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What Was Jonestown... Really?

In an obscure article in Esquire Magazine, South America was described as one of the best places to live in the event of a nuclear war. Based on this article, Jones is said to have decided to establish his commune in Guyana. But was this the real reason? Jones originally had his eyes on the island of Grenada. He had even courted Grenadian Prime Minister, Sir Eric Gairy, and invested $200,000 in the Grenada National Bank to begin the camp. After the Jonestown massacre, about $76,000 was still in this bank. Whatever the reason for changing his mind, we may never know. Perhaps the camp in Guyana was more remote and private for his needs. Jones finally settled on the Matthew's Ridge section in Guyana - the former site of a Union Carbide bauxite and manganese mine.

After the site was leased, trusted members of the Jones entourage flew to Guyana and began making the camp ready for the rest of the congregation. On the surface, it looked like Jones was a benevolent leader, concerned for the safety and well-being of his poor and socially outcast congregation, ushering them far away from the dangers of the Cold War. But on closer inspection, the loving facade was missing even from the start.

Church members were literally herded in busses in San Francisco and driven post haste to Florida where they were again herded into specially chartered planes that transported them to Guyana. The congregation, mostly black, were seen bound and gagged as they were taken off the plane and driven to the camp. This seemed an odd way to treat people and was more like the treatment of slaves or, maybe, "laboratory animals." Apparently, to get even more "subjects," children were reportedly "bought" from local Guyanese!

Once at the camp, the "congregation" was forced to work like slaves. Their work day was often 18 hours long after which they would be fed rancid, rotting food, usually rice or bread. At night, as they tried to sleep, they would be forced to listen to loud sermons, narrated by Jim Jones, that blasted from the PA system. "Slackers" were forced to work and threatened. Those that thought about leaving were quickly persuaded otherwise by individuals who were punished in full view of the public as "examples," and by the security force of armed guards that patrolled the camp.

Like the "Brown Shirts" of Nazi Germany, children were made to inform on the deviant conversations of their parents and elders. Jones told the camp that certain individuals would be "posing" as dissidants who wanted to leave the camp. He warned others to be diligent and report these people as a test of their loyalty. Thus, he perpetrated fear and distrust among members of his congregation.

Dr. Lawrence Schacht, the camp physician, was known to perform painful suturing without anaesthetic. Oddly, as they discovered following the massacre, the doctor and his staff kept meticulous medical records of every member of the congregation and performed routine physical exams, sometimes daily. This again sounds more like treatment of some experiemtnal lab animals than the routine first aid of a communal clinic.

A Mind Control Experiment Gone Crazy

Jonestown was, in reality, an experiment. It was part of a 30-year program called MK-ULTRA, the CIA and military intelligence code name for mind control. A close study of Senator Ervin's 1974 report, Individual Rights and the Government's Role in Behavior Modification, shows that these agencies had certain "target populations" in mind, for both individual and mass control. Blacks, women, prisoners, the elderly, the young, and inmates of psychiatric wards were selected as "potentially violent." There were plans in California at the time for a Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence, expanding on the horrific work of Dr. José Delgado, Drs. Mark and Ervin, and Dr. Jolly West, experts in implantation, psychosurgery, and tranquilizers. These "laboratory monkeys" were to be drawn from the ranks of the "target populations," and taken to an isolated military missile base in California. In that same period, Jones began to move his Temple members to Jonestown. They were the exact population selected for such tests. All of the population received daily medical exams and wore medical identification bracelets.

The meticulous daily notes and drug records kept by Larry Schacht, the camp doctor, disappeared, but evidence did not. Jeff Brillie, who helped with the "clean up" operation was asked to guard a metal case containing thousands of files. He was told to shoot anyone who tried to take them from him and that they contained "highly sensitive" information. He later turned the files over to CIA agents who denied that such records existed when questioned by a congressional investigation. The history of MK-ULTRA and its sister programs (MK-DELTA, ARTICHOKE, BLUEBIRD, etc.) records a combination of drugs, drug mixtures, electroshock and torture as methods for control. The desired results ranged from temporary and permanent amnesia, uninhibited confessions, and creation of second personalities, to programmed assassins and preconditioned suicidal urges. One goal was the ability to control mass populations, especially for cheap labor. Dr. Delgado told Congress that he hoped for a future where a technology would control workers in the field and troops at war with electronic remote signals. He found it hard to understand why people would complain about electrodes implanted in their brains to make them "both happy and productive."

The people of the People's Temple were little more than experimental "monkeys," being drugged and monitored by daily medical exams and miticulous records of their health and behavioral changes. Once the terrible experiment was discovered there was nothing else to do but exterminate them and crush any link to the CIA's experimental mind control program.

On the scene at Jonestown, Guyanese troops discovered a large cache of drugs, enough to drug the entire population of Georgetown, Guyana (well over 200,000) for more than a year. According to survivors, these were being used regularly "to control" a population of only 1,100 people. One footlocker contained 11,000 doses of thorazine, a dangerous tranquilizer. Drugs used in the testing for MK-ULTRA were found in abundance, including sodium pentathol (a truth serum), chloral hydrate (a hypnotic), demerol, thalium (confuses thinking), and many others. Schacht had supplies of haliopareael and largatil as well, two other major tranquilizers. The actual description of life at Jonestown is that of a tightly run concentration camp, complete with medical and psychiatric experimentation. The stresses and isolation of the victims is typical of sophisticated brainwashing techniques. The drugs and special tortures add an additional experimental aspect to the horror. This more clearly explains the medical tags on the bodies, and why they had to be removed. It also suggests an additional motive for frustrating any chemical autopsies, since these drugs would have been found in the system of the dead.

The story of Jonestown is that of a gruesome experiment, not a religious utopian society. One Temple director, Joyce Shaw, described the Jonestown massacre as, "some kind of horrible government experiments, or some sort of sick racial thing, a plan like that of the Germans to exterminate Blacks." If we refuse to look further into this nightmarish event, there will be more Jonestowns to come. They will move from Guyana to our own back yard.

The ultimate victims of mind control at Jonestown are the American people. If we fail to look beyond the constructed images given us by the television and the press, then our consciousness is manipulated, just as well as the Jonestown victims' was. If the discrepancy between the truth of Jonestown and the official version can be so great, what other lies have we been told about other major events?

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