The realization that physicians are part of a killing machine provokes a special horror

  

In his memorable account of the Plague, Albert Camus described how Dr. Rieux was determined to complete his chronicle, “so that he should bear witness in favor of the victim, so that some memorial of the injustice and outrage done to them might endure. He knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of final victory. It could only be the record of what had had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never-ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts.” I can think of no better reason for telling the story in these pages.

While political terrorism has been capturing widespread attention for some time, almost nothing has been made public of how doctors today use their knowledge and skills in its support. Yet they regularly medically examine political prisoners before questioning to assess the degree of torture to be used. They attend interrogations to treat the direct physical effect of the torture they have approved so that investigation can continue. They recommend how much further torture can then be applied. Physicians employed in state-sponsored terrorism also falsify autopsy reports and provide fake medical certificates for persons those doctors know were tortured to death. A common description is “cardiac failure” or ‘pneumonia’ on those certificates.

Physicians who are members of terrorist organizations provide, or themselves use, drugs to fotce hostages into video recordings— confessions, exhortations, and genuinely pathetic pleas that have become a regular feature of TV newscasts. These stage-managed appearances are aimed at exerting worldwide psychological pressure designed to achieve the aims of the kidnappers.

All such routine malpractices violate medical ethics as defined by one of three oaths sworn by every physician before he or she starts to practice: to do no harm, provide assistance to all in need, and only treat with the consent of the patient.

Yet every day these pledges are flagrantly abused by doctors whose actions conform to the generally accepted definition of torture produced by the United Nations, Amnesty International, and other human rights organizations: the deliberate infliction of pain by one person on another in an effort to break the will of the victim.

In 1988 this gross and pervasive violation was occurring in over ninety countries; a quarter of the world’s population were living in areas where abuses have long become habitual, particularly in the Soviet Union, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

The nonmedical perpetrators of physical and mental violence, such as prison guards and interrogators, are steadily being joined by doctors prepared to put aside all professional ethics to advise upon or perform torture. Psychiatry, in particular, is highly vulnerable to being used by the state to maintain power and control the thoughts and actions of its citizens. George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World continue to exist within all those countries where a person’s intentions and actions are interpreted by the state in a manner designed to destroy legiti- mate political dissent. In a high proportion of those instances psychiatrists provide the clinical label—and the veneer of legitimacy—that allows the state to incarcerate opponents. Doctors, therefore, are increasingly used to discredit and silence all those who oppose official policies; the description of political dissent as “insanity’’ would have no credence without their active support.

In Russia, glasnost has done nothing to significantly reduce the number of dissidents languishing in closed institutions. There, as elsewhere, they continue to be tortured psychologically and physically by physicians trying to induce a change of political views. There are no firm figures for the number of doctors involved. Some human rights workers suggest the global number could run to many thousands. More likely it is in the hundreds, at least for those actively engaged in daily torture. It is manifestly impossible to arrive at any accurate figure for the number who discreetly play a supportive role in torture. But one, surely, is too many.

What is certain is that not since Hitler understood that doctors were an integral and indispensable part of his final solution have physicians become so involved in torture. Yet, dismissing them as simply mad doctors intent on satisfying their own sadistic whims is no more convincing than it was concerning Nazi clini- cians involved in the death camps program. Many such physicians appear normal, offering a reminder that certain behavior does elude our full understanding. Indeed, much of what is described in this book cannot be explained by a comforting resort to psychological explanations, where personality and motivation interlock perfectly. All that can be safely claimed is that, be- cause this account is authentic, there can be no simple explana- ' tion for the way these doctors behaved—and continue to behave.

In writing this book I had access to written testimony from prime sources, which can be assessed in the following descending order of importance: reports by human rights organizations of fully verified medically sponsored torture; properly attested affidavits by those who were subjected to medical torture; statements by defectors, either from a terrorist organization or from state-sponsored terrorism, about the use of physicians to design methods of abuse or who act as torturers themselves; and authentic documents, gathered by security forces, which offer proof of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment administered directly by doctors or at the behest of those security forces.

That evidence was supported by interviews. Thirty-five years of researching other subjects has convinced me that the only way to fully understand an issue is to talk to those directly involved. For this book I traveled extensively in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and beyond to Asia and, finally, Latin America, during which I had to ponder many versions of truth and untruth.

I spoke to more than a hundred persons either directly employed or working indirectly for intelligence agencies. They ranged from desk men to field agents, from academics to physicians employed in prisons and interrogation centers. I conducted multiple interviews with over fifty of these people; some seventeen prime sources were each questioned a dozen or more times.
Their patience is something at which I still marvel—that and their willingness to talk. The only guarantee they asked for, and received, was that their anonymity would be protected.

To those who do not toil in the fields of investigative journalism, this is sometimes the moment when hands are thrown up and the question is put: “If they won’t be named, how can we believe them?” The only sensible answer is this: Men and women who work in intelligence generally will not discuss security matters without an absolute guarantee of not being identified.

However, that does not mean their words are any more, or less, believable; it simply requires that a reporter does not lower his guard.

In addition I followed the rules laid down by two of the great editors of this century, whom I had the good fortune to work for:

Arthur Christiansen of the Daily Express, London, and Ed Thompson of the Reader’s Digest. Both were absolutely firm on such matters as wherever possible using two sources for an important fact, and that when writing someone was said to have “felt,” “sensed,” “thought,” “understood,” or “believed,” such reactions must genuinely reflect the essence of a particular portion of an interview with that person. Both editors were insistent on the need to reproduce as accurately as possible the attitudes and personality of an interviewee, even when he or she was not directly quoted. 

Bob Woodward of the Washington Post has rightly reminded all of us of the need to try and distinguish between what should genuinely be kept secret for the sake of national security and what officialdom tries to hide under the guise of security, when what is really at stake is the uncovering of inept decision-making and unethical behavior. In his own book, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987, Woodward quoted the guide-lines of another veteran of our business, Ken Auletta. He has synthesized the complex business of prime and secondary sources, on-and off-the-record conversations, and recreating an event or happening with the use of memoranda, documents, letters, diaries, and notes-to-file. Auletta wrote that ‘‘no reporter can with 100 percent accuracy re-create events that occurred some time before. Memories play tricks on participants, the more so when the outcome has become clearer. A reporter tries to guard against inaccuracies by checking with a variety of sources. But it is useful for a reader—and an author—to be humbled by this journalistic limitation.”

Auletta’s reminder was certainly constantly in my mind during the interviews for this book. And just as Veil is among the first to illuminate the world of modern intelligence, so mine is an early entry into describing the field of medical torture. Like Woodward’s stated attitude to his work, I freely recognize that the story in these pages cannot be the final word; instead, I see it as an encouragement for others to pursue the trail, to turn what is essentially today’s reportage into the substantiality of tomorrow’s history. Sometimes, such as that day in May 1987 in Beirut, as on previous occasions, I had no alternative but to simply be my own prime source—to enter the story and describe what I saw. I’m not enthusiastic about such intrusions; after all, it is the story and not the teller who matters. But at those times there really seemed no other way.

When Veil was published in the autumn of 1987 it was attacked largely on the grounds that the one-time director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Joseph Casey, would never have given the interviews Woodward claimed, let alone be so forthcoming—or if he had, it had simply been to use Woodward to shape Casey’s place in history and spread disinformation. It’s the old story of trusting a source. Personally, I have no problem in believing that Woodward spoke, as he wrote, close to fifty times with Casey and that the director was as frank as Veil suggests.

I met Casey on two occasions in Washington in March 1986. My path to him had been cleared by senior U.S. diplomats and members of the CIA in the Middle East whom I had gotten to know through the hostage situation in Beirut. They said the only person who could begin to answer some of my questions was Casey.

The first occasion we met was in the International Club in Washington, D.C., on Friday, March 21; the second time was at the same venue four days later. On both occasions Casey wore the same dark blue suit, clearly custom-made because of his size. He seemed considerably bulkier than in his television appearances—and older, too. He looked physically unwell, his skin gray and taut around the eyes and jaw.

