Today in Labor History April 19, 1943: Albert Hoffman, inventor of LSD, tested his first dose and went for a bike ride. This day is now celebrated as Bicycle Day. “... Little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes. Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux ...” And from that date forward, working class people could finally afford to go on a trip. Hoffman later went on to isolate psilocybin, the active hallucinogenic ingredient in mushrooms, which he also enjoyed experimenting with.

Sandoz originally marketed the drug as Delysid and sold it in 100 microgram doses. From the late 1940s, through the early 1960s, the drug was legal and numerous psychologists and researchers began experimenting with it as a form of therapy. The CIA’s UKUltra mind control experiments (1953-1973) involved administering LSD, mescaline & other psychedelics to people, most of whom without their consent or knowledge. However, Ken Kesey volunteered to take part in what turned out to be a CIA-financed study under the aegis of MKUltra. There were other willing participants, as well, many of whom were given much larger doses. Cary Grant was a frequent and keen user. As early as the late 1940s, anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson became enthusiastic about its potential to unleash a new era of peace and expanded consciousness. The founder of Alcoholic Anonymous was also an early user and said that it was far more effective at treating alcoholism than any other treatment he knew of. Researcher John Lily, along with Gregory Bateson, began dosing dolphins in the early 1960s, in experiments connected with the U.S. military, in an attempt to learn to communicate with the animals and deploy them as weapons in the cold war. You can read more about Mead and Bateson’s role in promoting hallucinogens and in collaborating with the military and intelligence communities in Benjamin Breen’s book, Tripping on Utopia.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #alberthoffman #lsd #drugs #hallucinogens #psychedelics #bicycleday #cia #MKUltra #mindcontrol #brainwashing #consent #torture

¿Sabías que los Duffer Brothers confirmaron que Stranger Things se inspiró en experimentos REALES de la CIA? 👁️
Lo que Eleven vive en Hawkins Lab... pasó de verdad. Y hay testimonios que lo prueban 📄
Lo cuento todo en el blog 👇
#MKUltra #StrangerThings #Conspiracion

https://elblogdelascuriosidades.com.mx/2026/04/15/ponte-el-gorro-de-aluminio-los-duffer-brothers-le-enviaron-un-mensaje-oculto-a-las-victimas-del-control-mental/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=jetpack_social

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 federal spy agencies, 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

incredible conspiracy deep dive.

#franklinscandal #presidioscanal #dcacallboyscadal #mkultra #majestic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_A._Aquino

"We explore the fascinating and unsettling history of peculiar experiments conducted on children in the GATE program.. This investigation delves into the origins of programs like the Stargate Project and the Monroe Institute.. raising questions about extrasensory perception and the mysterious capabilities of the human mind."

CIA Psychic Experiments on Children: The GATE Program Exposed
https://youtu.be/3Ty1_ksLfyE

#CIA #Parapsychology #GATE #StrangerThings #MKUltra #ESP #RemoteViewing

Today in Labor History March 25, 1957: U.S. Customs seized copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" on obscenity grounds. Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and City Lights manager, Shigeyoshi Murao, were arrested on obscenity charges for publishing and distributing the poem. Howl was inspired, in part, by a terrifying peyote vision Ginsberg had in which the façade of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, in San Francisco, appeared as the monstrous face of a child-eating demon. The obscenity charges stemmed from homophobic responses to his explicit references to homosexuality. Ginsberg’s first experience with LSD, as well as Kerouac’s and Burroughs’s, was with acid provided by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson, one-time husband of and long-time collaborator with Margaret Mead. You can read more about Bateson and Mead’s early experimentation with, and promotion of, psychedelics (and their collaboration with the CIA) in the recent book, “Tripping on Utopia.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #poetry #howl #lgbtq #allenginsburg #homophobia #lawrenceferlinghetti #citylights #obscenity #censorship #bannedbooks #kerouac #mkultra #cia #williamburoughs #lsd #peyote #margaretmead #gregorybateson #psycheldelics #books #writer #author #poet @bookstadon

Unpicking the truth behind Kubrick conspiracy theories

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://filmstories.co.uk/news/unpicking-the-truth-behind-kubrick-conspiracy-theories/