was taking street
recordings and making a documentary of Soho. This was after all London's First
Expresso Bar was it not? I was doing them a favor. They couldnt say what both of
us knew without being ridiculous...
"He's not making any documentary. He's trying to blow up the coffee machine,
start a fire in the kitchen, start fights in here, get us a citation from the
Board of Health."
Yes I had them and they knew it. I looked in at the old Prop and smiled as if he
would like what I was doing. Playback would come later with more pictures. I
took my time and strolled over to the Brewer Street Market where I recorded a
three card Monte Game. Now you see it now you dont.
Playback was carried out a number of times with more pictures. Their business
fell off. They kept shorter and shorter hours. October 30, 1972 The Moka Bar
closed. The location was taken over by The Queens Snack Bar.
Now to apply the 3 tape recorder analogy to this simple operation. Tape recorder
1 is the Moka Bar itself it is pristine condition. Tape recorder 2 is MY
RECORDINGS of the Moka Bar vicinity. These recordings are ACCESS. Tape recorder
2 in the Garden of Eden was Eve made from Adam. So a recording made from the
Moka Bar is a piece of the Moka Bar. The recording once made, this piece becomes
autonomous and out of their control. Tape recorder 3 is PLAYBACK. Adam
experiences shame when his DISCRACEFUL BEHAVIOR IS PLAYED BACK TO HIM BY tape
recorder 3 which is God. By playing back my recordings to the Moka Bar when I
want and with any changes I wish to make in the recordings, I become God for
this local. I effect them. They cannot effect me. And what part do photos take
in this operation? Recall what I said earlier about written and sopken word. THE
WRITTEN WORD IS AN IMAGE IS A PICTURE . The spoken word could be defined as any
verbal units that correspond to these pictures and could be in fact be extended
to ANY SOUND UNITS THAT CORRESPOND to to the pictures ...Recordings and pictures
are tape recorder 2 which is access. Tape recorder 3 is playback and 'reality'.
For example suppose your bathroom and bed room are bugged and rigged with hidden
infra red cameras. These pictures and recordings give access. You may not
experience shame during defecation and intercourse but you may well experience
shame when these recordings are played back to a disapproving audience.
Now let us consider the arena of politics and the applications of bugging in
this area. Of course any number of recordings are immediately available since
politicians make speeches on TV. However, these recordings do not give access.
The man who is making a speech is not really there. Consequently more intimate
or at least private recordings are needed which is why the Watergate
conspirators had to resort to burgulary. A presidential candidate is not a
sitting duck like a Moka Bar. He can make any number of recordings of his
opponents. So the game is complex and competitive with recordings made by both
sides. This leads to more sophisticated techniques the details of which have yet
to come out.
The basic operation of recording pictures, more pictures and playback can be
carried out by anyone with a recorder and a camera. Any number can play.
Millions of people could nullify the control system which those who are behind
Watergate and Nixon are attempting to impose. Like all control systems it
depends on maintaining a monopoly position. If anybody can be tape recorder 3
then tape recorder 3 loses power. God must be THE GOD.
ELECTRONIC REVOLUTION
In THE INVISIBLE GENERATION first published in IT and in the Los Angeles Free
Press in 1966 and reprinted in THE JOB, I consider the potential of thousands of
people with recorders, portable and stationary, messages passed along like
signal drums, a parody of the President's speech up and down the balconies, in
and out open windows, through walls, over courtyards, taken up by barking dogs,
muttering bums, music, traffic down windy streets, across parks and soccer
fields. Illusion is a revolutionary weapon:
TO SPREAD RUMORS
Put ten operators with carefully prepared recordings out at rush hour and see
how quick the words get around. People don't know where they heard it but they
heard it.
TO DISCREDIT OPPONENTS
Take a recorded Wallace speech, cut in stammering coughs sneezes hiccoughs
snarls pain screams fear whimperings apoplectic sputterings slobbering drooling
idiot noises sex and animal sound effects and play it back in the streets subway
stations parks political rallies.
