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Unit 731

The content below is from Episode 159 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

ANNOUNCEMENT

  • This episode’s main topic is dark, very dark. In this episode, Unit 731, I will be talking about torture, mutilation, and treatment of human beings as if they were “logs.” But all of this actually happened and I think it is important for people to know about it.
    • You have been warned. This is mature content. Viewer and listener discretion is advised.

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

  • Before I get into the main topic, I would like to recommend something light and happy in contrast to how dark this episode is going to be.
    • This week I recommend you watch the Kill Tony. It is a live comedy podcast that I have been obsessed with.
    • The weekly live show recorded live from Austin Texas and the world, with your hosts Tony Hinchcliffe and Brian Redban.
    • It is hilarious. Tony has a live band, a couple of mics, and a live audience. He pulls names out of a bucket and gives whomever he pulls out, 60 seconds of uninterrupted time to do a comedy standup routine. When the 60 seconds are up, Tony and usually a guest comedian interview the aspiring comedian that probably just BOMBED on stage.
    • The show set up makes every episode unique and enjoyable.
    • If the aspiring bucket comedian does well (a rarity) then great. Everybody laughs.
    • If the aspiring bucket comedian does poorly (the usual outcome) Tony and the guest comedian rip into them. This also makes everyone laugh.

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT

Unit 731

Xinhua via Getty Images -Unit 731 personnel conduct a bacteriological trial upon a test subject in Nong’an County of northeast China’s Jilin Province. November 1940.

  • I’ve talked about World War 2 quite a bit on this podcast. It is important to know just how much suffering came out of the largest war this planet has ever seen. It killed 3% of the world’s population at the time.
    • “War is Hell” –General William Tecumseh Sherman, a leader of the Union army in the Civil War.
    • No part of WW2 lasted longer than the Pacific Theater. From Japan’s attack on Manchuria in 1931 to September 2nd, 1945 when Japan officially surrendered to the United States.
    • Japan’s invasion of China in 1937 drastically changed the country. It created a civil war, famine, and estimated 3.9 million Chinese (mostly civilian) perished as a direct result.
      • In the end 10.2 million Chinese died until the Soviets stepped in to “liberate” China in 1945.
    • During this genocide and mass rape of China, a biological warfare unit simply known as Unit 731 managed to stand out as even more cruel and brutal than what was already happening around them.
    • What started out as a truly beneficial public health research agency, eventually became a human disease factory. The diseases that were cultivated at Unit 731 had the ability to wipe out human life… all of it. And how did they create such biological weapons?
      • A virtually endless supply of human test subjects they saw as nothing more than “logs.”
    • Japan started its biological weapons program in the 1930s, partly because biological weapons were banned by the Geneva Convention of 1925; they reasoned that the ban verified its effectiveness as a weapon.[1] Japan’s occupation of Manchuria began in 1931 after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.[11] Japan decided to build Unit 731 in Manchuria because the occupation not only gave the Japanese an advantage of separating the research station from their island, but also gave them access to as many Chinese individuals as they wanted for use as human experimental subjects.[11] They viewed the Chinese as no cost research subjects, and hoped that they could use this advantage to lead the world in biological warfare.[11] The majority of research subjects were Chinese, but many were of different nationalities.

This is another warning. The topics I’m about to discuss include rape, mutilation, and some of the most vile treatment of a human being. Please, if you don’t want to hear about these topics just turn off the podcast now.

Here are some of the worst experiments carried out by Unit 731. They are some of the most horrific war crimes ever committed and they basically received no punishment.

Unit 731’s Harbin facility.

  • Rape was common in Imperial Japan’s expanse across the Pacific Theater. Unit 731 was no exception.
    • But instead of the beastial lust driven rape common among Japan’s combat units, Unit 731 used rape as a tool to further their understanding of biological warfare.
    • If a female captive was the right age to become pregnant, the beings operating Unit 731 would have her forcibly impregnated. A pregnant human guinea pig has more potential for insight into a biological weapons effectiveness.
    • After the female captive was pregnant they would be intentionally infected with various diseases, have parts of their bodies crushed, shot, exposed to chemical weapons, and beaten. After this abysmal suffering, the mother would be disected and the fetus would be examined.
    • These experiments seemed to have drastically improved medicine for pregnant women after the war.
      • Documentation of the experiments were destroyed before Unit 731 was shut down. However, the witness accounts say it happened. And the innovations in healthcare for pregnant women that came out of Manchuria support witnesses’ claims.

Unit 731 Medical Table

A Unit 731 doctor operates on a patient that is part of a bacteriological experiment.