He wasted no time on small talk, getting down to business at once. I gave him a brief account of what I had learned in the Middle East about the hostages. He listened carefully and said some of it had to be “just goddamn speculation.” Then he proceeded to substantially reduce that element by explaining in some detail why the CIA believed the hostages were being held under appalling conditions, including being ill-treated by a doctor. He suggested further ways I could “look into that aspect.” He was courteous and helpful, to a certain point—that point being that he told me he was “working with another writer,” and consequently could only be of limited assistance. That writer, of course, was Bob Woodward.

But Casey did provide me with confirmation of a number of key matters relating to medical torture, speaking candidly after he had been satisfied that anything he said would not be attributed to him. His death on May 6, 1987, freed me of that agreement and I can simply say that this book owes a debt to Casey—even though I am certain he would not have wanted many of the revelations about the CIA’s own behavior to emerge; it was very clear from our discussions that the director had a fierce protective feeling about not only the agency he then headed but the one he had inherited. I learned of his death back in the Middle East while pursuing one of the leads he had given. His passing came at the very time Congress had begun its public hearings on the Iran-Contra fiasco, whose ramifications arose directly out of the hostage-taking that forms a theme of this book.

The director, like my other interviewees from the intelligence world, would not be taped and would not allow notes to be taken at the time; those had to be written up immediately afterwards as background, that catchall phrase that means information provided could be fully used but not directly attributed.

Surprisingly, it worked; cross checks invariably showed my sources were not only in a position to know, but what they were saying was the truth. I am not one who subscribes to the idea that intelligence services spend their time and money running a continuous international conspiracy to deceive journalists and authors. All, undoubtedly, do spread disinformation some of the time among the gullible and unaware. But all the time? No.

Yet, that said, I should also add that sometimes attempts were made to dismiss medical torture as no more than harsh but essential treatment of dangerous suspects—and that, indeed, the very presence of a doctor should be seen as that of a physician ready to intervene, rather like a boxing referee, when a victim’s life is in danger.

Such arguments take no account of the long-term effects on the emotional stability of those who endure any form of violation of their basic human rights. Accounts by victims of torture are filled with trauma: recurrent nightmares and phobias, in- creased anxiety, and often impotency. Some of those symptoms are a direct result of medical abuse, itself not always easy to pinpoint, let alone assess, because its practitioners are often greatly skilled in its application.

Again, it was claimed that some of the doctors who were engaged in physical ill-treatment or psychological mind control were forced into such behavior because of threats to their own careers, and possibly their lives and those of their families. The most effective rebuttal to this suggestion is that the great majority of doctors—whether in totalitarian states or living amid terrorist enclaves—refuse to participate in such practices. Indeed, they are often prepared to risk their jobs, lives, and the safety of loved ones to avoid taking part in the violations of human rights that have become so systematic and efficient as to create a growth industry whose tools include drugs, electro-shocks, mouth gags, garrots, blindfolds, and branding irons, with methods ranging from sexual abuse to sham executions.

Nor is the defense of self-preservation new. It was advanced by some of the twenty-one German physicians charged with medical crimes at Nuremberg. Disclosures during their trials led to the Hippocratic Oath having an addendum: “I will not permit consideration of race, religion, nationality, party politics, or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient.” Forty years after that edict was framed, medical cooperation forms an integral part of torture in many countries; the demands of state-sponsored terrorism, or the organizations that deal in terrorism, require no less.

What remains for me the most disturbing aspect of my investigation is that even as I write, and later when it is read, there are physicians who continue to participate in torture. Their behavior poses a continuous threat to all those of us who still possess that most precious of all gifts: the right of the human spirit to choose. In working on this book I have had to come to terms with my own emotions—disbelief, bewilderment, disgust, and anger and, more than once in the early stages, a feeling that the subject was simply too evil to cope with. Nothing I had researched before could have prepared me for the dark reality of doctors who set out to deliberately destroy minds and bodies they were trained to heal. The realization that physicians are part of a killing machine provokes a special horror. Throughout the interviews I worked through much of my personal conflict— whether to stop or go on—knowing that at every turn there would be further personally unsettling revelations. I survived by constantly reminding myself of a professional obligation to be balanced about doctors whose actions in the end raise a fundamental question: How did they become the way they were and are?

For the most part they did not give the impression, outside their work, of being totally evil; certainly they rarely filled the popular imagery of demonic figures. Equally, it must be said it is demonic that they are not demonic. And, without doubt, there is a deeply disturbing psychological truth that what they do does not require personalities anywhere close to sadistic: their behavior confirms that what can be properly called ordinary people, nurtured and tutored to find places within the oldest caring profession, can perform acts of authentic wickedness. To reveal their capacity to do so, I felt, like Dr. Rieux, a powerful need to complete a chronicle that has its beginning, though not its roots, in the predawn, neither light nor darkness, the hour the Moslem faithful say when night properly ends and another day starts in Beirut—4:30 A.M. on my watch on a morning in May 1987. (...)

from the book Journey Into Madness The True Story of Secret CIA Mind Control and Medical Abuse by Gordon Thomas

Stand for Law and Justice

 George Lucas’s Star Wars is not the only fantasy that challenges the idea of empire. The foundational myth of “fighting unjust tyrants” is deeply embedded into the origin of the United States of America; it may take effort for my American readers to accommodate their thinking to the idea that the very purpose of monarchies was to stand for law, justice, and peace for your people. Monarchs may not always have achieved this goal, either internally or along their borders, but, nevertheless, it was the goal and their purpose.

Partly, it may be more difficult for Americans to understand real monarchies because they rarely encounter real royals; and they tend to have little sense of actual royalty throughout history. They haven’t seen, or considered, how future monarchs were raised; how they took their first responsibilities and finally took over from their parents; how they then raised children of their own. All they imagine is an oppressive tyrant, sitting on a far-away throne. But the populations in countries with active monarchs, who witness royalty directly or are raised to consider the history of royalty throughout the generations, benefit from a completely different perspective, and this creates a close social bond. Furthermore, as a cousin to many modern royals, I personally have had the additional advantage of knowing and understanding the goals and aspirations of some of the princes and princesses who became rulers.

What did I find? I met people who, since their earliest childhood, were raised toserve — to serve their country with every appearance, every gesture, every parade, every photo. Just as their parents and grandparents had done before. Since they were young, they got to know their countries, the political parties and politicians, and the Church representatives. They learned about all the fault lines that menaced their country. They watched as their parents dealt with many problems. And they were told how their grandparents had confronted similar problems. 

Serving always meant putting your own interests second. In a country with several languages, your preferred language was not used exclusively; rather, all the country’s languages were spoken. Your preference for one region or for one kind of people could not be indulged. You were a symbol of unity and had to show respect to all regions and all people. Furthermore, you knew that any mess you created when you were eventually in the position of power would burden your children when they came to power. Finally, at least in my youth there was very little option to renounce your responsibilities and disappear into a private life. You simply owed it to your country: for God’s sake, and for the many privileges you had been given. And precisely because you were not elected — and therefore not obliged to calibrate your decisions to ensure re-election — you were specially positioned to engage real problems honestly. 

You may say this is a rose-tinted view. Perhaps. But nevertheless, it is what I have seen. 

Even if modern European monarchies have very limited constitutional powers — indeed, they have far less power than an American president — their real power is the power of example. But that was always a critical, perhaps the most critical, role played by monarchs. Whether a monarch is upholding the law, or simply the Truth, a Catholic monarch who believes in God understands that He will, someday, render final judgment. 

Contrast this mindset with some modern politicians. Not having been raised to responsibility, and with less permanently secure positions, they will quite understandably be more naturally tempted to use their careers as paths to personal advancement, profiting off the connections made during those careers. Nobody can blame them. But this was something rulers in the past need not have done. 