AS A FRONT LINE WEAPON TO PRODUCE AND ESCALATE RIOTS
There is nothing mystical about this operation. Riot sound effects can produce
an actual riot in a riot situation. RECORDED POLICE WISTLES WILL DRAW COPS.
RECORDED GUNSHOTS, AND THEIR GUNS ARE OUT.
"MY GOD, THEY'E KILLING US."
A guardsman said later: "I heard and saw my buddy go down, his face covered in
blood (turned out he'd been hit by a stone from a sling shot) and I thought,
well this is it." BLOODY WEDNESDAY. A DAZED AMERICA COUNTED 23 DEAD AND 32
WOUNDED, 6 CRITICALLY.
Here is a run of the mill, pre-riot situation. Protestors have been urged to
demonstrate peacefully, police and guardsmen to exercise restraint. Ten tape
recorders strapped under their coats, playback, and record controlled from lapel
buttons. They have pre-recorded riot sound effects from Chicago, Paris, Mexico
City, Kent/Ohio. If they adjust sound levels of recordings to surrounding sound
levels, they will not be detected. Police scuffle with the demonstrators. The
operators converge. turn on Chicago record, play back, move on to the next
scuffles, record playback, keep moving. Things are hotting up, a cop is down
groaning. shrill chorus of recorded pig squeals and parody groans.
Could you cool a riot by recording the calmest cop and the most reasonable
demonstrator? Maybe! However, it's a lot easier to start trouble that to stop
it. Just pointing out that cut/ups on the tape recorder can be used as a weapon.
You'll observe that the operators are making a cutup as they go. They are
cutting in Chicago, Paris, Mexico City, Kent Ohio with the present sound effects
at random and that is a cutup.
AS A LONG RANGE WEAPON TO SCRAMBLE AND NULLIFY ASSOCIATIONAL LINES PUT DOWN BY
MASS MEDIA
The control of the mass media depends on laying down lines of association. When
the lines are cut the associational connections are broken.
President Johnson burst into a swank apartment, held three girls at gunpoint, 26
miles north of Saigon yesterday.
you can cut the mutter line of the mass media and put the altered mutter line
out in the streets with a tape recorder. Consider the mutter line of the daily
press. It goes up with the morning papers, millions of people read the same
words. In different ways, of course. A motion praising Mr. Callaghan's action in
banning the South African Cricket Tour has spoiled the colonel's breakfast. All
reacting one way or another to the paper world or unseen events which becomes an
integral part of your reality. You will notice that this process is continually
subject to random juxtapostation. Just what sign did you see in the Green Park
station as you glanced up from the PEOPLE? Just who called as you were reading
your letter in the TIMES? What were you reading when your wife broke a dish in
the kitchen? An unreal paper world and yet completely real because it is
actually happening. Mutter line of the EVENING NEWS, TV. Fix yourself on
millions of people all watching Jesse James or the Virginian at the same time.
International mutter line of the weekly news magazine always dated a week ahead.
Have you noticed it's the kiss of death to be on the front cover of TIME. Madam
Nhu was there when her husband was killed and her government fell. Verwoerd was
on the front cover of TIME when a demon tapeworm gave the order for his death
through a messenger of the same. Read the Bible, kept to himself, no bad habits,
you know the type. Old reliable, read all about it.
So stir in news stories, TV plays, stock market quotations, adverts and put the
altered mutter line out in the streets.
The underground press serves as the only effective counter to a growing power
and more sophisticated technique used by establishment mass media to falsify,
misrepresent, misquote, rule out of consideration as a PRIORI ridiculous or
simply ignore and blot out of existence: data, books, discoveries that they
consider prejudicial to establishment interest.
