1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,760 Okay, it's time for some breaking news. Luckily at this time. 2 00:00:04,240 --> 00:00:06,280 Is it breaking or is it just an update? 3 00:00:06,400 --> 00:00:10,800 Both breaking and an update from the last episode that we just did. 4 00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:14,440 Well, not episode actually, it's not, it has nothing to do with Japan, 5 00:00:14,480 --> 00:00:18,240 but it has something to do with the opener we did on the last episode. 6 00:00:18,320 --> 00:00:22,760 Actually, not only just to do with it, it's actually pretty heavily tied to it. 7 00:00:22,920 --> 00:00:25,480 Update on the avian flu. 8 00:00:25,640 --> 00:00:29,440 So I'm taking from something going on in the local neighborhood, 9 00:00:29,440 --> 00:00:31,120 and I'm going to make it worldwide. 10 00:00:31,280 --> 00:00:36,240 This article is from March 13th, 2023 from cbc.ca. 11 00:00:36,280 --> 00:00:40,720 The title of the article is eight dead skunks found in Vancouver and Richmond 12 00:00:40,800 --> 00:00:42,840 test positive for avian flu. 13 00:00:42,920 --> 00:00:47,640 So here in the article, here in the article, 14 00:00:47,680 --> 00:00:52,000 eight skunks found dead last month in Vancouver and nearby Richmond, BC, 15 00:00:52,040 --> 00:00:54,160 have tested positive for avian flu. 16 00:00:54,280 --> 00:00:58,960 The BC government says it is the same strain of avian flu associated with the 17 00:00:58,960 --> 00:01:01,480 outbreak that began in April, 2022. 18 00:01:01,640 --> 00:01:06,440 The skunks were found in residential areas in both cities and were taken to BC's 19 00:01:06,480 --> 00:01:08,600 animal health center over concerns. 20 00:01:08,600 --> 00:01:10,680 They may have been deliberately poisoned. 21 00:01:10,720 --> 00:01:11,560 That would be awful. 22 00:01:11,560 --> 00:01:13,400 Well, both scenarios are awful. 23 00:01:13,440 --> 00:01:17,520 British Columbia's ministry of agriculture says the skunks were infected with the 24 00:01:17,520 --> 00:01:22,640 same H5N1 strain that had caused the deaths of millions of domestic poultry 25 00:01:22,640 --> 00:01:25,480 since the outbreak began in April last year. 26 00:01:25,480 --> 00:01:30,720 The ministry says in the statements, the skunks have contracted H5N1 by scavenging 27 00:01:30,720 --> 00:01:32,440 on infected wild birds. 28 00:01:32,480 --> 00:01:33,720 I didn't know skunks did that. 29 00:01:33,720 --> 00:01:35,440 I guess I guess they would. 30 00:01:35,600 --> 00:01:37,480 Yeah, I don't actually know what they eat. 31 00:01:37,560 --> 00:01:40,280 I know I never actually thought about it. 32 00:01:40,400 --> 00:01:42,720 They definitely aren't like stealth predators. 33 00:01:42,720 --> 00:01:43,400 That's for sure. 34 00:01:43,400 --> 00:01:47,280 I guess that would make sense if you're thinking about what they would eat. 35 00:01:47,320 --> 00:01:51,400 The statement says while avian flu in skunks is considered to be low risk to 36 00:01:51,400 --> 00:01:55,880 humans, there are always risks when people or pets come into contact with sick or 37 00:01:55,880 --> 00:01:57,080 dead wild animals. 38 00:01:57,120 --> 00:02:01,440 I mean, we don't generally go around eating skunks, which is why I think that 39 00:02:01,440 --> 00:02:03,160 they say it's not high risk. 40 00:02:03,200 --> 00:02:04,920 Try to avoid them, I believe. 41 00:02:05,160 --> 00:02:10,080 In fact, I very heavily try to avoid it actually. 42 00:02:10,240 --> 00:02:15,160 Since last April, the ministry says wildlife infected by flu included more than 43 00:02:15,160 --> 00:02:20,360 20 species of wild birds, two skunks and a fox found in rural areas of the province. 44 00:02:20,360 --> 00:02:22,960 That's the latest update. 45 00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:24,480 Well, it's not the latest update. 46 00:02:24,480 --> 00:02:29,800 I'm going to run through the fashion of our year end update and I'm going to run 47 00:02:29,800 --> 00:02:34,640 through some other headlines of what we have put together in regards to this, 48 00:02:34,640 --> 00:02:38,000 because it's not just skunks shockingly or birds. 49 00:02:38,040 --> 00:02:42,280 It's spreading to other wildlife and other things as we'll get to. 50 00:02:42,320 --> 00:02:47,600 So the next article I have is bird flu kills thousands of South American sea 51 00:02:47,600 --> 00:02:50,920 lions as outbreak continues, which is crazy. 52 00:02:50,960 --> 00:02:54,720 There are concerns that bird flu could be getting better at crossing over to 53 00:02:54,720 --> 00:02:59,680 mammals after the disease killed 3500 South American sea lions in Peru. 54 00:02:59,720 --> 00:03:00,480 Holy shit. 55 00:03:00,520 --> 00:03:04,440 The Natural History Museum posted that article. 56 00:03:04,480 --> 00:03:10,280 Next article is from the CDC and it has the bird flu current situation summary. 57 00:03:10,320 --> 00:03:11,480 It's keeping account. 58 00:03:11,480 --> 00:03:16,120 I believe this would be for the United States of what's going on there. 59 00:03:16,120 --> 00:03:21,720 There is currently been 6356 wild birds infected. 60 00:03:21,760 --> 00:03:24,440 58 and a half million poultry affected. 61 00:03:24,480 --> 00:03:26,400 I'm assuming that's farm poultry. 62 00:03:26,440 --> 00:03:28,280 Yeah, or I'll say it'd be wild birds. 63 00:03:28,320 --> 00:03:28,680 Yeah. 64 00:03:28,720 --> 00:03:31,000 There are restrictions with bird flu and wild birds. 65 00:03:31,040 --> 00:03:37,640 There's 50 states with poultry outbreaks, 47 and states with reported cases of a 66 00:03:37,640 --> 00:03:39,800 human death. Are these fatalities? 67 00:03:39,840 --> 00:03:41,560 That one person did die, yes. 68 00:03:41,600 --> 00:03:41,840 Yeah. 69 00:03:41,880 --> 00:03:44,280 So one person in the United States. 70 00:03:44,280 --> 00:03:47,600 Then we move on again with another article from the CDC. 71 00:03:47,640 --> 00:03:49,080 H5N1 update. 72 00:03:49,120 --> 00:03:55,720 Two humans, H5N1 cases in Cambodia were infected with the avian influenza. 73 00:03:55,760 --> 00:03:57,520 Just trying to see if they died. 74 00:03:57,560 --> 00:03:58,480 Yep, they died. 75 00:03:58,520 --> 00:03:59,920 It was a child of the father. 76 00:03:59,960 --> 00:04:01,040 The avian flu. 77 00:04:01,080 --> 00:04:02,400 Then we have another one. 78 00:04:02,440 --> 00:04:06,320 This is the New York Times that has blocked me. 79 00:04:06,360 --> 00:04:06,760 That's okay. 80 00:04:06,800 --> 00:04:07,560 All you need is the title. 81 00:04:07,600 --> 00:04:11,360 Bird flu dolphin cetaceans. 82 00:04:11,400 --> 00:04:12,640 I can't even read the title. 83 00:04:12,640 --> 00:04:14,560 I can just read you the one sec. 84 00:04:14,600 --> 00:04:16,240 I'll just pull it quick link. 85 00:04:16,280 --> 00:04:21,240 And then while Taylor pulls that bird flu found in dolphin in Florida and porpoise 86 00:04:21,280 --> 00:04:23,960 in Sweden, what's in Sweden? 87 00:04:24,000 --> 00:04:25,000 That's pretty crazy. 88 00:04:25,040 --> 00:04:26,000 And what's the other one? 89 00:04:26,040 --> 00:04:27,120 Not just for birds. 90 00:04:27,160 --> 00:04:30,040 Avian influenza is also felling wild mammals. 91 00:04:30,080 --> 00:04:34,280 They're finding the virus in red foxes, bobcats and other mammals in North America. 92 00:04:34,320 --> 00:04:40,360 And then the final article that I have here for dead seals test positive for bird flu 93 00:04:40,360 --> 00:04:43,560 in Scotland. This is worldwide. 94 00:04:43,600 --> 00:04:47,240 It's not just happening in Canada and the United States, obviously. 95 00:04:47,280 --> 00:04:51,440 It's going between species now and eventually into humans. 96 00:04:51,480 --> 00:04:54,760 So I think that has some pretty scary implications. 97 00:04:54,800 --> 00:04:58,200 There's one more article too, I think should be included as well, 98 00:04:58,240 --> 00:04:59,440 because it's just something different. 99 00:04:59,480 --> 00:05:03,680 Three Montana grizzly bears euthanized last fall, tested positive for avian flu. 100 00:05:03,720 --> 00:05:05,080 Why were they euthanized? 101 00:05:05,120 --> 00:05:08,680 That's a good question that the article's title does not answer. 