From the first Habsburg Emperor, Rudolf in 1273, the Habsburgs defended the law, tried to be just, and tried to improve the lives of their subjects. Remember, there had been a nearly thirty-year interregnum after the fall of the House of Hohenstaufen, so there had been constant fights, conflicts, and lawlessness. Rudolf’s first challenge was to restore order, which he did with remarkable success. He worked with local rulers to reorganize territories taken in those thirty years from the empire (the so-called “Revendication”). He gave them a juridical structure and abolished tolls unlawfully instituted during the interregnum. He forced his great rival Ottokar of Bohemia to give back all the countries he had taken — Central Austria, Styria, and Carinthia — that were then still independent lands. (First the lands were placed under imperial guardianship; later, when Ottokar was defeated, Rudolf gave the lands to his own sons.)

So the role of the emperors — as the “kings above kings” — required them to take law and justice very, very seriously.18 And like their forebear Rudolf, they did. There are too many Habsburg emperors to review each of their records; but it is worth considering at least a few examples of how seriously they stood for law, justice, and their subjects: (...)

There is much more to be said about the “glorious generation” of Francis and his brothers, especially about their modesty and frugality. But I want to finish with an amusing anecdote that illustrates what was typically said of them. When the poet Byron spent his famous summer on Lake Geneva in 1816 with Mary Wollstonecraft and her lover Percy B. Shelley, a literary bet prompted Mary to create the first scene of what was to become her immortal novel Frankenstein. During the same stay, Byron himself wrote a fragmentary novel, and his personal physician, John William Polidori, also wrote The Vampyre, the precursor of romantic vampire stories. However, Byron and Polidori had a falling out, and so Polidori left on a trip to Italy. Coming from Switzerland, Polidori crossed over the Grand St. Bernard and spent the night of September 27, 1816, in the monastery located at the top of the mountain pass. He notes in his diary that there was great excitement there: another simple traveler had stayed the previous night, and the monks had only just discovered, through his signature in the monk’s guest book, that the guest had been the famous Archduke Rainer, Viceroy of Lombardo-Venetia. Rainer, one of the “glorious brothers,” is known to regularly have hiked, incognito, along the borders of his reign, in order to better understand his subjects (and to study rock formations). 

Finally, I want to end the chapter with an anecdote about Franz Joseph standing up for his subjects. In 1910, the old emperor met with the former president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, in the Hofburg. When the former president and Noble Peace Prize winner asked the emperor to explain to him exactly what he was doing — implying, I suspect, that elected parliaments and governments had made the emperor’s role a superfluous anachronism — the emperor answered simply: “The idea of my office is to protect my peoples from their politicians.” 

I leave you with this question: Who protects the voters from their politicians today?

From:

The Habsburg Way

Seven Rules for Turbulent Times

By Eduard Habsburg 

Spiritual reptilians?

 Man, it would appear, is an easy enough creature to control, if one knows the right buttons to push and switches to flip on the opportune occasions. If we are to believe some authorities, the exercise of such control has been refined to the precision and exactitude of a science. Those who are in the business of what is called “public relations”—advertisements, political campaigns, propaganda efforts, and suchlike—zero in relentlessly upon the psychic vulnerabilities of targeted groups; billions of dollars have been spent to help these uber-experts to perfect their technique. By now, we are all allegedly at their mercy; they have effectively made us their Pavlovian mongrels, and mental freedom is now a sheer impossibility; the bitter dawn of the “Brave New World” has broken; we now dwell helplessly like lobotomized, lifeless-eyed mandarins, utterly enslaved to the whims of our handlers.

  I have my doubts that things are quite so dire as this, as I suspect that man is far too complicated an animal to be so thoroughly “owned” to such an extreme degree; in any case, if man is indeed “owned,” then his “owners” (being men themselves) are also perfectly capable of being dominated by the very same instruments they have used to consolidate their rule. Moreover, the fact that he sees fit to exercise control at all is an indication of their vulnerability to be controlled, as the compulsion to be a ruler is, paradoxically enough, itself a sign of psychic weakness. 

  Surely control is not an exact science; indeed, it is probably more of an art than a science. Still, it cannot be doubted that man is indeed an easily exploitable creature; there is no “one size fits all” manner of exercising dominion, as each individual is at least to some degree unique—to control for the quirks in absolutely everyone’s programming would be costly and time-consuming. Yet there does exist a baseline for control, a way of dominating the thoughts of the mass of men (even if some men manage to escape this widely-cast net), of strafing this weary load of penned-up souls with a barrage of stimuli to the extent that their minds are blown and their hearts are wrenched in a manner that aids and abets their psychological enslavement. Of course, such operations must be performed sparingly, or else they lose impact. Pragmatically speaking, these propagandistic campaigns necessitate extensive coordination and planning, cost loads of money, and are generally onerous and burdensome in their intricacies. 

  Still, one imagines, such campaigns have their utility. Just as a micro-controller—say, a devious and malignant-minded person who wished to gain the upper hand in a relationship—might resort to deception, even brazen theatrics, in order to establish a position of emphasis, thus insuring that he is better equipped to launch psychological sorties against his “target,” so it makes perfect sense that those with a similarly devious and malignant mindset attempting to gain or enhance control on a macro scale (i.e., those in charge of the machinery of the state) would likewise occasionally contrive and carry forth grand, bold, and decisive deceptions, as a means toward achieving domination over a larger but still generally hapless “target.” (i.e., the population in general).

  Such orchestrations are not unknown throughout human history; in modern-day conspiracy culture, they are often called “false flags” or “inside jobs.” That the ruling authorities would “have it in them” to intentionally deceive their subjects is beyond dispute, at least judging from history; to suppose that current rulers are exempt from such considerations is at best naïve, at worst disingenuous. Again, given that people commonly deceive other people on a small scale in their personal relationships, why would not those generally “in charge” not seek to promulgate deception on a wider scale, given their conspicuously more developed, and considerably more depraved, ambitions?

                                                          ********************                                                               

  It shouldn’t strain credulity overmuch, then, to posit the possibility, or even assert the likelihood, of certain events being artificially orchestrated for the purpose of mass deception and psychological manipulation. The adage that “power tends to corrupt” is verifiable on numerous levels, with reams of anecdotal evidence available for support. When a person gains power, things become available to him in ways that couldn’t even have been dreamt of in the absence of said power. A wide world of alluring possibilities suddenly opens up, and that which had previously constrained his sensibilities just as suddenly releases its grip, making him capable of behaviors that would have been deeply alienating to his consciousness prior to his ascension to the post he now occupies; he comes to believe that he is truly deserving of all that he has, and that all steps undertaken with the purpose of consolidating his position are self-justifying. Power thus becomes an end in itself; he need not appeal to any standard of decency in the pursuit of protecting and consolidating his “turf”; if an act helps him and hurts those who would oppose him, then that act is reflexively deemed warranted by dint of the end it serves.

  Such a condition, whereby a person gains power by surrendering his humanity, is commonly referred to as “selling one’s soul”—in such cases, one simply degrades oneself by choice, after making the determination that the benefits of this transformation outweigh the costs. A lot of fuss has been made over this categorization of person, the one who seems to be patently inhuman, at least according to our accustomed understanding of what humanity is. Clinical psychologists designate this man a “sociopath.” Those with broader and more adventuresome sensibilities have theorized that in fact a whole other race lives among us, one what only appears to resemble humanity; these beings are called “skin jobs,” in that they possess merely the epidermal exterior of normal men and women, while retaining a cold-blooded core. This sinister alien race is at times referred to as “Reptilian,” and while the patently ‘sci-fi’ connotations of such a designation may strike one as far-fetched when taken literally, it must be admitted that as a metaphor it could scarcely be more compelling in capturing the essence of a sociopathic soul: viperous, venomous, carnivorous,  bereft of empathy, etc..