I suggest that the underground press could perform this function much more
effectively by the use of cut/up techniques. For example, prepare cut/ups of the
ugliest reactionary statements you can find and surround them with the ugliest
pictures. Now give it the drool, slobber, animal noise treatment and put it out
on the mutter line with recorders. Run a scramble page in every issue of a
transcribed tape recorded cut/up of news, radio and TV. Put the recordings out
on the mutter line before the paper hits the stand. It gives you a funny feeling
to see a headline that's been going round and round inside your head. The
underground press could add a mutter line to their adverts and provide a unique
advertising service. Cut the product in with pop tunes, cut the product in with
advertising slogans and jingles of other products and syphon off the sales.
Anybody that doubts that these techniques work has only to put them to the test.
The techniques here described are in use by the CIA and agents of other
countries ...Ten years ago they were making systematic street recordings in
every district of Paris. I recall the Voice of America man in Tangir and a room
full of tape recorders and you could hear some strange sounds through the wall.
Kept to himself, hello in the hall. Nobody was ever allowed in that room, not
even a fatima. Of course, there are many technical elaborations like long-range
directional mikes. When cutting the prayer call in with hog grunts it doesn't
pay to be walking around the market place with a portable tape recorder.
An article in NEW SCIENTIST June 4, 1970, page 470, entitled ' Electronic Arts
of Noncommunication ' by Richard C French gives the clue for more precise
technical instructions.
In 1968, with the help of Ian Sommerville and Anthony Balch, I took a short
passage of my recorded voice and cut it into intervals of one twenty - fourth of
a second movie tape (movie tape is larger and easier to splice)- and rearranged
the order of the 24th second intervals of recorded speech. The original words
are quite unintelligible but new words emerge. The voice is still there and you
can immediately recognise the speaker. Also the tone of the voice remains. If
the tone is friendly, hostile, sexual, poetic, sarcastic lifeless, despairing,
this will be apparent in the altered sequence.
I did not realise at the time that I was using a technique that has been in
existence since 1881 ...I quote from Mr. French's article ... "designs for
speech scramblers go back to 1881 and the desire to make telephone and radio
communications unintelligible to third parties has been with us ever since"...
The message is scrambled in transmission and then unscrambled at the other end.
There are many of these speech scrambling devices that work on different
principles... "another device which saw service during the war was the time
division scrambler. The signal was chopped up into elements .005 cm long. These
elements are taken in groups or frames and rearranged in a new sequence. Imagine
that the speech recorded is recorded on magnetic tape which is cut into pieces
.02 long and the pieces rearranged into a new sequence. This can actually be
done and gives a good idea what speech sounds like when scrambled in this way."
This I had done in 1968. And this is an extension of the cut/up method. The
simplest cut/up cuts a page down the middle and across the middle into four
sections. Section 1 is then placed with section 4 and section 3 with section 2
in a new sequence. Carried further we can break the page down into smaller and
smaller units in altered sequences.
The original purpose of scrambling devices was to make the message
unintelligible without scrambling the code. Another use for speech scramblers
could be to impose thought control on a mass scale. consider the Human body and
nervous system as unscrambling devices. A common virus like the cold sore could
sensitize the subject to unscramble messages. Drugs like LSD and Dim-N could
also act as unscrambling devices. Moreover, the mass media could sensitize
millions of people to receive scrambled versions of the same set of data.
Remember that when the human nervous system unscrambles a scrambled message this
will seem to the subject like his very own ideas which just occurred to him,
which indeed it did.
Take a card, any card. In most cases he will not suspect its extraneous origin.
that is the run of the mill newspaper reader who receives the scrambled message
uncritically and assumes that it reflects his own opinions independently arrived
at. On the other other hand, the subject may recognise or suspect the extraneous
origins of voices that are literally hatching out in his head. Then we have a
classic syndrome of paranoid psychosis. Subject hears voices. Anyone can be made
to hear voices with scrambling techniques. It is not difficult to expose him to
the actual scrambled message, any part of which can be made intelligible. This
can be done with street recorders, recorders in cars, doctored radio and TV
sets. In his own flat if possible, if not in some bar or restaurant he
frequents. If he doesn't talk to himself, he soon will do. You bug his flat. Now
he is really round the bend hearing his own voice out of radio and TV broadcasts
and the conversation of passing strangers. See how easy it is? Remember the
scrambled message is partially unintelligible and in any case he gets the tone.
