This discussion is relevant to my interests.
I dislike the term "brainwashing" as it invokes images of people being strapped to giant machines while bleepy music music is played and various coloured lights flash on and off. Either that or brains being washed in a giant washing machine.
The problem with the terms "brainwashing" and "mind control" is that they are used widely by CTers that anyone using them becomes, in the minds of some at least, a CTer themselves.
Cult apologists, such as Eileen Barker at INFROM, dismiss the idea that brainwashing exists at all, a position that is very helpful for abusive cults and I am sure that cult leaders worldwide are very grateful to Barker for her papers on the subject.
IME however there are certain techniques, some well known and some esoteric, by which some people can exert immense control over some other people.
Obviously it would be highly irresponsible to provide a "how to" post on the more esoteric techniques on a public forum, however I think that a good place to start for a rationalist / sceptic would be the issue of "recovered memories" of sexual / satanic abuse.
I think that any rational person could consider the process that MPD/DID/SRA patients are subjected to as a form of extreme and abusive control and the word "brainwashing" is not completely out of place with regards to such activities at least IMO.
In the UK we recently had a number of criminal trials regarding the grooming, sexual exploitation and pimping out of under-age girls by groups of adult men.
At least one of the young girls had become so corrupted by the men that she effectively acted as a recruiter for them (she was referred to by the other victims as "Honey Monster"). The police investigating the case repeatedly used the word "brainwashing" to describe the process of grooming and corruption of the young girls. When the police used the word I suspect that people generally understood that the girls had been removed from their friends and families and subjected to an extreme form of behavioural modification and indoctrination, rather than say strapped to a chair with the bleepy sounds and the flashing lights.
My interests lie in criminal pseudo-spiritual networks (cults) and in organised trafficking in human beings, my special interest being where the two categories meet. Thus I have some interest and experience of this kind of thing.
re scopolamine, unfortunately it is in use by some criminal cults as well as by some other criminal networks. There was a case in Spain a couple of years ago when it was used - combined with torture- as a truth serum by drug dealers on an associate who they believed had stolen their drugs. Scopolamine is widely used by criminals in Columbia and, more recently, in Ecuador.
This documentary about scolpolamine / burundanga is sensationalist but also grounded in reality and includes interviews with people who have been robbed and otherwise taken advantage of while under the influence, as well as interviews with criminals who have used the drug to rob people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3KMYWgiapg
