Today in Labor History April 13, 1953: CIA Director Allen Dulles launched the MKUltra mind control program. The program ran from 1953 to 1973. It involved giving human subjects LSD and other drugs, often without their knowledge. Then, researchers would try to “weaken” their minds and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. Over 7,000 U.S. war veterans were unwitting test subjects, as well as many Canadian and U.S. civilians. The program was a continuation of Nazi mind-control experiments, which utilized mescaline against Jews and Soviet prisoners, hoping it could be exploited as a “truth” serum. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor of the CIA, recruited many of these Nazi torturers in the wake of World War II to exploit their knowledge and research. MKUltra was headed by Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, who later devised plans to kill Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar, and saturating his shoes with radioactive thallium to make his beard fall out. He also tried to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of Congo, with poison. Several well-known liberals and radicals knowingly participated in MKUltra and its OSS predecessors, either as test subjects (e.g., Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Hunter), or as researchers (e.g., anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson). Others who have been alleged to have been victims or volunteers include Sirhan Sirhan, Ted Kaczyinski, Charles Manson, and Whitey Bulger.

For a really fascinating look at Margaret Mead's and Gregory Bateson’s exploration with hallucinogens and their connection to MKUltra, check out the recent book, Tripping on Utopia, by Benjamin Breen. And for a truly amazing documentary on the 1961 CIA-supported coup in Congo, check out the 2024 documentary, “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat.” But the film is really about so much more than the coup. It covers Cold War machinations, propaganda, and covert operations in the early 1960s; the superpowers’ jockeying for control of puppet regimes and spheres of influence in the global south; the Pan-African movement; racism in the U.S., the Civil Rights movement, and the repression against it; and, of course, jazz music, including tons of interviews and live footage of Lumumba, Ghanian president and revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah, activist and writer Andree Madeleine Blouin, Malcolm X, Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Miriam Makeba, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, surrealist artist Rene Magritte.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #cia #mindcontrol #torture #lsd #mkultra #castro #nazis #oss #allenginsberg #lumumba #malcolmx #coltrane #jazz #imperialism #kenkesey #margaretmead #charlesmanson #mescaline #castro #soviet #coldwar #books #nonfiction #ussr #communism #film #documentary @bookstadon

Today In Labor History April 7, 1870: German-Jewish anarchist and pacifist, Gustav Landauer, was born. He was friends with, and influenced, the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. He served as the Commissioner of Enlightenment and Public Instruction during the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, during the German Revolution of 1918–1919, but was killed when the republic was overthrown. He was also the grandfather of film director, Mike Nichols (The Odd Couple, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Graduate).

Today in Labor History April 6, 1919: The Bavarian Soviet Republic was declared. Novelist, B. Traven (Death Ship, Treasure of the Sierra Madre), served on its Central Council of Workers, Soldiers and Farmers. The socialist republic was quashed a month later by the Freikorps, which included Rudolf Hess and other future members of the Nazi party.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #soviet #socialism #communism #germany #nazis #btraven #fiction #fascism #writer #author #books @bookstadon

#Dugin er en som fôrer #Putin med #ideologi, og bakgrunnen hans er viktig.

Det er jo alltid vanskelig å skille mellom hva som er #propganada og at man blir sitt eget ekkokammer. Men det virker som om denne mannen ikke stiller spørsmål ved egne ideer, og det er den ene ideen som tar den andre.

Vesten har aldri ønsket noen krig med #Soviet/#Russland, men de har vist seg til å ikke kunne stoles på, noe de demosntrerte ved å invadere #Ukraiana

https://www.abcnyheter.no/nyheter/norge/2025/04/06/196080178/putins-filosof-aleksandr-dugin-ser-likhetstrekk-mellom-usa-og-russland

Sure, I have no idea what the Soviet-era Armenian art film called The Colour of the Pomegranates is about, but each shot is so carefully and beautifully staged like a photograph or painting that it is hard not to find it intoxicating. Free on YouTube.

Tatyana Oranskaya, 'Chinese revolutionary woman' (1960)

Today in Labor History March 29, 1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. They were executed at Sing Sing in 1953. The Rosenberg’s sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol were adopted by Abel Meeropol, the composer of “Strange Fruit,” (made famous by Billie Holiday). The sons maintained their parents’ innocence. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, decoded Soviet cables showed that their father had, in fact, collaborated, but that their mother was innocent. They continued to fight for the mother’s pardon, but Obama refused to grant it. The Rosenberg’s sons were among the last students to attend the anarchist Modern School, in Lakewood, New Jersey, before it finally shut its doors in 1958.

The Modern School movement began in 1901, in Barcelona, Spain, when Francisco Ferrer opened his Escuela Moderna. It was one of the very first Spanish schools to be fully secular, co-educational, and open to all students, regardless of class. His ideas were so popular that 40 more Modern Schools opened in Barcelona in just a few years, while 80 other schools adopted his textbooks. In 1909, there were mass protests and a General Strike against Spanish intervention in Morocco. The state responded with a week of terror and repression, during which they slaughtered over 600 workers and falsely executed Ferrer as an instigator of the protests. His execution led to worldwide protests. Modern Schools started to pop up outside of Spain, inspired by his original Escuela Moderna, including 20 in the U.S.

For more on the Modern School movement, read my article: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2022/04/30/the-modern-school-movement/

Today in Labor History March 23, 1918: 101 IWW members went on trial in Chicago for opposing World War I and for violating the Espionage Act. In September, 1917, 165 IWW leaders were arrested for conspiring to subvert the draft and encourage desertion. Their trial lasted five months, the longest criminal trial in American history up to that time. The jury found them all guilty. The judge sentenced Big Bill Haywood and 14 others to 20 years in prison. 33 others were given 10 years each. They were also fined a total of $2,500,000. The trial virtually destroyed the IWW. Haywood jumped bail and fled to the USSR, where he remained until his death 10 years later.

Today in Labor History March 22, 1920: Azeri army soldiers, in collaboration with Azeri civilians, attacked Armenian civilians in Shusha (Nagorno Karabakh) and destroyed the Armenian half of the city. The pogrom continued through March 26. The true death toll may have been well over 20,000. Between 1905 and 1920, there were at least 9 pogroms in the region, against both Armenians and Azeris, with a death toll of at least 57,000, and possibly well over 100,000. At least another 10 pogroms resumed after the fall of the Soviet Union, with hundreds more people slaughtered.

Today in Labor History March 22, 1943: The Nazi-affiliated Schutzmannschaft Battalion burnt alive everyone from the village of Khatyn, Belarus, near Minsk. They did it in retaliation for an attack on German troops by Soviet partisans. Himmler created Schutzmannschaft police units in 1941. By 1942, they had over 300,000 members. They slaughtered Jews throughout the Baltics, Ukraine and Belarus. They also served as guards at forced labor camps. In total, Nazis and Nazi collaborators slaughtered over 2 million people just in Belarus during the three years of Nazi occupation. This was nearly 25% of the entire population. Of these, 800,000 were Jews, or about 90% of the Jewish population.

A new DLC came out, I sat down to play it and ended up replaying the original game, which inspired me to do a small remake of a previous render.

Today in Labor History March 13, 1968: Student demonstrations in Warsaw led to street riots. All Polish universities went out on strike against the repressive communist regime, with students occupying the campus buildings. The strike, which came in the wake of Soviet withdrawals of diplomatic relations with Israel, in protest of the 1967 war, spread throughout the country, leading to a violent government crackdown and antisemitic purge that was branded as anti-Zionism. Thousands of Jews fled the country because of political harassment and being fired from their jobs.