“Democratic Institutions?” – 10 Lessons from history that will destroy your trust in the CIA
Kit
Did everyone urging us to trust the CIA forget this happened? Or do they just want us to?
In the hysterical wake of the Trump-Putin Summit in Helsinki, President Donald Trump was roundly criticised in the media for taking the side of a “hostile state” over his own intelligence agencies. The Guardian referred to Mueller as a “heroic marine” who Trump disbelieved in favour of a “Russian dictator”.
In the past, when Trump has criticised the FBI, CIA or NSA he has been accused of “undermining faith in our institutions”. He’s been blamed for a collapse of trust in the government. But was this trust ever earned?
At every corner, we are urged to simply believe what we are told. Whether it is about believing Porton Down and MI6 about “novichok”, or believing the White Helmets about Sarin, or believing the FBI about “collusion”, we are presented with no facts, just assertions from authority. Those who question those assertions are deemed “bots” at best or “traitors” at worst.
Well here, fellow traitors, are the Top Ten reasons to question anything and everything the CIA – or any intelligence agency – has ever told you.
10. OPERATION PAPERCLIP – we’ll start with an oldie but a goody. In 1945, as the allies were advancing on Berlin from both sides, American Army Intelligence (this was before the CIA were founded) were “capturing” (read: recruiting) over 1600 Nazi scientists and engineers. Most famous of them was Werhner von Braun…sorry, SS Sturmbannführer von Braun.
Whilst Allied soldiers died in the name of defeating fascism, the CIA’s predecessors were actively recruiting Nazis to come and build bombs for them.
9. OPERATION NORTHWOODS – The original, and important, precedent for accusations that the CIA et al. might engage in false-flag attacks. Operation Northwoods was a joint CIA/Pentagon proposal designed around the idea of escalating a war with Cuba by stoking public anger:
The proposals called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other U.S. government operatives to commit acts of terrorism against American civilians and military targets, blaming it on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba.
The idea was vetoed by President Kennedy. Fifty years later, the CIA and Pentagon still very much exist, but there’s no longer a Kennedy there to veto their more psychopathic ideas. Funny how that worked out.
8. ALLENDE COUP – In 1970 Salvador Allende was elected to the Chilean Presidency. A Physician and dedicated socialist, Allende was the first socialist president elected in South America. The Nixon-lead government of the United States immediately implemented “economic warfare” (as they do, to this day, against Cuba, Venezuela and others). The economic warfare did not work, and in 1973 Allende’s socialist party increased their parliamentary majority.
In response, the US “assisted” (read: instructed) the Chilean military in carrying out a coup. Allende allegedly shot himself, and Augusto Pinochet was placed in power as the first dictator in Chile’s history. Pinochet was a fascist who executed Chilean “subversives” by the thousand…and was the darling of Western leaders.
7. MOSADDEGH COUP – I could just copy-and-paste the above paragraph and change the names for this entry. In 1953, the Prime Minister of Iran – Mohammad Mosaddegh, a democratic socialist – wanted to audit the income of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company with an eye to limiting foreign control of Iran’s oil. Within a few months, a joint US/UK operation – Operation Ajax – had removed Mosaddegh’s elected government and turned over full control of the state to the Shah. He was a brutal absolute monarch, but the question of Western control of Iran’s enormous oil reserves wasn’t raised again under his leadership.
6. OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD – A CIA operation that you could deduce existed, even if were not proven….and it is proven. Mockingbird was the CIA project to coerce, train, control or plant CIA-friendly journalists in major news networks all across the country and in every medium. It’s existence is no longer disputed, thanks to FOIA releases of internal memos.
Mockingbird was allegedly shut down in 1976 – just after its existence was leaked – then CIA director George HW Bush claiming:
…effective immediately, CIA will not enter into any paid or contractual relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.”
If you’re willing to stake anything on the word of a Bush, well, good luck with that. It’s a decision that flies in the face of historical evidence.
Remember this one when you hear about the need to trust the CIA from some pundit on CNN or MSNBC.
5. MASS SURVEILLANCE – It’s not really talked about much these days – what with the vast majority of the media and huge sections of the supposedly “anti-establishment” progressive left marching in-step with the Deep State – but the NSA spied on the whole world. The whole world. We know this to be true because an employee of the Deep State – Edward Snowden – leaked the information.
When challenged on this issue, representatives of the NSA and CIA lied. They lied to the public, and they lied to congress. When they were proven to have lied, they carefully qualified their lies.
A qualified lie is still a lie.
There is no indication they have stopped this illegal surveillance, but they may have passed laws to make it legal.
4. NAYIRAH – A classic of “atrocity propaganda”, Nayirah should be required reading material for anybody looking top hop on a pro-war bandwagon. Nayirah – who originally gave only her first name – was a fifteen year old girl who testified in front of the United States Congress. She claimed to be a volunteer from at a Kuwaiti hospital, and to be an eye-witness to Iraqi soldiers throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and leaving them to die:
I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital with twelve other women who wanted to help as well. I was the youngest volunteer. The other women were from twenty to thirty years old. While I was there I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor. It was horrifying.
It was later revealed, not only that her full name was Nayirah al-Sabah and she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, but that she had never volunteered at a hospital and had seen no babies, soldiers or incubators. The whole thing was a fiction. A fiction paid for by the “Citizens of Free Kuwait”, an NGO (and obvious CIA front) set up to lobby the US to intervene in the Iraq-Kuwait war.
By the time this fiction was revealed it was too late, and the US had launched Operation Desert Storm….which was, of course, the entire point of the exercise
Remember this, when you hear about Assad gassing children or bombing kittens.
3. COINTELPRO – The FBI’s long running (and sometimes illegal) COunter INTELligence PROgram, COINTELPRO was a series of domestic projects carried out by the FBI (with cooperation from other agencies), over decades, with the aim of “surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations”.
These political organizations included anti-Vietnam protestors, civil rights groups (including both MLK and Malcolm X), socialists, Communist Party USA, environmental groups and feminist organizations.
The brief for these “disruptions” came straight from J. Edgar Hoover who wanted the FBI to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise Neutralize” people he perceived to be enemies of the state. The capital N in “neutralise” is no accident, as the FBI was implicated in the deaths of several Black Panther leaders, including Fred Hampton.