Hostile white voices unscrambled by a Negro will also activate by association
every occasion on which he has been threatened or humiliated by whites. To carry
it further you can use recordings of voices known to him. You can turn him
against his friends by hostile scrambled messages in a friend's voice. This will
activate ll his disagreements with that friend. You can condition him to like
his enemies by friendly scrambled messages in enemy voices.
On the other hand the voices can be friendly and reassuring. He is now working
for the CIA, the GPU, or whatever, and these are his orders. They now have an
agent who has no information to give away and who doesn't have to be paid. and
he is now completely under control. If he doesn't obey orders they can give him
the hostile voice treatment. No, "They" are not God or super technicians from
outer space. Just technicians operating with well-known equipment and using
techniques that can be duplicated by anyone else who can buy and operate this
equipment.
To see how scrambling technique could work on a a mass scale, imagine that a
news magazine like TIME got out a whole issue a week before publication and
filled it with news based on predictions following a certain line, without
attempting the impossible, giving our boys a boost in every story and the
Commies as many defeats and casualties as possible, a whole new issue of TIME
formed from slanted prediction of future news. Now imagine this scrambled out
through the mass media.
With minimal equipment you can do the same thing on a smaller scale. You need a
scrambling device, TV, radio, two video cameras, a ham radio station and a
simple photo studio with a few props and actors. For a start you scramble the
news all together and spit it out every which way on ham radio and street
recorders. You construct fake news broadcasts on video camera. For the pictures
you can use mostly old footage. Mexico City will do for a riot in Saigon Chile
you can use the Londonderry pictures. Nobody knows the difference. Fires,
earthquakes, plane crashes can be moved around. for example, here is a plane
crash in Toronto 108 dead. so move the picture of the Barcelona plane crash over
to Toronto and Toronto to Barcelona. And you scramble your fabricated news in
with actual news broadcasts.
You have an advantage which your opposing player does not have. He must conceal
his manipulations. You are under no such necessity. In fact you can advertise
the fact that you are writing the news in advance and trying to make it happen
by techniques which anybody can use. And that makes you NEWS. And TV personality
as well, if you play it right. You want the widest possible circulation for your
cut/up video tapes. Cut/up techniques could swamp the mass media with total
illusion.
Fictional dailies retroactively cancelled the San Francisco earthquake and
Halifax explosion as journalistic hoaxes, and doubt released from the skin law
extendable and revenous, consumed all the facts of history.
Mr French concludes his article ..."The use of modern microelectric integrated
circits could lower the cost of speech scramblers enough to see them in use by
private citizens. Codes and ciphers have always had a strong appeal to most
people and I think scramblers will as well..."
It is generally assumed that speech must be consciously understood to cause an
effect. Early experiments with subliminal images have shown that this is not
true. A number of research projects could be based on speech scramblers. We have
all seen the experiment where someone hears his own recorded voice back a few
seconds later. Soon he cannot go on talking. Would scrambled speech have the
same effect? to what extent does a language act as unscrambling in either-or
conflict terms? To what extent does the tone of voice used by a speaker impose a
certain unscrambling sequence on the listener?
Many of the cut/up tapes would be entertaining and in fact entertainment is the
most promising field for cut/up techniques. Imagine a pop festival like Phun
City scheduled for July 24th, 25th, 26, 1970 at Ecclesden Common, Patching, near
Worthing, Sussex. Festival area comprised of car park and camping area, a rock
auditorium, a village with booths and cinema, a large wooded area. A number of
Tape recorders planted in the woods and the village. As many as possible so as
to lay down a grid of sound over the whole festival. Recorders have tapes of
prerecorded material, music, news, broadcasts, recordings from other festivals,
etc. At all times some of the recorders are playing back and some are recording.
