And they don't give a damn about protecting women, either. They want to control them. Nor do they support Free Speech.

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 @npub1wceq...lzu8

Not trying to glorify the USSR. They killed, imprisoned, tortured plenty, too. But I do think it's important to remember how the U.S., and its allies pardoned Nazi war criminals, covered up their crimes, and, in many cases, gave them cushy new jobs that benefited them in the Cold War. And let's not forget how they did the same with so many Japanese war criminals, too, who they pardoned or granted immunity to, in spite of massacres, human experimentation, and crimes against humanity.

Today in Labor History April 12, 1963: Mexican journalist and human rights activist, Lydia Cacho, was born on this day. She has reported extensively on violence and sexual abuse against women in Mexico. In 2006, she reported on the hundreds of female homicides in Ciudad Juárez. That same year, a tape emerged of a conversation between businessman Kamel Nacif Borge and the governor of Puebla, in which they conspired to have her beaten and raped for her reporting. #LaborHistory #workingclass #rape #femicide #mexico #journalism #lydiacacho #sexism #feminism #humanrights #sexism

Today in Labor History April 12, 1900: Florence Reece was born. Reece was an activist in the Harlan County, Kentucky, coal strikes, and author of the song, “Which Side Are You On?” She originally wrote the song when she was twelve, when her father was on strike. She updated it to its current form in 1931, during a UMW strike, in response to Sheriff Blair’s thugs, who beat & murdered union leaders. Florence wrote the revised lyrics on an old wall calendar while her home was being ransacked by Blair’s goons, who were looking for her husband, Sam Reece, an organizer with the miners’ union. Many artists covered “Which Side Are You On,” including Pete Seeger, Billy Bragg, Dropkick Murphys, Natalie Merchant, Ani DiFranco, and Tom Morello. #workingclass #LaborHistory #FlorenceReece #Harlan #coal #mining #union #strike #WhichSideAreYouOn #umw #billybragg #TomMorello