"Don't Get High Without It:

The Vaults of Erowid Supplies the Ultimate Trip Buddy — Information"

Erik Davis

Early last February, a 19-year-old sophomore dragged himself into the
psychiatric emergency ward at a large American university hospital,
complaining that his friends and family were plotting against him.
Though the fellow knew his thoughts were irrational, he could not shake
his bout of paranoia. He also told the receiving staff that six weeks
earlier he had swallowed an unknown amount of 2C-I, a recreational drug
that, in his case, produced bright colors and swirling patterns and a
suffocating onslaught of cosmic dread. The bad vibes had recurred with
increasing ferocity in the intervening weeks, until he finally decided to
check himself in.

"Cruel Science: The Long Shadow of CIA Torture Research"

Alfred W. McCoy, Boston Globe, May 15, 2004

The photos from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison are snapshots, not of simple
brutality or a breakdown in discipline, but of CIA torture techniques
that have metastasized, over the past 50 years, like an undetected
cancer inside the US intelligence community.

From 1950 to 1962, the CIA led massive, secret research into coercion
and consciousness that reached a billion dollars at peak. After
experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, electric shocks, and sensory
deprivation, this CIA research produced a new method of torture that
was psychological, not physical — best described as "no touch torture."

The CIA's discovery of psychological torture was a counter-intuitive
break-through — indeed, the first real revolution in this cruel
science since the 17th century. In its modern application, the
physical approach required interrogators to inflict pain, usually by
crude beatings that often produced heightened resistance or
unreliable information. Under the CIA's new psychological paradigm,
however, interrogators used two essential methods, disorientation and
self-inflicted pain, to make victims feel responsible for their own
suffering.

"Dangerous Philosophy:

Threat, Risk, and Security"

Irving Goh, CTheory

"We have seen [the State war machine] set its sights on a new
type of enemy, no longer another State, nor even another regime,
but the 'unspecified enemy'; we have seen it put its
counter-guerilla elements into place, so that it can be caught
by surprise once, but not twice... Yet the conditions that make
the State or World war machine possible, in other words constant
capital (resources and equipment) and human variable capital,
constantly recreate unexpected possibilities for counterattack,
unforeseen initiatives determining revolutionary, popular,
minority, mutant machines. The definition of the Unspecified
Enemy testifies to this... 'multiform, maneuvering and
omnipresent... of the moral, political, subversive or economic
order, etc.,' the unassignable material Saboteur or human
Deserter assuming the most diverse forms." — Deleuze and Guattari [1]

"We plan a comprehensive assault on terrorism. This will be a
different kind of conflict against a different kind of enemy.
This is a conflict without battlefields or beachheads, a
conflict with opponents who believe they are invisible." — George W. Bush [2]

"Words can be turned against me." — Jean Baudrillard [3]

Questions of Philosophy

If Deleuze and Guattari were to write and publish their philosophy of
the nomadological war machine today, in the still dark light of the
omnipresent retaliatory and aggressive political discourse that has
emerged from the ruins of September 11, would their philosophy have a
chance?