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

The Connection Between the War in Ukraine and the U.S. Censorship industrial Complex

You have a choice. One option is to follow the dictates of the U.S. warmongering uniparty, who tells you, "Putin is bad. So shut the fuck up and support our policy of endless treasury-draining war. Or you could listen to Mike Benz, Executive Director of Foundation for Freedom Online.

Mike discussed Ukraine and U.S. censorship recently on Twitter. I created a transcript of his conversation with Win Marshall:

Win Marshall

Do you not think America should have supported Ukraine in the war?

Mike Benz

It's good question. It's strange for-- You know, if I'm hesitating, it's because to answer that question, there are so many layers that come before it that I haven't even really honestly had to think about where I actually fall on the underlying issue, because the process is so corrupted. And we lived through Russiagate, this thing where anybody who supported a detente with Russia was it was effectively deemed to be a Putin puppet, and then you could launch a federal investigation. You could bring in indictments and domestic spycraft on, you know, Trump's whole campaign, because of his policy of neutrality, with with Russia effectively, or his NATO skepticism. They were able to argue, you know, that he was effectively a Russian puppet, and so they spied on his campaign.

Win Marshall

These things are happening today in Britain with Nigel Farage, and he's been called a Putin apologist. I think it's continuation

Mike Benz

It's the same thing. And so I think the way I would answer the question is: if you took the gun off of my head, where the state, the regime, the NGOs, the cutouts, the media, the lawyers, the federal investigators, all said, "Hey, you know what? If you have your own opinion on the Ukraine war, I'll put the gun down." Then maybe I'd think about and say, Okay, well maybe we can now talk about whether or not it actually redounds to US interests to try to secure these $12.4 trillion in the natural resources, whether it redounds to our benefit to have this elaborate CIA State Department operation to kill Gazprom and pry all the profits off with this endogenous, you know, Ukraine Petro industry and lifeline by all these US oil and gas companies and British companies like Shell. Maybe. But the answer is a hard no while they still have a gun to my head, because you can't, you can't do that.

Win Marshall

Okay, so let's say there's no gun to a head.

Mike Benz

That feels like a hypothetical that is kind of irresponsible for me to indulge in because there is a gun to my head. The censorship industry grew out of Ukraine. That whole infrastructure of censorship that Americans live under and inherited during the 2016 presidential election cycle came from the 2014 US-UK overthrow of the Ukrainian-democratically elected government. When, when we orchestrated that coup, when the head of the US Embassy was personally handing out cookies and water bottles to the January 6 style protesters surrounding the parliament building, pumping them full of money, when our own senators like John McCain were there on the ground calling for a transition of the government, when we overthrew that government and then did not expect the blowback, did not expect the counter coup.

When the entire eastern side of Ukraine broke away and declared itself a breakaway state in 2014 and when Crimea voted in its referendum to formally join the Russian Federation, this set off a total crisis across NATO and called for a fundamental reimagining of how NATO understood warfare. This gave rise to something which I've talked a lot about. You know, first was called the Gerasimov doctrine. Then it was called hybrid warfare, and now it's sort of called sharp power. But it was essentially this idea that NATO could no longer just be a military alliance. It had to expand its mandate, and this is a direct quote from Jen stellenberg, from tanks to tweets. The reason that we lost in Ukraine was because we lost the information war. We lost to Russian propaganda, infecting the mines of Ukrainians. And it was Russian propaganda who was infecting the mines of Germans, because at the time the German AFD party was on the rise. They were running on restoring gas relations with Russia, because they were mostly a sort of working class, sort of like Trump, Trumpism. They were running on, sort of because these sanctions that the US State Department and UK Foreign Office effectively imposed on all these different other European countries, after Crimea, to sanction Russian gas, which was the cheapest gas.

The alternative was LNG liquefied natural gas harvested in Houston, liquefy ship 5000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean. You know, de-liquefied in ports in Portugal or in through the Baltic strait into Poland. You know, de-liquefied transported. That's orders of magnitude more expensive than Russia, which means the industries suffer, which means the middle class suffers. The welfare safety net suffers. So AFD was running on restoring gas relations with Russia. Marine. Le Pen was was running on the same from from France. So is the Vox party in Spain.

And so NATO is saying, Oh, my God, these right wing populist parties are all running on this economic nationalist what's best for us. Don't care what the US or UK says about, you know, being a good Global Citizen and sanctioning Russia, we want to do what's economically best for our own middle class citizens. And so our intelligence State, the trans military alliance of NATO, at that point in 2014 declared this hybrid warfare doctrine. Said war is actually not about tanks anymore. It's about tweets. It's about control over social media. Because we lost to Russia without Russia firing a bullet, Crimea voted itself to join the Russian Federation. It's the same thing as if they had rolled into Crimea with tanks and submarines, they now control it because of the referendum of the people.

Well, where are they getting their information?

Continue ReadingThe Connection Between the War in Ukraine and the U.S. Censorship industrial Complex