[WILLIAM BURROUGHS]

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                        THE E LECTRONIC R EVOLUTION

                                    BY

                           WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS

In THE INVISIBLE GENERATION first published in IT and in the Los Angeles
Free Press in 1966 and reprinted in THE JOB, I consider the potential of
thousands of people with recorders, portable and stationary, messages
passed along like signal drums, a parody of the President's speech up and
down the balconies, in and out open windows, through walls, over
courtyards, taken up by barking dogs, muttering bums, music, traffic down
windy streets, across parks and soccer fields. Illusion is a revolutionary
weapon:

TO SPREAD RUMOURS Put ten operators with carefully prepared recordings out
at rush hour and see how quick the words get around. People don't know
where they heard it but they heard it.

TO DISCREDIT OPPONENTS Take a recorded Wallace speech, cut in stammering
coughs sneezes hiccoughs snarls pain screams fear whimperings apoplectic
sputterings slobbering drooling idiot noises sex and animal sound effects
and play it back in the streets subway stations parks political rallies.

AS A FRONT LINE WEAPON TO PRODUCE AND ESCALATE RIOTS There is nothing
mystical about this operation. Riot sound effects can produce an actual
riot in a riot situation. RECORDED POLICE WHISTLES WILL DRAW COPS. RECORDED
GUNSHOTS, AND THEIR GUNS ARE OUT.

"MY GOD, THEY'VE KILLING US." A guardsman said later: "I heard and saw my
buddy go down, his face covered in blood (turned out he'd been hit by a
stone from a sling shot) and I thought, well this is it." BLOODY WEDNESDAY.
A DAZED AMERICA COUNTED 23 DEAD AND 32 WOUNDED, 6 CRITICALLY.

Here is a run of the mill, pre-riot situation. Protesters have been urged
to demonstrate peacefully, police and guardsmen to exercise restraint. Ten
tape recorders strapped under their coats, playback, and record controlled
from lapel buttons. They have prerecorded riot sound effects from Chicago,
Paris, Mexico City, Kent/Ohio. If they adjust sound levels of recordings to
surrounding sound levels, they will not be detected. Police scuffle with
the demonstrators. The operators converge. turn on Chicago record, play
back, move on to the next scuffles, record playback, keep moving. Things
are hotting up, a cop is down groaning. shrill chorus of recorded pig
squeals and parody groans.

Could you cool a riot by recording the calmest cop and the most reasonable
demonstrator? Maybe! However, it's a lot easier to start trouble that to
stop it. Just pointing out that cut/ups on the tape recorder can be used as
a weapon. You'll observe that the operators are making a cutup as they go.
They are cutting in Chicago, Paris, Mexico City, Kent Ohio with the present
sound effects at random and that is a cutup.

AS A LONG RANGE WEAPON TO SCRAMBLE AND NULLIFY ASSOCIATIONAL LINES PUT DOWN
BY MASS MEDIA

The control of the mass media depends on laying down lines of association.
When the lines are cut the associational connections are broken.

President Johnson burst into a swank apartment, held three girls at
gunpoint, 26 miles north of Saigon yesterday.

you can cut the mutter line of the mass media and put the altered mutter
line out in the streets with a tape recorder. Consider the mutter line of
the daily press. It goes up with the morning papers, millions of people
read the same words. In different ways, of course. A motion praising Mr.
Callaghan's action in banning the South African Cricket Tour has spoiled
the colonel's breakfast. All reacting one way or another to the paper world
or unseen events which becomes an integral part of your reality. You will
notice that this process is continually subject to random juxtapostation.
Just what sign did you see in the Green Park station as you glanced up from
the PEOPLE? Just who called as you were reading your letter in the TIMES?
What were you reading when your wife broke a dish in the kitchen? An unreal
paper world and yet completely real because it is actually happening.
Mutter line of the EVENING NEWS, TV. Fix yourself on millions of people all
watching Jesse James or the Virginian at the same time. International
mutter line of the weekly news magazine always dated a week ahead. Have you
noticed it's the kiss of death to be on the front cover of TIME. Madam Nhu
was there when her husband was killed and her government fell. Verwoerd was
on the front cover of TIME when a demon tapeworm gave the order for his
death through a messenger of the same. Read the Bible, kept to himself, no
bad habits, you know the type. Old reliable, read all about it.

So stir in news stories, TV plays, stock market quotations, adverts and put
the altered mutter line out in the streets.

The underground press serves as the only effective counter to a growing
power and more sophisticated technique used by establishment mass media to
falsify, misrepresent, misquote, rule out of consideration as a PRIORI
ridiculous or simply ignore and blot out of existence: data, books,
discoveries that they consider prejudicial to establishment interest.

I suggest that the underground press could perform this function much more
effectively by the use of cut/up techniques. For example, prepare cut/ups
of the ugliest reactionary statements you can find and surround them with
the ugliest pictures. Now give it the drool, slobber, animal noise
treatment and put it out on the mutter line with recorders. Run a scramble
page in every issue of a transcribed tape recorded cut/up of news, radio
and TV. Put the recordings out on the mutter line before the paper hits the
stand. It gives you a funny feeling to see a headline that's been going
round and round inside your head. The underground press could add a mutter
line to their adverts and provide a unique advertising service. Cut the
product in with pop tunes, cut the product in with advertising slogans and
jingles of other products and siphon off the sales. Anybody that doubts
that these techniques work has only to put them to the test. The techniques
here described are in use by the CIA and agents of other countries ...Ten
years ago they were making systematic street recordings in every district
of Paris. I recall the Voice of America man in Tangier and a room full of
tape recorders and you could hear some strange sounds through the wall.
Kept to himself, hello in the hall. Nobody was ever allowed in that room,
not even a fatima. Of course, there are many technical elaborations like
long-range directional mikes. When cutting the prayer call in with hog
grunts it doesn't pay to be walking around the market place with a portable
tape recorder.