  Some Reptilians are born, while others are no doubt made, and still others probably have their Reptoid identity “thrust upon them” through perceived necessity of one kind or another. Still, all such beings, whether via nature or nurture, have assumed room temperature in their hearts; they are perfectly possessed, one might say, by their ambition. Everything they say seems suggestive of a “normal” mindset is in fact a ruse; all gestures which appear to indicate goodwill and charity are merely aspects of a carefully contrived façade. Their lusts predominate, unconstrained by appeals to morality, reality, or restraint; the only thing that keeps them in line is their wily cunning; indeed, absent the sneaky prudence of their conniving craftiness (that which bids them to bide their time in order to achieve the best results), they would abandon themselves to an orgy of sheer, unbridled concupiscence.

  Of course, their predominant ruthlessness of heart and monstrousness of spirit ought not keep us from recognizing that these Reptilians are essentially vulnerable in a manner that is (dare we say it?) deeply human. There could even be said to linger an aura of poignancy about these creatures, since in their drive to be masters of the universe, they have become little more than slaves to their appetites. Still, while not inhumanly invulnerable, they have indeed ceased to be “human” in the way that a human being is said to have empathy, awareness of moral obligation, and a thirst for a transcendent consciousness whose locus dwells outside of his own willfulness and ruthless determination to survive and thrive at all costs. Moreover, these (literal or figurative, born or made) Reptilians have come to see other humans as little more than beasts of burden: to be worked, to be exploited, to be fussed over and fattened, not out of a compassionate impulse to provide nurturance, sustenance, and livelihood for said “beasts,” but rather with the mindset of a profit-minded owner of livestock, i.e., as one who feeds one’s cattle with an eye towards their eventual slaughter and sale for consumption. Other people, that is, exist merely for one’s use; they can be culled and cannibalized whenever it proves advantageous to do so.

CONSPIRACY, COMPLIANCE, CONTROL, AND DEFIANCE:

 a primer on what is, and what is to be done

 By Andy Nowicki

Ludovici - On Schooling

 

Education, as organized by the state, can have but one object: the rearing of people who are fit to be decent and worthy citizens. A man may educate himself privately in vice, in jazzing, in motoring or in crime; he is at liberty to do this at his own expense and in his own time, but if he is educated at the expense of his fellow-men the intention of these fellow-men must be to train him into a desirable member of society. Only thus can the huge outlay be made worthwhile.

Now, a desirable citizen is above all a well-conducted citizen. He may know French and fencing and be able to beat all-comers at billiards or biology, marbles or mathematics, but he is only a nuisance if he is not, in addition, well-conducted—that is to say, reliable, sensible, understanding and honest. It is more important that he should thoroughly grasp the first principles of sound conduct and thought than that he should know the whole of counterpoint or conchology.

When once he has mastered the first principles of sound conduct and thought, he is prepared to do well at anything according to his gifts, whereas the most exhaustive knowledge of counterpoint and conchology will, in the most favourable circumstances, only make him a good musician or a good classifier of shells.

In short, happiness and harmony are more easily achieved by a people holding deep and sound views concerning life and humanity than by people deeply versed in science and top-heavy with information. Happiness has been achieved again and again upon earth by people possessing not a billionth part of the knowledge that has been accumulated by modern man. A sound instinct in regard to food, a correct understanding of one’s self and one’s fellows, and a decent appreciation of the limits of individual caprice in a social community are, after all, more precious than a large accumulation of facts. And thus education, if it is to be valuable, should consist very much more in a training in manners, sound views and means of intercourse than in the acquisition of knowledge about facts. (The False Assumptions of ‘Democracy’, pp. 126–7)

Anybody would have thought that one of the first concerns of any educational body dealing with national education would have been to secure to all citizens of the same nation, irrespective of rank, at least a thorough knowledge of their native tongue. For what, indeed, could be more vital? It is the first prerequisite of all satisfactory communication, whether from or to the subject; it is the first essential weapon of the rational faculties. A particular native language may have faults and shortcomings, as compared with other native languages; it may be poorer in words, more complicated in syntax, less copiously supplied with racy idiom, etc., but surely any national scheme of education that fails to make the mastery of this native language—such as it is, perfect or imperfect—the foremost object on its programme is guilty of a gross dereliction of duty. For whatever its faults may be, the masses, at least, have no other means of communication and, if they are going to be made articulate, they must be taught their native tongue.

At present, the situation of the English working-classes is, in this respect, pathetic in its helpless and infantile humility. Their talk is the babble of babes, their vocabulary the means of expression for creatures whose feelings and thoughts are no more complicated than those of primitive savages. Not only are they incapable of understanding complex states of feeling or complex thoughts when they hear them accurately and carefully expressed, but they are also utterly unable to give expression to at least three-quarters of their own thoughts and emotions. In regard to a very large number of thoughts and emotions, which to the cultivated man are commonplace matters, the masses of England are therefore literally inarticulate. The same word answers for a hundred meanings in their conversation, all of which it but inadequately expresses, while for those emotions and thoughts for which they have no words there can exist only mute and mystified suspicion.

This is bad enough. Life is sufficiently tragic for millions of creatures today, without its being either necessary or desirable to aggravate it with the additional affliction of dumbness. And yet the fact that this inarticulateness which ignorance imposes, is equivalent to dumbness, or at least to partial dumbness, is surely incontestable.

But there is a consequence of this ignorance which is even more serious than that discussed above. And that is the danger to which it exposes its sufferers of falling under false guidance, misdirection and pollution from outside. Whereas dumbness, although a sad affliction, is often merely another form of constraint; misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or the inability to criticize and to reject the expressed thoughts of others may be a source of pollution, a source of grave error and a speedy means of complete and incurable perversion.

If people are to be protected from misconceptions, false leaders, demagogues and all those smart and slippery unemployed who are ever ready to exploit ignorance and take advantage of simplicity, they must be in a position to listen critically to an address or an appeal made to them in their own language. They must be in a position to tell to what extent their proposed leader or misleader understands what he is talking about. How much false sentiment, false doctrine, inflammatory teaching is simply an abuse of language, a forcing of terms—in fact, catachresis. How much of it would be detected and exposed if the majority of the nation possessed that precision and understanding in the use of words which would come with a proper knowledge of their native tongue. (The False Assumptions of ‘Democracy’, pp. 132–4)

The boys’ curriculum at an average elementary school consists of the following subjects: English, arithmetic, geography, history, nature study or hygiene, physics, drawing, singing, physical exercise, manual work.

The reader will only need to glance at this curriculum in order to realize how varied the programme is, and how assiduously the subjects would require to be studied in the eight years of school life in order to leave in the minds of the scholars a sufficient knowledge of them to be of use in later life. Eight years, with 22 hours a week for 44 weeks a year, and such a programme! Can it be possible for the boys to acquire anything more than a mere smattering of each subject? … In fact, take it how you will, it must be acknowledged without either bitterness or malice that elementary education is nothing more than a very expensive and very elaborate farce.

It teaches the boys two things that they undoubtedly remember: the trick of deciphering letterpress, which constitutes them purchasers and readers of the lowest and most fatuous literature that sweated literary hacks can produce, and enough arithmetic for them to master the ordinary numerical problems that may arise in the daily routine of their adult lives. Of history nothing, literally nothing, is remembered, except perhaps that there was once a king who spoilt some tarts (they are not quite certain whether it was Alfred the Great or the King of Hearts) and that there was once a monarch called William the Conqueror. Of geography only the vaguest notions are retained, and these relate more often to the world as a whole than to their native land. Of hygiene, physics, not a trace is left, not even a recollection of the names of the subjects. While singing and drawing, except to the few, are a pure waste of time.

It is safe to say that this is true of the majority of the scholars and, since it is the majority of the children that constitute the great mass of the nation, it is on them we must concentrate our attention.

