During the Korean War, Korean and Chinese captors reportedly brainwashed American POWs held in prison camps. Several prisoners ultimately confessed to waging germ warfare — which they hadn’t — and pledged allegiance to communism by the end of their captivity. At least 21 soldiers refused to come back to the United States when they were set free. It sounds impressive, but skeptics point out that it was 21 out of more than 20,000 prisoners in communist countries. Does brainwashing really work in any reliable way?

In psychology, the study of brainwashing, often referred to as thought reform, falls into the sphere of “social influence.” Social influence happens every minute of every day. It’s the collection of ways in which people can change other people’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. For instance, the compliance method aims to produce a change in a person’s behavior and is not concerned with his attitudes or beliefs. It’s the “Just do it” approach. Persuasion, on the other hand, aims for a change in attitude, or “Do it because it’ll make you feel good/happy/healthy/successful.” The education method (which is called the “propaganda method” when you don’t believe in what’s being taught) goes for the social-influence gold, trying to affect a change in the person’s beliefs, along the lines of “Do it because you know it’s the right thing to do.” Brainwashing is a severe form of social influence that combines all of these approaches to cause changes in someone’s way of thinking without that person’s consent and often against his will.

Because brainwashing is such an invasive form of influence, it requires the complete isolation and dependency of the subject, which is why you mostly hear of brainwashing occurring in prison camps or totalist cults. The agent (the brainwasher) must have complete control over the target (the brainwashee) so that sleep patterns, eating, using the bathroom and the fulfillment of other basic human needs depend on the will of the agent. In the brainwashing process, the agent systematically breaks down the target’s identity to the point that it doesn’t work anymore. The agent then replaces it with another set of behaviors, attitudes and beliefs that work in the target’s current environment.

While most psychologists believe that brainwashing is possible under the right conditions, some see it as improbable or at least as a less severe form of influence than the media portrays it to be. Some definitions of brainwashing require the presence of the threat of physical harm, and under these definitions most extremist cults do not practice true brainwashing since they typically do not physically abuse recruits. Other definitions rely on “nonphysical coercion and control” as an equally effective means of asserting influence. Regardless of which definition you use, many experts believe that even under ideal brainwashing conditions, the effects of the process are most often short-term — the brainwashing victim’s old identity is not in fact eradicated by the process, but instead is in hiding, and once the “new identity” stops being reinforced the person’s old attitudes and beliefs will start to return.

There are psychologists who say the apparent conversion of American POWs during the Korean War was the result of plain-old torture, not “brainwashing.” And in fact, most POWs in the Korean War were not converted to communism at all, which leads to the question of reliability: Is brainwashing a system that produces similar results across cultures and personality types, or does it hinge primarily on the target’s susceptibility to influence? In the next section, we’ll examine one expert’s description of the brainwashing process and find out what makes an easy target.

Brainwashing Techniques

In the late 1950s, psychologist Robert Jay Lifton studied former prisoners of Korean and Chinese war camps. He determined that they’d undergone a multistep process that began with attacks on the prisoner’s sense of self and ended with what appeared to be a change in beliefs. Lifton ultimately defined a set of steps involved in the brainwashing cases he studied:

1. Assault on identity
2. Guilt
3. Self-betrayal
4. Breaking point
5. Leniency
6. Compulsion to confess
7. Channeling of guilt
8. Releasing of guilt
9. Progress and harmony
10. Final confession and rebirth

Each of these stages takes place in an environment of isolation, meaning all “normal” social reference points are unavailable, and mind-clouding techniques like sleep deprivation and malnutrition are typically part of the process. There is often the presence or constant threat of physical harm, which adds to the target’s difficulty in thinking critically and independently.

We can roughly divide the process Lifton identified into three stages: breaking down the self, introducing the possibility of salvation, and rebuilding the self.

Breaking down the self

• Assault on identity: You are not who you think you are.
  This is a systematic attack on a target’s sense of self (also called his identity or ego) and his core belief system. The agent denies everything that makes the target who he is: “You are not a soldier.” “You are not a man.” “You are not defending freedom.” The target is under constant attack for days, weeks or months, to the point that he becomes exhausted, confused and disoriented. In this state, his beliefs seem less solid.