102 00:05:08,680 --> 00:05:14,280 And I guess we will leave it at a mystery. 103 00:05:14,320 --> 00:05:17,720 I was reading a bit of one of the articles in there as well, 104 00:05:17,760 --> 00:05:21,280 because just hearing all these animals is kind of devastating. 105 00:05:21,320 --> 00:05:23,000 But like, what does that actually mean? 106 00:05:23,040 --> 00:05:26,760 It was explained in the New York Times article, not just for the birds. 107 00:05:26,800 --> 00:05:30,280 Avian influenza is also felling wild animals by Emily Anthes. 108 00:05:30,320 --> 00:05:32,320 She talked to a virologist at St. 109 00:05:32,360 --> 00:05:34,600 Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis. 110 00:05:34,640 --> 00:05:37,280 And basically they say evolution is a numbers game. 111 00:05:37,280 --> 00:05:39,640 And the more mammals the virus infects, 112 00:05:39,680 --> 00:05:43,160 the more opportunities it has to pick up new mutations that could help it spread 113 00:05:43,200 --> 00:05:46,920 among all the animals that it is spreading to, as well as humans. 114 00:05:46,960 --> 00:05:51,160 Because remember, it's a bigger evolutionary step to get from bird to mammal 115 00:05:51,200 --> 00:05:52,560 than it is from mammal to human. 116 00:05:52,600 --> 00:05:53,800 Wow, that's crazy. 117 00:05:53,840 --> 00:05:55,080 I don't know why I would say remember. 118 00:05:55,120 --> 00:05:56,640 It's just a bigger gap. 119 00:05:56,680 --> 00:05:57,000 Yeah. 120 00:05:57,040 --> 00:05:57,320 Wow. 121 00:05:57,360 --> 00:06:00,920 I think that it's not good, that's for sure. 122 00:06:00,960 --> 00:06:02,600 When it was just with birds alone, 123 00:06:02,640 --> 00:06:05,480 I think it was having some pretty serious implications. 124 00:06:05,520 --> 00:06:07,040 And a direct quote here. 125 00:06:07,040 --> 00:06:10,880 What it's going to take for this virus to transition from being a duck or a chicken 126 00:06:10,920 --> 00:06:15,280 virus to being a mammalian virus is more chances to replicate in those mammalian 127 00:06:15,320 --> 00:06:16,720 hosts, Dr. Webby said. 128 00:06:16,760 --> 00:06:21,320 So that's why when we see these mammals being infected by this virus, we do take 129 00:06:21,360 --> 00:06:23,720 notice, end of quote, I would assume so. 130 00:06:23,760 --> 00:06:26,960 And COVID just went right from bat to humans. 131 00:06:27,000 --> 00:06:28,200 Well, that's a mammal. 132 00:06:28,240 --> 00:06:30,600 I didn't think it was. 133 00:06:30,640 --> 00:06:33,680 OK, it was a dinosaur, wasn't it? 134 00:06:33,680 --> 00:06:37,120 I guess you could say that. 135 00:06:37,160 --> 00:06:39,040 I thought it was a reptile. 136 00:06:39,080 --> 00:06:44,240 But yeah, this may in fact be our last update on it before it isn't a fringe topic 137 00:06:44,280 --> 00:06:46,880 anymore, but hey, maybe it makes the year end. 138 00:06:46,920 --> 00:06:48,360 We can always hope. 139 00:06:48,400 --> 00:06:49,640 Yeah, we can see about it. 140 00:06:49,680 --> 00:06:51,040 That's the update. 141 00:06:51,080 --> 00:06:52,800 One article and some headlines. 142 00:06:52,840 --> 00:06:56,320 And with that, let's get into the episode. 143 00:06:56,320 --> 00:07:02,560 From the unexplained to the mundane, come join us on a Journey to the Fringe. 144 00:07:02,600 --> 00:07:12,680 Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe, where we join this episode already in progress. 145 00:07:12,720 --> 00:07:16,640 Next up, Chelsea, do you remember that unit that you wanted to completely avoid talking 146 00:07:16,680 --> 00:07:20,400 about because the things that they do are really horrendous and hard to talk about? 147 00:07:20,440 --> 00:07:22,880 No, I didn't want to not talk about it. 148 00:07:22,920 --> 00:07:25,200 I just thought we would do a full episode on it. 149 00:07:25,200 --> 00:07:26,400 OK, there's a lot. 150 00:07:26,440 --> 00:07:28,800 Well, we might do an episode on it in the future. 151 00:07:28,840 --> 00:07:31,360 But unit 731 is grotesque. 152 00:07:31,400 --> 00:07:32,520 Also unit 100. 153 00:07:32,560 --> 00:07:33,800 But that's a different thing. 154 00:07:33,840 --> 00:07:35,000 It also comes up right here. 155 00:07:35,040 --> 00:07:37,520 During the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, 156 00:07:37,560 --> 00:07:41,600 U.S. occupation authorities deliberately omitted witnesses to obfuscate evidence 157 00:07:41,640 --> 00:07:44,800 in relation to the conviction of several Japanese right wing officials. 158 00:07:44,840 --> 00:07:46,400 This process of covering up war crimes 159 00:07:46,440 --> 00:07:49,880 against humanity committed by Japanese officials extended to Japanese biological 160 00:07:49,920 --> 00:07:53,520 warfare programs in Manchukuo in 1946 and 1947. 161 00:07:53,520 --> 00:07:57,160 The State Department and U.S. military intelligence officials began a pressure 162 00:07:57,200 --> 00:08:02,720 campaign to convince Shiro Ishii, director of unit 731, to take a deal with the U.S. 163 00:08:02,760 --> 00:08:08,600 in regard to the transfer of information research during unit 731's activities in the region. 164 00:08:08,640 --> 00:08:11,920 This caused Ishii to take a deal to avoid prosecution. 165 00:08:11,960 --> 00:08:13,680 He would give the U.S. intelligence 166 00:08:13,720 --> 00:08:18,600 officials information on human experimentation procured during his time as director. 167 00:08:18,640 --> 00:08:21,920 To the great consternation of the SCAP and U.S. officials, 168 00:08:21,920 --> 00:08:25,880 the Soviet Union began its own campaign to gain information in relation to the 169 00:08:25,880 --> 00:08:29,600 biological weapons, and the Soviet officials blackmailed former unit 731 170 00:08:29,640 --> 00:08:35,040 members to reveal their research lest they be prosecuted at the Pavarov's war crime trials. 171 00:08:35,080 --> 00:08:39,200 The U.S. intervened, forcing interrogations to be performed only in the presence of U.S. 172 00:08:39,240 --> 00:08:43,080 military officials, obscuring the true extent of Japanese human experimentation 173 00:08:43,120 --> 00:08:47,040 and to preserve their own research edge over the Soviet Union in the field. 174 00:08:47,080 --> 00:08:51,200 The American government sent General MacArthur to oversee the rebuild of postwar 175 00:08:51,200 --> 00:08:56,000 Japan, which we already knew MacArthur was also responsible for gathering data 176 00:08:56,040 --> 00:08:59,680 on biological warfare, which was obtained through human experimentation. 177 00:08:59,720 --> 00:09:04,040 The U.S. government offered full political immunity to high ranking officials who were 178 00:09:04,080 --> 00:09:09,520 instrumental in perpetrating crimes against humanity in exchange for the data about their experiments. 179 00:09:09,560 --> 00:09:13,920 That's not all. Among those was Shiro Ishii, the commander of unit 731. 180 00:09:13,960 --> 00:09:15,480 During the cover up operation, 181 00:09:15,520 --> 00:09:20,400 the U.S. government paid money to obtain the data on human experiments deducted in China, 182 00:09:20,400 --> 00:09:23,360 according to two declassified U.S. government documents. 183 00:09:23,400 --> 00:09:28,120 The total amount paid to unnamed former members of the infamous unit was somewhere 184 00:09:28,160 --> 00:09:31,120 between 150,000 and 200,000 yen. 185 00:09:31,160 --> 00:09:36,480 An amount of 200,000 at this time is equivalent of 20 million to 40 million yen today. 186 00:09:36,520 --> 00:09:40,280 So they not only got off Scott clean, they also got wealthy. 187 00:09:40,320 --> 00:09:43,040 Yes, because that's like hundreds of thousands of dollars. 188 00:09:43,080 --> 00:09:47,160 And they also helped the government cover up what unit 731 was actually up to. 189 00:09:47,200 --> 00:09:49,040 They destroyed many of the documents. 190 00:09:49,040 --> 00:09:52,760 Hirohito, as emperor, gave his consent regarding the policies and activities of 191 00:09:52,800 --> 00:09:56,320 unit 731 and unit 100 and other human experimentation facilities. 192 00:09:56,360 --> 00:09:59,440 Despite this, there is no evidence that he was thoroughly informed on most of 193 00:09:59,480 --> 00:10:01,480 the atrocities that occurred within the facilities. 194 00:10:01,520 --> 00:10:03,960 He was one of many that would be granted immunity. 