The recorders recording the crowd and the other tape recorders that are playing
back at varying distances. This cuts in the crowd who will be hearing their own
voices back. Play back, wind back and record could be electronicly controlled
with varying intervals. Or they could be hand operated, the operator deciding
what intervals of play back, record, and wind to use. Effect is greatly
increased by a large number of festival goers with portable recorders playing
back and recording as they walk around the festival. We can carry it further
with projection screens and video cameras. Some of the material is pre-prepared,
sex films, films of other festivals, and this material is cut in with live TV
broadcasts and shots of the crowd. Of course, the rock festival will be cut in
on the screens, thousands of fans portable recorders recording, and playing
back, the singer could direct play back und record. Set up an area for
travelling performers, jugglers, animal acts, snake charmers, singers,
musicians, and cut these acts in. Film and tape from the festival, edited for
best material, could then be used at other festivals.
Quite a lot of equipment and engineering to set it up. the festival could
certainly be enhanced if as many festival goers as possible bring portable tape
recorders and play back at the festival.
Any message, music, conversation you want to pass around, bring it pre-recorded
on tape so everybody takes a piece of your tape home.
Research project: to find out to what extent scrambled messages are unscrambled,
that is scanned out by experimental subjects. The simplest experiments consists
in playing back a scrambled message to subject. Message could contain simple
commands. Does the scrambled message have any command value comparable to post-
hypnotic suggestion? Is the actual content of the message received? What drugs,
if any, increase ability to unscramble messages? Do subjects vary widely in this
ability? Are scrambled messages in the subject's own voice more effective than
messages in other voices? Are messages scrambled in certain voices more easily
unscrambled by specific subjects? Is the message more potent with both word and
image scramble on video tape? Now to use, for example, a video tape message with
a unified emotional content. Let us say the message is fear. For this we take
all the past fear shots of the subject we can collect or evoke. We cut these in
with fear words and pictures, and threats, etc. This is all acted out and would
be upsetting in any case. Now let's try it scrambled and see if we can get an
even stronger effect. The subject's blood pressure, rate of heart beat, and
brain waves are recorded as we play back the scrambled tape.
His face is photographed and visible to him on video screen at all times. the
actual scrambling of the tape can be done in two ways. It can be a completely
random operation like pulling pieces out of a hat and if this is done several
consecutive units may occur together yielding an identifiable picture of
intelligible word. Both methods of course can be used at varying intervals.
Blood pressure, heart beat, and brainwave recordings will show the operator what
material is producing the strongest reaction, and he will of course zero in. And
remember that the subject can see his face at all times and his face is being
photographed. As the Peeping Tom said, the most frightening thing is fear in
your own face. If the subject becomes too disturbed we have peace and safety
tapes ready.
Now here is a sex tape: This consists of a sex scene acted out by the ideal
sexual object of the subject and his ideal self image. Shown straight it might
be exciting enough, now scramble it. It makes a few seconds for scrambled tapes
to hatch out, and then? can scrambled sex tapes zeroing in on the subject's
reactions and brain waves result in spontaneous orgasm? Can this be extended to
other functions of the body? A mike secreted in the water closet and all his
shits and farts recorded and scrambled in with stern nanny voices commanding him
to shit, and the young liberal shits his pants on the platform right under Old
Glory. Could laugh tapes, sneeze tapes, hiccough tapes, cough tapes, give rise
to laughing sneezing, hiccoughing, and coughing?
To what extent extent can physical illness be induced by scrambled tapes? Take
for example, a sound and color picture of a subject with a cold. Later, when the
subject is fully recovered, we take color and sound film of recovered subject.
