by Starman » Mon Aug 22, 2005 2:09 am
Starroute said:<br><br>"What I do see is a fight to the death between two sides -- on one hand, an administration that has been working systematically to dismantle the CIA, reduce its power, and subordinate it to the executive branch, and on the other, the CIA itself, applying its considerable expertise in bringing down governments to the problem of its own survival."<br><br>I think that's exactly what the spinmeisters WANT us to see -- as a way to decontextualize the CIA from what it really is -- the policy-arm of Wall Street and US Foreign Policy. This, after all, is one of the most powerful and well-connected agencies of the US Government that operates under extra-ordinary secrecy, controlling its own secret off-the-books budget and financing via its share of the shadow government black budget, and unprecedented extra-legal permission to appropriate hundred-million-dollar-plus chunks via line-item 'special projects' in any of the 28 (or so) Federal Agencies that have their own budgets, totally beyond congressional oversight and only very limited Defense Committee regulation, acting with near-total autonomy --<br><br>Why are people who SHOULD know better about the CIA's abominal history as the mailed-fist covert-action arm of America, implicated in the death of an estimated 6 million people during the cold war and the subjugation of dozens of nations and hundreds of millions of people by every dirty-trick in the book (which it helped write), not limited to political assassinations, coups, mounting Death Squads, fomenting civil strife, organizing and directing terrorism, engaging in drug-and-arms running, facilitating human-traficking and sexual-exploitation, involved in secret mind-control projects and medical experimentation and biological/chemical weapons development and testing, counterfeiting, espionage and sabotage, mass-murder, undeclared wars, protecting and advancing transnational corporate interests, destoying trade unions and civic groups and co-ops and community-activist/democracy movements, infiltrating social-justice groups, acting as agent provocateurs to discredit citizen-led groups, training police in brutal methods of interrogation and torture, and etc. -- Yeah, a great Company to work for alright.<br><br>And YET, we're supposed to believe there are actually a bunch of all-around 'good-guys' in the CIA. the abstract-intellectual 'analysts' presumably who ONLY try to produce accurate information to aid the Noble US Government in presumably only doing 'GOOD' things with it, and who are fighting against the Bush Thugs and the bad-guys faction in the CIA -- <br><br>If ANYBODY has a reasonably-accurate take on how the CIA has been invaluable to serve the elite interests of the internationalist Status Quo of wealth and power, it would HAVE to be the analysts, since they have access to the most extensive information and intelligence networks, they know the names, dates, places, amounts, histories, groups, cash-flows, crime-organizations, factions, military and paramilitary and guerrilla and citizen organizations and what their agenda and resources and strengths and weaknesses are -- Cuz after all, what do you suppose the analysts are ANALYZING, anyway? Just projected grain harvests and unemployed fishermen? Who do ya suppose plots things like which villages to firebomb and how a new third-world ally can be 'gifted' with 'surplus' F-15s, and how the FARC guerrillas can be covertly resupplied with Ukranian AK-47s in order to rekindle conflict just in time for the billion-dollar Plan Columbia to be reauthorized?<br><br>IMHO, the 'good-guy vs bad guy 'fight' in the CIA' is a brilliant piece of deftly-managed meme-propaganda -- that's exactly what Wilson was helping to push. Even I found myself hoping for something to resurrect and redeem the CIA's nasty reputation in the comments and observations of certain "ex-CIA" officials -- Ray McGovern comes to mind who I find myself WANTING to like. But John Stockwell's insider's take on the intimate fit between the CIA and US Imperialism should disabuse anyone who thinks there's anything like a 'reformist' streak or a conscience in anyone whose an active spook.<br><br>The repuation of the CIA has suffered in the last few years as the true news and information about its role as the premiere terrorist organization linked with criminal networks and corrupt regimes and druglords and arms trafficers has become better-known -- helped by the information liberation and education resource and communication potential of the internet -- and so it's only fitting that the CIA would spin it's own public image and manage public perceptions -- like, of COURSE!<br><br>Frankly, I don't think the CIA can be salvaged -- As part of US Foreign Policy, its integral to the greatest crime committed since the second world war.<br><br>Smell the Napalm.