195 00:10:04,000 --> 00:10:07,320 Though it is unclear on whether Emperor Hirohito was made aware of the full extent 196 00:10:07,360 --> 00:10:11,600 of unit 731, the emperor's younger brother, Prince Makasa, had toured the headquarters 197 00:10:11,640 --> 00:10:16,400 of unit 731 and wrote in his memoirs that he watched films of how Chinese prisoners 198 00:10:16,400 --> 00:10:21,320 were made to march on the plains of Manchuria for poison gas experiments on humans. 199 00:10:21,360 --> 00:10:25,880 MacArthur, abiding by the Potsdam Declaration, gathered a jury for the Tokyo trials, 200 00:10:25,920 --> 00:10:29,080 where a number of Japanese officials were successfully tried and convicted. 201 00:10:29,120 --> 00:10:32,640 In 1981, one of the last surviving members of the Tokyo Tribunal, Judge 202 00:10:32,680 --> 00:10:37,400 Rowling, expressed his unhappiness that the war crimes committed in unit 731 203 00:10:37,440 --> 00:10:39,920 had been protected by the US government and wrote, 204 00:10:39,960 --> 00:10:44,160 It is a bitter experience for me to be informed now that centrally ordered 205 00:10:44,160 --> 00:10:48,400 Japanese war criminality of the most disgusting kind was kept secret from the 206 00:10:48,440 --> 00:10:50,040 court by the US government. 207 00:10:50,080 --> 00:10:50,880 Unquote. 208 00:10:50,920 --> 00:10:53,040 So, yeah, that's awful. 209 00:10:53,080 --> 00:10:54,800 Next up, let's talk Yakuza. 210 00:10:54,840 --> 00:11:00,920 We know that the Yakuza was used well by the government prior to World War II. 211 00:11:00,960 --> 00:11:02,360 They came up in Manchuria. 212 00:11:02,400 --> 00:11:07,320 They were used as strikebreakers in 1920, 1925 and 1928, respectively. 213 00:11:07,360 --> 00:11:08,840 I don't know why I said respectively. 214 00:11:08,880 --> 00:11:09,520 They just were. 215 00:11:09,560 --> 00:11:10,560 During the reverse course, 216 00:11:10,560 --> 00:11:14,160 MacArthur and the SCAP decided to turn a blind eye to the growing criminal 217 00:11:14,200 --> 00:11:17,000 organizations, many of whom had links with the legal 218 00:11:17,040 --> 00:11:21,480 ultra-nationalist organizational bodies for the reason of their anti-communism. 219 00:11:21,520 --> 00:11:23,920 Again, the most important thing is that you're anti-communist. 220 00:11:23,960 --> 00:11:25,120 Everything else doesn't matter. 221 00:11:25,160 --> 00:11:28,560 Many of the rehabilitated politicians had links with the ultra-nationalist 222 00:11:28,600 --> 00:11:32,800 organizations. Instead, the SCAP and MacArthur adopted the Red Purge, purging 223 00:11:32,840 --> 00:11:36,240 and dispossessing members of the labor unions, the Japanese Communist Party and 224 00:11:36,280 --> 00:11:40,160 leftist academia. During the Red Purge, Willoughby and his associates began paying 225 00:11:40,160 --> 00:11:42,800 right wing criminals in the Yakuza to repress the left. 226 00:11:42,840 --> 00:11:47,040 The Yakuza were used in strike breaking operations, as well as attacks on leaders 227 00:11:47,080 --> 00:11:50,920 of the Japanese left. Willoughby, who came up earlier and his subordinates, became 228 00:11:50,960 --> 00:11:56,040 described as obsessed and paranoid with finding plots concerning communist infiltration. 229 00:11:56,080 --> 00:12:00,760 Willoughby and his Yakuza operatives allegedly staged a derailment of a Japanese 230 00:12:00,800 --> 00:12:04,480 national railway locomotive, which we talked about earlier, in a rumored 231 00:12:04,520 --> 00:12:07,120 false flag operation meant to discredit the Communist Party. 232 00:12:07,120 --> 00:12:12,320 The G2 and US military intelligence used the Yakuza in extrajudicial abductions 233 00:12:12,360 --> 00:12:16,880 of left wing figures, including novelist Kaji Wataru, which led to his torture. 234 00:12:16,920 --> 00:12:21,640 Externally, the Yakuza were deployed in Korea as Yoshio Kadama in negotiations 235 00:12:21,680 --> 00:12:26,280 with Douglas MacArthur supplied thousands of Yakuza and IGA veterans as volunteers 236 00:12:26,320 --> 00:12:28,640 in Korea, where they posed as Korean soldiers. 237 00:12:28,680 --> 00:12:32,880 Because remember, Japan does not have a military, so they cannot fight an 238 00:12:32,880 --> 00:12:37,640 offensive war, so the Yakuza supplied Japanese military to the Korean at the 239 00:12:37,680 --> 00:12:39,880 behest of the US military. 240 00:12:39,920 --> 00:12:41,480 Oh my God. 241 00:12:41,520 --> 00:12:45,480 OK, the US is just as bad as Japan. 242 00:12:45,520 --> 00:12:47,440 Next up, the Lockheed scandal. 243 00:12:47,480 --> 00:12:49,840 And this ends with a fantastic story. 244 00:12:49,880 --> 00:12:54,520 The scandal involved Meru Beni Corporation and several high ranking members of Japanese 245 00:12:54,560 --> 00:12:57,880 political business and underworld circles, including finance minister, 246 00:12:57,880 --> 00:13:03,160 Isaku Saito and the JASDF chief of staff, Minoru Genda. 247 00:13:03,200 --> 00:13:09,120 In 1957, the Japanese Air Self Defense Force wished to buy Grumman F-11F-1F 248 00:13:09,160 --> 00:13:12,200 Super Tigers to replace the F-86 Sabre, then in service. 249 00:13:12,240 --> 00:13:16,400 But heavy lobbying by Lockheed, now Lockheed Martin, of key liberal Democratic 250 00:13:16,440 --> 00:13:19,520 Party figures led to the adoption of the F-104 instead. 251 00:13:19,560 --> 00:13:21,560 Later, Lockheed Martin hired 252 00:13:21,600 --> 00:13:25,720 underworld figure Yoshio Kadama as a consultant in order to influence 253 00:13:25,720 --> 00:13:32,120 Japanese peristatal airlines, including All-Nepal Airways, which is ANA. 254 00:13:32,160 --> 00:13:37,080 It's the airlines, All-Nepal Airways, to buy the Lockheed L-1011, 255 00:13:37,120 --> 00:13:41,320 TriStar instead of the McDonnell Douglas DC-10. 256 00:13:41,360 --> 00:13:46,280 On February 6, 1976, the vice chairman of Lockheed told the Senate subcommittee 257 00:13:46,320 --> 00:13:50,680 that Lockheed had paid approximately three million dollars in bribes to the office 258 00:13:50,720 --> 00:13:54,360 of Japanese Prime Minister Kakuhei Tanaka for aid in the matter. 259 00:13:54,360 --> 00:13:59,680 Lockheed also paid 2.4 billion yen to earn the contract from ANA. 260 00:13:59,720 --> 00:14:03,520 500 million of the total yen was received by the prime minister. 261 00:14:03,560 --> 00:14:06,400 160 million was received by ANA officials. 262 00:14:06,440 --> 00:14:11,040 1.7 billion was received by Yoshio Kadama, who, remember, is that Yak is a guy 263 00:14:11,080 --> 00:14:14,520 from earlier on who was the fixer for the LDP. 264 00:14:14,560 --> 00:14:18,200 On October 30, 1972, All-Nepal Airways, ANA, 265 00:14:18,240 --> 00:14:23,040 announced its decision to purchase 21 Lockheed 1011 TriStars, which cost 266 00:14:23,040 --> 00:14:26,000 approximately five million dollars each, even though it had previously 267 00:14:26,040 --> 00:14:28,320 announced options to purchase the DC-10. 268 00:14:28,360 --> 00:14:29,680 The 1986 U.S. 269 00:14:29,720 --> 00:14:31,240 President's Commission on Organized Crime 270 00:14:31,280 --> 00:14:36,320 revealed that from 1969 to 1975, Lockheed used Deek and Company, a large 271 00:14:36,360 --> 00:14:40,240 foreign exchange operator owned by Nicholas Deek, as a conduit to transfer 272 00:14:40,280 --> 00:14:43,520 money intended by Lockheed to bribe Japanese officials. 273 00:14:43,560 --> 00:14:44,760 It was disclosed that the U.S. 274 00:14:44,800 --> 00:14:49,000 8.3 million was moved to Deek's office in Hong Kong, where a Spanish-born 275 00:14:49,040 --> 00:14:52,400 priest representing Lockheed took the cash and carried it to Japan. 276 00:14:52,400 --> 00:14:56,000 And this is my favorite story about Yoshio Kadama. 277 00:14:56,040 --> 00:15:03,240 This pisses off a extreme right-wing Japanese porn star by the name of Mutsuyasu Meino. 278 00:15:03,280 --> 00:15:07,680 He gets so pissed off because he says that this is an affront to the samurai code. 279 00:15:07,720 --> 00:15:11,640 Even though he's an extreme right-winger, he says, no, you must follow the Japanese code. 280 00:15:11,680 --> 00:15:16,480 He rents a plane and kamikazes Yoshio Kadama's house. 