• Guilt: You are bad.
  While the identity crisis is setting in, the agent is simultaneously creating an overwhelming sense of guilt in the target. He repeatedly and mercilessly attacks the subject for any “sin” the target has committed, large or small. He may criticize the target for everything from the “evilness” of his beliefs to the way he eats too slowly. The target begins to feel a general sense of shame, that everything he does is wrong.

• Self-betrayal: Agree with me that you are bad.
  Once the subject is disoriented and drowning in guilt, the agent forces him (either with the threat of physical harm or of continuance of the mental attack) to denounce his family, friends and peers who share the same “wrong” belief system that he holds. This betrayal of his own beliefs and of people he feels a sense of loyalty to increases the shame and loss of identity the target is already experiencing.

• Breaking point: Who am I, where am I and what am I supposed to do?
  With his identity in crisis, experiencing deep shame and having betrayed what he has always believed in, the target may undergo what in the lay community is referred to as a “nervous breakdown.” In psychology, “nervous breakdown” is really just a collection of severe symptoms that can indicate any number of psychological disturbances. It may involve uncontrollable sobbing, deep depression and general disorientation. The target may have lost his grip on reality and have the feeling of being completely lost and alone.

  When the target reaches his breaking point, his sense of self is pretty much up for grabs — he has no clear understanding of who he is or what is happening to him. At this point, the agent sets up the temptation to convert to another belief system that will save the target from his misery.

Introducing the possibility of salvation

• Leniency: I can help you.
  With the target in a state of crisis, the agent offers some small kindness or reprieve from the abuse. He may offer the target a drink of water, or take a moment to ask the target what he misses about home. In a state of breakdown resulting from an endless psychological attack, the small kindness seems huge, and the target may experience a sense of relief and gratitude completely out of proportion to the offering, as if the agent has saved his life.

• Compulsion to confession: You can help yourself.
  For the first time in the brainwashing process, the target is faced with the contrast between the guilt and pain of identity assault and the sudden relief of leniency. The target may feel a desire to reciprocate the kindness offered to him, and at this point, the agent may present the possibility of confession as a means to relieving guilt and pain.

• Channeling of guilt: This is why you’re in pain.
  After weeks or months of assault, confusion, breakdown and moments of leniency, the target’s guilt has lost all meaning — he’s not sure what he has done wrong, he just knows he is wrong. This creates something of a blank slate that lets the agent fill in the blanks: He can attach that guilt, that sense of “wrongness,” to whatever he wants. The agent attaches the target’s guilt to the belief system the agent is trying to replace. The target comes to believe it is his belief system that is the cause of his shame. The contrast between old and new has been established: The old belief system is associated with psychological (and usually physical) agony; and the new belief system is associated with the possibility of escaping that agony.

• Releasing of guilt: It’s not me; it’s my beliefs.
  The embattled target is relieved to learn there is an external cause of his wrongness, that it is not he himself that is inescapably bad — this means he can escape his wrongness by escaping the wrong belief system. All he has to do is denounce the people and institutions associated with that belief system, and he won’t be in pain anymore. The target has the power to release himself from wrongness by confessing to acts associated with his old belief system.

  With his full confessions, the target has completed his psychological rejection of his former identity. It is now up to the agent to offer the target a new one.

Rebuilding the self

• Progress and harmony: If you want, you can choose good.
  The agent introduces a new belief system as the path to “good.” At this stage, the agent stops the abuse, offering the target physical comfort and mental calm in conjunction with the new belief system. The target is made to feel that it is he who must choose between old and new, giving the target the sense that his fate is in his own hands. The target has already denounced his old belief system in response to leniency and torment, and making a “conscious choice” in favor of the contrasting belief system helps to further relieve his guilt: If he truly believes, then he really didn’t betray anyone. The choice is not a difficult one: The new identity is safe and desirable because it is nothing like the one that led to his breakdown.