<br>Starman<br><br>'Food' for thought:<br><br>“The major function of secrecy in Washington is to keep the U.S. people ... from knowing what the nation's leaders are doing.” -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author <br><br>“Military intervention to maintain the global status quo will become a constant feature of international relations, whether this is justified in terms of fighting drugs, fighting terrorism, containing “rogue states,” opposing “Islamic fundamentalism,” or containing China.” -- Walden Bello, sociologist and author, International Socialist Review, Aug/Sep 2001, p8 <br><br>“We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.” -- George Kennan, head of U.S. State Department Policy Planning Staff, 1948 <br><br>“But what counter-insurgency really comes down to is the protection of the capitalists back in America, their property and their privileges. U.S. national security, as preached by U.S. leaders, is the security of the capitalist class in the US, not the security of the rest of the people.” -- Philip Agee, CIA Diary, p562 <br><br>“It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of money on arms.” -- John Stockwell, former CIA official and author <br><br>“[Nearly 70% of the military budget] is to provide men and weapons to fight in foreign countries in support of our allies and friends and for offensive operations in Third World countries .. Another big chunk of the defense budget is the 20% allocated for our offensive nuclear force of bombers, missles, and submarines whose job it is to carry nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union... Actual defense of the United States costs about 10% of the military budget and is the least expensive function performed by the Pentagon...” -- Rear Admiral Gene LaRoque, U.S. Navy retired <br><br>“The two-war strategy is just a marketing device to justify a high [military] budget.” -- Retired Air Force Chief of Staff, Merrill McPeak <br><br>“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it ...” -- General Douglas MacArthur, 1957 <br><br>“Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)? I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.... I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted; their air quality is vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City.” -- Lawrence Summers World Bank economist and Deputy Secretary of Treasury, in a 1991 internal memorandum <br><br>“... the United States has given frequent and enthusiastic support to the overthrow of democracy in favor of “investor friendly” regimes. The World Bank, IMF and private banks have consistently lavished huge sums on terror regimes, following their displacement of democratic governments, and a number of quantitative studies have shown a systematic positive relationship between U.S. and IMF / World Bank aid to countries and their violations of human rights.” -- Edward S. Herman, economist and media analyst <br><br>“The whole fabric of society will go to wrack if we really lay hands of reform on our rotten institutions. From top to bottom the whole system is a fraud, all of us know it, laborers and capitalists alike, and all of us are consenting parties to it.” -- Henry Adams, American historian, 1838-1918 <br><br>“Those who own the country ought to govern it.” -- John Jay, American statesman and first Chief Justice of US Supreme Court, 1745-1829 <br><br>“If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.” -- Woodrow Wilson, presidential candidate,1912 -The Nation magazine, July 3, 2000, p5 <br><br>“A considerable proportion of the developed world's prosperity rests on paying the lowest possible prices for the poor countries' primary products and on exporting high-cost capital and finished goods to those countries. Continuation of this kind of prosperity requires continuation of the relative gap between developed and underdeveloped countries - it means keeping poor people poor. Increasingly, the impoverished masses are understanding that the prosperity of the developed countries and of the privileged minorities in their own countries is founded on their poverty.” -- Philip Agee, CIA Diary, p595 <br><br>“The dream of the corporate empire builders is being realized. The global system is harmonizing standards across country after country - down toward the lowest common denominator. Although a few socially responsible businesses are standing against the tide with some limited success, theirs is not an easy struggle. We must not kid ourselves. Social responsibility is inefficient in a global free market, and the market will not long abide those who do not avail of the opportunities to shed the inefficient. And we must be clear as to the meaning of efficiency. To the global economy, people are not only increasingly unnecessary, but they and their demands for a living wage are a major source of economic inefficiency. Global corporations are acting to purge themselves of this unwanted burden. We are creating a system that has fewer places for people.” -- David Korten, economist and internationalist <br><br>“We are entering a new phase in human history -- one in which fewer and fewer workers will be needed to produce the goods and services for the global population.” -- Jeremy Rifkin, economist <br><br>“As an economy measures performance in terms of the creation of money, people become a major source of inefficiency. “ -- David Korten, economist and internationalist <br><br>“Corporations have been enthroned .... An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people... until wealth is aggregated in a few hands ... and the Republic is destroyed.” -- Abraham Lincoln, American president, 1861-1865 <br><br>“American capitalism, based as it is on exploitation of the poor, with its fundamental motivation in personal greed, simply cannot survive without force - without a secret police force. Now, more than ever, each of us is forced to make a conscious choice whether to support the system of minority comfort and privilege with all its security apparatus and repression, or whether to struggle for real equality of opportunity and fair distribution of benefits for all of society, in the domestic as well as the international order. It's harder now not to realize that there are two sides, harder not to understand each, and harder not to recognize that like it or not we contribute day in and day out either to the one side or to the other.” -- Philip Agee, CIA Diary, p597 <br><br>“A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.” -- Howard Scott <br> <p></p><i></i>