281 00:15:16,520 --> 00:15:18,160 Oh my God. What? 282 00:15:18,200 --> 00:15:18,760 Yeah. 283 00:15:18,760 --> 00:15:23,680 In process of scandal, actor, porn actor Mutsuyasu Meino made a suicide attack 284 00:15:23,720 --> 00:15:27,120 on Kadama's Tokyo home by crashing a light aircraft onto it. 285 00:15:27,160 --> 00:15:32,280 I read the story and basically he went in full kamikaze gear, like what they wore 286 00:15:32,320 --> 00:15:35,320 to attack Pearl Harbor, and he went with another plane and they were posing. 287 00:15:35,360 --> 00:15:37,760 There's a picture of him outside of his light aircraft. 288 00:15:37,800 --> 00:15:41,160 And somebody asked, like, hey, what are you doing at the tarmac? 289 00:15:41,200 --> 00:15:44,360 And they're like, oh, we're just filming a scene for a movie. 290 00:15:44,400 --> 00:15:46,200 Anyhow, they both go up in the air. 291 00:15:46,200 --> 00:15:49,160 He says, like, oh, I'm just going to take a quick detour over this way. 292 00:15:49,200 --> 00:15:51,120 And then he turns on his calm. 293 00:15:51,160 --> 00:15:54,880 He says, this is for the emperor, which in Japanese ends with Banzai, 294 00:15:54,920 --> 00:15:58,640 which is what they kamikaze yell before they kill people or themselves. 295 00:15:58,680 --> 00:16:01,040 And crashes it into Yoshio Kadama's house. 296 00:16:01,080 --> 00:16:03,880 Yoshio Kadama had suffered a stroke two years earlier, 297 00:16:03,920 --> 00:16:06,120 so he was more or less like house-ridden. 298 00:16:06,160 --> 00:16:07,200 Didn't move a whole lot. 299 00:16:07,240 --> 00:16:12,240 But luckily for Yoshio, he ends up actually completely unharmed in this plane crash. 300 00:16:12,280 --> 00:16:13,640 Oh my God. 301 00:16:13,640 --> 00:16:18,560 Tanaka for this probe was arrested in July 27, 1976, 302 00:16:18,600 --> 00:16:22,200 and was released on August on a 200 million yen bond. 303 00:16:22,240 --> 00:16:25,520 He was found guilty by Tokyo courts of violation of foreign exchange control. 304 00:16:25,560 --> 00:16:26,960 He was sentenced to four years in prison, 305 00:16:27,000 --> 00:16:30,200 but re-evaluated on appeal until his death in 1993. 306 00:16:30,240 --> 00:16:32,480 The same thing happens with Yoshio Kadama. 307 00:16:32,520 --> 00:16:35,480 He has a trial, but he dies before it can come to pass. 308 00:16:35,520 --> 00:16:37,200 He has a stroke in 1984. 309 00:16:37,240 --> 00:16:39,480 So, yeah. 310 00:16:39,520 --> 00:16:43,520 And then the last thing I wanted to talk about was that assassination 311 00:16:43,520 --> 00:16:46,960 that had just happened in Japan last year of Shinzo Abe. 312 00:16:47,000 --> 00:16:50,400 So, Shinzo Abe shot, giving a speech, by a homemade gun. 313 00:16:50,440 --> 00:16:54,160 And Yamagami, the guy who did it, basically, he ends up coming out with the story 314 00:16:54,200 --> 00:16:58,000 that he wanted to kill the leader of the unification church, the Moons. 315 00:16:58,040 --> 00:16:59,880 But it was too difficult to get to her. 316 00:16:59,920 --> 00:17:04,360 Instead, it would be easier to get to a previous prime minister and shoot him. 317 00:17:04,400 --> 00:17:05,920 Which is crazy. 318 00:17:05,960 --> 00:17:07,120 He just needed to shoot. 319 00:17:07,160 --> 00:17:09,880 Like, he made this homemade gun and he just needed to shoot someone. 320 00:17:09,880 --> 00:17:15,480 Yeah, but Shinzo Abe and the LDP have a big history with the unification church, 321 00:17:15,520 --> 00:17:17,880 which is a cult, which I'm going to tell you about. 322 00:17:17,920 --> 00:17:20,880 And I'm now going to reveal the thing that I've been hiding until now. 323 00:17:20,920 --> 00:17:25,960 Shinzo Abe is Kishi Nabusuke's grandson, the prime minister during Anpo 324 00:17:26,000 --> 00:17:27,760 and the guy who ran Manchuria. 325 00:17:27,800 --> 00:17:30,000 I feel like a horse at this point. 326 00:17:30,040 --> 00:17:31,560 I found a great article. 327 00:17:31,600 --> 00:17:34,720 It's called The Dark Shadow Cast by Moonsung Myungs, 328 00:17:34,760 --> 00:17:37,560 Unification Church and Abe Shinzo by Peter McGill. 329 00:17:37,560 --> 00:17:40,600 I'm just going to give it background on what the Moonees are. 330 00:17:40,640 --> 00:17:43,760 It's going to be a minute, but I think it's well worth our listen. 331 00:17:43,800 --> 00:17:47,400 So in 1941, a man by the name of Sung-myung Moon, 332 00:17:47,440 --> 00:17:50,640 which is why he called Moonees, began studying electrical engineering in Tokyo, 333 00:17:50,680 --> 00:17:52,880 but did not finish the course and returned to live in Seoul, 334 00:17:52,920 --> 00:17:54,360 where he married his first wife. 335 00:17:54,400 --> 00:17:57,480 After Allied forces liberated Korea in 1945, 336 00:17:57,520 --> 00:18:01,040 1945, Moon moved to Pyongyang and started his own church. 337 00:18:01,080 --> 00:18:02,840 Other ministers complained of his teachers 338 00:18:02,880 --> 00:18:06,080 in 1946, Moon was arrested and charged for polygamy. 339 00:18:06,080 --> 00:18:09,720 Two years later, he was excommunicated from the Presbyterian Church 340 00:18:09,760 --> 00:18:12,960 and Moon was sentenced to five years at the Hungman Labor Camp, 341 00:18:13,000 --> 00:18:16,640 where he wrote his memoirs that he was beaten until he vomited blood. 342 00:18:16,680 --> 00:18:18,800 When the Korean War broke out in the 1950s, 343 00:18:18,840 --> 00:18:23,080 he was freed from the camp when guards fled from advancing United Nations troops 344 00:18:23,120 --> 00:18:26,280 and traveled to Busan in the south, where he began a new church. 345 00:18:26,320 --> 00:18:28,240 By then, a convinced anti-communist, 346 00:18:28,280 --> 00:18:31,120 he identified movements in countries with biblical figures. 347 00:18:31,160 --> 00:18:32,840 Korea became the Adam nation, 348 00:18:32,880 --> 00:18:35,760 while Japan was Eve and America the Archangel. 349 00:18:35,760 --> 00:18:37,840 Communist countries were the lair of Satan, 350 00:18:37,880 --> 00:18:40,600 and Korea was the front line in a war between good and evil. 351 00:18:40,640 --> 00:18:45,000 In 1955, one year after official founding of his Holy Spirit Association 352 00:18:45,040 --> 00:18:47,120 for the Unification of World Christianity, 353 00:18:47,160 --> 00:18:50,280 Moon was arrested over allegations of sex with female followers. 354 00:18:50,320 --> 00:18:53,800 Ewha Women's University, a prestigious Methodist mission college, 355 00:18:53,840 --> 00:18:56,720 dismissed five professors and expelled 14 students. 356 00:18:56,760 --> 00:18:59,640 80 young women involved in the case refused to testify in court 357 00:18:59,680 --> 00:19:01,520 and charges were finally dropped. 358 00:19:01,560 --> 00:19:04,520 The FBI later cited reports that the cult was engaged 359 00:19:04,520 --> 00:19:08,360 in a sexual right called pickerion or cleaning of the womb, 360 00:19:08,400 --> 00:19:11,480 in which a woman had sex with Moon three times 361 00:19:11,520 --> 00:19:13,960 to cleanse her blood from Satan's lineage. 362 00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:17,880 The woman then could cleanse her husband by having sex with him. 363 00:19:17,920 --> 00:19:19,160 Oh, God. 364 00:19:19,200 --> 00:19:21,520 Yeah, that's what this church is all about. 365 00:19:21,560 --> 00:19:25,160 Also, the Unification Church is very commonly known 366 00:19:25,200 --> 00:19:27,520 as the church that plans weddings. 367 00:19:27,560 --> 00:19:30,360 They have mass weddings where thousands of people get married, 368 00:19:30,400 --> 00:19:32,480 and the Unification Church tells you who you're married, 369 00:19:32,520 --> 00:19:33,760 so you don't get to pick your... 370 00:19:33,760 --> 00:19:37,000 Oh, I was just gonna say, are these people not in the... 371 00:19:37,040 --> 00:19:43,480 They're all in the cult, and they're just running the side wedding business. 372 00:19:43,520 --> 00:19:45,400 But this thing is fucking huge. 373 00:19:45,440 --> 00:19:47,000 Like, it is a huge cult. 374 00:19:47,040 --> 00:19:51,400 The Unification Church was organized by retiring brigadier general Kim Jong-Pil, 375 00:19:51,440 --> 00:19:54,680 the founder and first director of the South Korean CIA, 376 00:19:54,720 --> 00:19:56,600 which was set up by the CIA, 377 00:19:56,640 --> 00:19:59,360 and Kim Jong-Pil, a relative of Park Chung-hee, 378 00:19:59,400 --> 00:20:02,040 an architect of the coup who later became prime minister, 379 00:20:02,040 --> 00:20:05,040 has been using the church, which has a membership of 27,000, 380 00:20:05,080 --> 00:20:07,800 as a political tool, says a CIA report. 