COINTELPRO didn’t just involve undermining left-wing groups, but also creating right-wing groups:
The FBI also financed, armed, and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former Minutemen, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization that targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement, using both intimidation and violent acts.
Whether this was done to actually push a right-wing agenda, create a fake threat to step up police powers, or just sow division and chaos, is unclear. But it definitely happened.
Much like MKUltra (below), COINTELPRO was “officially shut down”, not long after the public found out it existed. However, the accidental outing of undercover policeman at a rally in Oakland, and recent relaxation of the laws limiting the FBI’s powers, means that COINTELPRO – or a modern successor – is very likely still a thing.
The aim of COINTELPRO was to “Neutralize” anti-establishment political figures – the vast majority of targets were left wingers – through “smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media”. Remember that when you see Rand Paul called a “traitor” on twitter, or read about “Russian collusion”, or see Jeremy Corbyn branded an anti-Semite.
Remember that it is proven that the Deep State – our trusted intelligence agencies – pay people to plant false stories and discredit political opponents.
2. PROJECT MKULTRA – It might sound like something from a 70s sci-fi TV series, but it is unfortunately real. MKUltra was a series of (illegal) experiments carried out by the CIA from 1953 until it was *cough* “officially halted” in 1973 (just after its existence was leaked). The experiments were wide-ranging, achieved varied levels of success, but pretty uniformly brutal and unethical. They included, but were not limited too:
– Giving LSD to unsuspecting soldiers to see what happened.
– Mass hypnosis and mass suggestion
– Torture studies
– Studies on the effect of verbal and/or sexual abuse
We’ll never know the full range of studies, or how they were carried out, because in 1973 Richard Helms, then director of the CIA, ordered all MKUltra files destroyed. Only a fraction of them survive, thanks to FOIA requests, but it’s reasonable to assume they destroyed the worst parts and kept the more quote-unquote innocent files.
The CIA were not unique in this regard either, MKUltra was their baby – but there were parallel projects in other quarters of the deep state. Army Intelligence had Edgewood Arsenal, whilst the Department of Defense had Project 112. All these projects were “officially halted” in the early 70s…just around the time the public found out they existed.
The CIA (et al.) have strongly denied that these experiments and projects have ever been continued in any way, shape or form…but if you’d asked them in 1969, they would have denied they had ever taken place at all.
1. THE IRAQ WAR – This might not be the most callous, the most dangerous, the most recent, the most secret or the most insidious of the items on this list, nevertheless it is – must be – number one…because it is the most brazen.
The war was started in the name of “weapons of mass destruction” that everyone – everyone – knew never existed. They all knew the truth, but they lied.
The President lied, the vice-president lied, the secretary of defence lied, the secretary of state lied. The Prime Minister lied, the defence minister lied, the foreign minister lied. They lied to the press, the people and the UN.
The CIA, the NSA, the FBI – then headed by the “heroic marine” Robert Mueller – they lied too. The press repeated these lies, without question (see: Operation Mockingbird). They weren’t “misinformed”, they weren’t “mistaken”. They lied, they lied repeatedly – and provably – and they did it in order to start a war, make money, take control, spread influence.
One million Iraqis died.
Our ruling class is peopled with psychopaths and war criminals, who have so little regard for the people they lie to they recycle the same childishly simple falsehoods to further their evil agenda again and again and again. They tried the same in Libya…it worked again. They tried again in Syria…luckily, it didn’t work there.
Our “democratic institutions” lie to start wars. There’s no reason to think they aren’t doing – or wouldn’t do – the same thing about Iran, North Korea…or Russia.
That’s our list, and there’s really only one lesson you can take away from it:
These people, agencies and institutions deserve no trust, have earned no trust and have abused every micron of trust ever placed in them. To suggest we have a duty to believe them – or that they have ever done anything to serve the public good – is to live in a dream world.
This list is not a full catalogue of Deep State crimes, it would be 1000s of entries long if it were, but these ten are important. They’re important because they are admitted, proven and beyond debate. They are important because they show the many facets of dishonesty, hypocrisy and abuses of power that Intelligence agencies engage in, and they are important because they form the best riposte to the disingenuous clamour for “trust” in our “democratic institutions”.
Never trust the CIA, they have proved they don’t deserve it.
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On July 24 I posted a long reply to Zoltan Jorovic, part of the last part of which got fumble fingered into (more) incoherence (than usual) while I was trying to correct some typos, so I posted it – unfumbled – again.
Perhaps the admins will assist by deleting the first (which does NOT start with “Oops, compositing error. Retry:” AND this post
OR
Readers who DON’T want to read a long fumbled post but DO want (?!) to read the unfumbled version should skip to the repost immediately following it, which starts with “Oops, compositing error. Retry:”
I do not trust CIA, I do not trust Mainstream Media.
interesting post plus the comments.
Be they left or right, anti-religion or pro-religion or for that matter any form of ism.
It comes down to the three tier society.
A] Top Tier [the ones in charge] set the policy and the rules
B] Middle Tier [admin, legal system and military] enforce the policy and the rules
C] Bottom Tier [ the majority] educated sufficiently to do what we are told.
Any dissension against any ism is either not tolerated, or simply dismissed as trying to upset A or B above. Or to put as I was told many moons it is simply a question of Mind over Matter. A don’t mind and C don’t matter.
Most of the problems in the world are caused by B] trying to use C] to overthrow A] so that B] can be the new A’s] and then the C’s can go back to their place in society.
There you have the problem as simple as A B C. I certainly don’t know how to change it for it as been so for 10’s of 1000’s of years
The Phoenix Program that the CIA conducted in Vietnam from 1965 to at least 1972 was comprised of torture, rape and assassination; killing and maiming thousands!
The BBC radio 4 light entertainment friday evening programme – full of women for a change – spending plenty of time dumping on Trump and Putin, The World Cup forgotten and hastily buried as a success for all involved especially the Russian spaces and peoples.
It is worth reading and re-reading the speech that JFK was on his way to give when publicly executed by the Deep State and Friends. He was not going to go to war on behalf of the CIA/MIC in IndoChina. He was going to call a halt to the cold war, insane military spending and nuclear MAD using the direct channel with Kruschev that had averted the Cuban crisis and nuclear war that the insane militarists wanted.