  • One part of Unit 731 was known as Maruta.
    • Their job was to study the effects of disease and injury on enemy combat units.
    • At first they took volunteers from the Imperial Army for non-lethal diseases that could be easily observed.
    • But as the Maruta team wanted to study more harmful diseases and injuries and as the volunteers started to not show up to be butchered/infected… they changed tactics.
    • Maruta is Japanese for “log.” This unit started using POWs for their research subjects and therefore no longer had to ask for consent.
      • They no longer used any semblance of ethical restraint.
    • Vivisection is defined as:
      • Vivisection is surgery conducted for experimental purposes on a living organism, typically animals with a central nervous system, to view living internal structure
    • The Maruta team didn’t use anethesia as they vivisected living victims.
    • Mostly Chinese Civillians were infected with cholera and the black plague. Then their organs would be removed before they died. This gave Unit 731 the best insight into the effects of each disease as the organs wouldn’t have started to decompose at all.
    • Other than disease, Maruta team would amputate limbs and sew them back on to other parts of the body to see what would happen. All while the victim was alive and without any sort of pain management.
      • Other victims would have parts of their bodies crushed, frozen, and/or circulation cut off to see how gangrene works on the body.
    • When a victim’s body, or “log” as they were referred to by the Japanese, could no longer provide any insight, they were shot or sometimes they didn’t even bothered… burying the POWs alive. Not a single Chinese, Mongolian, Korean, or Russian prisoner sent to Unit 731 left alive.

Unit 731 Frostbite Test

The frostbitten hands of a Chinese person who was taken outside in winter by Unit 731 personnel for an experiment on how best to treat frostbite.

  • There was a special interest in hypothermia at Unit 731. A man known as Yoshimura Hisato preferred to study what extreme cold did to limb injuries.
    • He would take POWs and force their limbs into freezing water until the flesh was solid. Yoshimura would inspect the frozen limb by striking it with something solid. Unless the limb sounded like striking lumber, the limb would go right back into the ice bath.
    • He would then rapid warm the frozen limb in different ways to see if he could get it to be functional again.
      • He would pour hot water over the frozen limbs. He would also sit the victim next to a fire or simply let it thaw over time.

Bayonet Practice

A Japanese soldier uses a Chinese man’s body for bayonet practice near Tianjin, China. September 1937.

  • To optimize Japan’s fighting forces, Unit 731 was tasked with testing various weapons on living targets.
    • There were many instances of lining POWs up on firing ranges and testing every firearm on them.
    • Unit 731 measured and documented the wound patterns and depths of dead and dying inmates.
  • Bayonets, swords, knives, flamethrowers, gas chambers, nerve gas, and blister agents were used on bound subjects.
    • The military wanted to know the effectiveness of a flamethrower or nerve gas on a clothed victim as opposed to bare skin.
    • They dropped heavy objects to see how the human body is crushed.
    • They deprived inmates of food and/or water to see what would happen to their bodies, to see how long it would take for them to die.
    • They made some subjects only drink seawater until death.
    • They injected animal blood into victims to see how it clotted differently.
  • The invention of the Xray was in 1895 and long term effects not fully known at the time.
    • Unit 731 exposed thousands to way too much Xray and were sterilized or killed from it.
    • The Xray is a complicated procedure. Often the plates weren’t calibrated correctly and victims burned to death on the table.
  • To see what the human body can endure in terms of GForce (to benefit the Imperial Airforce) Unit 731 spun people at forces that are unheard of today.
    • At around 10 to 15Gs subjects lost conciousness and died. They found the younger the child, the less tolerance for GForce…

Shiro Ishii

General Shiro Ishii, the commander of Unit 731.

  • The Imperial military was having a major problem with STDs as it raped its way across Asia. So Unit 731 was tasked with learning more about venereal diseases… especially sythilis.
    • Doctors infected POWs with syphilis and simply withheld treatment to see what would happen. Syphilis can be fatal if not treated.
    • Male inmates infected with syphilis would be forced to rape both female and male inmates to spread the disease. If it didn’t take on, they were forced to rape until the rape victim showed signs of having syphilis.

Children With Unit 731 Researchers

Unit 731 researchers conduct bacteriological experiments with captive child subjects in Nongan County of northeast China’s Jilin Province. November 1940.

  • The end goal was for Unit 731 to develop biological weapons against their enemies such as Allied and Soviet forces.
    • They used tens of thousands of prisoners to weaponize lethal pathogens like Yersinia Pestis (bubonic and pneumonic plague) and typhus. The thought was to drop these on enemy populations and thin out their numbers.
  • AllThingsInteresting.com reads:

To breed the most lethal strains possible, doctors monitored patients for rapid onset of symptoms and quick progression. Victims who pulled through were shot, but those who got sickest fastest were bled to death on a mortuary table, and their blood was used to transfect other captives, the sickest of whom would themselves be bled to transfer the most virulent strain to yet another generation.

One member of Unit 731 later recalled that very sick and unresisting captives would be laid out on the slab so a line could be inserted into their carotid artery. When most of the blood had been siphoned off and the heart was too weak to pump anymore, an officer in leather boots climbed onto the table and jumped on the victim’s chest with enough force to crush the ribcage, whereupon another dollop of blood would spurt into the container.

When the plague bacillus had been bred to what was felt to be a sufficiently lethal caliber, the last generation of victims to be infected were exposed to huge numbers of fleas, Y. pestis’ preferred vector of contagion. The fleas were then packed in dust and sealed inside clay bomb casings.

Germ Warfare

Japanese personnel in protective suits carry a stretcher through Yiwu, China during Unit 731’s germ warfare tests. June 1942.

