War is Murder

I'm to the point now where I don't think I fought for the country. I fought for some politician's view on something. I remember one dude in particular that I killed him. I shot his buddy, and then I came through his room. I killed him in front of his wife in a bedroom because he went for a gun.

And I think about him now, and it's like, all right, why did I kill that guy? Well, because he went for a gun. Okay, but why did he go for a gun? Well, because I was in his fucking room at two in the morning. Well, why was that in his room at two in the morning? Well, because George fucking Bush was pissed that Saddam Hussein allegedly wanted to kill his dad. So we invaded.

And then I start to think, was this guy funny? What if I met him in Paris over a coffee? Would we actually have liked each other? I just killed him because a politician sent us here for weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist.

War is Murder. Time to kill the euphemism

Continue ReadingWar is Murder

Mike Benz Details Part I (of III) of the History of the Intelligence State

If you dare to mention the past evils perpetrated by the CIA, most modern-day Democrats will call you names, including "conspiracy theorist." They don't want to consider whether the utterly bizarre informational ecosystem many of us see every day has anything to do with a government agency with a long and unbroken history of lies, violence and interfering with the democratic process in dozens of countries.

As though the CIA meddlings in the democratic process of dozens of countries haven't been documented. See here.

You know, Democrats used to be highly suspicious about the CIA . . . Democrats have admitted that the CIA has and uses coercive power against politicians. See this statement by Chuck Schumer. [Video has since been taken down by Youtube].

None of this should be controversial. I highly recommend David Talbot's expose on the CIA, the Devil’s Chessboard. And see here. And here.

The CIA does not operate on its own as a "rogue" agency. As Mike Benz has carefully discussed on numerous occasions (here is one), it is one aspect of the "Blob," an amalgam of agencies, cutouts and government actors who meddle in the democratic process in mysteriously coordinated ways, all of them taking orders from the State Department.

Today I finished watching and transcribing a 40 minute talk Mike gave at Hillsdale College: "The History of the Intelligence State." I offer the full transcription here and suggest that the next time you are accused of being a conspiracy theorist by a modern-day Democrat, that you tell them this sordid true story about what has long driven and enabled our country's foreign policy. That was in the good old days, however. For instance, during the time JFK was murdered (See JFK and the Unspeakable, by James Douglass (2010). We are now seeing the national security state turned inward, making a farce of our elections.

Here's an excerpt:

[NSC 10-2] sanctioned US intelligence to carry out a broad range of covert operations, including propaganda, economic warfare, demolition, subversion, sabotage, sponsored by George Kennan. He was the one who pushed for this right after he wrote the inauguration of organized political warfare.

But he would later say it was the greatest mistake he ever made because of the monster it created. Because what NSC 10-2 two did was it gave the intelligence community this burgeoning, newly created CIA and the we now have 17 intelligence agencies plus the ODNI. They transformed not just from spy organizations, but to lie organizations. What I mean by that is because of this phrase that is used in NSE, 10-2, I'm going to read it. All of these activities, which are normally illegal, can be carried out so long as they are planned and executed, so that any US government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons, and that if uncovered, the US government can plausibly deny any responsibility for them. I'm going to actually just show you the exact language here. This is again, 1948: All covert operations, all of these sabotage, demolition, controlling the media, they are now legal, as long as they are planned and executed, so that any US government responsibility is not evident to unauthorized persons.

So you are cast out of Eden effectively if you eat the apple of the fruit of the tree of knowledge you are not allowed to know. And they are not allowed to tell you. Their job is to lie to you. And if they do get caught, the US government can then lie above the agency level, above the CIA. The State Department gets to lie to the world because the CIA had these covert links, and they can say it was not an official sanctioned US government operation. Something went rogue. Someone wasn't authorized, someone took it into their own hands.

And I'm just going to read this analysis that I think is a useful summary. Plausible deniability encouraged the autonomy of this newly created CIA, which is created the year earlier or year earlier, and other covert action agencies in order to protect the visible authorities of the government. And we're going to come back to that as we discuss the power structure of all these different organizations. But I want to drive this point home immediately, which is that this was seen as a major growth opportunity because of how effective it was in the 1940s and the 1950s to be able to take over the world through diplomacy through duplicity. But the problem with diplomacy through duplicity, plausible deniability is the core doctrine that governs the interagency, which controls all of our major US, government operations on national security, foreign policy and international interests.

Because you lie to the outside world, you need to also lie to your own citizens to keep the outside from finding out. So while the lies may help you successfully acquire an empire. You now have to permanently maintain an empire of lies. Not just abroad, but at home.