“that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of “peace on earth, good will toward men.”
http://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2013/11/22/Full-text-JFK-s-never-delivered-speech-from-Dallas/stories/201311210356
Muller’s investigation is a sham and everyone knows it. The Guardian’s prop “n” prattle is beyond belief. The Neo-liberal nonsense about democracy well look to Libya and see for yourself.
A court case about this would actually be quite fun.
You know: CIA puts you on trial but your defence is putting the CIA on trial.
‘I am charged with not trusting the CIA. My defence is to present evidence that the CIA and its predecessor the OSS is untrustworthy to the extent of being unworthy to exist’.
Requiring every jury member to be capable of considering the possibility that the CIA is untrustworthy.
It would certainly make good TV, although unfortunately it would also make good conditions for jury nobbling, witness intimidation and defence counsel assassination.
Of course, the CIA has never participated in those three.
The FBI takes responsibility for that.
Relax, its all going to be different now Gina ‘water boarding’ Haspel is in the driving seat.
I am sure she is already working on a brand new lexicon to make mass murder, torture and international criminality more palatable to gullable western minds.
The way things stand Gina is the only thing standing between us and a terrifying Commie empire or backward looking Caliphate – anyone who thinks otherwise should be censored or memory-holed.
Gina Haspel is Little Miss Muffet compared to MSNBCIA’s John Brennan.
“Within a few months, a joint US/UK operation – Operation Ajax – had removed Mosaddegh’s elected government and turned over full control of the state to the Shah. He was a brutal absolute monarch, but the question of Western control of Iran’s enormous oil reserves wasn’t raised again under his leadership.”
The Shah did his job openly and unequivocally, and giving his sponsors the good oil was most of it. What do you want? Some asshole posing as the typical “liberal democrat” or “social democrat” like B. O’bama or H. Clinton while simultaneously kicking Persian ass to take their Persian gas until you end up not knowing even which wall to stand those malefactors up against, let alone which bits to aim if you could?
You don’t believe that any of the Social Democracy” or “Liberal Democracy” types give any more of a real, deep down damn about “social” or “democracy” or “liberty”, or anthing even vaguely along those lines, except for its value in a Pavlov brand dog whistle, do you?
In his time off, the said Shahanshah equally openly and unequivocally bemoaned his sponsor’s grossly profligate waste of that oil – which he saw as the noblest of minerals, a true beneficence of geological providence, a finite resource with a utility far beyond its debased value as a commodity in 20th century trade – mostly to support a recklessly trivial “way of life”, which his day job sponsors pursued at the expense of all their – and everyone else’s – offspring for generations and millennia to come.
The Shahanshah as a genuine green prophet; Putin as a perceptive politician, straight talker and wannabe but maybe over-reaching, maybe a little too soft, committed Russian autocrat, in a long line of them, for his day job bosses: the future of Russia and the Russian people in a world with a future.
“Green” without a phoney “social democracy” Guardian-style Green Party “socialism” connotation tacked onto its irremediably self-indulgent butt; Russia in a real world cesspit of division and conflict and dirty tricks
So how does that fit, my darling little green or black and white two bit pixel divers? No complexity, please? Ooh ooh brain hurt, vision red yet? Go on, hit the down vote icon. Don’t get mad, get even. You know you want to.
Do they really pay you for this kindergarten level troll trash, Robbobbobin? You’re never going to make the Eliot Higgins/Brown Noses big-time troll-money with stuff as childish as this. 2/10. Must try harder!
“Do they really pay you for this kindergarten level troll trash, Robbobbobin? ”
I wish. I have to pay them to let me post it.
I don’t know what you are on, but I suggest you contact your dealer for a refund.
I’m on nothing more than an addiction to some semblance of historical objectivity.
The Shah was a sex-mad, chronically indecisive – some of his sympathisers, even, have concluded that he was a cowardly paranoiac – loner with a grandiloquent idea of his own importance in the history of Iran. He was also convinced that Allah had more or less directly communicated to him his mission to raise up Iran, rather as the same deity had more or less directly commissioned Mo Poobuh to get on with the broader matter of kicking off for Islam. As part of the raising up Iran he improved the material conditions of the country immeasurably and, as the socialist (but committed anti-communist) monarch that he described himself as (many American commentators described him as a “liberal”), those material improvements extended to the conditions of workers. He also pursued the establishment of the franchise for women and extension of their rights, fostering of the arts and sciences, opening the earlier closed Islamic culture to more Western attitudes, the separation of Islam from influence in the affairs of state, relaxing bureaucratic constraints on Jews, BahaisI’m on nothing more than an addiction to some semblance of historical objectivity.
The Shah was a sex-mad, chronically indecisive – some of his sympathisers, even, have concluded that he was a cowardly paranoiac – loner with a grandiloquent idea of his own importance in the history of Iran. He was also convinced that Allah had more or less directly communicated to him his mission to raise up Iran, rather as the same deity had more or less directly commissioned Mo Poobuh to get on with the broader matter of kicking off for Islam. As part of the raising up Iran he improved the material conditions of the country immeasurably and, as the socialist (but committed anti-communist) monarch that he described himself as (many American commentators described him as a “liberal”), those material improvements extended to the conditions and wages of workers. He also pursued the establishment of the franchise for women and extension of their rights, fostering of the arts and sciences, opening the earlier closed Islamic culture to more Western attitudes, separation of Islam from influence in the affairs of state, relaxing bureaucratic constraints on Jews, Bahá’is and other Iranian non-Muslims, and pursuing similar “liberal” agendas, but the monarchical anti-communist in him led to the banning of the main Iranian Marxist-Leninist communist party. When the Americans and Brits decided to see off Mossadeq, with his decidedly Iran-centred (Stalinist) communistic ideas of oil nationalization, etc., getting the weak willed Shah to sign the dismissal papers was also a pushover. In the confusion which followed, the Shah blind-sided practically everybody by bunking off. The Americans “calmed” the situation, unationalized the oil wells and led him back. By this time all sorts of people had it in for him – communists, employers, Mohammedens, conservatives and so on – so while he was busy pardoning and releasing imprisoned communists and dissidents from his first spell on the Peacock Throne, so the Americans kitted him out, ready or not, with a far more effective secret police force (SAVAK) than that of yore and heavily loaded its controllers and trainers with US operatives, including Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf, later of Iraq/Kuwait war fame, and set their softer Iranian counterparts on the proper sort of bloody and ruthless course that the CIA and other such American institutions expect of their raghead proxies.