We now scrambled the cold pictures and sound track in with present pictures on
present pictures. We also project the cold pictures on present pictures. Now we
try using some of Mr. Hubbard's reactive mind phrases which are supposed in
themselves to produce illness. To be me, to be you, to stay here, to stay there,
to be a body, to be bodies, to stay present, to stay past. now we scramble this
in together and show it to the subject. Could seeing and hearing this sound and
image track, scrambled down to very small units, bring about an attack of cold
virus? Is such a cold tape does actually produce an attack of cold virus,
perhaps we have merely activated a latent virus. Many viruses, as you know, are
latent in the body and may be activated. We can try the same with coldsore, with
hepatitis, always remembering that we may be activating a latent virus and in no
sense creating a laboratory virus. However, we may be in a position to do this.
Is a virus perhaps simply very small units of sound and image? Remember the only
image a virus has is the image and sound track it can impose on you. The yellow
eyes of jaundice, the postules of smallpox, etc. imposed on you against your
will. The same is certainly true of scrambled word and image it can make you
unscramble. Take a card, any card. This does not mean that it is actually a
virus. Perhaps to construct a laboratory virus we would need both camera and
sound crew and a biochemist as well. I quote from the INTERNATIONAL PARIS
TRIBUNE an article on the synthetic gene: "Dr. Har Johrd Khorana has made a
gene-synthetic."
"It is the beginning of the end," this was the immediate reaction to this news
from the science attache' at one of Washington's major embassies. "If you can
make genes you can eventually make new viruses for which there are no cures. any
little country with good biochemists could make such biological weapons. It
would take only a small laboratory. If it can be done, somebody will do it. "For
example, a death virus could be created that carries the coded message of death.
A death tape, in fact. No doubt the technical details are complex and perhaps a
team of sound and camera men working with biochemists would give us the answer.
And now the question as to whether scrambling techniques could be used to spread
helpful and pleasant messages. Perhaps. On the other hand, the scrambled words
and tape act like a virus in that they force something on the subject against
his will. More to the point would be to discover how the old scanning patterns
could be altered so that subject liberates his own spontaneous scanning pattern.
NEW SCIENTIST 2 July, 1970 ...Current memory theory posits a seven second
temporary "buffer store" preceding the main one: a blow on the head wipes out
memory of this much prior time because it erases the contents of the buffer.
Daedalus observes that the sense of the present also covers just this range and
so suggests that our sensory input is recorded on an endless time loop,
providing some seven seconds of delay for scanning before erasure. In this time
the brain edits, makes sense of, and selects storage key features. The weird
DEJA VU sensation "now" has happened before is clearly due to brief erasure
failure, so that we encounter already stored memory data coming round again.
Time dragging or racing must reflect tape speed. A simple experiment will
demonstrate this erasure process in operation. Making street recordings and
playing them back, you will hear things you do not remember, sometimes said in a
loud clear voice, must have been quite close to you, nor do you necessarily
remember them when you hear the recording back. The sound has bee erased
according to a scanning pattern which is automatic. This means that what you
notice and store as memory as you walk down the street is scanned out of a much
larger selection of data which is then erased from the memory. For the walker
the signs he passed, people he has passed, are erased from his mind and cease to
exist for him. Now to make this scanning process conscious and controllable, try
this:
Walk down a city block with a camera and take what you notice, moving the camera
around as closely as possible to follow the direction of your eyes. The point is
to make the the camera your eyes and take what your eyes are scanning out of the
larger picture. At the same time take the street at a wide angle from a series
of still positions. The street of the operator is, of course, the street as seen
by the operator. It is different from the street seen at a wide angle. Much of
it is in fact missing. Now you can make arbitrary scanning patterns - that is
cover first one side of the street and then the other in accordance with a
preconceived plan. So you are breaking down the automatic scanning patterns. You
could also make colour scanning patterns, that is, scan out green, blue, red,
etc. in so far as you can with your camera. That is, you are using an arbitrary
preconceived scanning pattern, in order to break down automatic scanning
patterns. a number of operators do this and then scramble their takes together
and with wide angle tapes. This could train the subject to see at a wider angle
and also to ignore and erase at will.