  • In October of 1940 the Japanese airforce dropped casings filled with fleas that had sucked the blood from dying diseases prisoners over a Chinese village known as Quzhou.
    • Those who were there saw a red mist descend upon them and then feeling flea bites.
    • 2,000 died in Quzhou from the plague
    • 1,000 died in the next town over after it was brought their from commuters from Quzhou
    • 6,000 people died when the Japanese dropped anthrax on another town.
    • Plans were found that outlined Japan’s intent to do the same to US towns.
  • But in 1945 we dropped Fat Man and Little Boy on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
    • The Soviets invaded Manchuria, destroying the Japanese army.
    • And Emperor Hirohito gave his surrender speech in August of 1945
    • Unit 731 was no more.
  • Unit 731 was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes committed by the Japanese armed forces. It routinely conducted tests on people who were dehumanized and internally referred to as “logs”. Experiments included disease injections, controlled dehydration, hypobaric chamber experiments, biological weapons testing, vivisection, amputation, and standard weapons testing. Victims included not only kidnapped men, women (including pregnant women) and children, but also babies born from the systemic rape perpetrated by the staff inside the compound. The victims came from different nationalities, with the majority being Chinese and a significant minority being Russian. Additionally, Unit 731 produced biological weapons that were used in areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces, which included Chinese cities and towns, water sources, and fields. Estimates of those killed by Unit 731 and its related programs range up to half a million people, and none of the inmates survived.
  • It was officially known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army (関東軍防疫給水部本部, Kantōgun Bōeki Kyūsuibu Honbu). Originally set up by the Kenpeitai military police of the Empire of Japan, Unit 731 was taken over and commanded until the end of the war by General Shirō Ishii, a combat medic officer in the Kwantung Army. The facility itself was built in 1935 as a replacement for the Zhongma Fortress, and Ishii and his team used it to expand their capabilities. The program received generous support from the Japanese government until the end of the war in 1945. Unit 731 and the other units of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department operated biological weapon production, testing, deployment, and storage facilities.
  • While Unit 731 researchers arrested by Soviet forces were tried at the December 1949 Khabarovsk war crime trials, those captured by the United States were secretly given immunity in exchange for the data gathered during their human experiments.[6] The United States covered up the human experimentations and handed stipends to the perpetrators.[1] The Americans co-opted the researchers’ bioweapons information and experience for use in their own biological warfare program, much like what had been done with German researchers in Operation Paperclip.[7][8]
  • Its records were mostly burned, destroying any useful information the team had managed to generate in 13 years of research. Researchers mostly slipped back into civilian life in occupied Japan as if nothing had ever happened, many of them becoming prominent members of university faculty.
  • To this day, Japan has not apologized for, and China has not forgiven, the countless atrocities Japanese forces visited upon China between 1931 and 1945. As the last witnesses to this history grow old and die, it’s possible that the matter will never be addressed again.

CREDIT

R/HistoryMemes:

  • candiedloveappleOP:
    • The japanese abducted chinese civilians, put them into a heat chamber and blasted them with hot air until they had the consistency of Jerky and then they cross referenced the amount of evaprated and collected water with the mass of the corpse before and after being tortured to death.
  • baiqibeendeleted28x·
    • The Empire of Japan is a serious contender for the most evil regime in human history. Their atrocities are just overlooked because Japan is so well liked in the West now (“bu-bu-but this sub talks about them!”, this sub is not representative of real life, shocker).
    • Indiscriminate massacre of civilians. Slaughter of entire cities, torture, inhumane treatment of POWs, comfort women, etc.
    • Over the course of their conquest of East Asia, the Japanese Army forced around 200,000 women into the ranks of “comfort women“. These women mainly came from China, Korea, and the Philippines. Unfortunately this is the one thing I couldn’t dig up the source for, but I distinctly remember reading the firsthand account of a Filipino comfort women who was raped 10x a day. Japan has yet to even officially apologize to them.
    • You think that’s the worst? During the Rape of Nanking, as many as 300,000 Chinese civilians were massacred within a month in a single city. Japanese soldiers paraded around with babies skewered on their bayonets like kebabs. Two Japanese officers held a competition to see who could behead 100 people the fastest and when the score was 105-106 and no one knew who got to 100 first, they restarted the contest, this time to 150 people. Civilians were buried alive en masse. Prisoners were used as live bayonet practice, screaming as the final moments of their life was used for the Japanese to sadistically torment. Tens of thousands of women were raped, most of whom were executed afterward. They dragged entire Chinese families into public squares and forced fathers on their daughters and sons on their mothers for the amusement of Japanese troops. I’m not an easily disturbed guy, but reading this fact for the first time physically made my stomach sick.
    • You think that’s the worst? The Imperial Japanese Army ran Unit 731: a biological/chemical warfare research program in Manchuria where Japanese researchers performed human experimentation on a large scale, using Chinese civilians as the majority of their “logs” (test subjects).
    • Living humans were dissected alive, usually without anesthesia. Subjects had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss and pain tolerance. Those limbs were sometimes reattached to the opposite sides of the body. Subjects had their stomachs or esophagus surgically removed. Subjects were gotten pregnant via rape then infected with diseases to see the effect on their baby. Subjects were forced into the cold to research frostbite then had their frozen limbs chopped off. Subjects were placed in pressure chambers until their eyeballs popped out of their sockets. This one is unconfirmed, but supposedly they placed a women and her baby in a room then heated up the floor to see if she’d step on her own baby.
    • Back in 1995, an anonymous Japanese medical assistant who worked in Unit 731 sat down for an interview with the New York Times and described one such dissection:
    • The entire world still cries over the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to this day. But hardly anyone sheds a tear for the millions of victims of the Empire of Japan.
    • Unit 731, Imperial Japan’s biological/chemical warfare research program based in Manchuria, is among the most disgusting atrocities in human history. Japanese researchers performed human experimentation on a large scale, using Chinese civilians as the majority of their “logs” (test subjects).
    • Some particularly brutal experiments performed on prisoners included:
    • Frostbite testing (upon which the subject’s frozen limbs would be chopped off)
    • Intentional disease infection (infected prisoners were forced to have sex with uninfected to study the transfer of disease)
    • Live targets for weapon testing, including flamethrowers (pic from Nanking, no known pictures of human targets from Unit 731)
    • Forced pregnancy from rape
    • Bacteriological experiments on children
    • Pressure chamber (subjects were placed inside and the pressure turned up until their eyeballs popped out of their sockets)
    • Dissection of living humans beings without anesthesia
    • You read the last one right… the Japanese dissected living human beings. Subjects had limbs amputated, their stomachs or esophagus surgically removed, and all sorts of inhumane procedures to “study” blood loss and pain tolerance. That amount of agony probably can’t even be comprehended, but back in 1995, an anonymous Japanese medical assistant who worked in Unit 731 described a dissection.