As you may by now perceive, he was a pretty complex, if scared, little rabbit. But maybe you won’t – the majority of posters in “radical” and “liberal” BTLs around don’t often have much rabid room left in mind for things like complexities. Or even simplicities that aren’t fully congruent with the propaganda efforts of their respective manipulated media overlords.
Oops, compositing error. Retry:
I’m on nothing more than an addiction to some semblance of historical objectivity.
The Shah was a sex-mad, chronically indecisive – some of his sympathisers, even, have concluded that he was a cowardly paranoiac – loner with a grandiloquent idea of his own importance in the history of Iran. He was also convinced that Allah had more or less directly communicated to him his mission to raise up Iran, rather as the same deity had more or less directly commissioned Mo Poobuh to get on with the broader matter of kicking off for Islam. As part of the raising up Iran he improved the material conditions of the country immeasurably and, as the socialist (but committed anti-communist) monarch that he described himself as (many American commentators described him as a “liberal”), those material improvements extended to the conditions of workers. He also pursued the establishment of the franchise for women and extension of their rights, fostering of the arts and sciences, opening the earlier closed Islamic culture to more Western attitudes, the separation of Islam from influence in the affairs of state, relaxing bureaucratic constraints on Jews, Bahá’ís and other Iranian non-Muslims, as well as similar “liberal” agendas, but the monarchical anti-communist in him also led to the banning of the main Iranian Marxist-Leninist communist party. When the Americans and Brits decided to see off Mossadeq, with his decidedly Iran-centred (Stalinist) communistic ideas of oil nationalization, etc., getting the weak willed Shah to sign the dismissal papers was a pushover. In the confusion which followed, the Shah blind-sided practically everybody by bunking off. The Americans “calmed” the situation, unnationalized the oil wells and led him back. By this time all sorts of people had it in for him – communists, employers, Mohammadens, conservatives and so on – so while he was busy pardoning and releasing imprisoned communists and dissidents from his first spell on the Peacock Throne, the Americans forcibly kitted him out, ready or not, with a far more effective secret police force (SAVAK) than that of yore and heavily loaded its controllers and trainers with US operatives, including Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf, later of the Iraq/Kuwait war, and set their newly formed Iranian counterparts on the proper bloody and ruthless course the CIA and other such American institutions expect of their raghead proxies.
As you may by now perceive, he was a pretty complex, if scared, little rabbit. But maybe not: the majority of posters in radical and liberal BTLs don’t have much rabid room left for complexities. Or even simplicities that aren’t fully congruent with the propaganda efforts of their respective manipulated media overlords.
Given the vast tonnage of bullets that Nixon loosed on Asians, Americans, and other people, “The Nixon-lead government of the US” does seem appropriate. But, since Nixon led the government, “Nixon-led” is better. (And I don’t mean he lost the bullets.)
Excellent article and list, and as the author mentions it is of course only the most partial of lists of CIA criminality. One sees the CIA’s bloody hands from the assassinations of JFK, MalcolmX, MLK and RFK within a five year period in the 1960’s, to Operation Gladio’s false flag terror bombings and attacks on the European populace, to the murders of Aldo Moro and Olaf Palme who just weren’t playing the game as required. We are talking about a criminal enterprise so vast and unaccountable to “democracy” that it makes a mockery of the very concept of not only “American democracy,” but of “Western democracies” in general.
The West is essentially ruled by a cabal of wealthy Nazi loving fascists with ties to everything from narcotics to money laundering to arms dealing – when they aren’t illegally invading sovereign nations, overthrowing governments, assassinating foreign leaders and engaging in torture. etc. etc. The CIA is the heartbeat of this monstrous system, but the Five Eyes alliance and Western European intelligence services through NATO have served admirably as surrogates to enact CIA mayhem.
We in the West get to “vote” periodically to choose those who “we will collectively pretend” will then act and rule in our interest, rather than the interest of the cabal that funds and owns them completely. This act of collective delusion and lunacy we refer to as “democracy” in the West. I can’t speak for Europe, but in the U.S. democracy in even the most imperfect form was silenced by the CIA in 1963 – and has never been heard from since.
Brilliantly put, Gary. What we think we know about the crimes of CIA and Mossad and MI6 can only ever be the tip of the proverbial iceberg. One significant assassination to your list might be UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold. Then throw in Patrice Lumumba and the ensuing Hell on Earth that has been the Congo’d lot ever since. The lizard-eyed Frank Carlucci knew quite a bit about both and he eventually was on e for he founders of The Carlyle Group: :We own several countries in Europe….I mean companies!”
Furthermore, the evil genius that is “The Unspeakable” had planned to be able to blame the JFK assassination on either Cuba or Russia, and these ‘hints’ are still trotted out on a regular basis to muddy the waters. The CIA murder, Peace, Hope, Decency, Truth and Common Sense. No wonder JFK wished to splinter them into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the winds.
P.S. Lets not forget the overthrow of Suharto and the CIA assassination lists of ‘socialists’. Lets not forget the scores of thousands of Vietnamese tortured to death in Operation Phoenix. Lets not forget Pol Pot as the CIA’s man in Cambodia. On and on, their depravity knows no bounds. And yet, Hollywood makes films about them glorifying their courage and patriotism. There is something rotten in the state of Virginia…
Or the brutal repression, anti-‘communist’ pogroms, forced collectivisation (Operation Sunlight), and cultural genocide of the South Vietnamese Buddhist population by the CIA propped-up, family-run, Catholic Diem regime. Pheonix was merely a continuation of the death squads set up by Nhu (Diem’s brother) in 1955-56.
[It was only bad press and a wave of self-immolations that caused JFK to greenlight regime change. To then, they were fully supported.]