Now all this is readily subject to experimental verification on control
subjects. Nor need the equipment be all on control subjects. Nor need the
equipment be all that complicated. I have shown how it could work with feedback
from brainwaves and visaaceral response and video tape photos of subject taken
while he is seeing and hearing the tape, simply to show optimum effectiveness.
You can start with two tape recorders. The simplest scrambling device is
scissors and splicing equipment. You can start scrambling words, make any kind
of tapes and scramble them and observe the effects on friends and on yourself.
Next step is sound film and then video camera. Of course results from individual
experiments could lead to mass experiments, mass fear tapes, riot tapes, etc.
The possibilities here for research and experiment are virtually unlimited and I
have simply made a few very simple suggestions
"A virus is characterized and limited by obligate cellular parasitism. All
viruses must parasite living cells for their replication. For all viruses the
infection cycle comprises entry into the host, intracellular replication, and
escape from the body of the host to initiate a new cycle in a fresh host." I am
quoting here from MECHANISMS OF VIRUS INFECTION edited by Dr. Wilson Smith. In
its wild state the virus has not proved to be a very adaptable organism. Some
viruses have burned themselves have burned out since they were 100 per cent
fatal and there were no reservoirs. Each strain of virus is rigidly programed
for certain attack on certain tissues. If the attack fails, the virus does not
gain a new host. There are, of course, virus mutations, and the influenza virus
has proved quite versatile in this way.Generally it's the simple repitition of
the same method of entry, and if that method is blocked by any body or other
agency such as interferon, the attack fails. By and large, our virus is a stupid
organism. Now we can think for the virus, devise a number of alternate methods
of entry. For example, the host is simutaneously attacked by an ally virus who
tells him that everything is allright and by a pain and fear virus. so the virus
is now using an old method of entry, namely, the tough cop and the con cop.
We have considered the possibility that a virus can be activated or even created
by very small units of sound and image. So concieved, the virus can be made to
order in the laboratory. Ah, but for the takes to be effective, you must have
also the actual virus and what is the actual virus? New viruses turn up from
time to time but from where do they turn up? Well, lets see how we could make a
virus turn up. We plot now our virus's symptoms and make a scramble tape. The
susceptible subjects, that is those who reproduce some of the desired symptoms,
will then be scrambled into more tapes till we scramble our virus into
existence. This birth of a virus occurs when our virus is able to reproduce
itself in a host and pass itself on to another host. Perhaps, too, with the
virus under laboratory control it can be tamed for useful purposes. Imagine, for
example a sex virus. it so inflames the sex centres in the back brain that the
host is driven mad from sexuality, all other considerations are blacked out
Parks full of naked, frenzied people, shitting, pissing, ejaculating, and
screaming. So the virus could be malignant, blacking out all regulation and end
in exhaustion, convulsions, and death.
Now let us attempt the same thing with tape. We organize a sex-tape festival. We
organise a sex-tape festival. 100,000 people bring their scrambled sex tapes,
and video tapes as well, to scramble in together. Projected on vast screens,
muttering out over the crowd, sometimes it slows down, so that you see a few
seconds, then scrambled again, then slow down, scramble. Soon it will scramble
them all naked. The cops and the National Guard are stripping down. LET'S GET
OURSELVES SOME CIVVIES. Now a thing like that could be messy, but those who
survive it recover from the madness. Or, say, a small select group of really
like-minded people get together with their sex tapes, you see the process is now
being brought under control. And the fact that anybody can do it is in itself a
limiting factor.
Here is Mr. Hart, who wants to infect everyone with his own image and turn them
all into himself, so he scrambles himself and dumps himself out in search of
worthy vessels. If nobody else knows about scrambling techniques he might
scramble himself quite a stable of replicas. but anybody can do it. So gon on,
scramble your sex words, and find suitable mates.
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