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MK-Ultra

The content below is from Episode 126 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

  • This week I have a specific recommendation for you. Go to YouTube and search “Shane Gillis Live In Austin.” It is a 48-minute and 4-second long video posted by Gilly and Keeves YouTube channel. It was released on September 7th of 2021.
    • Just a free stand-up show on YouTube with all my favorite topics to hear in a comedy show: politics, family, football, racism, drugs, and making fun of his own culture: rural Pennsylvania white people.

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT

  • To start this episode I want to take you back to the time of the Cold War.
    • The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc.
    • It began shortly after World War 2 and ended in the late 1990s
    • During this time, both nations were on edge all the time constantly trying to find new ways to best their opponent. While the general public of the world was gripped with fear over the nuclear holocaust, the Tactics used by the two sides were sometimes unorthodox and desperate.
  • Early on in the Cold War, the United State’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) wanted to out-do the Soviets on a playing field that we typically think is reserved for science fiction: mind control.
    • They started a secret program known as MK-Ultra
    • On a massive scale, psychiatric institutions across the US and Canada were funded by the CIA (on the tax payer dollar) to perform experiments aimed at the goal of developing mind control techniques.
    • These experiments consisted of
      • sensory deprivation
      • drugs
      • electroshock treatment
      • and other psychological techniques
    • All of these techniques can and are used to benefit psychiatric patients today.
      • Yes, believe it or not, electroshock treatment is used today. I thought it was appalling at first, but through my work, I have spoken to many people who swear it does wonders for them when no other form of treatment could help them.
      • Pharmaceutical drugs benefit countless people on a regular basis
      • And sensory deprivation tanks are now marketed as a luxury spa treatment that even my fiancee and I took part in during vacation once. It was really nice
    • But all of those treatments are beneficial when used toward the goal of benefitting the patient… when the goal is to further some other goal such as weaponizing psychology to defeat a Cold War enemy… the patient rarely benefits. On the contrary, they often suffer. It is immoral, unethical, and highly illegal to deceive a patient or even a research participant involved in such experiments.
      • VERY ILLEGAL by many different standards. Entire institutions such as Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) were constructed to avoid such heinous mistreatment of people and that is just for research purposes, let alone mental healthcare regulations.
    • Yet somehow the CIA has never been punished, had to compensate victims or even publicly apologize for their misdeeds.
  • When the Korean war ended with a cease-fire in the summer of 1953, American POWs were sent back home, but people noticed something was off about them.
    • The POWs were all gun-ho communists now, preaching about the benefits of living in a communist country and the pitfalls of living in a capitalist one.
    • While their neighbors speculated, the US government was convinced the POWs had been put through some sort of communist mind control treatment while overseas.
    • Terrified of being out-done in any form of strength by the Soviets, the US government granted $25 million dollars in funding to the CIA to create a US-based form of mind control… That’s $25 million in the 1950s, that’s roughly $300 million today. All this was given to a newly formed agency. The CIA had only just been formed a few years earlier in 1947.
    • What did the CIA do with all this money and power? They got to work poking, prodding, and destroying the lives of the average citizen.
    • Under an enormous shroud of secrecy, they started psychiatric experiments on humans. Money was given to psychiatric hospitals, federal prisons, and even local pharmacies to distribute drugs unknowingly to the public directly. All this was done without the participant/patients’ awareness or consent.
  • The operation was known as MK-Ultra, but that was broken up into smaller projects within MK-Ultra.
    • One of those projects was known as Operation Midnight Climax.
      • Operation Midnight Climax was a string of safe houses all over north America that were set up so that prostitutes could lure the men back to these safe house apartments. Once inside, the men would be forced to ingest large amounts of LSD. Once dosed with the psychotropic drug… heavily dosed, the men were studied by CIA analysts often from behind a 2-way mirror.
    • Under MK-Ultra, parties were thrown where LSD was distributed to party-goers, and were given music to listen to while being observed.
      • But these CIA orchestrated parties became more commonplace. Known as Acid Tests, these parties grew so popular and contributed to the Hippy movement of the following decade, the 60s.
    • I will admit, these two projects don’t sound all that bad. Operation Midnight Climax was a free night with a prostitute and free LSD and Acid Tests were sanctioned parties with good music and again… free drugs. But not all the projects were so morally ambiguous.
Donald Ewen Cameron – 1967
  • Arguably the worst project under the MK-Ultra umbrella was Subproject 68.
    • The Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal Canada is where some of the most messed up stuff went down. Dr Ewen Cameron “treated” patients who were suffering from post-partum depression, schizophrenia, and other serious mental illnesses.
    • Dr. Ewen Cameron used various drug cocktails and unorthodox techniques to treat these unsuspecting experiment participants.
      • Lana Sowchuk, the daughter of a victim, recounts that her father went to Dr. Ewen Cameron at the age of 27 in the physical peak of his life. Her father enjoyed athletics but had asthma. He was told by healthcare professionals that Dr. Ewen Cameron, the Scottish-American doctor at Allan Memorial Hospital could cure his asthma.
      • Other family members of victims tell how their loved ones would go to a doctor seeking all sorts of treatment (including physical health) and be referred to Dr. Ewen Cameron.
      • He had a network of colleagues that would refer their patients to him. This ensured that Dr. Ewen Cameron had a steady flow of unknowing participants for his experiments at Allan Memorial Hospital.