381 00:20:07,840 --> 00:20:09,080 Oh, God. 382 00:20:09,120 --> 00:20:12,320 This cult's first overseas bridgehead was in Japan, 383 00:20:12,360 --> 00:20:16,040 where Kishi Nobusuke, the maternal grandfather of Shinzo Abe, 384 00:20:16,080 --> 00:20:17,920 rolled out the red carpet for move. 385 00:20:17,960 --> 00:20:20,920 The Unification Church was granted a Japanese status 386 00:20:20,960 --> 00:20:24,280 as a Christian religious corporation in July 1964, 387 00:20:24,320 --> 00:20:26,320 and a few months later moved its headquarters 388 00:20:26,360 --> 00:20:28,040 to an art deco-style building 389 00:20:28,080 --> 00:20:30,920 beside Kishi's home in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward. 390 00:20:30,920 --> 00:20:34,720 Kishi had used the building as his official residence while prime minister. 391 00:20:34,760 --> 00:20:38,440 20 years after the Unification Church became his next-door neighbor, 392 00:20:38,480 --> 00:20:41,480 Kishi would beseech US President Ronald Reagan 393 00:20:41,520 --> 00:20:43,760 to free Moon Sung-Yun from imprisonment. 394 00:20:43,800 --> 00:20:45,720 From the 1960s to the late 1980s, 395 00:20:45,760 --> 00:20:48,760 the Unification Church was stridently anti-communist. 396 00:20:48,800 --> 00:20:51,960 More than 300,000 South Korean troops were sent 397 00:20:52,000 --> 00:20:54,760 to support American forces defending South Vietnam, 398 00:20:54,800 --> 00:20:57,040 and Moon was a vocal supporter of the Vietnam War. 399 00:20:57,080 --> 00:20:59,400 His position was fully shared throughout the war 400 00:20:59,400 --> 00:21:02,120 by all mainstream Protestant churches in South Korea. 401 00:21:02,160 --> 00:21:04,920 At home, critics of the South Korean military deployment 402 00:21:04,960 --> 00:21:07,480 risked detention and torture by the KCIA, 403 00:21:07,520 --> 00:21:10,440 and massacres by Korean troops in Vietnam were covered up. 404 00:21:10,480 --> 00:21:12,680 Party Yamagami's lethal animus, 405 00:21:12,720 --> 00:21:14,600 that is the guy who killed Shinzo Abe, 406 00:21:14,640 --> 00:21:17,000 derived from his grandfather's partnering with Moon 407 00:21:17,040 --> 00:21:20,000 in the International Federation of the Victory Over Communists. 408 00:21:20,040 --> 00:21:22,560 They have so many friggin' anti-communist groups 409 00:21:22,600 --> 00:21:24,760 that they just... I don't know how they come up with so many names 410 00:21:24,800 --> 00:21:26,680 and say, I'm not with the communists. 411 00:21:26,680 --> 00:21:30,120 The International Federation for Victory Over Communism, 412 00:21:30,160 --> 00:21:33,480 the Anti-Communist League, and there's more that will come up. 413 00:21:33,520 --> 00:21:36,080 And Moon founded it in Seoul in 1968. 414 00:21:36,120 --> 00:21:37,960 The honorary chairman of the Japan affiliate 415 00:21:38,000 --> 00:21:39,560 launched in the same year in Japanese, 416 00:21:39,600 --> 00:21:43,680 Kokusai Shokyo Rengo, was none other than Sasakawa Ryōchi, 417 00:21:43,720 --> 00:21:47,160 that guy who was the Class A war criminal I haven't mentioned yet 418 00:21:47,200 --> 00:21:48,200 who got out. 419 00:21:48,240 --> 00:21:51,480 One of the most notorious and flamboyant Japanese of the 20th century. 420 00:21:51,520 --> 00:21:54,760 He is considered like the daddy warbucks of Japan. 421 00:21:54,760 --> 00:21:57,920 His biggest regret is that he never won the Nobel Peace Prize, 422 00:21:57,960 --> 00:22:01,520 and during World War II, he was so proud of the planes that he bought 423 00:22:01,560 --> 00:22:05,520 that he flew them to Italy to show his hero, Mussolini. 424 00:22:05,560 --> 00:22:07,080 Big fascist. 425 00:22:07,120 --> 00:22:11,280 Also, he owned the entire gambling that's allowed in Japan for years, 426 00:22:11,320 --> 00:22:15,440 likely because he had a really good in with the Yakuza with Yoshio. 427 00:22:15,480 --> 00:22:16,920 So that's where Ryōchi comes in. 428 00:22:16,960 --> 00:22:18,920 Sorry, I finally got to him. 429 00:22:18,960 --> 00:22:20,480 Oh, God, where was I? 430 00:22:20,520 --> 00:22:21,960 What a roller coaster. 431 00:22:21,960 --> 00:22:26,920 Moon also sponsored the 1970 Tokyo meeting of the World Anti-Communist League. 432 00:22:26,960 --> 00:22:29,680 See, they have a million ways of saying they're against communism, 433 00:22:29,720 --> 00:22:34,160 with which the IFVOC and Shokyo Rengo were affiliated. 434 00:22:34,200 --> 00:22:38,760 The WACL grew out of the Asian People's Anti-Communist League, 435 00:22:38,800 --> 00:22:42,480 formed in 1954 at the request of South Korea's Ri Sing-Man 436 00:22:42,520 --> 00:22:45,760 and Taiwan's Chiang Kai-shek to fight communism in Asia 437 00:22:45,800 --> 00:22:47,080 after the end of the Korean War. 438 00:22:47,120 --> 00:22:50,120 The WACL established in Taiwan in 1966 439 00:22:50,120 --> 00:22:53,480 expanded the scope of anti-communist activities onto a global stage. 440 00:22:53,520 --> 00:22:57,640 In the 1970s, the European division of the WACL became notorious 441 00:22:57,680 --> 00:22:59,680 for a large influx of fascist groups, 442 00:22:59,720 --> 00:23:02,840 especially after British white supremacist Roger Pearson 443 00:23:02,880 --> 00:23:05,920 took over as WACL chairman in 1978. 444 00:23:05,960 --> 00:23:08,920 Geoffrey Stuart Smith, who headed the league's British chapter, 445 00:23:08,960 --> 00:23:11,920 resigned in protest, describing the WACL as, 446 00:23:11,960 --> 00:23:15,480 largely a collection of Nazis, fascists, anti-Semites, 447 00:23:15,520 --> 00:23:19,840 sellers of forgeries, vicious racialists and corrupt self-seekers. 448 00:23:19,840 --> 00:23:21,920 Sounds like a great group of people. 449 00:23:21,960 --> 00:23:26,600 Yeah. The Unification Church expansion into the US began after Moon moved there 450 00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:29,800 with his rapidly growing family in the early 1970s. 451 00:23:29,840 --> 00:23:31,760 With money also pouring in from Japan, 452 00:23:31,800 --> 00:23:34,840 the Unification Church bought the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan, 453 00:23:34,880 --> 00:23:38,480 a seafood operation said to supply half of the sushi sold in the United States, 454 00:23:38,520 --> 00:23:41,880 a cable TV network, a recording studio and a shipbuilding firm, 455 00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:45,600 all owned by the Unification Church in New York. 456 00:23:45,640 --> 00:23:48,240 And to this day, I can't remember if it comes up or not, 457 00:23:48,240 --> 00:23:52,920 70% of the income from the Unification Church comes from donations in Japan. 458 00:23:52,960 --> 00:23:55,240 Is it still a cult? 459 00:23:55,280 --> 00:23:57,840 It's still a cult, still very much so around. 460 00:23:57,880 --> 00:24:01,480 It's mostly Japan and Korea, mostly Japan, but it's everywhere. 461 00:24:01,520 --> 00:24:02,360 That's crazy. 462 00:24:02,400 --> 00:24:05,280 And they still, I'm pretty sure, own the Washington Post. 463 00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:07,120 If you ever see an article from the Washington Post, 464 00:24:07,160 --> 00:24:09,120 it's owned by the Unification Church. 465 00:24:09,160 --> 00:24:11,800 Yeah. Or sorry, Washington Times, not the Washington Post. 466 00:24:11,840 --> 00:24:13,280 OK, I was going to say, huh? 467 00:24:13,320 --> 00:24:14,960 Geoff Bezos owns the Washington Post. 468 00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:17,760 The Washington Times are owned by the Unification Church. 469 00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:20,520 Yeah, so they go to the US, but they buy all these companies. 470 00:24:20,560 --> 00:24:23,960 And a US congressional probe into the Korea Gate scandal of influence buying 471 00:24:24,000 --> 00:24:27,880 in Washington lifted the lid on the close cooperation between the Unification 472 00:24:27,920 --> 00:24:30,000 Church and the government of Park Chung-hee. 473 00:24:30,040 --> 00:24:32,200 The spark for a wide ranging investigation 474 00:24:32,240 --> 00:24:36,080 into the US-Korea relationship was revelations of corruption by South Korea's 475 00:24:36,120 --> 00:24:40,720 chief lobbyist, Tong Soon Park, who funneled money from the KCIA to members of Congress. 