Big B. I am sure we can both agree that torture and murder orchestrated by the CIA is evil incarnate. Your dislike for (Catholic) JFK is – for now – not really part of the discussion, nor can we blame JFK for crimes committed before he took office, nor indeed after. The CIA (especially under Dulles) has always acted beyond Presidential control. Ask Ike.
Agreed: in the context of the discussion, the CIA supported the illegitimate brutal dictatorship of Diem and his family in imposing a Catholic dictatorship. It was a Vatican/CIA cooperation of John Foster Dulles (not Allen) and Pope Pius XII. Amply helped by Ed Lansdale (CIA). The fact they were from the Catholic minority is relevant in a largely Buddhist country: as it portrays the CIA as an anti-democratic and sectarian institution (not least for cancelling the re-unification elections in 1956; keeping the false construct of South Vietnam alive (against the Geneva Accords); using propaganda to encourage around 1mn North Vietnamese Catholics to south, destabilising the country; propping up a murderous minority regime in its forced Catholicisation programme). Having created the conditions for murder, suffering, and religious persecution, the CIA then switched sides to back the Buddhist coup. But only to save face internationally: which displays their treachery. All in all, Diem’s Catholic dictatorship did more to destabilise the country than any phoney commie insurrection …the ‘commie’ bit being more CIA propaganda. John Pilger – “Heroes” is a good reference.
“I can’t speak for Europe, but…”
The same duck everywhere. Marx fantasized primitive communism, primitive communism begat slavery, slavery begat feudalism, feudalism begat theocracy and capitalism, and in Israel eveything old is old again, while in Palestine who needs a gun to shoot themselves in the foot when all their Arab neighbours have been doing it for them since before Mo Poobuh crossed the River Jordan? All dem duck legs are still the same as each other: in the before, in the now and forever, ah men.
So-called “democracy” is a secular fundamentalist religion.
It is the modern version of the Western Civilizing Mission or White Man’s Burden in the age of the British Empire in that democracy (and associated slogans like freedom, liberty, human rights) are manipulated by America and its “democratic” allies to justify their wars of aggression and massive crimes–of which the 10 examples mentioned above are only a very abridged list.
Killing Hope
U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II
https://williamblum.org/books/killing-hope
America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy
https://williamblum.org/books/americas-deadliest-export
If you want to preserve your sanity, take a look at ukcoumnnews for its hour-long broadcast each weekday evening. It’s fronted by an archetypal trio: a lugubrious, pontificating Englishman, Brian Gerrish, a contrary Irishman, Mike Robinson, who would nit-pickingly argue the hind-legs off a donkey, and a rip-roaring, hearty Scotsman, David Scott, who has the acuteness of a razor and focus of a laser when needed.
They’re a very natural trio with none of the ‘prepared piece’ style of MSM. Gerrish’s gravity is accentuated by Robinson’s levity and magnified by Scottie’s outrage.
Added is a good boffin, their back-room researcher, ex-GCHQ Alex Thomson and good reporters, such as Vanessa Beesley.
Above all, it’s great entertainment and often a good laugh.
“ukcoumnnews” =”UK Column News”, online at https://www.ukcolumn.org
“broadcast each weekday evening” = “streamed live at 1p.m. British Civil Time every weekday or ‘on demand’ from links on the site.”
Not to forget Patrick Henningsen of 21 Wire: who often stands in for Brian on a Monday.
No mention of the Skripal cover up I assume. The UK government have their D Notices out to suppress the Press.
ukcolumnnews keep at it, but the Skripal pantomime is now the target of Robbo’s satire and Brian’s “well this is Theresa May’s Britain in 2018”, with Scottie guffawing in the background.
It’s the standard joke about Britain’s ‘transparent, parliamentary democracy’.
And you didnt mention Operation Cyclone, perhaps the most important one given whats going on today. It was a cia operation started in late 1970 to fund, arm and run propaganda for jihadis in Afghanistan in order to get Afghans Soviet friendly government to invite Soviets and “boggle them down”. it involved not just funding domestic ones in Afghan but shipping tens of thousands of them there from all over the world via Pakistan. Thats why today the most famous “Afghan” mujahedin is bin Laden who is a Saudi. Operation Cyclone is important for numerous reasons, first it is identical to how in 1980s they ran propaganda for brutal, primitive, religious fanatics who fought against all human, particulary women, rights as some sorta “freedom fighters”, as in Syria today. Mujahedin of course is just arabic word for jiahdis, but somehow they became “freedom fighters”. After Soviets decided to leave on Gorbachevs order and whole perestroika thing US continued to fund them during so called Afghan civil war of 1989-1992, eventually mujahedin won against now underfunded Afghan government and that in turn led to making Afghanistan a medieval state when it comes to human rights. So its hilarious when you see reports how we need to fight for womens rights in Afghan and how US is bringing them there lolololol it was US and EU that took them. Of course just after the war ended mujahedin that were funded by US and west in OC created both Taliban and Alqaeda.
Another reason why its important is the propaganda, how the propaganda convinced so many people of this nonsense that medieval religious islamist are some sorta freedom fighter, just look what propaganda was talking about them how Reagan and Thatcher welcomed them, its surreal, then propaganda transformed them in terrorists when they were no longer useful. Now notorious things among those who study this is Rambo 3 movie which deasl with this and Rambo going to Afghan to help mujis fight godless soviets, and ending thank you credits that originally thanked “brave mujahedin fighters” which after 9 11 was changed to “gallant people of Afghanistan”. You got same situation is Syria where similar group of people are presented as moderate rebels, of course its again complete propaganda nonsense trying to install puppet in Syria but despite media and communications being much different than in 1980s people are equally stupid.
And of course its important because Operation Cyclone directly spread to wahabism worldwide. Mujis returning from Afghan to their homes spread the ideology and Saudis continued funding them as they were also one of main funders during OC..So every time you hear some quasi intellectuals or American exceptionalist or western European supremacist about evils of islam just remember that it was US, west Europe, specifically UK, and their Gulf vassals who first spread the most radical version of islam over the world, who first mass armed, funded and propagandized for it.
Well said.