Continue ReadingMike Benz Details Part I (of III) of the History of the Intelligence State

Chris Hedges Comments on the U.S. Security State and the DNC

Chris Hedges was recently on Glenn Greenwald's System Update offering a wide-ranging analysis of current events. I copied the following excerpts concerning the U.S. Security State and the disturbing transformation of the DNC:

G. Greenwald: Anyone covering foreign policy and covering wars as you did for so long, obviously has to deal with, in all sorts of ways, the U.S. security state, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, and sort of how it influences a lot of these policies. There's no way to understand one without the other. After 9/11, we saw this series of whistleblowers from within the U.S. Security State, and people like William Binney, Thomas Drake, and, of course, culminating with Edward Snowden, all have the same grievance, namely, that the whole foundation of this secret part of our government that would act without democratic accountability and outside of any transparency would be the one taboo would ever be turning their power inward to manipulate the American population and domestic population. And a lot of that came forward primarily based on their grievance, that that was the thing that they thought would never happen. And they were seeing that more and more and more and more, that almost as much as these agencies were focused on foreign governments, they were focused on our domestic politics as well. I know there's been a lot of that since the creation of the U.S. Security State, but do you agree that that has gotten worse and more dire, more evident – the idea that the U.S. Security State now plays a bigger role than ever before in our domestic politics?

Chris Hedges: Yeah, it's completely unaccountable and you can't control it. That's the problem. And Arnold Toynbee when he writes about the decline of the Empire, talks about these rogue intelligence, military complexes, institutions that essentially can no longer be regulated, can no longer be constrained. All of the people who led us into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Libya, you know, there should be accountability there. Not only is there no accountability, but the same people are leading us into the disasters in Ukraine and funneling weapons to sustain the genocide in Gaza. And that's very dangerous because, at the beginning of an empire, empires are very judicious, usually about the use of force. What characterizes declining dying empires is military adventurism, where they seek to gain a diminishing or a loss to Germany through a military fiasco. And I think we can start with Vietnam and go basically right through just one military debacle after another. What we've done in the Middle East is probably the greatest strategic blunder, you know, in American history.

Continue ReadingChris Hedges Comments on the U.S. Security State and the DNC

Minimal Media Coverage of Attempted Assassinations and The Dog the Didn’t Bark

If they were real journalists, the U.S. corporate media would be vigorously examining the many claims raised in this video (and many similar videos and posts on X (Twitter). It would be nonstop, 24/7. Similarly, if someone tried to shoot Kamala Harris, the "news" media would stop at NOTHING to find out exactly and precisely what happened, how it happened and why.

Too many things simply don't add up regarding the two recent attempts on Donald Trump's life, but revealing the facts might not be convenient for the big media corporations. Vigorously investigating how these two allegedly unfunded and unconnected "renegades" came so close to killing Donald Trump might even impugn the operations and intentions of the U.S. security state. It is stunning to watch "journalists" doing the bare minimum, repeatedly taking the attitude: Just move on . . . nothing to see here. They are working hard to normalize the fact that people sometimes try to kill a major candidate for president. This lack of interest, the failure or journalists to care about major stories, is as disturbing as the blatant censorship and government funded propaganda we've seen over the past five years.

For those who think all of the questions and suspicions of this young woman on TikTok are far-fetched, that the U.S. security state would never do the terrible things that it does to other countries to our own country, consider that the ubiquitous censorship, government propaganda (including the claim of Russian collusion), the abject disinterest of our corporate media and perhaps much much more might be the most recent manifestations of a 60+ year work in progress.

If you think that the constant state of war promoted by the U.S. is the only option, your brain has been broken by sophisticated U.S. government psy-ops. You can't simply make these serious concerns magically disappear by uttering "conspiracy theory" as though this phrase were one of Harry Potter's incantations.

Continue ReadingMinimal Media Coverage of Attempted Assassinations and The Dog the Didn’t Bark

The Modern Democratic Party

I have voted Democrat almost my entire life, but I agree with Bret Weinstein:

"I want a coalition to redefine American politics, because frankly, we have a longstanding problem with corruption, which has now turned into something else with the modern Democratic Party.

We need to rethink the way we govern ourselves so that corruption is not the dominant force.

A coalition is the way we’re going to do that.”

“I think the modern Democratic Party is an existential threat to the Republic.

Although I am a Democrat, I’ve been a Democrat my whole life, the party that I see in front of me today is literally the inverse of the party I signed up for.

This is now the party of war, this is the party of racism, this is the party of censorship.

I don’t recognize this party.

There is no conceivable scenario in which I would vote for Kamala Harris.”"

Actually, I'd even go further . . .

Continue ReadingThe Modern Democratic Party