12 ms·

FYI, this is just one of the known experiments out of MK-ULTRA. Victim testimonies describe being immovably bound to chairs for all of their waking existence an

by dannyw 9y ago

FYI, this is just one of the known experiments out of MK-ULTRA. Victim testimonies describe being immovably bound to chairs for all of their waking existence and forced to listen to a short, recorded tape on loop while blindfolded for sensory deprivation. One victim was unable to recount the message as they suffered PTSD flashbacks and dissociated if they even thought about it. IIRC official records show the tape was something like “I did not kill my mother”, however there were other inclinations that the actual played message was the opposite - “I killed my mother”. At least hundreds of years of torture were carried out on unwitting Americans and Canadians; on a magnitude that is comparable to human experimentation astrocities of the worst regimes in history; just less in numbers. More reading: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/exqjv4/how-do-you-turn-a-family-history-of-cia-mind-control-experiments-into-art https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/exqjv4/how-do-you-turn-a-...

christmasity 9y ago
Unethical human experimentation was pioneered by the US. We've been experimenting on natives, blacks, minorities a long before the nazis. And we even tested nuclear fallout on pacific islanders long after ww2. I believe the "father" of unethical japanese human experimentation was trained in the US before ww2. Not sure why canadians got involved in this mess though.
- ivan_ah 9y ago
  I was reading about this a long time ago, and remember the de-programming research experiments were initially proposed to be done in US, but was rejected based on ethical grounds. So they just took the project up north.
  - myth_drannon 9y ago
    Not surprising, considering the history of residential schools and the treatment of Aboriginal people in Canada
    - throwanem 9y ago
      Nothing the US hasn't done to our own territories' aborigines.
- badosu 9y ago
  A couple of instances pre and post-ww2 of medical human experimentation: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment
- wyck 9y ago
  Well Donald Ewen Cameron lived in Montreal at the time and had the means, The CIA was interesting in his work on Psychic Driving. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_driving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_driving . His move to Montreal was funded by the Rockefellers, he was given Sir Hugh Allan's mansion, and he was endored by the pioneering neurosurgeon Dr. Wilder Penfield.
- jknoepfler 9y ago
  Unethical human experimentation was almost certainly pioneered by the first human civilizations, not the relative late comer from the 18th century.
  - katastic 9y ago
    I know. It's really funny how people seem to have a knowledge of history that begins solely with the colonization of the new world. They have zero recollection of the horrors of past civilizations. As if, somehow, the founders of the USA, are responsible for all evils in the world and everyone else was just getting along and hugging up until 1776. And I recommend those people ask for a refund from their history teachers, because anyone who tells you history is black-and-white, good-and-evil, is selling you something. Humanity is one long stream of moral ambiguity. Any moral lessons derived from it are done by omitting contradictory evidence. A simple cruise through a Wikipedia article offers plenty of moral ambiguity--and that should be the minimum starting point for considering yourself knowledgeable in a subject. Even the archtype of evil himself, Hitler, (and likewise Stalin with Russia) still managed to re-vitalize broken countries into industrial titans that we still benefit from today. Russia was literally a pre-industrial society before WW2. And it's interesting how people who believe in rigid good-guys/bad-guys have no problem driving a VW Beetle, or a Mitsubishi--they made the Kamakazi Zeros, by the way. And both companies benefited from slave labor. It's not even hidden knowledge: http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/07/world/volkswagen-s-history-the-darker-side-is-revisited.html http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/07/world/volkswagen-s-history... http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/07/20/mitsubishi_apology_slave_labor_company_admits_using_american_prisoners_of.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/07/20/mitsubishi...
    - yesenadam 9y ago
      If I remember right, Hitler left Germany pretty broken.
      - koonsolo 9y ago
        Look at the German economy before WW2, and after WW2. Then you will get your answer. But like the parent poster said, some people can only think black and white.
- icelancer 9y ago
  >Unethical human experimentation was pioneered by the US. Have to guess the Aztecs and many other civilizations before that had it figured out before us.
  - throwanem 9y ago
    They were religious about it, and offered no inspiration to modern societies. We were scientific about it, and inspired, among much else, many enormities of the Nazi regime. I get that American exceptionalism galls people, and I don't ask that they feel otherwise on the subject. But having inspired the 20th Century's greatest horrors - we had a strong, if still rather quiet, hand in the Soviet Union's origins as well - seems pretty legitimately exceptional to me. I don't know. No one I've ever heard has argued other than that the British Empire bestrode the world as the titan of its age, leaving the places where its feet fell forever changed in its wake. Why is it "American exceptionalism", rather than simply historicity, to suggest that the inheritor of that empire, in its own now fast closing age, did the same?
    - cat199 9y ago
      > We were scientific about it what makes you think that scientific rationalism isn't a religion, or that despite 'being religious about it', prevous experiments weren't done in a rational, controlled, repeatable way by practitioners?
      - throwanem 9y ago