    • The Doctor’s goal was to revert his participants back to an infantile state. He wanted to erase who they were psychologically, a process he called “Depatterning.”
      • If successful, the doctor would then try to rebuild their mind so that he could control them completely and remake the person as he saw fit.
    • His favorite method for depatterning was “Psychic Driving.”
      • Patients were put in an insulin-induced coma (sometimes for 36 days or longer). While in the coma and while sleeping, a tape recorder of a psychiatrist’s lectures was played on a loop under the patient’s pillow.
      • Sometimes these recordings would say things like “your mother hates you” to sever ties with the patient’s past.
  • The Page Russel electroshock therapy was also used for depatterning.
    • Page Russel Shock treatment is about 40 to 75 times the strength of shock treatment that is used today. That is 40 to 75 times stronger than the shock treatment that actually benefits patients like the ones I talked with at work.
    • Here is some history on Page Russel ElectroShcok Therapy from FreedomMag.org:
      • 1938 After observing pigs shocked into seizures and senselessness in a Rome slaughterhouse, Italian psychiatrist Ugo Cerletti uses the same method on a human being. After the first shock, his subject screams, “Not another one! It’s deadly!”
      • 1940s In Nazi euthanasia facilities, hundreds are killed with electroshock machines.
      • 1943-1950 Incarcerated in a series of psychiatric institutions, Frances Farmer receives ECT against her will. The gifted actress never regains her creative abilities and dies at 56.
      • 1949 At age 26, Judy Garland undergoes ECT. Several suicide attempts follow. Her biographer, Gerold Frank, writes in Judy: “[S]he had no respect for psychiatrists; she had seen more than a dozen of them and they had all failed her.”
      • 1954-1962 Electroshock is used to torture prisoners of the French during the Algerian War.
      • 1957 Psychiatrist Ewen Cameron describes to the 2nd World Congress of Psychiatry what happens to those receiving ECT: “There is complete amnesia for all events of his life.”
      • 1960-1961 Ernest Hemingway receives ECT at the Mayo Clinic under the supervision of psychiatrist Howard Rome. On July 2, 1961, shortly after returning home, he kills himself with his favorite shotgun, but not before he had written: “What is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient.”
      • The CIA’s 1963 KUBARK Counterintelligence Manual is based on Cameron’s “blank slate” approach of regressing people to “reprogram” their minds. As Naomi Klein pointed out in The Shock Doctrine, Cameron’s work apparently made a strong impression. Klein reported that the CIA in 1966 dispatched three psychiatrists to Vietnam with a Page-Russell electroshock machine, the type Cameron favored. According to Klein, “it was used so aggressively that it killed several prisoners.” Alfred McCoy, author of A Question of Torture, noted, “In effect, they were testing under field conditions whether Ewen Cameron’s McGill depatterning techniques could actually alter human behavior.”
      • So yeah, Page Russel ElectroShock was used as a torture device that causes seizures and erases a lot of who a person is.
    • But Dr. Ewen Cameron was discouraged. Most of his patients were reported to still ask for loved ones such as their wives or parents after dozens of electroshock treatments.
      • When patients did still exhibit ties with their former lives, after the 30+days of insulin comas, and dozens of electroshock torture sessions… the Doctor would induce another 30+ day coma and more electroshock treatment.
  • When these patients… victims really… were finally released their lives were ruined.
    • Loved ones reported complete change in personality. Once healthy and productive members of society were now unable to hold a job and seemed lifeless to hold a gaze with.
  • MK-Ultra was shut down in 1973
    • John Marks, a whistleblower, wrote a book called “The Search for the Manchurian Candidate.”
    • His book exposed MK-Ultra and caused congressional hearings that shined a light on the program during the mid-70s.
    • Through these hearings, the CIA did admit that MK-Ultra existed and that it was unethical but stated that they were innocent due to the time period.
    • Even thought there were official congressional hearings and public awareness of the program, many victims, for whatever reason, did not speak out.
    • Likely due to shame, the vast majority of MK-Ultra victims took their suffering with them to the grave. But now their family members are speaking out.
    • Decades later with no compensation or even an apology, the children and grandchildren of MK-Ultra victims are demanding to be acknowledged. A class action lawsuit has been filed.
  • Although there was an official hearing and now public outcry, much of MK-Ultra’s findings and reach is unknown.
    • Most of the evidence against Dr. Ewen Cameron and others working for the CIA had evidence destroyed.
    • We now know about the victims and what they went through, but we have no idea the larger impact this played on our world.
  • But many have speculated on the applications of MK-Ultra might have been
    • Many TV series, movies, and books have been inspired by MK-Ultra
      • Stranger Things
      • The Manchurian Candidate (book and movie starring Denzel Washington)
      • American Ultra
      • and Conspiracy Theory starring Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts
  • We like to think that it is impossible for such a project to happen today.
    • There are all sorts of hoops and regulations that a researcher has to get through to conduct ANYTHING on human beings, even just a paper survey.
    • But this was done by a government agency. One that was well funded and given the power to keep people quiet.
    • Who knows what tactics came out of MK-Ultra. Perhaps there is a Manchurian candidate out there somewhere, brainwashed to do the government’s bidding. I don’t mean to cause panic in people or spread conspiracy theories, but MK-Ultra actually happened. There were congressional hearings and LOADS of evidence. The government infiltrated the healthcare system and tried to brainwash people under the guise of curing their asthma or sore neck.
    • People’s trusted family doctors were in on this.
    • This sounds like something you would hear Joe Rogan talk about with a blunt in hand discussing with a tinfoil hat guy on his show. This sounds like something made up… but it is not. THIS HAPPENED.