The West, led by the USA, has supported fascists, racists, religious fundamentalist fanatics and every other sort of Rightwing filth throughout history. In contrast any Government that even makes the most puny efforts to improve the lot of ordinary people will be viciously attacked, and destroyed. The lessons of history are irrefutable, but are not only hidden by the propaganda machine, but if confronted by them, EVERY single Western fakestream media presstitute will hysterically deny them, start hissing and spitting ‘conspiracy theory’, and reaching for the ‘Cut-off” button. And this Evil sewer has the appalling insolence to call itself the ‘Free Press’, and the western death-machine the ‘Free World’.
The US are like the Fascists in Israel: When they open they mouths it is either to puke, breathe or tell lies.
A final solution to the US and Israeli problem, has been made out 70 years ago.
Worthy of addition to the list:
Obama. Obama’s presidency is one of the most successful deception projects in history!
I did read somewhere that one intelligence operative in the USA declared that continuing, and even expanding, the GW Bush agenda ‘..behind a black face’, was the CIA’s greatest coup ever.
Indeed. You may remember the image of Bush pulling the mask off and Obama showing up. While I consider the people behind the above listed activities and action as intellectual failures due to their lacking of empathy, one must acknowledge the ‘brilliance’ of their chief psychopaths in manipulating the population. Obama was groomed to be the ‘worthy’ alternative to Dim Son and even received a peace price before he rendered that one worthless. It was brilliant, because the owners of the nation shut up any criticism of this Manchurian candidate, this metaphorical Trojan horse.
Just like Nixon stained the history of the nation, Obama stained and soiled the principles of the African-American soul forever. May MLK, Marcus Garvey and Patrice Lumumba (to name only a few) stalk him for all eternity.
Obama was a CIA trained operative all along. How on earth do you think he got elected? So much for the hypocritical CIA protests that Trump rigged his election with Russian help. The Deep State military/industrial complex in the US is what Eisenhower warned against and Kennedy died promising to destroy. The Ford, Carter, Bushes, Clintons and Obama were all stooges of the Deep State and its New World Order fanatics. The Brits started the idea of one world order and they still follow along. Trump is no leftie but he is a honest and brave man to the point of naivety trying almost alone to push back the Deep State and to make US peace with the world against the warmongering profiteers of the world and terrorism. He is the great white hope for civilisation and an end to war. The odds against him are stacked very high. He needs all the support he can.
“Never trust the CIA” is a good warning. However, it is a very weak conclusion for our current state of affairs.
We don’t think of CIA in our daily routine. We interact with people.
Since W. Bush the US has accelerated programs by which, they keep dispatching agents to further the US national interest in many areas. These agents are business people, students, consultants/PHD holders, teachers, employees on job exchange/interns as well as highly trained commandos sent on covert missions throughout the whole world.
Therefore, the warnings should be: “Never trust a Neo-Liberal” and “Never trust an American” and “Never trust the Five-Eyes” and perhaps “Never trust Blue-eye Politicians and Managers” .. and .. well .. you got the picture!
One more warning to add: “Never trust an ‘excessively friendly’ or ‘excessively knowledgeable’ person from the Five Eyes countries” !!!!!
Here are two cents that I will gladly spare for the topic, but nobody should expect that I will remain within the surface of the issues at hand. Nor am I able, or willing to construct a reasonable model of explanation as to why all this has been and is allowed to happen at all.
Instead, I like to take a closer look at what is commonly referred to as ‘Human Condition‘. Let me loosely circumscribe what this condition entails: ‘the worst of human traits’. If the human condition would be loving kindness, the above described business model of terror and intimidation would not fly, it would simply be antagonistic to truth, empathy and understanding.
No, as human condition is generally regarded the shortcomings of Homo Sapiens. Such as lying, stealing, cheating, deceiving and murdering in an egoic order to advance a quite psychopathic purpose. And since, as the norm of being a ‘good’ human being still considers to be honest, reliable and integer, it is obvious that members of the above described circle of terrorists (because that’s what they literally are – more often than not) are not ‘good’ human beings. The ‘good’ receives quotation marks due to the relativity of the adjective, as there is wiggle room for its meaning, however, ‘good’ is used here the absence of detriment to oneself and most important to others.
Back now to the two cents. What is Gullibility? Most obvious, it was not always part of the human condition. Just imagine cave folks to display it. We would have never made it to where we are today. Gullibility has to be a more recent addition to the shortcomings of Homo Sapiens. Allow me to describe the kind of gullibility I am referring to via the reflection of circumstances it requires to appear. The most prominent example, but surely not the earliest, is the population of the Roman Empire, with the focus on ‘Rome’ – where the gullible ones resided. Where a million people would live. They were living in opulence and decadence created by the successes of the Roman Empire in regards to its ruthless expansion.
Decadence gives birth not only to gullibility, but also to indifference, its toxic sibling. A people removed from the need for self-reliance – utilizing the man power of unpaid workers and a system of oppression that keeps it that way. The next prominent appearance of gullibility must be attributed to the imperial offspring of the Roman Empire. The ruling class/elite of the British, French, Portuguese, Dutch and German empires. The list is longer than those mentioned, but those were most influential in the creation of the U.S Empire.
As a matter of fact, ‘Operation Paperclip’ was not limited to ‘scientists’ and their little helpers. It also included the echelon of Nazi bureaucracy, that had so impressed the owners of the United States of America. A small step from the Emperor Wilhelm to dictator Hitler under preservation of Emperor Friedrich’s invention of German bureaucracy – this well organized state that would at all time know how many paperclips any given public officer would use. There was a reason why they named it ‘paper clip’. Otherwise they would have named it ‘Operation Rocket Science’ or something to this extend.
When Nazi-bureaucracy started working in America, they created the prerequisite for the modern gullibility of the American population. Not only would have McCarthy never been possible without the constant manipulation of the American mind towards this decadence of believing to be ‘exceptional’ and at such, especially god-given superior to the ‘red menace’ – the commies, the Russkies and whatever they were called. In some very perverted way, McCarthy with the help of Edward Bernays paved the way for the majority of the population to be convinced to be above the Russians, the Iranians, the Central and South Americans and let’s not even talk about those coming from or living in Africa.