476 00:24:40,760 --> 00:24:42,440 Cash filled envelopes were handed over 477 00:24:42,480 --> 00:24:47,200 that lavish parties at the Georgetown Club that Park had founded for entertaining. 478 00:24:47,200 --> 00:24:50,960 Park Chung-hee had authorized an aggressive influence buying operation 479 00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:54,440 around the Washington embassy to counter moves to reduce the US troop presence 480 00:24:54,480 --> 00:24:58,600 in South Korea and other US military assistance, as well as to roll back 481 00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:01,760 mounting criticism of human rights violations by his regime. 482 00:25:01,800 --> 00:25:06,120 The chief agent of repression was the KCIA, widely suspected of involvement 483 00:25:06,160 --> 00:25:10,720 in the 1973 abduction from Tokyo of Korean opposition later in later Nobel 484 00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:14,400 Laureate Kim Dae-jung. Moon also manufactured guns for the Korean 485 00:25:14,400 --> 00:25:19,000 military through the Unification Church, which drew much unfavorable attention. 486 00:25:19,040 --> 00:25:23,080 Tongil Heavy Industries, headed by his second cousin, made the Vulcan gun, 487 00:25:23,120 --> 00:25:27,320 an anti-aircraft weapon, an air gun used by Korean school children for military 488 00:25:27,360 --> 00:25:31,200 training, the M79 grenade launcher, and most controversially at the time 489 00:25:31,240 --> 00:25:35,760 for Korea Gate, the M16 rifle, the basic infantry weapon of the Korean Army. 490 00:25:35,800 --> 00:25:40,720 The M16 was made under the license from the Colt Industries in the US and was 491 00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:44,560 made under an agreement with the US government that was only to be reproduced 492 00:25:44,600 --> 00:25:47,200 or to be produced by the South Korean government. 493 00:25:47,240 --> 00:25:50,760 So the South Korean government is so intertwined with this cult at the time 494 00:25:50,800 --> 00:25:54,160 that they basically see no difference between them making it and this cult 495 00:25:54,200 --> 00:25:57,520 making the weapons. Washington Times, founded by this ubiquitous 496 00:25:57,560 --> 00:26:00,880 henchman Pak Bo-hee in 1982, strengthened bonds. 497 00:26:00,920 --> 00:26:02,720 The paper was meant to be a conservative 498 00:26:02,760 --> 00:26:06,720 counterweight to liberal Washington Post that had been instrumental in driving 499 00:26:06,760 --> 00:26:09,800 Nixon from office and enjoyed a monopoly in the capital area. 500 00:26:09,800 --> 00:26:14,760 Reagan read the Washington Times every day for his presidency. 501 00:26:14,800 --> 00:26:17,880 That took me a moment. 502 00:26:17,920 --> 00:26:20,040 The American people know the truth. 503 00:26:20,080 --> 00:26:23,040 You, my friends at the Washington Times, have told it to them. 504 00:26:23,080 --> 00:26:25,600 He said in 1997. 505 00:26:25,640 --> 00:26:27,800 Isn't it great that like one of everybody's 506 00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:31,080 favorite presidents fully loved Colts readings? 507 00:26:31,120 --> 00:26:32,880 Colts readings. 508 00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:35,800 Colt newspapers, literally owned by a cult. 509 00:26:35,840 --> 00:26:38,960 That might make them better. I don't know. 510 00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:39,960 I don't know. 511 00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:43,200 And then this is where the CIA part actually comes in. 512 00:26:43,240 --> 00:26:47,240 The Moody's, the Unification Church, are definitely involved with the CIA. 513 00:26:47,280 --> 00:26:49,440 The guaranteed part is right here. 514 00:26:49,480 --> 00:26:54,640 In 1979, the hereditary dictatorship of the Somoza family, Somoza family 515 00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:59,000 in power in Nicaragua since 1937, was deposed by left wing Sandinistas. 516 00:26:59,040 --> 00:27:01,800 Reagan believed that the Sandinista victory threatened 517 00:27:01,840 --> 00:27:04,520 Southern frontier of the United States. 518 00:27:04,560 --> 00:27:07,840 In addition to a trade embargo against Nicaragua, he authorized the CIA to 519 00:27:07,840 --> 00:27:12,600 covertly help Contra rebels operating out of camps in the neighboring Honduras 520 00:27:12,640 --> 00:27:16,800 and Costa Rica with funding, training and weaponry, obviously known as the 521 00:27:16,840 --> 00:27:20,720 Iran-Contra affair. After Congress prohibited federal funding of the Contras 522 00:27:20,760 --> 00:27:25,520 in 1983, Colonel Oliver North on the National Security Council formulated a plan 523 00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:29,160 for the Reagan administration to continue backing them by selling arms to Iran 524 00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:31,560 and channeling the proceeds to the Contras. 525 00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:33,880 The CIA was supported in these covert 526 00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:37,720 campaigns by a broad range of right wing individuals and networks connected 527 00:27:37,720 --> 00:27:40,760 to Singh Lob's World Anti-Communist League. 528 00:27:40,800 --> 00:27:45,840 It's Latin American chapter, the C.A.L., which stands for Confederación 529 00:27:45,880 --> 00:27:51,440 Anticommunista Latinaamericana, would gradually involve representatives of all 530 00:27:51,480 --> 00:27:55,520 the Latin American domestic security forces, intelligence services, military 531 00:27:55,560 --> 00:27:59,320 establishments, paramilitary movements and desuades across the continent. 532 00:27:59,360 --> 00:28:03,880 Moon's contribution to the anti-communism in Central and South America was through 533 00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:07,560 a new political arm of the Unification Church called the CASA, Spanish 534 00:28:07,560 --> 00:28:10,040 for cause founded in New York in 1980. 535 00:28:10,080 --> 00:28:15,000 CASA was inevitably headed by Noon's ultra loyal ex-Colonel Pak Bohe. 536 00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:19,320 In 1984, the celebrated American investigative journalist Jack Anderson 537 00:28:19,360 --> 00:28:23,440 described in a syndicated column how Moon's cult worked with the CIA. 538 00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:24,840 And this is from his article. 539 00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:28,320 In the Central American hinterlands, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish 540 00:28:28,360 --> 00:28:31,800 CIA operative from the Reverend Somyon Moon's disciples. 541 00:28:31,840 --> 00:28:33,720 They appear to be working in harness 542 00:28:33,760 --> 00:28:37,080 against the communist tainted Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. 543 00:28:37,080 --> 00:28:41,040 This troubles at least one Pentagon analyst now stationed in Korea, who has 544 00:28:41,080 --> 00:28:45,120 warned the White House that the CIA Mooney connection could cause possible 545 00:28:45,160 --> 00:28:48,960 political damage to the president's reelection campaign, that president being 546 00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:51,800 Ronald Reagan. Current Mooney involvement in the government officials, 547 00:28:51,840 --> 00:28:55,960 contractors and grantees could create a major scandal, the memo warns. 548 00:28:56,000 --> 00:29:00,200 CASA International, Moon's political front, has representatives working 549 00:29:00,240 --> 00:29:05,240 in the programs that help the CIA in its contra work against the Sandinista government. 550 00:29:05,240 --> 00:29:09,520 CASA maintains a publicity office in Tezegalpa, the Honduran capital, 551 00:29:09,560 --> 00:29:12,200 but its principal activities are in the field. 