• Final confession and rebirth: I choose good.
  Contrasting the agony of the old with the peacefulness of the new, the target chooses the new identity, clinging to it like a life preserver. He rejects his old belief system and pledges allegiance to the new one that is going to make his life better. At this final stage, there are often rituals or ceremonies to induct the converted target into his new community. This stage has been described by some brainwashing victims as a feeling of “rebirth.”

A brainwashing process like the one discussed above has not been tested in a modern laboratory setting, because it’s damaging to the target and would therefore be an unethical scientific experiment. Lifton created this description from first-hand accounts of the techniques used by captors in the Korean War and other instances of “brainwashing” around the same time. Since Lifton and other psychologists have identified variations on what appears to be a distinct set of steps leading to a profound state of suggestibility, an interesting question is why some people end up brainwashed and others don’t.

Certain personality traits of the brainwashing targets can determine the effectiveness of the process. People who commonly experience great self doubt, have a weak sense of identity, and show a tendency toward guilt and absolutism (black-and-white thinking) are more likely to be successfully brainwashed, while a strong sense of identity and self-confidence can make a target more resistant to brainwashing. Some accounts show that faith in a higher power can assist a target in mentally detaching from the process. Mental detachment is one of the POW-survival techniques now taught to soldiers as part of their training. It involves the target psychologically removing himself from his actual surroundings through visualization, the constant repetition of a mantra and various other meditative techniques. The military also teaches soldiers about the methods used in brainwashing, because a target’s knowledge of the process tends to make it less effective.

While the U.S. consciousness was turned to brainwashing in the 1950s in the aftermath of the Korean War, brainwashing has been around for longer than that. Scholars have traced the roots of systematic thought reform to the prison camps of communist Russia in the early 1900s, when political prisoners were routinely “re-educated” to the communist view of the world. But it was when the practice spread to China and the writings of Chairman Mao Tse-tung (”The Little Red Book”) that the world started to take notice.

Brainwashing Then and Now

In 1929, Mao Tse-tung, who would later lead the Chinese Communist Party, used the phrase ssu-hsiang tou-cheng (translated as “thought struggle”) to describe a process of brainwashing. Political prisoners in China and Korea were reportedly subjected to communist-conversion techniques as a matter of course. The modern concept and the term “brainwashing” was first used by journalist Edward Hunter in 1951 to describe what had happened to American POWs during the Korean War. Hunter introduced the concept at a time when Americans were already afraid: It was the Cold War, and America panicked at the idea of mass communist indoctrination through “brainwashing” — they might be converted and not even know it!

In the wake of the Korean War revelations, the U.S. government seemed to fear it was falling behind in the weapons race, because it began its own mind-control research. In 1953, the CIA began a program called MKULTRA. In one study, the CIA supposedly gave subjects (including the famed Timothy Leary) LSD in order to study the effects of mind-altering drugs and gauge the effectiveness of psychedelics at inducing a brainwashing-friendly state of mind. The results were not that encouraging, and subjects were supposedly harmed by the experiments. Drug experimentation by the CIA was officially cancelled by Congress in the 1970s, although some claim it still happens under the radar. Public interest in brainwashing briefly subsided after the Cold War but resurfaced in the 1960s and 1970s with the emergence of countless non-mainstream political and religious groups during that era. Parents who were horrified by their children’s new beliefs and activities were sure they’d been brainwashed by a “cult.” The mass suicides and killing sprees committed by a small percentage of those cults seemed to validate the brainwashing fears, and some parents went so far as to have their children kidnapped by “deprogrammers” to remove them from the influence of cult leaders.

One supposed victim of brainwashing at that time was Patty Hearst, heiress to the Hearst publishing fortune, who would later use a brainwashing defense when she was on trial for bank robbery. Hearst became famous in the early 1970s after she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (the SLA, which some deem a “political cult”) and ended up joining the group. Hearst reports that she was locked in a dark closet for several days after her kidnapping and was kept hungry, tired, brutalized and afraid for her life while SLA members bombarded her with their anti-capitalist political ideology. Within two months of her kidnapping, Patty had changed her name, issued a statement in which she referred to her family as the “pig-Hearsts” and appeared on a security tape robbing a bank with her kidnappers.