An article in NEW SCIENTIST June 4, 1970, page 470, entitled ' Electronic
Arts of Non communication ' by Richard C French gives the clue for more
precise technical instructions.

In 1968, with the help of Ian Sommerville and Anthony Balch, I took a short
passage of my recorded voice and cut it into intervals of one twenty -
fourth of a second movie tape (movie tape is larger and easier to splice)-
and rearranged the order of the 24th second intervals of recorded speech.
The original words are quite unintelligible but new words emerge. The voice
is still there and you can immediately recognise the speaker. Also the tone
of the voice remains. If the tone is friendly, hostile, sexual, poetic,
sarcastic lifeless, despairing, this will be apparent in the altered
sequence.

I did not realise at the time that I was using a technique that has been in
existence since 1881 ...I quote from Mr. French's article ... "designs for
speech scramblers go back to 1881 and the desire to make telephone and
radio communications unintelligible to third parties has been with us ever
since"... The message is scrambled in transmission and then unscrambled at
the other end. There are many of these speech scrambling devices that work
on different principles... "another device which saw service during the war
was the time division scrambler. The signal was chopped up into elements
.005 cm long. These elements are taken in groups or frames and rearranged
in a new sequence. Imagine that the speech recorded is recorded on magnetic
tape which is cut into pieces .02 long and the pieces rearranged into a new
sequence. This can actually be done and gives a good idea what speech
sounds like when scrambled in this way."

This I had done in 1968. And this is an extension of the cut/up method. The
simplest cut/up cuts a page down the middle and across the middle into four
sections. Section 1 is then placed with section 4 and section 3 with
section 2 in a new sequence. Carried further we can break the page down
into smaller and smaller units in altered sequences.

The original purpose of scrambling devices was to make the message
unintelligible without scrambling the code. Another use for speech
scramblers could be to impose thought control on a mass scale. consider the
Human body and nervous system as unscrambling devices. A common virus like
the cold sore could sensitize the subject to unscramble messages. Drugs
like LSD and Dim-N could also act as unscrambling devices. Moreover, the
mass media could sensitize millions of people to receive scrambled versions
of the same set of data. Remember that when the human nervous system
unscrambles a scrambled message this will seem to the subject like his very
own ideas which just occurred to him, which indeed it did.

Take a card, any card. In most cases he will not suspect its extraneous
origin. that is the run of the mill newspaper reader who receives the
scrambled message uncritically and assumes that it reflects his own
opinions independently arrived at. On the other other hand, the subject may
recognise or suspect the extraneous origins of voices that are literally
hatching out in his head. Then we have a classic syndrome of paranoid
psychosis. Subject hears voices. Anyone can be made to hear voices with
scrambling techniques. It is not difficult to expose him to the actual
scrambled message, any part of which can be made intelligible. This can be
done with street recorders, recorders in cars, doctored radio and TV sets.
In his own flat if possible, if not in some bar or restaurant he frequents.
If he doesn't talk to himself, he soon will do. You bug his flat. Now he is
really round the bend hearing his own voice out of radio and TV broadcasts
and the conversation of passing strangers. See how easy it is? Remember the
scrambled message is partially unintelligible and in any case he gets the
tone. Hostile white voices unscrambled by a Negro will also activate by
association every occasion on which he has been threatened or humiliated by
whites. To carry it further you can use recordings of voices known to him.
You can turn him against his friends by hostile scrambled messages in a
friend's voice. This will activate ll his disagreements with that friend.
You can condition him to like his enemies by friendly scrambled messages in
enemy voices.

On the other hand the voices can be friendly and reassuring. He is now
working for the CIA, the GPU, or whatever, and these are his orders. They
now have an agent who has no information to give away and who doesn't have
to be paid. and he is now completely under control. If he doesn't obey
orders they can give him the hostile voice treatment. No, "They" are not
God or super technicians from outer space. Just technicians operating with
well-known equipment and using techniques that can be duplicated by anyone
else who can buy and operate this equipment.

To see how scrambling technique could work on a a mass scale, imagine that
a news magazine like TIME got out a whole issue a week before publication
and filled it with news based on predictions following a certain line,
without attempting the impossible, giving our boys a boost in every story
and the Commies as many defeats and casualties as possible, a whole new
issue of TIME formed from slanted prediction of future news. Now imagine
this scrambled out through the mass media.

With minimal equipment you can do the same thing on a smaller scale. You
need a scrambling device, TV, radio, two video cameras, a ham radio station
and a simple photo studio with a few props and actors. For a start you
scramble the news all together and spit it out every which way on ham radio
and street recorders. You construct fake news broadcasts on video camera.
For the pictures you can use mostly old footage. Mexico City will do for a
riot in Saigon Chile you can use the Londonderry pictures. Nobody knows the
difference. Fires, earthquakes, plane crashes can be moved around. for
example, here is a plane crash in Toronto 108 dead. so move the picture of
the Barcelona plane crash over to Toronto and Toronto to Barcelona. And you
scramble your fabricated news in with actual news broadcasts.

You have an advantage which your opposing player does not have. He must
conceal his manipulations. You are under no such necessity. In fact you can
advertise the fact that you are writing the news in advance and trying to
make it happen by techniques which anybody can use. And that makes you
NEWS. And TV personality as well, if you play it right. You want the widest
possible circulation for your cut/up video tapes. Cut/up techniques could
swamp the mass media with total illusion.

Fictional dailies retroactively cancelled the San Francisco earthquake and
Halifax explosion as journalistic hoaxes, and doubt released from the skin
law extendible and ravenous, consumed all the facts of history.

Mr French concludes his article ..."The use of modern microelectric
integrated circuits could lower the cost of speech scramblers enough to see
them in use by private citizens. Codes and ciphers have always had a strong
appeal to most people and I think scramblers will as well..."