        Man, I don't know. Only the one of them having made it possible to build the technology by which we're communicating with one another right now? Assuming we are communicating with one another right now, a point on which I have my doubts. I mean, I'm placing the responsibility for eugenics and its consequent enormities squarely upon those who saw no reason to involve any concept of morality other than the most reductive utilitarianism in their development of the science of heredity into the technology of eugenics, and you seem to find that in so doing I'm saying something laudatory, so...
- naeem 9y ago
  The unapologetic close-mindedness of Americans, even in the more intelligent parts of the web, never ceases to baffle me. Really? Human experimentation started in the US?
  - pavlov 9y ago
    It's a facet of the American exceptionalist mindset filtered through a Biblical worldview. Good things become enshrined and eventually turn into unquestionable scripture (cf. the Constitution); bad things are whispered in conspiracy theories until they become the Original Sin ("nobody else could have been so evil as us").
    - throwanem 9y ago
      On the other hand, we really did invent the eugenic concept, as implemented for example by the Nazi regime, and even that example wasn't enough to stop some states, such as California, forcibly sterilizing their own citizens for explicitly eugenic purposes until at least a couple of decades after. You're not quite wrong about American exceptionalism in its negative application here. (You're far from wholly right, though - people question the Constitution, for example, all the time.) But the Progressive Era in the US really does have a hell of a lot to answer for. That's whence came the modern concept of engineering a society en bloc, and treating its members however harshly seemed necessary to fit them into the overarching structure of some notional greater good. That's what Huxley was satirizing in Brave New World. Where did you think he got the idea?
      - wavefunction 9y ago
        Sir Francis Galton (a Brit) invented the term "eugenics." The Wikipedia article on Eugenics notes that the concept of selective breeding of humans dates back to at least Plato. Additionally the Wikipedia entry indicates that the modern Eugenics movement started in the UK before spreading to the US, Canada and most other European countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
      - cat199 9y ago
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
bionoid 9y ago
Jan Irvin at GnosticMedia has done a lot of interesting research on MKULTRA. I learned that Timothy Leary was a CIA agent and basically the counterculture of the 60s was manufactured (see "manufacturing the deadhead" [0]). Personally I find his "unspun" show refreshing, if nothing else it seems like an attempt at honest reporting, which is rare. edit: and please do read it before judging, the evidence is more convincing than you think. [0] https://www.gnosticmedia.com/manufacturing-the-deadhead-a-product-of-social-engineering-by-joe-atwill-and-jan-irvin/ https://www.gnosticmedia.com/manufacturing-the-deadhead-a-pr...
- programmarchy 9y ago
  I'm also familiar with Jan's work and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of mind control and psychedelics. He's uncovered a lot of interesting history. It has been interesting to see Jan's development from being pro-psychedelics (e.g. his film Pharmacratic Inquisition) to his stance today which place psychedelics and mysticism mostly in the realm of mind control tools. To say the least, there are some very bizarre connections between military intelligence and the formation of the "counter culture". And seemingly, this is nothing new, with these types of links going back to at least classical civilization with Eleusinian cult initiations.
  - losteric 9y ago
    Can you elaborate on those connections? My cursory googling surfaced some thread-bare conspiracy theories, but nothing of substance to follow-up on.
    - dreamdu5t 9y ago
      I recommend reading “Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: the CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond“ It covers MKUltra’s LSD experiments.
    - bionoid 9y ago
      I suggest you look at Irvin's brain [0], which contains a lot of the connections. Red items are confirmed, documented CIA, yellow is "highly likely but not 100% confirmed". [0] https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6FBA86B0-0C57-9FCA-5CF9-D742DA541AAA#-4411 https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6FBA86B0-0C57-9FCA-5CF9...
xor1 9y ago
Being able to induce disassociation and splitting within trained subjects are what I primarily associate with MK Ultra.
- dannyw 9y ago
  Aka, BPD? Can you elaborate?
  - xor1 9y ago
    The person who wrote what I'm going to link you is clearly mentally ill, and it's hosted on a conspiracy theory wiki. I hope linking it doesn't get me flagged as a spammer or nut. You can take the author at face value in regards to them actually having gone through what they're describing, I'm 50/50 split on that. Despite that, I think it's interesting stuff to read about, basically the adult version of ghost stories. It's what initially made me make the connection between MKUltra (as explained by those who believe in it) and splitting/disassociation. It's really long and rambling, and I don't blame you if you end up deciding not to read through it. https://deprogramwiki.com/deprogramming/deprogramming-modalities-for-trauma-mind-control-survivors/ https://deprogramwiki.com/deprogramming/deprogramming-modali...
colordrops 9y ago
I appreciate that HN is still a place where we can talk directly and frankly about these topics but I have to wonder how long it will last...
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Why do you wonder about that? Is there any indication that this is changing?
  - Sabinus 9y ago
    Nation states are investing more and more into the control and shaping of dialogue on the internet.
  - colordrops 9y ago
    The way things are trending is in the opposite direction of free speech. The loss of net neutrality, bills to control the media (anti-"fake news" bills), and tightening control by all the main social media outlets seem to indicate that any content that directly challenges authority will not be surfaced to anyone but a tiny audience.