Since the object of all our expensive elementary school organization ought to be to impart to them some valuable knowledge that they can retain throughout their lives, some valuable knowledge, moreover, in the acquisition of which the highest faculties of their mind would be disciplined and trained, surely it would be an advantage in the first place to concentrate on a fewer number of subjects, and secondly to select only those which could be of service to them in later life (for they are the only subjects that are ever remembered), and thirdly to confine the study of the subject or subjects chosen, as far as possible, to those limits which, while they guarantee a solid foundation of learning, allow of further unassisted progress when once the school career is over.

Now, it seems to the present writer that no subject in the whole curriculum of schools answers these requirements more satisfactorily in every way than English itself. It is at once an ideal means of disciplining and training the mind, of clarifying thought and of correcting vagueness and looseness of reasoning; it is an excellent preservative of natural nobility of character, by opening up to the student the whole treasury of lofty thought and sentiment that the language contains; it is a mental weapon against befoulment by prurient and other deleterious influences; it is an instrument of criticism that can be employed at any moment, in any contingency, against the appeals of demagogues, agitators and corrupters of all kinds, and it is a means of lucid and logical communication, without which no man can be said to be safe against misunderstanding or confusion. Above all—and this is its principal value today—a knowledge of English is essential to anyone who wishes to know how to ‘read’. (The False Assumptions of ‘Democracy’, pp. 141–5)

The Lost Philosopher: The Best of Anthony M. Ludovici

Edited with Preface by John V. Day.

Mutilating Children Could Have Been Avoided

The sexual left is blamed for the mutilation of children in the name of trangenderism. But the estalishment right allowed it to happen.

The conservative political class may finally be waking up to the realization that mutilating children is a little more serious consequence of transgenderist ideology than is admitting men to feminist bastions like women’s sports. Tucker Carlson has contributed to this awareness. But the interview he just held with the creator of a new film on this hideous practice covers up more than it reveals.

Carlson and filmmaker Robby Starbuck are appropriately outraged that children should be systematically abused in this way. But government policies and government officials, captured by radical sexual ideologues, have been the main driver of child abuse for decades, while both liberals and conservatives ignored it. I published articles clearly demonstrating this in the respected conservative news magazine Human Events back in 2002 and 2006, and in my books of 2007 and 2017 and my pieces were based on evidence provided by other investigators and scholars well before that.¹

Briefly, the argument is this: It is undeniable that child abuse overwhelmingly takes place in single-parent homes. Almost all physical child abuse (which is most of it) is perpetrated by single mothers (or in foster care after the children are removed from the mothers). Virtually all sexual abuse is by the mothers’ lovers. Mothers in intact families also account for very little. Biological fathers are responsible for a miniscule proportion and serve as the children’s principal protectors.

Yet trumped-up accusations of child abuse have long been used to rationalize separating children from their fathers through divorce/custody proceedings and creating the very single-parent homes where most abuse occurs. Family court judges, terrified of feminist social workers (and skillful at creating additional business for themselves), readily grant their requests to endanger children.

As I wrote previously:

Seldom does public policy stand in such direct defiance of undisputed truths, to the point where the cause of the problem -- separating children from their fathers -- is presented as the solution, and the solution -- allowing children to grow up with their fathers -- is depicted as the problem. If you want to encourage child abuse, remove the fathers. … Appalling as it sounds, the conclusion is inescapable that we have created a huge army of officials with a vested interest in child abuse.

Conservatives may finally be willing to criticize the transgenderists for the latest outrage, but they are still too frightened to challenge the feminists who started it all: both sexual ideology itself and using other people’s children as political weapons. Had they had the courage to do so decades ago, we might have avoided all this.² But then neutering conservatives, and rendering them cowardly sissies, is another achievement of the feminists.

As a coda to this, Tucker Carlson recently intereviewed a father who found himself helpless as his former wife and feminist judges started physically “changing the sex” of his young son. Again, Carlson was appropriately outraged. But here is what I posted on X (Twitter) in response:

https://twitter.com/DrSBaskerville/status/1784189991976865856

This [too] could have been avoided. As I posted recently (https://twitter.com/DrSBaskerville/status/1782147106423140573…), child abuse -- including some hideous child abuse -- has long been taking place almost entirely in the homes of single mothers. Yet only now that it involves transgender ideology do conservatives start expressing outrage about it. Where were they all these decades, when children were being taken away from their fathers and subject to abuse every bit as horrifying as this? And why are they not expressing any outrage or desire to reform the divorce machinery itself, which is the first weapon that enables all the horrors like this one? It is no accident that this man's son is suffering this at the hands of his "ex-wife". It is certainly why she become his ex-wife, so that she would be "liberated" to do things like this. This is all thoroughly documented in my book, Taken Into Custody (https://stephenbaskerville.com/taken-into-custody…). I realize that Carlson worked for Fox News, who would have dismissed him earlier if he had investigated this properly. But now he is free. My new book will argue that professional conservatives deliberately allow and even encourage harm to come to ordinary people in order that they can express outrage about it and benefit politically. I would like to think this is not true of Carlson. His commentaries are full of little asides indicating that he wants to expose things like this. So what is he waiting for?

1
Stephen Baskerville, “The Truth About Child Abuse,” Human Events, vol. 58, no. 16, 29 April 2002, p. 14; “How the Government Creates Child Abuse,” Human Events Online, 13 April 2006. You can find extensive documentation in my books, Taken Into Custody (2007), chap. 4, and The New Politics of Sex (2017), pp, 193-206.

2
I have not seen a breakdown of how many children undergoing “sex change” procedures are the children of broken homes, but it is almost certainly huge. Even if it is not, the point is the same, because failing to confront feminist extremism is what led to transgenderism. That would make a good project for a graduate student.

If you liked this post from Stephen Baskerville's Newsletter, please share it.

More of my work can be found at www.StephenBaskerville.com.

"Mind control", dissociative states & children

 Perhaps the most controversial theory that readers will find themselves confronted with concerns a phenomenon commonly referred to as “mind control.” Although the concept of mind control has long been a staple of that polluted well-spring of information known as the ‘conspiracy theory’ literature (where it often mingles freely with outlandish tales of reptilian aliens and paranormal activity), it has never been a polite topic of discussion in mainstream culture. The only exposure that most people have had to the idea of mind control is through the often metaphorical, and frequently absurd, images that Hollywood has provided in a decades-long string of films—from The Manchurian Candidate and The Stepford Wives in the 1960s and 1970s, to such recent offerings as Conspiracy Theory and Zoolander (along with the remakes of both The Manchurian Candidate and The Stepford Wives).

Most people are naturally quite skeptical of the notion that someone’s thoughts and actions can be controlled by unseen actors. Particularly in Western culture, where the idea of “free will” is firmly indoctrinated, theories of mind control are inimical to the omnipresent mantra that “we are all responsible for our own actions.” It is quite likely then that scenarios involving mind-controlled killers—whether assassins like Lee Harvey Oswald or Sirhan Sirhan, or serial killers like Henry Lee Lucas or Charles Manson—will be summarily dismissed by many readers. Skeptics though should bear in mind that, contrary to perceptions, mind control is not a fictional creation of novelists and Hollywood screenwriters; to the contrary, there exists a substantial paper trail establishing that the U.S. intelligence community has devoted a vast amount of both human and financial resources, over a period of several decades, to the study of mind control. Along the way, luminaries of numerous social sciences have been recruited and co-opted.

Detailing all the techniques and procedures that have received attention from the Central Intelligence Agency and its brethren is, unfortunately, well beyond the scope of this book. 2 It is possible, however, to provide a rough sketch of what mind control really is—a sketch that will, it is hoped, help to demystify a phenomenon that is not, as it turns out, nearly so esoteric as it may at first appear to be.

The basic methodology of mind control was revealed many decades ago by George Estabrooks, a prominent psychologist/hypnotist who worked under contract to American intelligence agencies. In his book Hypnotism, first published in 1943, Estabrooks teased his audience by noting that the “intelligent reader...will sense that much more is withheld than has been told.” While that was undoubtedly an accurate assessment, Estabrooks nevertheless did reveal enough to allow an informed reader to construct a reasonably accurate picture of the fundamentals of mind control.