It is generally assumed that speech must be consciously understood to cause
an effect. Early experiments with subliminal images have shown that this is
not true. A number of research projects could be based on speech
scramblers. We have all seen the experiment where someone hears his own
recorded voice back a few seconds later. Soon he cannot go on talking.
Would scrambled speech have the same effect? to what extent does a language
act as unscrambling in either-or conflict terms? To what extent does the
tone of voice used by a speaker impose a certain unscrambling sequence on
the listener?

Many of the cut/up tapes would be entertaining and in fact entertainment is
the most promising field for cut/up techniques. Imagine a pop festival like
Phun City scheduled for July 24th, 25th, 26, 1970 at Ecclesden Common,
Patching, near Worthing, Sussex. Festival area comprised of car park and
camping area, a rock auditorium, a village with booths and cinema, a large
wooded area. A number of Tape recorders planted in the woods and the
village. As many as possible so as to lay down a grid of sound over the
whole festival. Recorders have tapes of prerecorded material, music, news,
broadcasts, recordings from other festivals, etc. At all times some of the
recorders are playing back and some are recording. The recorders recording
the crowd and the other tape recorders that are playing back at varying
distances. This cuts in the crowd who will be hearing their own voices
back. Play back, wind back and record could be electronically controlled
with varying intervals. Or they could be hand operated, the operator
deciding what intervals of play back, record, and wind to use. Effect is
greatly increased by a large number of festival goers with portable
recorders playing back and recording as they walk around the festival. We
can carry it further with projection screens and video cameras. Some of the
material is pre-prepared, sex films, films of other festivals, and this
material is cut in with live TV broadcasts and shots of the crowd. Of
course, the rock festival will be cut in on the screens, thousands of fans
portable recorders recording, and playing back, the singer could direct
play back and record. Set up an area for travelling performers, jugglers,
animal acts, snake charmers, singers, musicians, and cut these acts in.
Film and tape from the festival, edited for best material, could then be
used at other festivals.

Quite a lot of equipment and engineering to set it up. the festival could
certainly be enhanced if as many festival goers as possible bring portable
tape recorders and play back at the festival.

Any message, music, conversation you want to pass around, bring it
prerecorded on tape so everybody takes a piece of your tape home.

Research project: to find out to what extent scrambled messages are
unscrambled, that is scanned out by experimental subjects. The simplest
experiments consists in playing back a scrambled message to subject.
Message could contain simple commands. Does the scrambled message have any
command value comparable to post-hypnotic suggestion? Is the actual content
of the message received? What drugs, if any, increase ability to unscramble
messages? Do subjects vary widely in this ability? Are scrambled messages
in the subject's own voice more effective than messages in other voices?
Are messages scrambled in certain voices more easily unscrambled by
specific subjects? Is the message more potent with both word and image
scramble on video tape? Now to use, for example, a video tape message with
a unified emotional content. Let us say the message is fear. For this we
take all the past fear shots of the subject we can collect or evoke. We cut
these in with fear words and pictures, and threats, etc. This is all acted
out and would be upsetting in any case. Now let's try it scrambled and see
if we can get an even stronger effect. The subject's blood pressure, rate
of heart beat, and brain waves are recorded as we play back the scrambled
tape.

His face is photographed and visible to him on video screen at all times.
the actual scrambling of the tape can be done in two ways. It can be a
completely random operation like pulling pieces out of a hat and if this is
done several consecutive units may occur together yielding an identifiable
picture of intelligible word. Both methods of course can be used at varying
intervals. Blood pressure, heart beat, and brain wave recordings will show
the operator what material is producing the strongest reaction, and he will
of course zero in. And remember that the subject can see his face at all
times and his face is being photographed. As the Peeping Tom said, the most
frightening thing is fear in your own face. If the subject becomes too
disturbed we have peace and safety tapes ready.

Now here is a sex tape: This consists of a sex scene acted out by the ideal
sexual object of the subject and his ideal self image. Shown straight it
might be exciting enough, now scramble it. It makes a few seconds for
scrambled tapes to hatch out, and then? can scrambled sex tapes zeroing in
on the subject's reactions and brain waves result in spontaneous orgasm?
Can this be extended to other functions of the body? A mike secreted in the
water closet and all his shits and farts recorded and scrambled in with
stern nanny voices commanding him to shit, and the young liberal shits his
pants on the platform right under Old Glory. Could laugh tapes, sneeze
tapes, hiccough tapes, cough tapes, give rise to laughing sneezing,
hiccoughing, and coughing?

To what extent extent can physical illness be induced by scrambled tapes?
Take for example, a sound and colour picture of a subject with a cold.
Later, when the subject is fully recovered, we take colour and sound film
of recovered subject. We now scrambled the cold pictures and sound track in
with present pictures on present pictures. We also project the cold
pictures on present pictures. Now we try using some of Mr. Hubbard's
reactive mind phrases which are supposed in themselves to produce illness.
To be me, to be you, to stay here, to stay there, to be a body, to be
bodies, to stay present, to stay past. now we scramble this in together and
show it to the subject. Could seeing and hearing this sound and image
track, scrambled down to very small units, bring about an attack of cold
virus? Is such a cold tape does actually produce an attack of cold virus,
perhaps we have merely activated a latent virus. Many viruses, as you know,
are latent in the body and may be activated. We can try the same with
coldsore, with hepatitis, always remembering that we may be activating a
latent virus and in no sense creating a laboratory virus. However, we may
be in a position to do this. Is a virus perhaps simply very small units of
sound and image? Remember the only image a virus has is the image and sound
track it can impose on you. The yellow eyes of jaundice, the postules of
smallpox, etc. imposed on you against your will. The same is certainly true
of scrambled word and image it can make you unscramble. Take a card, any
card. This does not mean that it is actually a virus. Perhaps to construct
a laboratory virus we would need both camera and sound crew and a
biochemist as well. I quote from the INTERNATIONAL PARIS TRIBUNE an article
on the synthetic gene: "Dr. Har Johrd Khorana has made a gene-synthetic."