Another “insanity by brainwashing” defense hit the courtroom 30 years later, when Lee Boyd Malvo stood trial for his role in the 2002 sniper attacks in and around Washington, D.C. The 17-year-old Malvo and 42-year-old John Allen Muhammad killed 10 people and wounded three in a killing spree. The defense claimed that the teenaged Malvo was brainwashed by Muhammad into committing the crimes, which he would not have committed if he weren’t under Muhammad’s control. According to “The Brainwashing Defense” in Psychology Today:

Muhammad plucked 15-year-old Malvo from the Caribbean island of Antigua, where his mother had abandoned him, and brought him to the U.S. in 2001. An army veteran, Muhammad filled the teen’s head with visions of an impending race war and trained Malvo in marksmanship. He isolated Malvo, steeped him to his own idiosyncratic, vitriolic brand of Islam and imposed a strict diet and exercise regimen on his “adopted” son.

The argument was that Malvo was brainwashed, and because he was brainwashed he could not tell right from wrong. Malvo was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without parole. (Muhammad was sentenced to death in a separate trial.)

There seems to be a contrast between an underlying fear of brainwashing in modern society, as seen in contemporary films and literature, and the apparent belief of many people who sit on juries that brainwashing is hogwash. Maybe it’s the “it could never happen to me” reaction, or maybe it’s just a general reluctance to absolve a criminal of responsibility for his or her crime. Whatever the cause, people seem to distinguish between brainwashing now and brainwashing in the future, the latter of which appears to be the more fearsome of the two. The future of brainwashing, if Hollywood and the conspiracy theorists are to be trusted, involves much more high-tech approaches. And yes, brain implants are arguably a lot scarier than verbal or physical “assaults on identity.” If some evil branch of neurosurgery can get it right, we’re all doomed to be puppets of the state. Combined with hypnosis techniques, a brain implant might be all that’s needed to control a human being’s thoughts, actions and beliefs. But most scientists agree that the field of neurology is nowhere close to that level of understanding of the human brain. Likewise, many psychologists believe that large-scale brainwashing — via the mass media and subliminal messages, for instance — is not possible, because the thought-reform process requires isolation and absolute dependence of the subject in order to be effective. It’s just not that easy to change a person’s core personality and belief system.

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You Have Two Choices
There are always two choices: either you can persuade others to help you or you can be persuaded to help them. It is one or the other. Most people are not aware that every human interaction involves a complex process of persuasion and influence. And being unaware, they are usually the ones being persuaded to help others rather than the ones who are doing the persuading.

The Key to Persuasion
The key to persuasion is motivation. Every human action is motivated by something. Your job is to find out what motivates other people and then to provide that motivation.

People have two major motivations: the desire for gain and the fear of loss. The desire for gain motivates people to want more of the things they value in life. They want more money, more success, more health, more influence, more respect, more love and more happiness.

Human wants are limited only by individual imagination. No matter how much a person has, he or she still wants more and more. When you can show a person how he or she can get more of the things he or she wants by helping you achieve your goals, you can motivate them to act in your behalf.

A Presidential Insight
President Eisenhower once said that, “Persuasion is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do, and to like it.” You need always to be thinking about how you can get people to want to do the things that you need them to do to attain your objectives.

The Fear of Loss
People are also motivated to act by the fear of loss. This fear, in all its various forms, is often stronger than the desire for gain. People fear financial loss, loss of health, anger or disapproval of others, loss of the love of someone and the loss of anything they have worked hard to accomplish. They fear change, risk and uncertainty because these threaten them with potential losses.

Use Dual Motivation
Whenever you can show a person that, by doing what you want them to do, they can avoid a loss of some kind, you can influence them to take a particular action. The very best appeals are those where you offer an opportunity to gain and an opportunity to avoid loss at the same time.

Remember, people are motivated for their reasons, not yours.

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READ BOTH Stories…….