It has always been the gullibility of the American population that created the unwillingness to stop murderous wars for influence and resources. After all, America was only doing its god-given duty to work over the rest of the planet in its image. America = ‘the good guys’. The rest of the world that does not obey America = ‘the bad guys’. It was within this skillfully crafted image the American population was subdued to, that the excesses of the oxymoronic ‘intelligence agencies’ were not only tolerated, but wholeheartedly supported. In other words, these terror agencies simply could do no wrong in the eyes of the majority. Their invaluable services were needed for ‘National Security’, for the safety of the homeland.
As long as gullibility reigns the American and to a large extend also the British, French and German populations, change might well be unattainable. To hope for any form of betterment in relationship to these policies is in itself gullible. Only a firm population, firm in its demands for justice, equality and liberty, will stand a chance to break the vicious cycle of manipulation of the masses and subsequent destruction of a people that have never had anything to do with the lies the establishment alleges in order to go to war, or to discredit and denounce voices of reason and justice.
Excellent observations, notheonly1.
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”.
Thank You. I like to give credit in turn to offGuardian. Its quality and the quality of the comments here make it possible to express oneself in this way. As a matter of fact, offGuardian is the only platform known to me without the incessant influx of folks that either don’t want to accept the truth, don’t have the means to accept the truth, or are paid to disrupt what Krishnamurti called ‘thinking together’. Thinking together can be achieved here. That’s why I consider offGuardian a real gem.
First-class article, whoever wrote it.
Thanks, OffG. Nice piece. It should be compulsory reading for everyone.
What’s happened to people? Why would anyone who considers themselves a bit to the left or a liberal, believe anything they read in the newspapers, especially about our wars or states that have been designated enemies? Looking back at history and very recent history; Iraq and Libya, Afghanistan, all these wars based on a parcel of lies told by a parcel of rogues, including the journalists, why should it be any different now? Surely any moderately intelligent person would wonder? A culture, a structure of systematic distortion and lying in the service of war, to sell war and mass destruction of entire countries, virtually wiping them off the map… and yet were asked to believe that this time… it’s different, the stories are true! This kind of pre-war hysteria is… frightening. Yet, I still believe it’s actually a mere handful of people at the top who are steering all this and most people reject all these dreadful stories.
What’s appalling is the way the Guardian promotes this Mueller guy as some kind of ruggedly handsome, like Gary Cooper the actor, hero. As usual with the Guardian these days, nothing could be further from the truth, alas.
Are people who read the Guardian really as credulous as the Guardian seems to think they are? I doubt it somehow. That’s why they’ve clamped down on the comments below their stuff. Like before I was banned, the comments are/were often far better than the articles they printed. It’s a form of censorship. Leftist journalists have been almost sent into exile from the Guardian’s pages, sent to an internal Siberia. How ironic is that? Why?
I think we, the public, are being groomed, groomed for conflict/war with Russia. That’s what it sounds like, that’s what it looks like, that’s what it smells like.
Not that the American people want that, but they don’t matter.
What so much of the official left don’t seem to understand, consumed as they are by an irrational and visceral hatred of Trump, is that he may be the only thing standing between us and war. This alone is pretty tragic, how easily they are manipulated.
”I think we, the public, are being groomed, groomed for conflict/war with Russia. That’s what it sounds like, that’s what it looks like, that’s what it smells like.”
Almost certainly the case. I just wonder how the AZ strategists intend to operationalise and such a war. Obviously a nuclear exchange is out of the question since Russia has ample means to defend itself. And even when it was unprepared Russia still beat off (at great cost invasions from the west, north and east) invasions from the Tatars, Poles, Swedes, Germans in 1914 and 1941, Armies of Intervention 1917-1920 each and every one ending in failure.* The most likely scenario is a Soros-type colour revolution, or a coup by the 5th column of Russian Atlantic Integrationists would seem be the most likely route. But these people are weak and have no popular support, unable to garner the requisite number of votes – 5% I think – to enter the Russian parliament. Another method might be a full-blown economic embargo, using the institutions of global capitalism, the IMF, WTO, IRBD in an effort to strangle the Russian economy, but the problem for the AZ empire is that it is not merely dealing with Russia, but an emerging Eurasian counter-hegemonic bloc including China. And it therefore follows that any future for the Eurasian resistance must extricate itself from the coils of these American instruments of colonial control. Whether they will or not remains an open question.
There is an excellent book, unfortunately out of print, ‘Seven Roads to Moscow’ written by a certain Lieutenant-Colonel W.G.F.Jackson, a military theorist, soldier and instructor at the British military academy Sandhurst, who delineates all the past attempts to conquer Russia, the campaigns and why the failed. Excellent reading. I read this book when I was 17, so the author is almost certainly dead, but no doubt there are a number of remaindered copies worth getting hold of.
I believe a more realistic estimate of Iraqi deaths (according to Gideon Polya) is 3-4 million – including the half million children who died during the sanctions regime (the deaths Madeleine Albright said was “worth it”). The code name for the war crime gives it away – OIL (cynically claimed to mean Operation Iraqi Liberation).
I’ve done this too, a back of the envelope calculation; sorry that sounds wrong, glib. One is after all talking about hundreds of thousands, millions of deaths, a gigantic western massacre of innocent civilians. Over the years I’ve talked to people about the scale of the ‘massacre’ and they are stunned by the numbers. When I talk about ‘half a Holocaust’ or a ‘hidden Holocaust’ people become extremely uneasy and defensive, surely we’re not like that. That kind of thing can’t happen today? All that mass slaughter is something from the past!
It gets worse. Think of all the children who were never even born because they parents were killed/died before they could have children, yes? Then the figure takes a ghastly upward leap. And Blair, in a ‘democracy’ is allowed to walk around free and easy, like he isn’t covered in blood and gore and reeks of death, and the Guardian still adores him, what a disgrace, how shameful.
Polya, a demographer, is excellent. I heard him on the ABC here in Austfailure years ago, and was gob-smacked at the honest explanation of US genocide, worldwide. Naturally he has not, as far as I know, ever re-appeared there as the ABC has undergone full Murdochisation, under Liberal and ‘Labor’ regimes alike. Although US genocide directly, by aggression, sanctions and death-squad army proxy assaults is prodigious, the greatest death-tolls and quantum of human suffering come from the imposition of the neo-liberal Free Market absolutist capitalist paradigm on all countries, save China. And, interestingly, China accounts, according to the UN, for 110% of global poverty reduction since 2000, 110% because other countries, like ‘Shining India’ have gone backwards under more tight US control.