"It is the beginning of the end," this was the immediate reaction to this
news from the science attache' at one of Washington's major embassies. "If
you can make genes you can eventually make new viruses for which there are
no cures. any little country with good biochemists could make such
biological weapons. It would take only a small laboratory. If it can be
done, somebody will do it. "For example, a death virus could be created
that carries the coded message of death. A death tape, in fact. No doubt
the technical details are complex and perhaps a team of sound and camera
men working with biochemists would give us the answer.

And now the question as to whether scrambling techniques could be used to
spread helpful and pleasant messages. Perhaps. On the other hand, the
scrambled words and tape act like a virus in that they force something on
the subject against his will. More to the point would be to discover how
the old scanning patterns could be altered so that subject liberates his
own spontaneous scanning pattern.

NEW SCIENTIST 2 July, 1970 ...Current memory theory posits a seven second
temporary "buffer store" preceding the main one: a blow on the head wipes
out memory of this much prior time because it erases the contents of the
buffer. Daedalus observes that the sense of the present also covers just
this range and so suggests that our sensory input is recorded on an endless
time loop, providing some seven seconds of delay for scanning before
erasure. In this time the brain edits, makes sense of, and selects storage
key features. The weird DEJA VU sensation "now" has happened before is
clearly due to brief erasure failure, so that we encounter already stored
memory data coming round again. Time dragging or racing must reflect tape
speed. A simple experiment will demonstrate this erasure process in
operation. Making street recordings and playing them back, you will hear
things you do not remember, sometimes said in a loud clear voice, must have
been quite close to you, nor do you necessarily remember them when you hear
the recording back. The sound has bee erased according to a scanning
pattern which is automatic. This means that what you notice and store as
memory as you walk down the street is scanned out of a much larger
selection of data which is then erased from the memory. For the walker the
signs he passed, people he has passed, are erased from his mind and cease
to exist for him. Now to make this scanning process conscious and
controllable, try this:

Walk down a city block with a camera and take what you notice, moving the
camera around as closely as possible to follow the direction of your eyes.
The point is to make the the camera your eyes and take what your eyes are
scanning out of the larger picture. At the same time take the street at a
wide angle from a series of still positions. The street of the operator is,
of course, the street as seen by the operator. It is different from the
street seen at a wide angle. Much of it is in fact missing. Now you can
make arbitrary scanning patterns - that is cover first one side of the
street and then the other in accordance with a preconceived plan. So you
are breaking down the automatic scanning patterns. You could also make
colour scanning patterns, that is, scan out green, blue, red, etc. in so
far as you can with your camera. That is, you are using an arbitrary
preconceived scanning pattern, in order to break down automatic scanning
patterns. a number of operators do this and then scramble their takes
together and with wide angle tapes. This could train the subject to see at
a wider angle and also to ignore and erase at will.

Now all this is readily subject to experimental verification on control
subjects. Nor need the equipment be all on control subjects. Nor need the
equipment be all that complicated. I have shown how it could work with
feedback from brainwaves and visaaceral response and video tape photos of
subject taken while he is seeing and hearing the tape, simply to show
optimum effectiveness.

You can start with two tape recorders. The simplest scrambling device is
scissors and splicing equipment. You can start scrambling words, make any
kind of tapes and scramble them and observe the effects on friends and on
yourself. Next step is sound film and then video camera. Of course results
from individual experiments could lead to mass experiments, mass fear
tapes, riot tapes, etc. The possibilities here for research and experiment
are virtually unlimited and I have simply made a few very simple
suggestions

"A virus is characterised and limited by obligate cellular parasitism. All
viruses must parasite living cells for their replication. For all viruses
the infection cycle comprises entry into the host, intracellular
replication, and escape from the body of the host to initiate a new cycle
in a fresh host." I am quoting here from MECHANISMS OF VIRUS INFECTION
edited by Dr. Wilson Smith. In its wild state the virus has not proved to
be a very adaptable organism. Some viruses have burned themselves have
burned out since they were 100 per cent fatal and there were no reservoirs.
Each strain of virus is rigidly programed for certain attack on certain
tissues. If the attack fails, the virus does not gain a new host. There
are, of course, virus mutations, and the influenza virus has proved quite
versatile in this way.Generally it's the simple repetition of the same
method of entry, and if that method is blocked by any body or other agency
such as interferon, the attack fails. By and large, our virus is a stupid
organism. Now we can think for the virus, devise a number of alternate
methods of entry. For example, the host is simultaneously attacked by an
ally virus who tells him that everything is allright and by a pain and fear
virus. so the virus is now using an old method of entry, namely, the tough
cop and the con cop.

We have considered the possibility that a virus can be activated or even
created by very small units of sound and image. So conceived, the virus can
be made to order in the laboratory. Ah, but for the takes to be effective,
you must have also the actual virus and what is the actual virus? New
viruses turn up from time to time but from where do they turn up? Well,
lets see how we could make a virus turn up. We plot now our virus's
symptoms and make a scramble tape. The susceptible subjects, that is those
who reproduce some of the desired symptoms, will then be scrambled into
more tapes till we scramble our virus into existence. This birth of a virus
occurs when our virus is able to reproduce itself in a host and pass itself
on to another host. Perhaps, too, with the virus under laboratory control
it can be tamed for useful purposes. Imagine, for example a sex virus. it
so inflames the sex centres in the back brain that the host is driven mad
from sexuality, all other considerations are blacked out Parks full of
naked, frenzied people, shitting, pissing, ejaculating, and screaming. So
the virus could be malignant, blacking out all regulation and end in
exhaustion, convulsions, and death.

Now let us attempt the same thing with tape. We organise a sex-tape
festival. We organise a sex-tape festival. 100,000 people bring their
scrambled sex tapes, and video tapes as well, to scramble in together.
Projected on vast screens, muttering out over the crowd, sometimes it slows
down, so that you see a few seconds, then scrambled again, then slow down,
scramble. Soon it will scramble them all naked. The cops and the National
Guard are stripping down. LET'S GET OURSELVES SOME CIVVIES. Now a thing
like that could be messy, but those who survive it recover from the
madness. Or, say, a small select group of really like-minded people get
together with their sex tapes, you see the process is now being brought
under control. And the fact that anybody can do it is in itself a limiting
factor.