The degree to which any given person is susceptible to being mind controlled is a direct function of that persons susceptibility to what are known as “dissociative states.” According to the psychiatric community, dissociative states (or dissociative ‘disorders’) include Amnesia, Fugue State, and what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) but is now generally referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). All of these terms describe the same basic phenomenon: a person who is seemingly in control of his or her actions over a given time period is unable, at a later date, to recall or account for those actions.

As with any category of ‘mental illness,’ there is no dividing line that separates those who are diagnosed with dissociative ‘disorders’ from those who are ‘normal.’ Virtually everyone possesses the ability to experience dissociative states. Many people, for example, are familiar with the phenomenon sometimes referred to as “driving on autopilot.” The scenario generally plays out as follows: you suddenly ‘snap out of it’ just as you are pulling into your parking space at work, and you realize, to your horror, that you can’t remember anything since leaving your house! If this has happened to you, then you have experienced being in a dissociative state. In essence, you drove to work while in a “fugue state,” and you later had “amnesia.” In a similar vein, it could be said that an “alter personality,” which you have no conscious awareness of, drove you to work. In any event, it is clear that someone piloted your car to work in a safe and reasonable manner, and it was someone other than you.’

(...)

As mental health professionals have long recognized, the normal human reaction to highly stressful situations is what is known as the “fight or flight” response. Children, however, typically lack the ability to either fight off or flee from their attackers and abusers. This is particularly true, of course, for very young children. The human brain, that wonderfully resilient organ, therefore reacts in the best way that it can under the circumstances: it allows the child to mentally ‘flee’ from the situation. When the abuse is of an extreme and sustained nature, the brain’s response is to build a virtual wall around the traumatic experiences by creating a separate and distinct ‘alter personality to deal with current and future episodes of abuse.

Although MPD/DID is a ‘disorder’ listed in the DSM IV, the veritable bible of the psychiatric community, the public generally looks upon the notion of multiple personality with a healthy dose of skepticism—a skepticism encouraged by a news and entertainment media apparatus that generally mocks and ridicules the condition, and by a not insignificant number of psychologists and psychiatrists who deny the existence of MPD/DID (strangely enough, many of the most visible and vocal members of the denial crowd tend to be psychologists and psychiatrists who have received funding from the CIA).

(...)

But can this really be done? Is mind control is a real phenomenon, or merely the product of the fertile imaginations of various ‘conspiracy theorists’ and self-described survivors? The answer to that question lies in the answers to several other questions, beginning with:

• Do dissociative states occur naturally in the human species?

As anyone who has ever driven their car to work “on autopilot”—or been caught “daydreaming” or “spacing out”—can testify, the answer is yes (although the vast majority of people would not normally use the term “dissociative state” to describe the experience).

• Can the naturally occurring ability to dissociate be enhanced?

The answer here also appears to be yes, albeit with the caveat that enhancing that ability generally requires the infliction of severe trauma, preferably during the vulnerable childhood years.

• Would the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies be restrained morally or ethically from inflicting such trauma?

How this question is answered depends largely upon the individual reader’s political orientation and level of awareness of national and world events. Serious students of covert operations know that the CIA has a long and very sordid history of sponsoring countless assassinations, civilian massacres, violent coups, and barbaric torture/interrogation centers (and that is just the short list). This bloody, and very well documented, 3 record suggests that there is little, if anything, that the CIA will not attempt to justify in the name of “national security.” Documents released through FOIA requests have revealed that, at the very least, the agency has not shied away from funding and sponsoring studies in which very young children have been dosed with LSD continuously for several weeks.

• If we accept that dissociation is a real and naturally occurring human ability, and that the tendency to dissociate can be enhanced, and that the intelligence community’s hands are not tied by ethical concerns, then the final, and most critical, question becomes: can enhanced dissociative states, once created, be controlled?.

George Estabrooks was clearly convinced that that was indeed the case.

(...)

The vulnerability of children to dissociative states brought on by traumatic abuse is one of the reasons that the CIA and other intelligence agencies have played key roles in the creation of relatively mainstream satanic groups, as well as in denying the existence of underground satanic cults engaged in violent criminal enterprises. Some of the available evidence suggests that an array of satanic groups have served as intelligence agency ‘fronts’ for mind control operations—which actually makes perfect sense, considering that if the goal is to severely traumatize children, then surely nothing compares to the seemingly outlandish stories told by those who have survived what has been dubbed “Satanic Ritual Abuse” (SRA).

Verdier took note in his book of the fact that one of “the most pronounced emotional experiences that a human being can undergo is having his or her life threatened. Threats of death are used as a basic tool by brainwashing Communists. Even among them, however, this threat is used sparingly, for they know that humans quickly adapt to this type of threat, especially if it is repeatedly given but never carried out. In order to avoid this routinization of stressful emotional situations, they have been known to casually execute prisoners for the apparent effect it has on others.” The actions that Verdier predictably attributed to “brainwashing Communists” precisely mirror the stories that have been told repeatedly by self-described survivors of ritual abuse. These victims speak of receiving frequent death threats, directed against both themselves and their family members. They speak also of having those threats reinforced through their forced witnessing of, and even participate in, the killing of others.

There has been a tremendous amount of energy expended to discredit all such stories. At the forefront of the movement to deny the validity of the stories told by countless survivors is the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, a group led by a truly vile coalition of CIA-funded psychiatrists and accused (and in some cases, convicted) pedophiles. Also playing a key role in the movement are Paul and Shirley Eberle, the authors of a purportedly authoritative book entitled The Politics of Child Abuse. The Eberles’ book attempts to lay the blame for virtually all child abuse accusations and prosecutions on overzealous prosecutors, therapists and parents. That argument might be a little more credible, however, if the Eberles themselves were not known to Los Angeles police as distributors of child pornography—a fact that media outlets conveniently and rather consistently ignore while touting the Eberles as authorities in the field of child abuse.

Form: Programmed to Kill The Politics of Serial Murder

David McGowan

Adventures of ahimsa follower - 1

Part 2 →

 Ozarksville, Missouri. Rhoda May Gruber. Mrs. Efrim’s hold-up man. George Brush’s criminal record: Incarceration No. 3.

In spite of the absorbing occupation that entered his life with the appearance of Elizabeth and the problems of her education, George Brush’s mind was filled with the coming interview on Sunday. In order to quiet his anticipation he decided to fill in the time with work. There were a number of professional calls in the vicinity waiting to be made, but first he decided to journey some distance and confer with a certain mathematics teacher and high-school principal at Ozarksville in lower Missouri. Arriving at the town, he discovered that he had more than a day’s free time on his hands—the man he had come to see was away on a tour of inspection in the rural districts—and he decided to put into practice a plan that had long appealed to him. He resolved to pass a day in silence, following the example of his master, Gandhi. From four o’clock on Thursday until four o’clock on Friday not a word would pass his lips; and to mark the occasion still more solemnly he decided that not a particle of food would enter them.

He now communicated with the outside world by means of paper and pencil. The staff of the Baker Hotel was astonished to discover that its guest had been visited by so sudden an attack of laryngitis. On Thursday night, Mr. Baker, staring at the sky from the railing of his veranda, asked Brush whether he thought it was going to snow. Brush drew out his pad and gravely wrote the word, “No.” He was mistaken. The next morning he woke up to find that it had been snowing during the night; it grew warmer, however, the snow changed to rain and presently cleared to a mild winter day. He spent the morning in his room, light-headed from hunger, but rendered strangely happy by what he took to be the spiritual benefits of the experiment. Soon after two o’clock he started out for a walk, having put some apples in his pocket in anticipation of the stroke of four. He was strolling down a street looking at the houses to right and left when his glance fell upon an arresting sight. A little girl was sitting on the front steps of a house and a few yards from the sidewalk; around her neck was a placard which read, “I AM A LIAR.” Brush stared at the little girl and the little girl, pursing up her mouth importantly, stared at him. He hesitated only a moment, however. He walked up the path to the house and, drawing out his pencil and pad, wrote:

“What is your name?”

