
Canadian government gag order in CIA brainwashing case - myth_drannon
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-government-gag-order-mk-ultra-1.4448933
======
dannyw
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-...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/exqjv4/how-do-you-turn-a-
family-history-of-cia-mind-control-experiments-into-art)

~~~
christmasity
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.

~~~
jknoepfler
Unethical human experimentation was almost certainly pioneered by the first
human civilizations, not the relative late comer from the 18th century.

~~~
katastic
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...](http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/07/world/volkswagen-s-history-the-
darker-side-is-revisited.html)

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/07/20/mitsubishi...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/07/20/mitsubishi_apology_slave_labor_company_admits_using_american_prisoners_of.html)

~~~
koonsolo
I can't believe you are getting downvoted for this.

Surely people on HN care more about real facts, right?

~~~
chesimov
I think it is a reflection of the zeitgeist - things are once again either
only good, or only bad. There is no space for bad people to also have done
some good things, and vice versa.

------
kelvin0
How can anyone discount so called 'conspiracies theories' so quickly when
accounts of such atrocities are now mainstream knowledge? I am not saying one
should suspend critical thinking and logic to accept anything they are told,
but clearly there are some instances where history has proven such
conspiracies have taken place and harmed many innocent lives.

~~~
wallace_f
I used to be of the mind that ideas within the conspiracy theory realm were
most likely utter nonsense. After Snowden and the DNC scandal, I've opened up
the possibility for a lot more critical thought.

If you take a look at the conspiracy sub on reddit, which became popular after
the DNC Scandal, while there is some nonsense, the most-upvoted stuff are
often quite interesting. In fact, I find the userbase there in some ways more
sane and rational than your typical political online forum, often being even
quite the opposite of the identity politics seen in those places, ie the #3
most upvoted post this year is exactly that.(1)

1 -
[https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6twr5k/the_only...](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/6twr5k/the_only_power_that_scares_the_establishment/)

~~~
shostack
>" In fact, I find the userbase there in some ways more sane and rational than
your typical political online forum"

I'm confused by this statement. /r/conspiracy has been shown to have been
heavily used by Russian bots/trolls to spread propaganda and truly fake news.

~~~
wallace_f
Can you elaborate, or give an example? What about my example/observation
screams 'Russian propoganda?' Russians want us to throw away identity politics
and work together to fight against the abuses of the plutocracy?

~~~
seppin
No they want everyone to distrust one another, and tear down instead of
reform.

------
pbourke
The government has tortured its citizens in the past and is covering up that
torture in the present. It sounds like a Royal Commission or similarly
significant investigation is needed.

~~~
wallace_f
Quite a few things are a bigger deal than this, but get no attention. For
example, the same could be said for our government-funded genocide of Native
Americans. I don't know why the denial is allowed to persist.[1] In Germany
holocaust-denial can land you prison time. America has the only remaining
legitimate government in the world that committed an attempted genocide
against its people.

1 - www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-madley-california-
genocide-20160522-snap-story.html

~~~
jhiska
Germany lost the war.

Although it's not true that the victors always write the history. There are
cases where the defeated write books detailing all the injustices committed
against them and it gets picked up centuries later after the tides of power
have changed again, or so much time has passed that everyone involved is safe
or dead -- I guess one can say that's how you know about the Native American
version of American history and can talk about it safely.

Want an interesting thought? What in the horrors of hell is being done to
Middle-Easterners?

------
gtcode
I'd speculate that, after such an age of barbaric experimentation, new and
supposedly more innocuous methods that don't require physically
detaining/restraining a subject have long since been conceived, implemented,
and tried.

~~~
VonGuard
I don't know, some of the things they were doing up there were just ridiculous
and useless. Like putting a woman in a chemically induced coma for a year, and
playing high volume affirmations though a headset she wore the whole time. The
doctor who started all this up there was just Mengele with a Psych degree and
some very stupid ideas.

~~~
djsumdog
Many MKUltra documents were shredded, and even those recovered were of little
scientific benefit due to the way the experiments were carried out. So many
people had their lives irrevocably destroyed, and for absolutely nothing of
value.