Here is Mr. Hart, who wants to infect everyone with his own image and turn
them all into himself, so he scrambles himself and dumps himself out in
search of worthy vessels. If nobody else knows about scrambling techniques
he might scramble himself quite a stable of replicas. but anybody can do
it. So go on, scramble your sex words, and find suitable mates.

If you want to, scramble yourself out there, every stale joke, fart, chew,
sneeze, and stomach rumble. If your trick no work you better run. Everybody
doing it, they all scramble in together and the populations of the earth
just better settle down a nice even brown colour. Scrambles is the
democratic way, the way full cellular representation. Scrambles is the
American way.

I have suggested that virus can be created to order in the laboratory from
very small units of sound and image. Such a preparation is not in itself
biologically active but it could activate or even create virus in
susceptible subjects. A carefully prepared jaundice tape could activate or
create or create the jaundice virus in liver cells, especially in cases
where the jaundice liver is already damaged. The operator is in effect
directing a virus revolution of the cells. Since DOR seems to attack those
exposed to it at the weakest point, release of this force could coincide
with virus attack. Reactive mind phrases could serve the same purpose of
rendering subjects more susceptible to virus attack.

It will be seen that scrambled speech already has many of the
charictaristics of virus. When the speech takes and unscrambles, this
occurs compulsively and against the will of the subject. A virus must
remind you of its presence. Whether it is the mag of a cold sore or the
torturing spasms of rabies the virus reminds you of its unwanted presence.
"HERE ME IS."

So does scrambled word and image. The units are unscrambling compulsively,
presenting certain words and images to the subject and this repetitive
presentation is irritating certain bodily and neutral areas. The cells so
irritated can produce over a period of time the biologic virus units. We
now have a new virus that can be communicated and indeed the subject may be
desparate to communicate this thing that is bursting inside him. He is
heavy with the load. Could this load be good and beautiful? Is it possible
to create a virus which will communicate calm and sweet reasonableness? A
virus must parasitise a host in order to survive. It uses the cellular
material of the host to make copies of itself. in most cases this is
damaging to the host. The virus gains entrance by fraud and maintains
itself by force. An unwanted guest who makes you sick to look at is never
good or beautiful. It is moreover a guest who always repeats itself word
for word take for take.

Remember the life cycle of a virus ... penetration of a cell or activation
within the cell, replication within the cell, escape from the cell to
invade other cells, escape from host to infect a new host. This infection
can take place in many ways and those who find themselves heavy with the
load of a new virus generally use a shotgun technique to cover a wide range
of infection routes... cough, sneeze, spit and fart at every opportunity,
Save shit, piss, snot, scabs, sweat stained clothes and all bodily
secretions for dehydration. The composite dust can be unobtrusively
billowed out a roach bellows in subways, dropped from windows in bags, or
sprayed out a crop duster ... Carry with you at all times an assortment of
vectors ... lice, fleas, bed bugs, and little aviaries of mosquitoes and
biting flies filled with your blood ... I see no beauty in that.

There is only one case of favourable virus influence benefiting an obscure
species of Australian mice. On the other hand, if a virus produces no
damaging symptoms we have no way of ascertaining its existence and this
happens with latent virus infections. It has been suggested that yellow
races resulted from a jaundice- like virus which produced a permanent
mutation not necessarily damaging, which was passed along genetically. The
same may be true of the word. The word itself may be a virus that has
achieved a permanent status with the host. However, no known virus in
existence at the present time acts in this manner, so the question of a
benefit virus remains open. It seems advisable to concentrate on a general
defence against all virus.

Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology, says that certain words and word
combinations can produces serious illnesses and mental disturbances. I can
claim some skill in the scrivener's trade, but I cannot guarantee to write
a passage that will make someone physically ill. If Mr.Hubbard's claim is
justified, this is certainly a matter for further research, and we can
easily find out experimentally whether his claim is justified or not. Mr.
Hubbard bases the power he attributes to words on his theory of engrams. An
engram is defined as word,sound,image recorded by the subject in a period
of pain and unconsciousness. Some of his material may be reassuring: "I
think he's going to be alright." Reassuring material is an ally engram.
Ally engrams, according to Mr Hubbard, are just as bad as hostile as pain
engrams. Any part of this recording played back to the subject later will
reactivate operation pain, he may actually develop a headache and feel
depressed, anxious, or tense. Well, Mr Hubbard's engram theory is very
easily subject to experimental verification. Take ten volunteer subjects,
subject them to a pain stimulus accompanied by certain words and sounds and
images. You can act out little skits.

"Quickly, nurse , before I lose my little nigger," bellows the southern
surgeon, and now a beefy white hand falls on the fragile black shoulder.
"Yes, he's going to be alright. He's going to pull through."

If I had my way I'd let these animals die on the operating table."

"You do not have your way, you have your duty as a doctor, we must do
everything in our power to save human lives."

And so forth.

It is the tough cop and the con cop. The ally engram is ineffective without
the pain engram, just as the con cop's arm around your shoulder, his soft
persuasive voice in your ear, are indeed sweet nothings without the tough
cop's blackjack. Now to what extent can words recorded during medical
unconsciousness be recalled during hypnosis or scientological processing?
To what Extent does the playback of this material affect the subject
unpleasantly? Is the effect enhanced by scrambling the material, pain and
ally, at very short intervals? It would seem that a scrambled engram's
picture could almost dump an operating scene right in the subject's lap.
Mr. Hubbard has charted his version of what he calls the reactive mind.
This is roughly similar to Freud's ID, a sort of built-in self defeating
mechanism. As set forth by Mr. Hubbard this consists of a number of quite
ordinary phrases. He claims that reading these phrases, or hearing them
spoken, can cause illness, and gives this as his reason for not publishing
this material. Is he perhaps saying that these are magic words? Spells, in
fact? If so, they could be quite a weapon scrambled up with imaginative
sound-and-image track. Here now is the magic that turns men into swine. To
be an animal: a lone pig grunts, shits, squeals and slobbers down garbage.
To be animals: A chorus of a thousand pigs. Cut that in with video tape
police pictures and play it back to them and see if you get a reaction from
this so reactive mind.