The little girl took his writing materials from him and wrote, “Rhoda May Gruber.”

“You can talk?” wrote Brush.

Rhoda May insisted on being given the pencil and paper again. She wrote, “Yes.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Ten years.”

“Talk. You can talk,” wrote Brush.

“Yes,” wrote Rhoda May, “only I cannot talk now because I have been noty.”

“Are your father and mother home?”

“Yes.”

Brush hesitated, but it was too late. The Grubers had become aware of the unusual conversation on their front steps. They came out upon the porch.

“What’s goin’ on here?” asked Mr. Gruber, darkly.

Brush smiled reassuringly up at him.

Mrs. Gruber said, shrilly: “Rhoda May, git up off that step. Come here to me.”

Mr. Gruber followed her with his eyes. “Take that thing off your neck,” he said. “What did this man say to you?”

Mrs. Gruber gave Rhoda May a sharp pull and clutched her to her skirts. Rhoda May began to cry. Mr. Gruber turned back to Brush.

“What do you want? Eh? What is it you want?”

Brush began writing on his pad.

“You’re deef-’n’-dumb, is that it?”

Brush shook his head, still smiling.

“You’re not deef-’n’-dumb? Then what is it? . . . Rhoda May, what did this man say to you? . . . There’s something funny about this,” he said, raising his eyebrows significantly. “You’d better run over to the Jones’ telephone and call Mr. Warren or the sheriff.” Then he turned back to Brush. “What is it you want? Are you selling something?”

Brush raised his head from his work, shook it, pointed at Rhoda May, then at the placard, and went back to his writing.

Rhoda May’s wails rose louder. Her father slapped her smartly and roared: “Git in the house. Git in there. . . . You git in there, too, Mary. I’ll tend to this.”

Mrs. Gruber put out one trembling hand. “Now do be careful, Herman.”

Brush now presented his statement: “I will be back later to talk to you about that punishment. I think you’ll see what I mean.”

Whereupon, walking down the path backwards, with gestures of cordiality, he returned to the sidewalk.

“You show up here again,” called Gruber, “and I’ll lick the hide off you, d’ya hear? I’ll get the police on you, d’ya hear?”

Brush nodded, making gestures of pacification with his hands.

“You come around here and I’ll knock your teeth out!” bellowed Gruber, and went into the house, slamming the door on Rhoda May’s howls.

Four o’clock found Brush several miles from town, stumbling about in the mud of the road. As he looked at his watch and found that the vow was accomplished, he was filled with a satisfaction that was almost ecstasy. He turned back toward the town and did a quarter of an hour’s running, then slowed down and ate an apple. He gazed with affection at the squatters’ frame cabins, at the hound dogs that hesitantly approached the gates in the wire fences, at the chickens that had ventured out in the pale wintry sunshine. The path amid the dried weeds at the side of the road gave way to a sidewalk of planks. In the distance he could see a few rusty automobiles drawn up before the long arcade made by the projecting fronts of the stores beside the post-office.

At the edge of the town he came upon a store, or rather two stores thrown into one, that bore a sign: “N. Efrim, Dry Goods and Notions.” One door had been boarded up. In the windows lay a disordered mass of such objects as dress patterns, slates, kites, and licorice whips. It occurred to Brush that he might buy some milk chocolate here, and seeing a row of dolls in the window, that he might take one of them as a peace-offering to the Grubers.

Mrs. Efrim was sitting by the window, knitting, when Brush entered the store. She was a wrinkled old woman with the head of an intelligent and dolorous monkey. Over a thick woolen dress she was wearing a frayed sweater, and over the sweater a short greenish-black cape trimmed with rusty braid. She pushed her spectacles farther down her nose and looked over them at Brush.

“I’d . . . I’d like a doll, please,” said Brush.

Mrs. Efrim laid aside her knitting and, putting her hands on her knees, painfully rose to her feet. They inspected the dolls together.

“It’s for a girl ten years old,” said Brush. “I guess you may know her. Her name’s Rhoda May Gruber.”

Mrs. Efrim nodded. Brush told her about the placard.

“Ain’t that terrible, now!” said Mrs. Efrim.

They looked at one another and became great friends. Both were pining for conversation. They agreed that that was no way to bring up children. Brush, a little mysteriously, alluded to the fact that the bringing up of little girls had recently become a problem in his life. Mrs. Efrim had six children and Brush was glad to hear about their good and bad traits. He suddenly remembered that he was hungry, and offered Mrs. Efrim an apple, adding that he had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, but that he felt fine. When he came to pay for the doll and the milk chocolate he laid a ten-dollar bill on the counter. Mrs. Efrim, making change, had a moment’s hesitation before the cash register.

“I’ll go and change it at the drug store,” said Brush.

“No, no. I have it. You’ll see. I have it fine, only it’s hid.”

“Hid?”

Mrs. Efrim looked at him and nodded mysteriously. “It don’t do to have money in the till these days. No, sir. It don’t hurtyour knowing where it’s kep’. Look!” Whereupon she put her hand behind a bolt of cloth and drew out a packet of one dollar bills and pushing aside some spools of ribbon came upon a store of fives. “That’s the way we do it.”

“I see.”

The purchase was completed, but Brush lingered on, looking about the shop enviously.

“Young man,” said Mrs. Efrim, who had again seated herself by the window, “do you know how to thread a needle?”

“I certainly do, Mrs. Efrim. I can sew pretty well, too.”

“Well, my eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. My children—every morning before they go off to school and to work—every morning they thread me up five or six needles, but sometimes they give out. Now, if you could thread me two or three needles . . .”

“I’d like to.”

So it was that when the hold-up man entered Mrs. Efrim’s store he came upon Brush standing by the window, threading needles.

“Stick up your hands,” he roared. “Stick’m up, you two!”

“Ach Gott!” cried Mrs. Efrim.

“Stand where you are and keep your mouths shut. One peep out of you and you’re dead. Do you speak English?—Eh? Spika Inglis?”

“Yes,” replied Brush and Mrs. Efrim.

“All right, then. Now stay where you are.”

This burglar was a nervous young man, new to the work and considerably hampered by the fact that the bandana handkerchief which he had tied about his nose was continually slipping and falling about his shoulders. He was given to crouching and glaring, and what he lacked in terrifying appearance he tried to make up for by shouting and by pointing his revolver squarely at the noses of his victims. He slowly crept over to the counter, keeping his eyes and his aim on Brush, opened the cash register and swept the silver change out of the drawer. Then he began uncertainly looking about for objects of value. Brush and Mrs. Efrim stood side by side with arms upraised. Brush’s face shone with happy excitement. He glanced downward, trying to meet Mrs. Efrim’s eyes in an exchange of intimate amusement.

“What are you laughing at, you big hyena,” said the burglar. “Wipe that smile off your face or I’ll plug you.”

Brush assumed a grave expression, and the burglar continued his search. There was a long pause, filled only by the rumblings in Brush’s famished stomach.

At last the burglar turned and said: “I didn’t come in here for two dollars and a quarter, you two. There’s some more money somewhere here and I’m going to get it.” He addressed Brush: “Take off your coat and throw it on the floor,—here by me. One extra move from you and you get it in the belly. Do you hear?”

“Yes,” said Brush.

The burglar rested the revolver on the counter, retied the bandana about his face, and carefully went through Brush’s pockets. He found two apples, a purse containing two dollars, a nail file, copies ofKing Lear and other classics, some newspaper clippings about India and an application for a marriage license.“Can I say something?” asked Brush.

“What the hell’s the matter with you—can you say something? What is it?”