Rowley had ‘substantially higher dose’ of ‘novichok’, but leaves hospital after just three weeks (Sergei ~ 12 weeks).
In other news : Farmyard Goose Beats Champion at Scrabble
Tubularsock believes that in today’s world Geese have been given too much freedom. They fly right over our borders and they shit on our heads. They are offensively impolite and they don’t assimilate into the culture.
And now this Scrabble Incident! When will this end.
WE MUST protect the woman and children.
I agree with tubularsock, those geese are getting way ahead, the’ve ‘got some neck’. Let us not, however, forget the pigeons…
‘What connects Ben Walsall Anarchists, Nazi Pigeons and Ben Afleck?’
am sorry.british.what the fuck can we do?
reports on rt suggest ecuador will give julian assange to the brish police!!!
Follow this:
https://twitter.com/Unity4J
Ecuador’s new President, Moreno, has turned out to be a US asset-whether of long-standing or recently bought, one cannot be sure. As expected the ‘Pink Tide’ in Latin America is being EASILY destroyed, and another ‘Red Tide’, of blood, is not very far away.
‘Fuckin’ A-men’
Kevin Ryan on Mueller:
‘What some people don’t know about Mueller is that he has a long history of leading government investigations that were diversions or cover-ups. These include the investigation into the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, the investigation into the terrorist financing Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the FBI investigations into the crimes of September 11th, 2001…’
Somewhere in a ‘top twenty’ would surely be GLADIO and the strategy of tension.
Anyone else read Peter Levenda ?
Ryan link:
https://digwithin.net/2018/04/08/muellers-history/
Mog: talking of ‘Honest Bob’ Meuller’s diversions and cover ups …he made sure the AMERITHRAX investigation went nowhere. He also personally delivered a sample of stolen highly enriched uranium for HRC; palmed off ‘plane side’ on the tarmac in Georgia; months before the Uranium One deal. All above board, FBI Directors always personally deliver the ‘evidence’ to FSB representatives on the tarmac at airports …nothing suspicious at all! Especially not for our Heroic Marine. Now if a member of the Trump regime shared ‘evidence’ with the FSB? What was that about Russian collusion, Bob?
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09STATE85588_a.html
I do love how Putin brings up the 1999 agreement between Russia and the USA where law enforcement can question people in the other country, (which has apparently been used on many occasions), re. the various thugs and thieves on the lam from Russian justice in the USA, AND the twelve GRU operatives (or should I say ‘ham sandwiches’)indicted by the corrupt Mueller thug, and the Western fakestream sewer presstitutes go BALLISTIC. The idea that an American, like the diplo-thug McFaul, who made the US Embassy the HQ for regime change operations in Russia, should be questioned, IN AMERICA, has been treated as an affront so great that it is a veritable casus belli, but the Russians MUST simply be handed over, no questions asked, or else. One thing that the Imperial propaganda thugs certainly are is puerile in the belligerent double-standards. The school-yard looks a haven of reason and commonsense in comparison.
I was too busy to comment during the week: but I enjoyed the friendly taunt to Mueller – you can interview your 12 designated spies …BTW: we want to question Browder! 😀
Have you noticed that the lying presstitute scum have turned Putin’s proposal for the framed twelve GRU operatives to be interviewed in Russia, with US agents witnessing the process, in line with the 1999 Treaty, and in return US miscreants could be interviewed IN THE USA, with Russians as witnesses, has been turned, 180 degrees, into Americans being delivered to Russia for interrogation. A flat out, vicious, lie, and one that not a single Western presstitute vermin has dared point out?
I flipped on Radio 4 ‘Any Questions’ (I know, but what the hell) :
‘Our next question please.’
-‘Is Donald Trump a Soviet agent?’
[smug chortles from middle class ignoramuses in the audience]
I immediately think of about six ways that quesiton defies any understanding of current affairs, politics or, well anything really.
I wonder about a Matrix blue pill to make me wake up with no memory of any of this.
Awesome. Well-done. If I could, I would read it out loud on all networks and print it in all newspapers.
Your headline seems a bit naive. Did anyone ever trust the CIA?
Well, they haven’t produced any evidence at all and everyone seems to believe them anyway, so it seems like it. (US) Dem partisans take anything that the “intelligence community” says as gospel if it paints Mr. Trump in a negative light and might be useful for his removal. Even the ones that should understand the dangers seem to think the ends justify the means, which is scary but also makes their apocalyptic urgency almost hilarious when you consider that their political prescription is more of the same, just packaged a little differently–the equivalent of your Blairites.
I just saw a beauty in Counterpunch today, a magazine which has certainly gone down the drain lately. (Is it time for an Off-Counterpunch!?)
The article, titled “Montenegro and the Manchurian candidate” includes such trusting statements as:
“Furthermore, the trashing of America’s justice and intelligence communities has created an unprecedented threat to our credibility in the international arena”
It was written by a CIA ‘defector’, Melvin Goodman, who doesn’t seem to have had any notable career impediments since his whisteblowing, ending up in employed by the US National Defence Academy & as senior fellow at the think-tank Center for International Policy.
Point 9 was part of the reason the CIA got rid of JFK.
President Eisenhower was too late warning us in his farewell speech in 1961: the rot already had set in. http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm
This is Margaret Kimberley’s take:
“..Robert Mueller is no different from his prosecutor colleagues across the country. They lie. They over charge and force innocent people to plead guilty. They “squeeze” defendants with threats of draconian sentences and get them to turn on other people or even to tell lies themselves.
“Mueller’s indictments of Russian officials is akin to the shady doings that he and the rest of his profession always engage in. After more than one year of investigation Mueller succeeded only in proving that Paul Manafort is a crook and that Donald Trump, Jr. is stupid. The charges against Manafort and Trump attorney Michael Cohen have nothing to do with the Russian collusion story at all. The indictments make a political rather than a criminal case and are a weak effort to prove that the year-long charade was worth carrying out at all…”
https://www.blackagendareport.com/freedom-rider-russiagate-and-black-misleadership