Now here is another. To be a body, well it's sure an attractive body, rope
the marks in. And a nice body symphony to go with it, rhythmic heart beats,
contented stomach rumbles. To be bodies: recordings and pictures of
hideous, aged, diseased bodies farting, pissing, shitting, groaning, dying.
To do everything: man in a filth apartment surrounded by unpaid bills,
unanswered letters, jumps up and starts washing dishes and writing letters.
To do nothing: he slumps in a chair, jumps up, slumps in chair, jumps up.
Finally, slumps in a chair, drooling like an idiot helplessness, while he
looks at the disorder piled around him. The reactive mind commands can also
be used to advantage with illness tapes. While projecting past cold sore on
to the subject's face, and playing him back to him a past illness tape, you
can say: to be me, to be you, to stay here, to stay there, to be a body, to
be bodies, to stay in, to stay out, to stay present, to stay absent. To
what extent are these reactive mind phrases when scrambled effective in
causing disagreeable symptoms in control volunteer subjects? As to Mr.
Hubbard's claim for the reactive mind, only research can give us the
answers.

The RM then is an artifact designed to limit and stultify on a mass scale.
In order to have this effect it must be widely implanted. This can readily
be done with modern electronic equipment and techniques described in this
treatis. The RM consists of commands which seem harmless and in fact
unavoidable ... To be a body ... but which have the most horrific
consequences.

Here are some sample RM screen effects ...

As the theatre darkens a bright light appears on the left side of the
screen. The screen lights up.

To be nobody ... On screen shadow of ladder and soldier incinerated by the
Hiroshima blast

To be everybody ... Street crowds, riots, panics

To be me ... A beautiful girl and a handsome young man point to selves

To be you ... They point to audience

Hideous hags and old men, lepers, drooling idiots point to themselves and
to the audience as they intone ...

To be me

To be you

Command no 5 ... To be myself

Command no 6 ... To be others

On screen a narcotics officer is addressing an audience of school boys,
spread out in front of him are syringes, kief pipes, samples of heroin,
hashiesh, LSD.

Officer: "Five trips on a drug can be a pleasant and exciting
experience..."

On screen young trippers ..."I'm really myself for the first time" Etc.
Happy trips ...To be myself ...no 5 ...

Officer: "THE SIXTH WILL PROBABLY BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF"

Shot shows a man blowing his head off with a shotgun in his mouth...

Officer: "Like a 15 year old boy I knew until recently, you could well end
up dying in your own spew ..." To be others no 6 ...

To be an animal ... A lone Wolf Scout ...

To be animals: He joins other wolf scouts playing, laughing, shouting

To be an animal ... Bestial and ugly human behaviour ...brawls, disgusting,
eating and sex scenes

To be animals ... Cows, sheep and pigs driven to the slaughter house

To be a body

To be bodies

A beautiful body ... a copulating couple ... Cut back and forth and run on
seven second loop for several minutes ... scramble at different speeds ...
Audience must be made to realise that to be a body is to be bodies

...A body only exists to be other bodies.

To be a body ...Death scenes and recordings ... a scramble of last words

To be bodies ... Vista of cemeteries ...

To do it now ... Couple embracing hotter and hotter

To do it now ... A condemned cell ... Condemned man is same actor as lover
... He is led away by the guards screaming and struggling. Cut back and
forth between sex scene and man led to execution. Couple in sex scene have
an orgasm as the condemned man is hanged, electrocuted, gassed, garroted,
shot in the head with a pistol

To do it later ... The couple pull away ...One wants to go out and eat and
go to a show or something... They put on their hats

To do it later ... Warder arrives at condemned cell to tell the prisoner he
has a stay of execution

To do it now ... Grim faces in the Pentagon. Strategic is on the way ...
Well THIS IS IT ... This sequence cut in with sex scenes and a condemned
man led to execution, culminates in execution, orgasm, nuclear explosion
...The condemned lover is a horribly burned survivor

To do it later ... 1920 walk out sequence to "The Sunny Side of the Street"
... A disappointed general turns from the phone to say the president has
opened top level hot wire talks with Russia and China ... Condemned man
gets another stay of execution

To be an animal ... One lemming busily eating lichen ...

To be animals ... Hordes of lemmings swarming all over each other in
mounting hysteria ...A pile of drowned lemmings in front of somebody's nice
little cottage on a Finnish lake where he is methodically going through sex
positions with his girl friend. They wake up in a stink of dead lemmings

To be an animal ... Little boy put on a pot

To be animals ...The man has just been hanged. The doctor steps forward
with a stethoscope

To stay down ... Body is carried out with the rope around neck ... Naked
corpses on the autopsy table ... corpse buried in quick lime.

To stay up ...Erect phallus

To stay down ... White man burns off a Negro's genitals with blow torch ...
Theatre darkens into the blow torch on the left side of the screen

To stay present

To stay absent

To stay present ... A boy masturbates in front of sex pictures ... Cut to
face of white man who is burning off black genitals with blow torch

To stay absent ... Sex phantasies of the boy ... The black slumps dead with
genitals burned off and intestines popping out

To stay present ... Boy watches strip tease, intent, fascinated ...A man
stands on trap about to be hanged

To stay present ...Sex phantasies of the boy ..."I ponounce this man dead."

To stay present ... Boy whistles at girl in street ... A man's body twists
in the electric chair, his leg hairs crackling a blue fire

To stay absent ... Boy sees himself in bed with girl ... Man slumps dead in
chair smoke curling from under the hood saliva dripping from his mouth...

