I watched the news last night and saw the 79 year-old woman who is suing the Canadian government for the brainwashing torture they inflicted on her in cooperation with the CIA fifty years ago. I've read about her many times and saw the made-for-TV-movie THE SLEEP ROOM that aired a few years ago: The Sleep Room's Missing Memories

But this was the first time I had seen her LIVE on television. As she talked about her reasons for not letting the government get away with this atrocious crime - in the face of their repeated rejections of her - I was filled with a sense of admiration for her courage in pursuing justice - not only for herself but for all past, present and future victims.

The government's excuse for not compensating her - as it has other victims - is because her mind is still intact, unlike some of the other victims who are "childlike" in their mentality.

It crossed my mind, as I watched her, how incredibly strong her mind must be to have withstood what she endured. She is a true Canadian hero, an inspiration to others seeking to overcome their fears and speak out when they see wrongs being committed. I imagine the spirit of George Orwell is admiring her for being a Winston Smith, challenging the mind-control of Big Brother. ~ Jackie Jura

39.Interrogation & Torture and 40.Electric Shock Brainwashing and 43.Winston Talks In Sleep and 44.Room 101

MONTREAL -- Janine Huard was a young mother of four with mild postpartum depression when she checked herself in for psychiatric treatment at a Montreal hospital more than five decades ago. What happened after that still haunts her today, Ms. Huard says, and she will be in a federal courtroom this week seeking to launch a class-action lawsuit against the Canadian government for brainwashing experiments carried out in the Cold War era on her and hundreds of other patients. "I was a guinea pig," Ms. Huard said.

On and off for more than a decade at McGill University's renowned Allan Memorial Institute, Ms. Huard said, she received massive electroshocks and was fed more than 40 experimental pills a day. The former patient, who will be 79 at the end of the month, said she was drugged and subjected to so-called "depatterning," during which repetitive recordings were played in her ear for weeks on end, one of them telling her she was of no use to her family.

"I came out of there so sick that my mother had to live with me for 10 years," Ms. Huard said. "I couldn't take care of my children any more." She said she lost memories and suffered from migraines as a result.

The ordeal came at the hands of Ewan Cameron. The Edinburgh-educated physician based in New York pioneered "psychic driving," by which he believed he could erase the memories of patients and rebuild their psyches without psychiatric defect.

The idea intrigued the Central Intelligence Agency, which recruited Dr. Cameron to experiment with mind-control techniques beginning in 1950. The McGill experiments were jointly funded by the CIA and Ottawa.

As director of the institute until 1964, Dr. Cameron conducted a range of experiments, often without the knowledge or permission of patients. He gave patients LSD and subjected them to massive and multiple electroshock treatments. Some underwent sleep deprivation or total sensory deprivation. Others were kept in drug-induced comas for months while speakers under their pillows broadcast messages for up to 16 hours a day. The experiments were part of a larger CIA program called MK-ULTRA, which also saw LSD administered to U.S. prison inmates and brothel patrons without their knowledge, according to testimony before a 1977 U.S. Senate committee.

The CIA eventually settled a class-action lawsuit by test subjects, including Ms. Huard, and the Canadian government ordered a judicial report into Dr. Cameron's experiments. The allegations have not been proved in court.

A Federal Court hearing is scheduled to begin Wednesday to decide whether to approve the class-action lawsuit against Ottawa.

In 1994, 77 of the mostly unwitting Canadian patients were awarded $100,000 each from the federal government but only those who suffered "total depatterning" -- were rendered to a childlike state. More than 250 others were denied compensation because their treatment was less intense and had fewer long-term effects. In 2004, a federal appeal court overruled that decision and awarded a former patient the $100,000. "There are many, many former patients of Dr. Cameron who applied for the $100,000 whose applications were denied on the same basis . . . because they misapplied the decree," Alan Stein, Ms. Huard's lawyer, said. The federal appeal court's decision means hundreds of other former patients should also have received compensation, he said. "Even though [Ms. Huard] might not have had the number of electroshock treatments as other applicants, she was subject to psychic driving, she was given experimental drugs and she had electroshock treatments," Mr. Stein said. Government lawyers have argued that too much time has passed for patients to appeal a federal panel decision.

But Ms. Huard said the treatments affected her four children and her marriage. "Justice has to be done," the grandmother of four and great-grandmother of four said. "It's impossible that they ruined our lives like that. They shouldn't sweep it under the carpet."

...Huard, a petite great-grandmother who will be 79 at the end of the month, was a patient of Cameron three separate times from 1951 to 1962. She said she was drugged, shocked and forced to listen to recorded messages for hours on end, day after day."It was torture," she said outside the court yesterday. Huard said it left her unable to care for her four children and plagued with migraines and memory loss. Huard was one of nine Canadian victims who received nearly US$67,000 from the CIA in 1988 to compensate her for her suffering. But her claim for compensation from the federal government, which jointly funded the experiments, was rejected three times. Frederic Paquin, the lawyer for the federal attorney general, said the government does not contest that Huard underwent the treatments she claims. "It's in the medical record," Paquin told the court. But he argued it's too late for a lawsuit, more than four decades after Cameron's death and more than a decade after her claim was rejected.

...In 1994, 77 patients were awarded $100,000 each from the federal government but more than 250 others were denied compensation because they were not "totally depatterned." Although a 2004 federal appeal court decision overruled that criteria in another patient's case and awarded her the $100,000, the Crown stood by the original decisions to deny Huard's claim. Huard's lawyers argued that she did suffer serious harm and failed to file a lawsuit earlier only because she didn't have the money. "It's unbelievable that this took place," Stein told the court. The Crown told the judge that it's difficult to pass judgment today on the treatments of yesterday. Electroshock therapy is still in use, Paquin told the court, and lobotomies were once common. "We haven't compensated people who received lobotomies during that era, either," he told the court. A decision on whether the application can proceed is expected at a later date.

Reader Chris is seeking compensation for brainwashing experiments conducted on his mother by the Canadian government

LSD A CIA RACKET and BE LEARY OF LEERY

MIND-CONTROL PART 1: CANADIAN & USA SURVIVORS SEEK JUSTICE ("Curiously, often a classic manifestation of people who are afflicted with certain psychotic disorders is the irrational fear that the CIA and FBI is conspiring to harm them. In this case, the CIA involvement is real and the covert nature of the involvement is not contested."). Probe Magazine, Mar/Apr 2000

MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and THINKING INSIDE YOUR SKULL

ELECTRIC-SHOCK TEACHING IN BRAVE NEW WORLD and SLEEP TEACHING IN BRAVE NEW WORLD