Stay safe out there Who’d a Thunkers. Until next week.

CREDIT:

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The Blood Countess

The content below is from Episode 90 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

Recommendation Segment

  • I got Shannon to do another recommendation segment so enjoy Audio Podcast listeners!

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT

  • The past few episodes have been about different milestones in technology, but this week I wanted to take a different rout. This week I wanted to learn about something dark and twisted. This story takes place in 16th and 17th century Hungary, near Transylvania… but this isn’t about Count Dracula. no…
Dracula (Dover Thrift Editions) - Kindle edition by Stoker, Bram. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
  • This episode is about Elizabeth Bathory, the Blood Countess!
    • Her name in her native Hungarian form is: Ecsedi Báthory Erzsébet
      • Although some speculate that Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula was inspired by the Blood Countess, none of the authors notes indicate as much.
    • She was born in August of 1560 and died of natural causes in August 1614, just two weeks after her 54th birthday.
    • Her family was a very well connected bunch. Her uncle was King of Poland. She had Dukes, Barons, Baronesses and so forth. 
    • Born into a privileged family of nobility, Elizabeth was endowed with wealth, education, and a prominent social rank. It is safe to say that Elizabeth was relatively well-off for the time period.
    • Báthory was raised a Calvinist Protestant. As a young woman, she learned Latin, German, Hungarian, and Greek.
Death of Countess Elizabeth Bathory | History Today
Supposedly she was a beautiful young girl, but she just looks like a depressed middle schooler to me.
  • She may have been well-off financially, but Elizabeth’s child hood was grim
    • As a child, she suffered multiple violent seizures that most believe were caused by epilepsy. During the late 1500’s, symptoms relating to epilepsy were diagnosed as falling sickness and treatments included rubbing blood of a non-sufferer on the lips of an epileptic or giving the epileptic a mix of a non-sufferer’s blood and piece of skull as their episode ended… fun.
      • Some historians believe that her parents being first cousins may have contributed to her poor health.
    • There is no hard evidence of this, so it could be just rumors, but it is said that little Elizabeth witnessed various horrors of man within her families estate.
      • Stories include a young Báthory witnessing brutal punishments executed by her family’s officers, and being taught by family members involved with Satanism and witchcraft.
      • She witnessed the punishment of a man caught stealing. As she played spectator to a man being sewn in to the body of a horse while still alive, she reportedly laughed at the sight.
      • It was common for her to see the harsh beatings of her family’s servants.
      • Instead of looking away from all this violence, she seemed to be drawn to it.
Ferenc Nádasdy - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia
Ferenc Nadasdy looks like a real douche in this painting.
Ferenc Nádasdy - Wikipedia
  • At the age of 11, Bathory, who was considered a beautiful and well-educated girl, became engaged to Hungarian Count Ferenc Nadasdy. 
    • Elizabeth promply moved in to her future husbands house… well, more like an estate with a castle and everything. There she was educated on how to run the estate of her future mother-in-law.
    • At the age of 13, before her first marriage, Elizabeth allegedly gave birth to a child. The child, said to have been fathered by a peasant boy, was supposedly given away to a local woman who was trusted by the Báthory family. The woman was paid for her actions, and the child was taken to Wallachia.
      • Legends says her betrothed fiance Ferenc Ndasdy found out about Elizabeth’s affair and took action. He had the peasant boy castrated and then executed by feeding him to wild dogs.
      • A 15-year-old Bathory married Frerenc Nadasdy on May 8, 1575 (some sources say 1574). The wedding was a massive banger with over 4 and a half thousand guests in attendance and it went on for 3 days. It was at their wedding when Ferenc Ndasdy gave his wife a castle just for her. It was Castle Cachtice, a grim and forboding stucture.
        • The surrounding village and farmland is where Elizabeth committed the many acts that gave her the gruesome moniker: The Blood Countess!
Cachtice Castle-The Home For The Nr.1 Female Killer Ever.
Čachtice Castle
Fictional reconstruction of Cachtice Castle in modern-day Slovakia (formerly in Hungary) in the film Bathory (2008). | Castle, Elizabeth bathory, Castle ruins
Čachtice Castle reimaged to look like what it did back in its prime.
  • The couple’s first child was born 10 years after their marriage, in 1585. Elizabeth Bathory gave birth to five children. Two died as infants, but two daughters and a son survived.
    • As her husband was a soldier who was often off fighting Ottoman Turks, the couple spent most of their marriage apart. Ferenc was brutally effective on the battlefield and was called the Black Knight of Hungary.
      • When they were together, Ferenc educated his wife in techniques of torture.