by dannyw 9y ago

christmasity 9y ago

Unethical human experimentation was pioneered by the US. We've been experimenting on natives, blacks, minorities a long before the nazis. And we even tested nuclear fallout on pacific islanders long after ww2. I believe the "father" of unethical japanese human experimentation was trained in the US before ww2. Not sure why canadians got involved in this mess though.

ivan_ah 9y ago
I was reading about this a long time ago, and remember the de-programming research experiments were initially proposed to be done in US, but was rejected based on ethical grounds. So they just took the project up north.
- myth_drannon 9y ago
  Not surprising, considering the history of residential schools and the treatment of Aboriginal people in Canada
  - throwanem 9y ago
    Nothing the US hasn't done to our own territories' aborigines.
badosu 9y ago
A couple of instances pre and post-ww2 of medical human experimentation: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment
wyck 9y ago
Well Donald Ewen Cameron lived in Montreal at the time and had the means, The CIA was interesting in his work on Psychic Driving. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_driving https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychic_driving . His move to Montreal was funded by the Rockefellers, he was given Sir Hugh Allan's mansion, and he was endored by the pioneering neurosurgeon Dr. Wilder Penfield.
jknoepfler 9y ago
Unethical human experimentation was almost certainly pioneered by the first human civilizations, not the relative late comer from the 18th century.
- katastic 9y ago
  I know. It's really funny how people seem to have a knowledge of history that begins solely with the colonization of the new world. They have zero recollection of the horrors of past civilizations. As if, somehow, the founders of the USA, are responsible for all evils in the world and everyone else was just getting along and hugging up until 1776. And I recommend those people ask for a refund from their history teachers, because anyone who tells you history is black-and-white, good-and-evil, is selling you something. Humanity is one long stream of moral ambiguity. Any moral lessons derived from it are done by omitting contradictory evidence. A simple cruise through a Wikipedia article offers plenty of moral ambiguity--and that should be the minimum starting point for considering yourself knowledgeable in a subject. Even the archtype of evil himself, Hitler, (and likewise Stalin with Russia) still managed to re-vitalize broken countries into industrial titans that we still benefit from today. Russia was literally a pre-industrial society before WW2. And it's interesting how people who believe in rigid good-guys/bad-guys have no problem driving a VW Beetle, or a Mitsubishi--they made the Kamakazi Zeros, by the way. And both companies benefited from slave labor. It's not even hidden knowledge: http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/07/world/volkswagen-s-history-the-darker-side-is-revisited.html http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/07/world/volkswagen-s-history... http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/07/20/mitsubishi_apology_slave_labor_company_admits_using_american_prisoners_of.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/07/20/mitsubishi...
  - yesenadam 9y ago
    If I remember right, Hitler left Germany pretty broken.
    - koonsolo 9y ago
      Look at the German economy before WW2, and after WW2. Then you will get your answer. But like the parent poster said, some people can only think black and white.
icelancer 9y ago
>Unethical human experimentation was pioneered by the US. Have to guess the Aztecs and many other civilizations before that had it figured out before us.
- throwanem 9y ago
  They were religious about it, and offered no inspiration to modern societies. We were scientific about it, and inspired, among much else, many enormities of the Nazi regime. I get that American exceptionalism galls people, and I don't ask that they feel otherwise on the subject. But having inspired the 20th Century's greatest horrors - we had a strong, if still rather quiet, hand in the Soviet Union's origins as well - seems pretty legitimately exceptional to me. I don't know. No one I've ever heard has argued other than that the British Empire bestrode the world as the titan of its age, leaving the places where its feet fell forever changed in its wake. Why is it "American exceptionalism", rather than simply historicity, to suggest that the inheritor of that empire, in its own now fast closing age, did the same?
  - cat199 9y ago
    > We were scientific about it what makes you think that scientific rationalism isn't a religion, or that despite 'being religious about it', prevous experiments weren't done in a rational, controlled, repeatable way by practitioners?
    - throwanem 9y ago
      Man, I don't know. Only the one of them having made it possible to build the technology by which we're communicating with one another right now? Assuming we are communicating with one another right now, a point on which I have my doubts. I mean, I'm placing the responsibility for eugenics and its consequent enormities squarely upon those who saw no reason to involve any concept of morality other than the most reductive utilitarianism in their development of the science of heredity into the technology of eugenics, and you seem to find that in so doing I'm saying something laudatory, so...
naeem 9y ago
The unapologetic close-mindedness of Americans, even in the more intelligent parts of the web, never ceases to baffle me. Really? Human experimentation started in the US?
- pavlov 9y ago
  It's a facet of the American exceptionalist mindset filtered through a Biblical worldview. Good things become enshrined and eventually turn into unquestionable scripture (cf. the Constitution); bad things are whispered in conspiracy theories until they become the Original Sin ("nobody else could have been so evil as us").
  - throwanem 9y ago
    On the other hand, we really did invent the eugenic concept, as implemented for example by the Nazi regime, and even that example wasn't enough to stop some states, such as California, forcibly sterilizing their own citizens for explicitly eugenic purposes until at least a couple of decades after. You're not quite wrong about American exceptionalism in its negative application here. (You're far from wholly right, though - people question the Constitution, for example, all the time.) But the Progressive Era in the US really does have a hell of a lot to answer for. That's whence came the modern concept of engineering a society en bloc, and treating its members however harshly seemed necessary to fit them into the overarching structure of some notional greater good. That's what Huxley was satirizing in Brave New World. Where did you think he got the idea?
    - wavefunction 9y ago
      Sir Francis Galton (a Brit) invented the term "eugenics." The Wikipedia article on Eugenics notes that the concept of selective breeding of humans dates back to at least Plato. Additionally the Wikipedia entry indicates that the modern Eugenics movement started in the UK before spreading to the US, Canada and most other European countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
    - cat199 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