The theatre lights up. In the sky a plane over Hiroshima ...Little Boy
slides out

To stay present ... The plane, the pilot, the American flag ...

To stay absent ... theatre darkens into atomic blast on screen

Here we see ordinary men and women going about their ordinary everyday jobs
and diversions ... subways, streets, buses, trains, airports, stations,
waiting rooms, homes, flats, restaurants. offices, factories ...working ,
eating, playing, defecating, making love.

A chorus of voices cuts in RM phrases

To stay up

To stay down

Elevators, airports, stairs, ladders

To stay in

To stay out

Street signs, door signs, people at head of lines admitted to restaurants
and theatres

To be myself

To be others

Customs agents check passports, man identifies himself at bank to cash
cheque

To stay present

To stay absent

People watching films, reading, looking at TV ...

A composite of this sound and image track is now run on seven second loop
without change for several minutes.

Now cut in the horror pictures

To stay up

To stay down

Elevators, airpits, stairs, ladders, hangings, castrations

To stay in

To stay out

Door signs, operation scenes ... doctor tosses bloody tonsils, adenoids,
appendix into receptacle

To stay present

To stay absent

People watching film ... ether mask, ether vertigo ... triangles, spheres,
rectangles, pyramids, prisms, coils go away and come in regular sequence
...a coil coming in, two coils coming in, three coils coming in ... a coil
going away, two coils going away, four going away

A coil straight ahead going away, two coils on the left and right going
away. three coils left right and centre going away, four coils right left
centre going away

A coil coming, two coils coming in, three coils coming in, four coils
coming in ... spirals of light ... round and round faster, baby eaten by
rats, hangings, electrocutions, castrations....

The RM can be cut in with the most ordinary scenes covering the planet in a
smog of fear ...

The RM is a built-in electronic police force armed with hideous threats.
You don't want to be a cute little wolf cub? All right, cattle to the
slaughter house meat on a hook.

Here is a nostalgic reconstruction of the old fashioned Mayan methods. The
wrong kind of workers with wrong thoughts are tortured to death in rooms
under the pyramid ... A young worker has been given a powerful hallucigen
and a sexual stimulant ... Naked he is stripped down and skinned alive ...
The Gods of pain are surfacing from the immemorial filth of time ...The
Ouab bird stands there, screams, washing through his wild blue eyes. Others
are crabs from the waist up clicking their claws in ecstasy, they dance
around and mimic the flaved man. The scribes are busy with sketches ...Now
he is strapped into a segmented copper centipede and placed gently on a bed
of hot coals ... Soon the priests will dig the soft meat from the shell
with their golden claws ... Here is another youth staked out on an ant hill
honey smeared on his eyes and genitals ...Others with heavy weights on
their backs are slowly dragged through the wooden troughs in which shards
obsidian have been driven ...So the priests are the masters of pain and
fear and death ...To do right... to obey the priests ... To do wrong? the
priest's very presence and a few banal words....

The priests postulated and set up a hermetic universe of which they were
the axiomatic controllers. In so doing they became Gods who controlled the
known universe of the workers. They became Fear and Pain, Death and Time.
By making opposition seemingly impossible they failed to make any provision
for opposition. There is evidence that this control system broke down in
some areas before the arrival of the White God. Stellae have been found
defaced and overturned, mute evidence of a worker's revolution. How did
this happen? The history of revolutionary movements shows that they are
usually led by defectors from the ruling class. The Spanish rule in South
America was overthrown by Spanish revolutionaries. The French were driven
out of Algeria by Algerians educated in France. Perhaps one of the priest
Gods defected and organised a worker's revolution ...

The priest Gods in the temple. They move very slowly, faces ravaged with
age and disease. Parasitic worms infest their flesh. They are making
calculations for the sacred books.

"400,000,000 years ago on this day a grievous thing happened..."

Limestone skulls rain in through the porticos. The Young Maize God leads
the workers as they storm the temple and drag the priests out. They build a
huge brush fire, throw the priests in and then throw the sacred books in
after them. Time buckles and bends. The old Gods, surfacing from the
immemorial depths of time, burst in the sky ... Mr Hart stands there
looking at the broken sellae ... "How did this happen?"

His control system must be absolute and world wide. Because such a control
system is even more vulnerable to attack from without than revolt within...
Here is Bishop Luanda burning burning sacred books. To give you an idea as
to what is happening, imagine our civilisation invaded by louts from outer
space...

"Get some bulldozers in here. Clear out all this crap..." The formulae of
all natural sciences, books, paintings, the lot, swept into a vast pile and
burned. and that's it. No one ever heard of it.

Three codices survived the vandalism of Bishop Landa and these are burned
around the edges.

No way to know if we have here the sonnets, the Mona Lisa or the remnants
of a Sears Roebuck catalogue after the old out-house burned down in a brush
fire. A whole civilisation went up in smoke...

When the Spaniards arrived, they found the Mayan aristocrats lolling in
hammocks. Well, time to show them what is what. Five captured workers bound
and stripped, are castrated on a tree stump. the bleeding sobbing,
screaming bodies bodies thrown into a pile...

"And now get this through your gook nuts. We want to see a pile of gold big
and we want to see it pronto. The White God has spoken."

Consider now the human voice as a weapon. To what extent can the unaided
human voice duplicate effects that can be done with a tape recorder?
Learning to speak with the mouth shut, thus displacing your speech, is
fairly easy. You can also learn to speak backwards, which is fairly
difficult. I have seen people who can repeat what you are saying after you
and finish at the same time. This is a most disconcerting trick,
particularly when praciticed on a mass scale at a political rally. Is it
possible to actually scramble speech? A far-reaching biologic weapon can be
forged from a new language. In fact such a language already exists. It
exists as Chinese, a total language closer to multilevel structure of
experience, with a script derived from hieroglyphs, more closely related to
the objects and areas described. The equanimity of the Chinese is
undoubtedly derived from their language being structured for greater
sanity. I notice the Chinese, wherever they are retain the written and
spoken language, while other immigrant peoples will lose their language in
two generations. The aim of this project is to build up a language in which
certain falsifications inherit in all existing western languages will be
made incapable of formulation. The follow-falsifications to be deleted from
the proposed language.