        • He taught Elizabeth the fun little game of placing oiled paper inbetween the toes and fingers of servant girls then lighting them on fire. He also gave Elizabeth a clawed metal glove so she could scratch and permanently scar the faces of servant girls that displeased her.
      • When the Turks invaded Hungary in 1591 it kicked off the Long War. This is when Ferenc’s talent for combat scared his enemies and allies alike.
      • This war was sapping the Hungarian empire of its economic resources, but Ferenc, the Black Knight, never stopped sending his spoils of war back home to his wife. She was showered in wealth from the Ottoman empire. This steady flow of wealth made the sinister couple so rich that they leant money to the Hungarian Hapsburg Empire to keep the country afloat.
      • During the long war, while Ferenc was out fighting, Elizabeth was learning how to effectively run her estate. She defended the castle Cachtice against the Turks and gave shelter to surrounding peasants.
The Legend of Elizabeth Báthory: The Blood Countess - Medical Bag
  • Ferenc did teach his wife how to torture her servants, but he wasn’t the biggest influence.
    • In 1601 Elizabeth met Anna Darvolya. Darvolya was thought to be a witch by the community and her sadistic nature was well known. She took Elizabeth from a torturer that mamed her victims, to a full blown torturing serial killer.
    • Elizabeth would take servant girls, torture them for as long as she wanted and then murder them. No one ever came looking for them because that is how lowly peasants were thought of in those days… at least in Hungary. She and her family name were so powerful that she could kill all she wanted without any fear of reprocussions.
      • One of the very few people to even acknowledge the deaths was a local priest that had grown weary of performing an unusual amount of burrial rights for young servants girls in Elizabeth’s charge.
      • The priest basically pulled Elizabeth aside and said: “Look, I know what you are doing. You might want to think about stopping. This sort of stuff, like mass murder, tends to piss off God. You keep telling me these girls have died from various illnesses, but you and I know damn-well that if any of these bodies are exumed they will find all sorts of evidence that points to torture and mutilation.”
      • Elizabeth threatened the priest and asked her hubby to shut him up.
The Real-life Countess Dracula Who Murdered Over 600 Girls | by Anita Durairaj | Medium
She looks like a salamander.
  • After Ferenc Nadasdy had fallen ill in 1601 which paralyzed him from zthe waste down, he died in January 1604. That is when Elizabeth Bathory took control of her extensive estates.
    • She was accused of a haunting litany of crimes against both female servants and minor noblewomen who’d come to her for training and education. Most of her alleged assaults and murders took place after she was widowed in 1604.
    • Some of Bathory’s victims were covered with honey and left outside for insects to devour. During colder parts of the year young women might be stripped naked and forced into deadly ice baths. Bathory sometimes tortured girls by driving needles into their fingers, cutting their noses or lips or whipping them with stinging nettles. She would bite shoulders and breasts, as well as burning the flesh, including the genitals, of some victims. The intimate nature of Bathory’s attacks suggests a sexual motivation, though it’s impossible to know with certainty what compelled her to act.
    • She had hundreds of peasant girls to torture and kill. When she was done torturing her victims she often threw their remains over the castle wall to be eaten by wolves… so at the very least she was an animal lover. How nice.
    • Elizabeth didn’t do all of this on her own, she employed the help of Anna Darvolya and other servants.
      • Some were happy to join Elizabeth and others were threatened with torture if they didn’t help with the torturing themselves.
    • All of these atrocities were carried out on peasants because peasants couldn’t bring charges against a noble at the time. Hell, some of the peasant parents were fine with the arrangement because it meant Elizabeth would give them some money in exchange for their daughter.
    • In 1609, Anna Darvolya, Elizabeth’s most influencial torturer and accused witch died.
Elizabeth Bathory - Death, Children & Facts - Biography
What a charming young woman! …. jk
  • But when Elizabeth began to target girls from noble houses, her crimes quickly caught up with her.
    • Apparently another of Elizabeth’s accomplices who dabbled in witchcraft convinced Elizabeth to start targetting Noblegirls. She told Elizabeth that if she spilt noble blood instead of peasants it would solve her financial issues at the time.
    • On December 29, 1610, Count György Thurzó, who oversaw judicial matters as the lord palatine of Hungary, arrived at Bathory’s Castle Čachtice to investigate the countess’ alleged crimes against women of noble birth (any mistreatment of servants was not a concern to authorities).
      • Elizabeth was appauled that she was being investigated and insisted that she was innocent. She claimed her servants were going mad. She told Thurzo and the local community that her servants would kill each other in a fits of murder suicide…. sounds like a sick game that would only be fabricated by such a twisted mind of Elizabeth.