Tattoos made of ‘disappearing’ ink

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A radar detector is a device that scans for police radar signals and then alerts you to their presence. Radar guns actually send out radio waves, on specific frequencies that are prescribed by the FCC. These radar/radio signals are referred to as X band, K band, Ka band, and Ku band. (The Ku band is used only in European countries.) Because radar signals propagate in a wave that gets larger as it moves outward, and because they bounce off of other objects, they can often be detected from over a mile away, giving you ample time to adjust your speed.

A good quality radar detector will identify all frequencies of police radar (X, K, and Ka band) at distances that are great enough to allow you to slow down before your speed is detected by police radar. A high-end radar detector will also detect laser (lidar) devices used by the police. Unfortunately though, if your detector picks up a laser signal, it’s probably too late to slow down and avoid detection if you’re speeding.

There are some add-on products that can increase your protection against lasers, such as the Laser Shield (an anti-laser license plate cover) and Laser Veil (an anti-reflective coating for headlights, fog lights and license plate). These products can reduce the effective range of the police laser gun, giving you 5-10 seconds to reduce your speed. For maximum laser defense, you can use a laser jamming or laser shifting device, which is designed to block laser signals before they hit your car.

Which Radar Detector is Best?

There are several radar detector vendors that make quality products. Beltronics, Escort, PNI, Valentine, Whistler and Cobra all have offerings, but a quick scan of the available products will show that prices range from $99 to over $300, and the critical features can be hard to discern due to the technical jargon used in the descriptions of the various products. Having recently purchased a radar detector, here is my layman’s advice…

Don’t buy a cheap radar detector. If the model you pick saves you $200 on the purchase price, but fails to protect you on the road, then you haven’t saved money at all. The cost of getting a speeding ticket (fines, lost time, and increased insurance premiums) can mount up to $800, $1000 or even higher. My recommendation is to purchase a high-end model that has a complete feature set, excellent reviews and a price tag somewhere around $300.

My choice after quite a bit of research was the Bel Professional Series RX65 Radar Detector from Beltronics. At just over $300, the RX65 provides advanced radar detection, supporting X, K, Ka, Ku and the new POP mode radar, as well as 360-degree laser protection. The AutoScan feature eliminates most false alarms, and VG-2 Stealth technology makes the unit invisible to “radar detector detectors” used by police. The RX65 has an alphanumeric display with brightness control, and over 60 programmable voice messages for easy recognition of alerts. You probably won’t find this advanced model in big electronics stores, but you can buy it online or at a local auto accessory shop.

Do I Need Laser Protection?

Not all police use lasers along with radar detection. My advice is to buy a model that includes laser detection, and use it for a few weeks on the roads you travel most. If you DO pick up laser signals in areas where you frequently travel, you can purchase Laser Veil Stealth Coating and the Laser Shield Anti-Laser License Plate Cover for about $100 extra.

If you have money to burn, and want to absolute best in laser protection system, consider the Bel LaserPro 905 Laser Defense System which integrates into high-end Bel models (including the RX65), or the Escort Shifter ZR3 Laser Jammer which works with the Escort units mentioned earlier. These laser-jamming devices will cost about $500 extra.

You can learn a lot about radar detectors, laser detectors, related products and technology online. I recommend the Buy Radar Detectors site because they have lots of free reference material about radar detectors, speed traps, and what to do if you get a speeding ticket. And as the name implies, you can also buy radar detectors at their online store. I have no affiliation with Buy Radar Detectors, and I don’t benefit in any way if you buy a radar detector from them. I did purchase mine there, and was very happy with the customer service as well as the product. Another site I found useful was http://www.RadarTest.com, which offers comparisons, reviews and reports.

http://askbobrankin.com/radar_detectors.html

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A take from the nerd media…….