552 00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:16,720 CASA provides cash and other aid to Honduran based Nicaraguan contras 553 00:29:16,760 --> 00:29:19,120 and Honduran right wing political groups. 554 00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:24,440 Many anti-Sandinista guerrillas wear red CASA t-shirts with a map of the world on them. 555 00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:28,040 But CASA and its affiliates, the Refugee Relief Freedom Foundation, 556 00:29:28,080 --> 00:29:29,800 provide more than t-shirts to the rebel group. 557 00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:33,360 They also funnel supplies to refugee families in and near contra camps and pay 558 00:29:33,360 --> 00:29:35,920 for trips by rebel leaders to the United States. 559 00:29:35,960 --> 00:29:40,920 The airlift of supplies to the rebels by Moon's Unification Church has escalated 560 00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:43,360 since Congress cut off CIA funding for contras. 561 00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:47,160 The administration has been attempting to privatize its war against the 562 00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:50,280 Sandinistas and it's apparently willing to work with Moon's people. 563 00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:54,960 While CASA was active throughout South America, it was Uruguay's military 564 00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:56,960 dictatorship that offered the warmest welcome. 565 00:29:57,000 --> 00:30:01,360 In March of 1981, Park Bohee met the president, vice president and interior 566 00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:03,320 minister in the capital of Montevideo. 567 00:30:03,360 --> 00:30:08,200 By the end of the year, CASA was granted rights to set up two newspapers, 568 00:30:08,240 --> 00:30:13,040 Noticia del Uruguay and Ultima Noticia, and a radio station in Uruguay, 569 00:30:13,080 --> 00:30:16,280 as well as a casino in violation of local gambling laws. 570 00:30:16,320 --> 00:30:20,120 It brought the largest publishing house, a restaurant and a meatpacking plant, 571 00:30:20,160 --> 00:30:24,920 and owned Montevideo's only luxury hotel, the Victoria Plaza, which housed the casino 572 00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:27,280 and was later extended to include a convention center. 573 00:30:27,320 --> 00:30:31,200 Uruguay's offshore banking system operated behind walls of secrecy 574 00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:34,400 and was notorious for being a laundromat for drug money, as well as a haven 575 00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:35,960 for flight capital and tax evasion. 576 00:30:36,000 --> 00:30:39,880 CASA's acquisition of a controlling interest in Uruguay's third largest bank, 577 00:30:39,920 --> 00:30:42,720 the Banco de Credito, prompted many questions. 578 00:30:42,760 --> 00:30:46,960 The cult's sudden interest in acquiring a Uruguayan bank may have been related 579 00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:49,600 to its intense scrutiny it was receiving from U.S. 580 00:30:49,640 --> 00:30:53,840 tax authorities, which led to Moon's conviction, incarceration and a Connecticut penitentiary. 581 00:30:53,880 --> 00:30:58,880 This provoked an extraordinary intervention by Kishi, the former prime minister who had done 582 00:30:58,880 --> 00:31:02,080 so much to facilitate unification church entry into Japan. 583 00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:07,360 On November 26, 1984, Nobusuke Kishi wrote to Reagan at the White House, 584 00:31:07,400 --> 00:31:12,760 imploring him to release Moon by all means from his unfair imprisonment as soon as possible. 585 00:31:12,800 --> 00:31:16,880 Kishi begins his letter by congratulating Reagan on a sweeping election victory 586 00:31:16,920 --> 00:31:20,360 and on departing from the New Deal policies of the Democratic Party, 587 00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:23,720 ultimately derived from Marxism, which have been the parents 588 00:31:23,760 --> 00:31:26,360 since the time of President F.D. Roosevelt. 589 00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:32,000 Kishi alludes to a recent World Media Conference in Tokyo, of which he and Douglas MacArthur 590 00:31:32,040 --> 00:31:37,480 II, American ambassador to Japan from 1957 to 1961, had both been honorary 591 00:31:37,520 --> 00:31:41,440 chairman, attended by, quote, 800 journalists from 87 countries. 592 00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:44,040 According to Kishi, the conference closed with congratulatory 593 00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:49,400 speech by Mike Mansfield, who was U.S. ambassador to Tokyo from 1977 to 88. 594 00:31:49,440 --> 00:31:53,920 The World Media Conference was founded by Moon, whom Kishi extols in his letter 595 00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:59,440 as a genuine man staking his life on promoting the ideals of freedom and correcting communism. 596 00:31:59,480 --> 00:32:03,640 His existence is and will be in the future a rare, precious, 597 00:32:03,680 --> 00:32:08,000 indispensable one for the maintenance and freedom of democracy. 598 00:32:08,040 --> 00:32:12,760 A reply was drafted by Reagan's signature and was sent to Kishi on March 5th, 1985. 599 00:32:12,800 --> 00:32:14,960 It is noted that Moon's request for a parole 600 00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:18,240 have been denied and his scheduled release date remained August 20th, 601 00:32:18,280 --> 00:32:21,840 although a formal request for executive clemency was under consideration. 602 00:32:21,840 --> 00:32:26,320 Japanese defense minister Nobuo Kishi, who is Abe's brother, said this week 603 00:32:26,360 --> 00:32:30,160 that unification church members had volunteered in his own past election 604 00:32:30,200 --> 00:32:34,920 campaigns and the head of Japan's agency investigating security lapses in Abe's 605 00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:40,440 killing told reporters that he headed the executive committee for a church linked event in 2018. 606 00:32:40,480 --> 00:32:41,600 And this is the Moonies. 607 00:32:41,640 --> 00:32:45,880 It hosts mass weddings, owns a famous ski resort, a soccer team, travel agency, 608 00:32:45,920 --> 00:32:51,080 construction company and numerous factories, sits on a giant land bank of 4628 hectares 609 00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:54,880 and pursues government sanction, economic and political diplomacy with North Korea. 610 00:32:54,920 --> 00:32:58,800 So close have been relations with the government that the unification church 611 00:32:58,840 --> 00:33:03,560 gave anti communist indoctrination courses to South Korean civil servants at its 612 00:33:03,600 --> 00:33:06,360 Su-taek-ri compound outside Seoul. 613 00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:08,360 Inside the compound was the unification church, 614 00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:11,280 factory making rifles for the South Korean military. 615 00:33:11,320 --> 00:33:18,680 And in 2021, both Shinzo Abe and Donald Trump addressed a unification church rally of hope. 616 00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:22,680 Both Trump and his former CIA director and secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, 617 00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:28,280 addressed another Moonie event in Seoul in August of 2022 after Abe's assassination. 618 00:33:28,320 --> 00:33:30,600 So that super fucked up. 619 00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:34,560 On September 8th, the LDP released the results of an internal survey that it had done, 620 00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:41,120 showing that almost half of its 379 diet members had admitted to dealing with the Moonies cult. 621 00:33:41,160 --> 00:33:46,560 In addition, 290 members of the prefectural assemblies and seven prefectural governors 622 00:33:46,560 --> 00:33:49,880 have acknowledged associating with it, according to the survey by a side. 623 00:33:49,920 --> 00:33:53,600 So close have their relationships been with the government that the unification church 624 00:33:53,640 --> 00:33:57,600 gave anti communist indoctrination courses to South Korea and Japan. 