    • When Thurzo went unannounced to investigate Cachtice Castle one day he opened the door to find the mutilated body of a servant girl right by the door. He went in further and found 2 more bodies. Thurzo reportedly surprised Elizabeth Bathory and her team of accomplices in the middle of tormenting a victim and in response immediately imprisoned her in her home (her high status meant she would not be jailed as a common criminal).
    • Some of Elizabeth Bathory’s servants were then arrested, questioned, and subjected to torture.
      • The accmplices’ court proceedings began early in January 1611. These servants denied their culpability in the murders but admitted to burying multiple victims, though the number in their accounts varied between 36 and 51. In addition to shifting blame to their mistress and each other, they also implicated a deceased servant, the wicked Anna Darvolya, who’d served as a maid and governess.
      • Four servant accomplices were punished harshly. Their fingers were slowly torn out by iron tongs. This was a fatal form of torture due to blood loss. Once they died their bodies were placed on a bon fire.
      • One of the accomplices, a young boy named Fizcko, was spared torture because of his young age. Instead of torture, he was beheaded and then burned.
      • Another accomplice named Katalin was spared death. Elizabeth’s surviving victims and witnesses said Katalin would sneak food to victims being starved for fun. It was believed Katalin was forced to help her fellow torturers. Even though she wasn’t killed, she was sentenced to life inprisonment.
    • After these executions Thurzó continued to investigate the countess. One witness stated that Elizabeth Báthory herself had listed 650 victims in her papers, though the number of victims varied in other testimonials and the countess’ exact death toll remains unknown. The evidence gathered by Thurzó also included 289 witness statements.
    • As a member of a powerful family, Elizabeth Bathory was not put on trial. Instead, she was isolated — perhaps walled up — in Castle Čachtice, where she remained.
      • While in custody, basically on house arrest, Elizabeth would constantly claim she was innocent and that her servants were all to blaim. She hated them and hated Thurzo.
      • Many priests would visit Elizabeth, but she would never acknowlege the horrible things she had done.
    • In 1614, Elizabeth complained to a guard that her hands were cold. He told her to lie down and get some rest… She never woke up. The body of a 54-year-old Bathory was found on August 21, 1614, in Castle Čachtice (located in present-day Slovakia), where she’d been imprisoned since 1610. She was initially buried in the crypt on her estate, but her body was likely moved afterward.
Guys, do you think Elizabeth Bathory really killed women and children or was she victim of a big conspiracy?? : r/creepypasta
  • Today there is Doubt that Elizabeth was guilty. Some now think she may have been the victim of a 17th century witch hunt.
    • The evidence against Bathory has flaws: Of 289 witness accounts, more than 250 offered either hearsay or no information whatsoever. The testimony that Bathory had listed 650 victims was a secondhand accounting of what a court official had discovered — yet the official who’d supposedly seen this information didn’t testify. Many of the witnesses who spoke against Bathory were beholden to Thurzó, who oversaw the entire investigation. And the fact that Bathory’s servants were tortured makes their confessions unreliable.
      • Some believe that Elizabeth was a victim of a witch hunt, orchestrated by her family to take control of her estate and wealth. They believe it was a conspiracy backed by the powerful Hapsburg family who felt threatened by a family so rich they could afford to loan money to their empire to stay afloat.
    • In 1989, writer Michael Farin stated the accusations against Báthory were supported by testimony from more than 300 individuals, some of whom described physical evidence and the presence of mutilated dead, dying and imprisoned girls found at the time of her arrest. 
    • In a 2018 article for Przegląd Nauk Historycznych (Historical Science Review) Aleksandra Bartosiewicz stated that when Báthory was persecuted, the accusations were a spectacle to destroy her family’s influence in the region, which was considered a threat to the political interests of her neighbors, including the Habsburg empire.
    • Legends describing Báthory’s vampiric tendencies, such as the tale that she bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth, were generally recorded years after her death and are considered unreliable. Stories about Báthory quickly became part of national folklore. Nicknames and literary epithets attributed to her include The Blood Countess and Countess Dracula.
  • Doubt the Doubt
    • It is unlikely Elizabth Bathory was completely innocent. In 1602 a priest wrote a letter that discussed the excessive cruelty exhibited by Bathory and her husband towards their servants. The testimony against Bathory could have included true tales about how harshly she acted with lower classes. Such acts weren’t illegal at the time — Bathory was only punished because her victims were said to have included noblewomen — but would still make Bathory responsible for many ruined lives.

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