~~~
bionoid
> and for absolutely nothing of value

Nothing of value to society anyway; looking at the 1979 reunion video, it
seems like they were pretty happy with the return on investment overall.

[0] [https://www.gnosticmedia.com/ccn-unspun-020-mkultra-
reunion-...](https://www.gnosticmedia.com/ccn-unspun-020-mkultra-reunion-
party-1979-jan-irvin-joe-atwill/)

------
anigbrowl
_" They don't want to have to deal with more applications," Stein said of the
government's requirement the settlement details be kept confidential and out
of the public eye._

Cooperation is complicity. If you're party to a gag order and it's not
obviously geared towards protecting the basic (not political) safety of
specific persons, then you should consider whether you have an obligation to
circumvent it, and how.

~~~
Waterluvian
Academically, yes. But it's easy to say when it's not you.

------
pmoriarty
What boggles my mind is after decades and decades of truly scummy, bottom of
the barrel activity (not only in this case, but in the torture they inflicted
on prisoners, assassinations, drug running, overthrows of governments, etc),
the CIA still manages to recruit people.

They must either be hiring really naive recruits, who are blinded by idealism
or really ignorant of the history of the organization they're joining, or
they're hiring complete and utter scumbags. Or, perhaps the revelations that
have been made public about them are false and they're really the
stereotypical "good guys" they try to paint themselves as.

~~~
kridsdale
You may classify this under idealism, but I bet a lot of them would claim to
just have realistic understandings of the brutalities that are a requirement
to keep an empire running. They would say that those who would hold back from
exploring any means neccissary to defeat their geopolitical adversaries are
the idealists.

~~~
cryoshon
ah yes, the pragmatist's prayer-- "it was necessary even if it was immoral,
therefore it was right, even if it was wrong, therefore i am noble, even if i
have lost my humanity"

everyone jumps to the question of "does the end justify the means?"

a better question: why jump to the most brutal means before questioning
whether the end is worthwhile regardless of the means?

is government mind control something we really want them to be able to do in
the context of an intelligence agency? no, it is not; it is the apex of the
opposite of human rights.

~~~
jhiska
You are asking the wrong questions.

Is morality powerful enough to stop actions?

Government thugs can survive with a guilty conscience.

------
brunoqc
I live near Montréal and I never heard about it except from US sources. It's
weird that it doesn't seem to be a big deal. Also I'm never sure if the
sources are accurate or if it's from some conspiracy nuts.

~~~
scott_karana
Why would you hear about it from Canadian sources, if they're getting gagged?

~~~
brunoqc
If I understand correctly, the victims are getting gagged. Not the news
medias. They can publish stuff and they did in the past, like that The Fifth
Estate thing. So I could have heard about it but I didn't. From the news or
from people. Maybe the news don't talk about it often enough or that the
population don't care.

------
forapurpose
Coincidentally, I just saw this review of a film about a similar event:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/movies/wormwood-review-
er...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/14/movies/wormwood-review-errol-morris-
peter-sarsgaard.html)

------
dangero
It's not hard to imagine that a government organization capable of this is
almost certainly testing out all types of brainwashing techniques online
today. (not that many others aren't)

------
gtcode
Do any modern day entities (governments, corporations, other) perform
ostensibly mild versions of such psychological experimentation, possibly at
scale, or with the intention of scaling?

This occurred decades after an ancestor of mine was PM of Canada, thankfully.

~~~
toomanybeersies
Facebook performs secret psychological experiments on its users by
manipulating their news feed:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-
apologises-psychological-experiments-on-users)

I would say without their consent, but it's likely there is a clause buried in
the user agreement that means that you consent to it.

~~~
uiri
If their users did not read that clause in the user agreement and knowingly
consent to the experiments, then they _are_ being carried out without the
users' consent.