bionoid 9y ago

Jan Irvin at GnosticMedia has done a lot of interesting research on MKULTRA. I learned that Timothy Leary was a CIA agent and basically the counterculture of the 60s was manufactured (see "manufacturing the deadhead" [0]). Personally I find his "unspun" show refreshing, if nothing else it seems like an attempt at honest reporting, which is rare. edit: and please do read it before judging, the evidence is more convincing than you think. [0] https://www.gnosticmedia.com/manufacturing-the-deadhead-a-product-of-social-engineering-by-joe-atwill-and-jan-irvin/ https://www.gnosticmedia.com/manufacturing-the-deadhead-a-pr...

programmarchy 9y ago
I'm also familiar with Jan's work and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of mind control and psychedelics. He's uncovered a lot of interesting history. It has been interesting to see Jan's development from being pro-psychedelics (e.g. his film Pharmacratic Inquisition) to his stance today which place psychedelics and mysticism mostly in the realm of mind control tools. To say the least, there are some very bizarre connections between military intelligence and the formation of the "counter culture". And seemingly, this is nothing new, with these types of links going back to at least classical civilization with Eleusinian cult initiations.
- losteric 9y ago
  Can you elaborate on those connections? My cursory googling surfaced some thread-bare conspiracy theories, but nothing of substance to follow-up on.
  - dreamdu5t 9y ago
    I recommend reading “Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: the CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond“ It covers MKUltra’s LSD experiments.
  - bionoid 9y ago
    I suggest you look at Irvin's brain [0], which contains a lot of the connections. Red items are confirmed, documented CIA, yellow is "highly likely but not 100% confirmed". [0] https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6FBA86B0-0C57-9FCA-5CF9-D742DA541AAA#-4411 https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6FBA86B0-0C57-9FCA-5CF9...

xor1 9y ago

Being able to induce disassociation and splitting within trained subjects are what I primarily associate with MK Ultra.

dannyw 9y ago
Aka, BPD? Can you elaborate?
- xor1 9y ago
  The person who wrote what I'm going to link you is clearly mentally ill, and it's hosted on a conspiracy theory wiki. I hope linking it doesn't get me flagged as a spammer or nut. You can take the author at face value in regards to them actually having gone through what they're describing, I'm 50/50 split on that. Despite that, I think it's interesting stuff to read about, basically the adult version of ghost stories. It's what initially made me make the connection between MKUltra (as explained by those who believe in it) and splitting/disassociation. It's really long and rambling, and I don't blame you if you end up deciding not to read through it. https://deprogramwiki.com/deprogramming/deprogramming-modalities-for-trauma-mind-control-survivors/ https://deprogramwiki.com/deprogramming/deprogramming-modali...

colordrops 9y ago

I appreciate that HN is still a place where we can talk directly and frankly about these topics but I have to wonder how long it will last...

jacquesm 9y ago
Why do you wonder about that? Is there any indication that this is changing?
- Sabinus 9y ago
  Nation states are investing more and more into the control and shaping of dialogue on the internet.
- colordrops 9y ago
  The way things are trending is in the opposite direction of free speech. The loss of net neutrality, bills to control the media (anti-"fake news" bills), and tightening control by all the main social media outlets seem to indicate that any content that directly challenges authority will not be surfaced to anyone but a tiny audience.