This IS OF IDENTITY. You are an animal. You are a body. Now whatever you
may be you are not an "animal", you are not a "body", because these are
verbal labels. The IS of identity always carries the assignment of
permanent condition. To stay that way. All name calling presupposes the IS
of identity. This concept is unnecessary in a hieroglyphic language like
ancient Egyptian and in fact frequently omitted. No need to say the sun IS
in the sky, sun in sky suffices. The verb TO BE can easily be omitted from
any languages and the followers of Count Korgybski have done this,
eliminating the verb TO BE in English. However, it is difficult to tidy up
the English language by arbitrary exclusion of concepts which remain in
force so long as the unchanged language is spoken.

THE DEFINITE ARTICLE THE. THE contains the implication of one and only: THE
God, THE universe, THE way, THE right, The wrong, If there is another, then
THAT universe, THAT way is no longer THE universe, The way. The definite
article THE will be deleted and the indefinite article A will take it's
place.

THE WHOLE CONCEPT OF EITHER/OR. Right or wrong, physical or mental, true or
false, the whole concept of OR will be deleted from the language and
replaced by juxtaposition, by AND This is done to some extent in any
pictorial language where two concepts stand literally side by side. These
falsifications inherent in the English and other western alphabetical
languages give the reactive mind commands their overwhelming force in these
languages. Consider the IS of identity. When I say to be me, to be you, to
be myself, to be others- whatever I may be called upon to be or to say that
I am- I am not the verbal label "myself." The word BE in the English
language contains, as a virus contains, its precoded message of damage, the
categorical imperative of permanent condition. To be a body, to be an
animal. If you see the relation of a pilot to his ship, you see crippling
force of the reactive mind command to be a body. Telling the pilot to be
the plane, then who will pilot the plane?

The IS of identity, assigning a rigid and permanent status, was greatly
reinforced by the customs and passport control the came in after World War
I. Whatever you may be, you are not the verbal labels in your passport. any
more than you are the word "self." So you must be prepared to prove at all
times that you are what you are not. Much of the falsification inherent in
the categorical definite THE. THE now, THE past, THE time, THE space, THE
energy, THE matter, THE universe. Definite article THE contains the
implications of no other. THE universe locks you in THE, and denies the
possibility of any other. If other universes are possible, then the
universe is no longer THE it becomes A. The definite article THE is deleted
and replaced by A. many of the RM commands are in point of fact
contradictory commands and a contradictory command gains its force from the
Aristotelian concept of either/or. To do everything, to do nothing, to have
everything, to have nothing, to do it all, to do not any, to stay up, to
stay down, to stay in, to stay out, to stay present, to stay absent. These
are in point of fact either/or propositions. To do nothing OR everything,
to have it all, OR not any, to stay present OR to stay absent. Either/or is
more difficult to formulate in a written language where both alternatives
are pictorially represented and can be deleted entirely from the spoken
language. The whole reactive mind can be in fact reduced to three little
words - to be "THE". That is to be what you are not, verbal formulations.

I have frequently spoken of word and image as viruses or as acting as
viruses, and this is not an allegorical comparison. It will be seen that
the falsifications of syllabic western languages are in point of fact
actual virus mechanisms. The IS of identity the purpose of a virus is to
SURVIVE. To survive at any expense to the host invaded. To be an animal, to
be a body. To be an animal body that the virus can invade. To be animals,
to be bodies. To be more animal bodies, so that the virus can move from one
body to another. To stay present as an animal body, to stay absent as
antibody or resistance to the body invasion.

The categorical THE is also a virus mechanism, locking you in THE virus
universe. EITHER/OR is another virus formula. It is always you OR the
virus. EITHER/OR. This is in point of fact the conflict formula which is
seen to be archetypical virus mechanism. The proposed language will delete
these virus mechanisms and make them impossible of formulation in the
language. This language will be a tonal language like Chinese, it will also
have a hieroglyphic script as pictorial as possible without being to
cumbersome or difficult to write. This language will give one option of
silence. When not talking, the user of this language can take in the silent
images of the written, pictorial and symbol languages.

I have described here a number of weapons and tactics in the war game.
Weapons that change consciousness could call the war game in question. All
games are hostile. Basically there is only one game from here to eternity.
Mr Hubbard says that Scientology is a game where everybody wins. There are
no games where everybody wins. That's what games are all about, winning and
losing ... The Versailles Treaty ... Hitler dances the Occupation Jig ...
War criminals hang at Nuremberg ...It is a rule of this game that there can
be no final victory since this mean the end of the war game. Yet every
player must believe in final victory and strive for it with all his power.
Faced by the nightmare of final defeat he has no alternative. So all
technologies with escalating efficiency produce more and more total weapons
until we have the atom bomb which could end the game by destroying all
players. Now mock up a miracle. The so stupid players decide to save the
game. They sit down around a big table and draw up a plan for the immediate
deactivation and eventual destruction of all atomic weapons. Why stop
there? Conventional bombs are unnecessarily destructive if nobody has them
hein? Let's turn back the war clock back to 1917: Keep the home fires
burning Through the hearts are yearning

There's a long, long trail winding ... .

Back to the American Civil War...

"He has loosed the fatal lightning of this terrible swift sword." His fatal
lightning didn't cost as much in those days. Save a lot on the defence
budget this way on back to flintlocks, matchlocks, swords, armour, lances,
bows and arrows, spears, stone axes and clubs. Why stop there? Why not grow
teeth and claws, poison fangs, stingers, spines, quills, beaks and suckers
and stink glands and fight in out in the muck hein?

That is what this revolution is about. End of game. New games? There are no
new games from here to eternity.

END OF THE WAR GAME.

Williams Burroughs

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                       Contact Shogie Phenome
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