625 00:33:57,640 --> 00:34:00,360 And yeah, basically how they get all their money. 626 00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:01,360 It's super sketchy. 627 00:34:01,400 --> 00:34:04,760 I cut this part out, but they look in the obituaries. 628 00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:08,600 The unification church find people that have recently died, go to their loved ones 629 00:34:08,640 --> 00:34:13,720 and say, your family member that's passed on is in hell right now and you need to give us money 630 00:34:13,720 --> 00:34:19,280 and commit yourself to our church that your loved ones can live a better life in the afterlife. 631 00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:23,280 I'm just amazed at how many people they take in with all of this. 632 00:34:23,320 --> 00:34:24,760 They take in so many people. 633 00:34:24,800 --> 00:34:27,280 I'm always amazed at cult and how they operate like this. 634 00:34:27,320 --> 00:34:30,240 Fuck, I hope I still have this article open, do I? 635 00:34:30,280 --> 00:34:32,000 Because this is absolutely vital. 636 00:34:32,040 --> 00:34:33,760 Basically, it's the story of... 637 00:34:33,800 --> 00:34:35,640 Why would you close it if it's vital? 638 00:34:35,680 --> 00:34:37,080 I thought I had it in my thing. 639 00:34:37,120 --> 00:34:38,520 That's 25 pages long. 640 00:34:38,560 --> 00:34:42,200 But basically Yamagami, the guy who assassinated Shinzo Abe, 641 00:34:42,200 --> 00:34:48,120 his life was ruined because his father died in a construction accident when he was young 642 00:34:48,160 --> 00:34:52,160 and his mother got taken in by the unification church. 643 00:34:52,200 --> 00:34:58,760 They forced her to sell her family's construction company and sell all the land that they owned 644 00:34:58,800 --> 00:35:03,960 and give all that money to the unification church, which ended up being about $700,000. 645 00:35:04,000 --> 00:35:08,040 Yamagami's brother committed suicide basically because they were destitute. 646 00:35:08,080 --> 00:35:10,760 Yamagami attempted to commit suicide at one point. 647 00:35:10,760 --> 00:35:15,240 His mom basically says that she has no family left and only cares about the church. 648 00:35:15,280 --> 00:35:20,240 And Moonie, Sung-yeon Moon, died and his wife is now in charge of the church. 649 00:35:20,280 --> 00:35:23,440 He wanted to assassinate her because he hates the church so much, 650 00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:26,640 but was unable to find a place that would actually work. 651 00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:29,680 So instead, he found the next closest thing that he could, 652 00:35:29,720 --> 00:35:33,360 which is a family that is deeply tied to bringing it into Japan, 653 00:35:33,400 --> 00:35:35,480 which is the Abe and the Kishi family. 654 00:35:35,520 --> 00:35:37,600 So that's why he assassinated Shinzo Abe. 655 00:35:37,600 --> 00:35:43,520 And that is why a Korean cult church came up in my episode about Japan and the CIA. 656 00:35:43,560 --> 00:35:46,760 And that is where this episode ends. 657 00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:49,480 What a web that's been weaved. 658 00:35:49,520 --> 00:35:52,400 We touched on a little bit of everything. 659 00:35:52,440 --> 00:35:56,280 That was, I don't even know what to compare that to. 660 00:35:56,320 --> 00:35:59,040 I was going to say roller coaster, but it wasn't quite a roller coaster. 661 00:35:59,080 --> 00:36:01,200 It was something different than a roller coaster. 662 00:36:01,240 --> 00:36:05,920 It was a plane ride with a Japanese porn star of a ride. 663 00:36:05,920 --> 00:36:07,680 OK, yeah, I'll take that one. 664 00:36:07,720 --> 00:36:09,480 I'll take it. In fact, encourage it. 665 00:36:09,520 --> 00:36:11,480 Embrace it. Yes. 666 00:36:11,520 --> 00:36:15,200 And let's just say right now I had to cut this short. 667 00:36:15,240 --> 00:36:17,960 This is the short version of this episode. 668 00:36:18,000 --> 00:36:20,640 And does this bring us to the end of Japan? 669 00:36:20,680 --> 00:36:21,880 Probably not. 670 00:36:21,920 --> 00:36:25,640 This brings us to the end of Japan for now. 671 00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:29,400 Because there's obviously still other stuff we need to touch on that have come up. 672 00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:32,880 Yeah, God. Chelsea, any questions? 673 00:36:32,920 --> 00:36:35,120 I don't think there's any comments. 674 00:36:35,120 --> 00:36:36,120 I was crazy. 675 00:36:36,160 --> 00:36:41,960 Lots of things in these last three episodes that have taught me a lot about the history 676 00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:45,120 of Japan, much of which I had no idea of. 677 00:36:45,160 --> 00:36:52,120 It was a journey for me, much of which I did not know, nor would have any reason to know, I guess. 678 00:36:52,160 --> 00:36:53,320 Yeah, they're fringe topics. 679 00:36:53,360 --> 00:36:56,560 I've been oblivious to what Japan's been up to. 680 00:36:56,600 --> 00:37:01,480 And like we knew we were going to circle back to, I'll be keeping my eye on Japan 681 00:37:01,520 --> 00:37:03,560 a little closer here on out. 682 00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:06,000 But other than that, I don't know that I have any. 683 00:37:06,040 --> 00:37:09,800 I can't add much to that. 684 00:37:09,840 --> 00:37:10,880 But what a journey. 685 00:37:10,920 --> 00:37:13,480 OK, what a journey it has been. 686 00:37:13,520 --> 00:37:16,880 God, I'll be happy to not have to think about Japan for a little while. 687 00:37:16,920 --> 00:37:18,800 Oh, it's just like math. 688 00:37:18,840 --> 00:37:21,040 We always got to be thinking about Japan. 689 00:37:21,080 --> 00:37:22,960 We always got to be, or else you're insane. 690 00:37:23,000 --> 00:37:24,000 Yeah. 691 00:37:25,720 --> 00:37:28,200 Or else some bad shit's going to happen. 692 00:37:28,240 --> 00:37:30,240 And you might become part of the cult. 693 00:37:30,280 --> 00:37:32,160 But with that, I'll leave you with the same advice. 694 00:37:32,160 --> 00:37:35,520 If you ever hear anybody talking about the Unification Church or the Moonies, 695 00:37:35,560 --> 00:37:36,920 don't give them your money. 696 00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:38,120 Just don't. 697 00:37:38,160 --> 00:37:39,040 As much as you want to. 698 00:37:39,080 --> 00:37:40,200 Even if they're trying to sell you stuff. 699 00:37:40,240 --> 00:37:42,680 Don't. Because we're your Japanese experts. 700 00:37:42,720 --> 00:37:46,280 Sure, we don't speak the language, but we tell you, don't. 701 00:37:46,320 --> 00:37:49,640 And with that sage advice, I have been Taylor here with Chelsea. 702 00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:50,920 We are Journey to the Fringe. 703 00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:53,120 Thank you all for listening and we'll see you next week. 704 00:37:53,160 --> 00:37:54,120 Bye. 705 00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:56,520 Thank you for listening to Journey to the Fringe. 706 00:37:56,560 --> 00:38:00,840 If you have liked what you have listened to, please like, share, 707 00:38:00,840 --> 00:38:05,720 subscribe or follow, depending on what venue you are listening to us through. 708 00:38:05,760 --> 00:38:09,320 Also, please, if possible, leave a five star review, 709 00:38:09,360 --> 00:38:11,840 as that really helps us in the algorithms. 710 00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:16,960 Should you wish to interact with us, please check us out on your social media of choice. 711 00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:18,360 I bet you we are there. 712 00:38:18,400 --> 00:38:22,760 And if you really want to communicate with us and give us ideas for new episodes 713 00:38:22,800 --> 00:38:25,280 or tell us that we're wrong and terrible, either way, 714 00:38:25,320 --> 00:38:29,960 please send us an email at journeytothefringe at gmail.com. 715 00:38:29,960 --> 00:38:32,040 For now, I'll see you in the next episode.