“There’s hardly any money in that coat, but I know where you can find some. . . . I’ll pay you back, Mrs. Efrim, when it’s all over.”

The burglar stared at Brush, pointing the revolver at his eyes. “Well, where is it?”

“I won’t say anything if you point that gun at me like that,” said Brush. “You ought to know better than that.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“You don’t really mean to kill us, but you might kill us by accident.”

“I don’t, eh?”

“No, of course not. Notkill. Never point a gun at a person. That’s a rule everybody ought to know.”

“Well, Ido mean to shoot you, so keep your face shut. Now where’s this money you were talking about?”

“Iwant to tell you about it, but I won’t tell you until you point that gun at the window.”

The burglar turned the barrel a fraction to the left and shouted, “All right now, spit it out.”

“You’ll find some money on the shelf behind the cash register,” said Brush, calmly, “behind that roll of blue cloth.”

“Gott—enu!” cried Mrs. Efrim. “How can you tell him that! You’re crazy! Telling him that!”

The man was looking at the bolt of cloth suspiciously: “So you say! So you say! What’s the trick, eh?”

Brush said in a low, urgent whisper to Mrs. Efrim: “I’ll pay you back, Mrs. Efrim. He needs it a lot more than we do. I swear to you you won’t lose a cent.” Then he continued to the burglar, “And there’s some more in five-dollar bills behind those spools of ribbon.”

Mrs. Efrim wailed still more loudly than before. Brush entered into an earnest debate with her. The hold-up man, still distrustful of the hiding-places, tried to follow the argument.

“You see, Mrs. Efrim, this is very interesting to me, because I have a theory about thieves and robbers. I’ll explain it to you afterwards. Really, I’ll pay you it all back.”

“I don’t want your money. I want my own,” said Mrs. Efrim.

The hold-up man finally outshouted them: “Say, shut up, you two. What’s the idea? Who do you think I am, anyway? I’m not fooling. I’m serious. Now what’s all this about money over here?”

Brush repeated the directions. The man extracted the money from its hiding-places.

“All right, now. Where’s some more. Out with it.”

“That’s all I know about over there,” said Brush, “but if you’ll let me put my hand down I’ll get you some I have here.”

“Where?”

“In my . . . my watch pocket, here.”

“Say, what is this?” cried the man, as though in pain. “You keep your hands up or I’ll shoot you.”

“Well, I’d like to give you twenty dollars I have here.”

“Keep your hands up! Say, are you yellow or cuckoo, or what? Keep your hands up. Where’s this money?”

Brush motioned with his chin toward the pocket.

There was silence for a moment while they stared at one another.

Brush said, quietly: “You want money, don’t you? That’s what you came for. Well, I want to give you some. You need it a lot more than I do. Only you won’t let me put my hand down to get it.”

At that moment a gust of wind flung open the warped door of Mrs. Efrim’s shop and then slammed it shut with a tremendous detonation. The current of air rushed through the room, tossing the window curtains toward the ceiling and flinging a shower of the exposed objects over the floor. The burglar was so alarmed that the gun went off in his hand and the bullet shattered the window pane. Mrs. Efrim, wailed louder than ever. The burglar let fall the revolver, jumped across the counter, and sank on one knee, still crying: “What is this, anyway? What’s going on here?”

Brush picked up the gun and planted himself in the middle of the room. With furrowed brow, he pointed the barrel towards a corner of the ceiling.

“Nowyou hold up your hands,” he said. “I don’t believe in weapons of any kind, but I want you to stay there while I say something.”

The hold-up man, swearing softly, stooped so that only his eyes appeared above the counter. Mrs. Efrim began pulling at Brush’s sleeve, “Now, you make him give back that money before you do another thing.”

“No, Mrs. Efrim, no! Don’t you understand? This is a kind of experiment. We’re going to give this man a new start in life, don’t yousee? I’ll pay you back every cent that he’s taken.”

“I don’t want your money. I want my own money. That’s all I want. And I’m going to phone Mr. Warren this minute.”

“No, Mrs. Efrim.”

“Yes, I will.”

“Mrs. Efrim,” said Brush severely, “you move over there and put up your hands.”

“Ach, g’rechter Gott!”

“Put up your hands, Mrs. Efrim. I’m sorry, but I know what I’m doing. Burglar,” continued Brush, quietly, “what’s your name?”

There was no answer.

“Do you know a trade of any kind?”

More silence.

“Have you been holding up people long?”

“Oh, shoot me and get this over with,” muttered the burglar, contemptuously, but remained in hiding behind the counter. Brush was not abashed. He continued:

“I’m going to see that you leave this store with about fifty dollars in all. That’ll give you room and board for a while. You go somewhere where you can think things over. Now listen. Even I can see that you’ll never be a very good hold-up man.”

Brush was entering into a discourse on the rewards of honesty when an unfortunate interruption occurred. A customer opened the door of the shop, an old woman who promptly put her hand over her mouth and screamed through it:

“Why, Mrs. Efrim, what’s the trouble?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Robinson,” replied Mrs. Efrim, sullenly. “I don’t know at all.”

Brush turned his head a fraction and said, curtly: “You can’t come in now because we’re busy here. Come back in half an hour.”

“Mrs. Efrim,” gasped Mrs. Robinson, “I’ll call Mr. Warren,” and disappeared.

“That woman’s coming in here has spoiled everything,” said Brush, lowering his gun with an impatient sigh. “I guess we’ll have to hurry.—Mrs. Efrim, there’s a way he can escape through the back of the house, isn’t there?”

“Don’t ask me no questions,” replied Mrs. Efrim. “I’m not going to tell you a thing.”

Brush walked up to the counter and laid some bills on it. “Here’s your money,” he said to the burglar. “The price of the gun’s in it, too. Now you can go. You’d better go out through there.”

The man snatched up the money and, sidling about the room, filled up his cheeks with air, made an explosive sound, and dashed out of the door.

Brush put down the gun carefully. “That was awfully interesting, wasn’t it?” he said, with a constrained laugh. “Now I want to pay you what I owe you.”

Mrs. Efrim did not answer. She crossed the room and closed the till with a bang.

“Mrs. Efrim, don’t be mad at me. I had to act that way to live up to my ideals.”

“You’re crazy.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You are. You’re crazy. Whoever heard of anybody going out of their way to give money to a burglar. Yes, and letting him go free, too. No, I won’t take your money. Look at all that’s been took from you already. Now go away before the police come and arrest you.”

“I’m not afraid of the police.”

“Now you mind what I say—go away.”

“Mrs. Efrim, if I’d done anything wrong I’d apologize. I owe you about thirty-five dollars . . .”

Mr. Warren, the town constable, appeared at the door followed by some men and by Mrs. Robinson.

“Now come out quiet,” commanded Mr. Warren. “Hold up your hands and come quiet.”

Brush said to Mrs. Efrim, smiling: “He thinks I did it! . . . Here I am, Officer.” Mr. Warren handcuffed him. “Oh—oh, Mr. Warren,” said Brush. “I hope I can eat with those things on, because I haven’t eaten anything but an apple for twenty-four hours and I’m very hungry.”

“Lock up your store and come with us, Mrs. Efrim,” said Mr. Warren. “We’ll want your story of what’s been going on.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” said Mrs. Efrim, shrilly. “It was just foolishness. No, I’m not going to leave this store. No, I’m not.”

The officer insisted, however, and presently the procession was making its way down Main Street. As luck would have it Mr. and Mrs. Gruber were standing under the arcade.

“Look! Herman, look!” cried Mrs. Gruber, catching her husband’s arm. “That’s the man!—The kidnapper!”

“Charley Warren,” said Mr. Gruber, “I charge that man with attempting to kidnap my daughter Rhoda May.”

“Follow in behind, Herman,” said Warren.

When they reached the jail, Brush was shown into a cell. He ate another apple, sighed heavily and went to sleep.

Thorton Wilder

Heaven's My Destination