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Protestors Stink! Emotional-chemical warfare

deletia

08:00 / 05.07.01

I'm not sure whether this should go in the Head Shop or the Laboratory or here. See what you think.

Pentagon develops stench warfare

As I understand from this, the odour released by this weapon is designed to induce fear in protestors, leading to dispersal. Is messing with emotions and feelings better or worse than more traditional, physically invasive methods? What does it mean when a government has the power to make you not want to do something by psychopharmaceutical means?

And does anyone seriously believe that this will be an alterantive, rather than a prelude, to baton charges and rubber bullets?

[ 05-07-2001: Message edited by: The Haus of Thorns ]

E Randy Dupre

08:44 / 05.07.01

I would have thought inducing fear would be the last thing you'd want to do. Fear = panic = misdirected aggression.

Surely better to induce a feeling of calm?

deletia

08:52 / 05.07.01

I don't know - I'd rather go up against a panicking group than a calm, controlled one any time.

ynh

15:56 / 05.07.01

From another site not amenable to linking, apparently:

quote:Everybody these days wants to develop the next-generation stink bomb, Pam Dalton of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia told the San Francisco Chronicle. It could be used for crowd control and non-lethal warfare applications, adds the experimental psychologist, whose work is support by the U.S. Pentagon. The roots of her research go back to the Second World War, "to a compound called Who Me that was designed for use by the French Resistance. Who Me smelled like fecal matter, according to Dalton, and was issued in pocket atomizers. The plan was for a Resistance member to sidle up to one of the German officers then occupying Paris and unobtrusively spray him. 'This, of course, would totally embarrass the officer,' Dalton explains straight-faced 'And Germany would then lose the war.' "

I'm terribly curious about what the two odors she found are, and whether I can cultivate them bodily.

[ 05-07-2001: Message edited by: [Your Name Here] ]

ynh

16:34 / 05.07.01

Gawd, this woman has interesting range. I'm verging into the science of it all, but some of her other work includes discovering which odors mask others. I'm assuming this is the origin of the search for "transcultural odors" that inspire fear. Americans apparently can't smell saccharine if you add msg to it.

This article has her commenting on virtual scents for the internet.

If you couple echelon/carnivore with that, can you make activists afraid of the internet?

16:50 / 05.07.01

There have been rumours about this kind of thing before - last time I read about an anti-protestor device was in the Amok Journal, although that was ultrasound rather than scent-based technology.

(It's a great edition, by the way - they've even got Jimmy Page and William Burroughs discussing the use of ultrasound at Led Zepplin gigs (honestly))
See here http://www.amokbooks.com

Ultrasound is basically certain frequencies of sound - a bit like sub-bass on early jungle or bleep techno records like LFO's first one - and it can do all sorts of nasty shit to your insides (literally in some cases.) It really isn't very nice.

See here for some stuff on ultrasound weaponry, if you are interested.
http://www.acoustics.org/press/137th/altmann.html

Just got it off Google, so can't vouch 100 per cent for its accuracy, but it doesn't seem to be a NWO rant or anything. It basically suggests that ultrasound weapons are unworkable in a civilized society. Ah well, that's us ok then... it'd never happen here...

I think the really worrying thing about all these rumours about anti-protest technology - if they are in fact true, rather than just spook's scare stories - is just how hardcore a position it puts Governments in.

Sure, we all know they can be absolute bastards, and judging by several people's posts here, we expect them to be nothing else.

The use of stink bombs - if it happens - is cranking up that notch one more, but as I said before, I'd expect nothing less from daddy's puppet George and his military advisers.