Following on from the story about spammers attacking Blue Security’s anti-spam system, CBR is reporting that Six Apart, which runs the popular LiveJournal and TypePad blogging services, has become a collateral victim. Six Apart told its millions of bloggers it had experienced ‘intermittent and limited availability for TypePad, LiveJournal, TypeKey, sixapart.com, movabletype.org and movabletype.com’, before resolving the issue in the early hours of Wednesday. ‘[The spammers are] trying to rip apart the internet just to make our community stop fighting back against spam,’ Blue Security’s chief executive Eran Reshef said, adding that he knows who’s behind the attack.
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/04/131226
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=187200448
http://www.newsforge.com/newsvac/06/05/06/0650234.shtml

now i turn the tables and let you digest this email I received from one of the devilish scum……

Dear Blue Frog Member,

As a follow-up to our previous emails, and, as promised, we are stepping up in the fight against Blue Security.

The Blue Frog member email database has been compromised, and is currently being distributed worldwide to spammers and to the public. Attached to this email, you will find a zip file of the Blue Frog database, which includes your own personal or business email address(es). If you have not uninstalled Blue Frog yet, we highly suggest you do so now in order to avoid your involvement in this war any further.

Leaving your email address on the Blue Frog list is a risky choice, as we will uphold our promise not only to increase your spam by 20 times the amount you are receiving now, but to continue to make this list publically available as well. Also, as the Blue Frog member database is updated, we will find more creative ways in which to use it, and frequently release it to whomever we wish.

Blue Security, Inc

….and yet a follow-up from the fiendish fux came soon after….

BlueSecurity Important Update
——————————

You are being emailed because you are a BlueSecurity user.

Today, BlueSecurity database became known to worst spammers. Within 48 hours, the database will be published on the Internet, and your email will be open to a community of spammers. After this, you will see that spam to your mailbox increases 10 – 20 fold.

BlueSecurity was illegally attacking spammers, now spammers fight back!

REMOVE BLUE FROG FROM YOUR TRAY ASAP TO AVOID GETTING MORE SPAM!!!!

We, the spammers, have analyzed software of BlueSecurity, and found a lot of malicious code. This includes: ability to send mass mail to users. Ability to attack websites with Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS), and update functionality, which can install Trojan software on your computer and turn your computer into zombie.

BlueSecurity is using your computers to illegally attack sites including non-spam sites. They decide who is to be attacked today. And they have been noticed to attack many non-spam websites.

But now, attacked sites fight back. We are using their own database of users to send millions of spam messages to. You are one of these poor folks.

UNINSTALL BLUE FROG NOW!!!

You will ask how the Database leaked???

Its simple. BlueSecurity approach DOES NOT WORK. They have publish encrypted database for spammers, so they can remove emails from their lists, yet they can’t see the emails.

What BlueSecurity didn’t realize is that after you removed the emails, its quite simple to figure what emails were removed. How can BlueSecurity be so stupid??? I don’t know.

But after scanning 100 gigabytes of email addresses, we now have 99% of all BlueSecurity users. And guess what, they can’t do anything about that.

Because YOU CAN NOT ILLEGALY ATTACK PEOPLE and expect to continue operations.

As of today, BlueSecurity project is BUSTED. They will eventually shut their website. Because YOU HAVE EVERY RIGHT TO COMPLAIN.

The reason you will be getting A LOT OF SPAM is BlueSecurity.

REMOVE BLUE FROG. AND NEVER INSTALL IT AGAIN.

BlueSecurity lists a USA address as their place of business, whereas their main office is in Tel Aviv. BlueSecurity is run by a few Russian born Jews, who have previously been spamming themselves. They do not take money for downloading their software, they do not take money for removing emails from their lists.

How do you think they make money? We don’t know… But they could be

1.Using your computer to send spam themselves.
2.Hired to attack other sites
3.Asking for randsom after attack

They have no visible revenue stream, and 500,000 computers sitting there working for them. What are they doing?

Whatever it is UNINSTALL BLUE FROG, THEN GUESS WHAT THEY ARE DOING.

……considering that the site @ http://www.bluesecurity.com is back up and (plenty) running, methinks I will GLADLY continue to utilize their services in an (obviously successful) attempt at fighting back the relentless spammer hordes, who need nothing else but to FUCKING DIE!!!!

btw, you idgets should LEARN TO SPELL!

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