Ruth's Report: CIA Officer: How the Establishment Makes War Seem to Be Fun to Get Young People to Fight (1983)

His books: https://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=U... John R. Stockwell (born 1937) is a former CIA officer who became a critic of United States government policies after serving seven tours of duty over thirteen years. Having managed American involvement in the Angolan Civil War as Chief of the Angola Task Force during its 1975 covert operations, he resigned and wrote In Search of Enemies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_St...) The West and the Soviet Union both used propaganda extensively during the Cold War. Both sides used film, television, and radio programming to influence their own citizens, each other, and Third World nations. Through a front organization called the Bedford Publishing Company, the CIA through a covert department called the Office of Policy Coordination disseminated over 1 million books to Soviet readers over the span of 15 years, including novels by George Orwell, Albert Camus, Vladimir Nabakov, James Joyce, and Pasternak in an attempt to promote anti-communist sentiment and sympathy of Western values. George Orwell's contemporaneous novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four portray the use of propaganda in fictional dystopian societies. During the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro stressed the importance of propaganda. Propaganda was used extensively by Communist forces in the Vietnam War as means of controlling people's opinions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda In the mid-1990s, the CIA named Chase Brandon, an operations officer who was assigned to South America, as liaison to Hollywood. Brandon's film credits include The Recruit, The Sum of All Fears, Enemy of the State, Bad Company and In the Company of Spies. He has consulted for television programs including The Agency and Alias. He has appeared on Discovery, Learning Channel, History Channel, PBS, A&E, and has been interviewed on E! Entertainment, Access Hollywood, and Entertainment Tonight. The Guardian journalist John Patterson criticizes the CIA assistance as being only to complimentary productions, including not running material, such as "the original pilot episode of The Agency, which was pulled. It featured the spymasters preventing a plot by a Bin Laden-backed terrorist cell to blow up a fictionalized Harrods. The airing of such an episode might have pointed up the real CIA's corresponding lack of success in foiling the World Trade Center attacks." According to Brandon, the agency would not endorse Spy Game, starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. The final rewrite "showed our senior management in an insensitive light and we just wouldn't want to be a part of that kind of project", said Brandon, who also withheld approval from 24, a Fox series about a fictional intelligence agency, CTU, that "also suggests all is not hunky-dory in the company's upper echelons." And The Bourne Identity, based on the 1984 novel by Robert Ludlum, was "so awful that I tossed it in the burn bag after page 25". Patterson observed: It used to be the case that if a movie explicitly condemned CIA actions - such as Under Fire - the studios could be counted on to bury it. That was no longer true after Costa-Gavras's Missing won Jack Lemmon an Oscar in 1982, and Iran-Contra slimed the CIA in the late 1980s. Since then, "CIA renegade" has become a dependable staple not just of big-budget movies like Enemy of the State, but also of a million straight-to-cable action-schlockfests starring Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal. Other films that the CIA has provided assistance to include the 1992 film version of the Tom Clancy novel Patriot Games, and the 2003 movie, The Recruit. According to director Roger Donaldson When the Agency commits to providing their support to a project, that can include letting a photographer shoot stills to help in designing sets, or, in certain instances, having the actors spend time in the building. By visiting Langley, the director says, he came to "understand how the space worked and looked. I needed a real sense of how a new person would feel when they saw the place for the first time." In 2012, Tricia Jenkins released a book, The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television, which further documented the CIA's efforts at manipulating its public image through entertainment media since the 1990s. The book explains that the CIA has used motion pictures to boost recruitment, mitigate public affairs disasters (like Aldrich Ames), bolster its own image, and even intimidate terrorists through disinformation campaigns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_inf...

I really believe the C.I.A. should be smashed and scattered to the wind, as President John F. Kennedy said, "I will splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the wind."

This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:

Monday, June 13, 2022. Inflation continues to increase but Joe Biden wants his war and wants to prop up Nazis in Ukraine while Iraq is hit by another sand storm.

Over the weekend, Joseph Adinolfi (MARKET WATCH) noted, "The May reading of the U.S. consumer-price index -- a closely followed gauge of price pressures in the economy -- deflated hopes on Wall Street, and in Washington, D.C., that inflation had already reached a 'peak.' Instead, the headline inflation number for May came in at 8.6% annualized, a new cycle high." This morning, Marcus Day (WSWS) notes:

Millions of workers in the US and around the world are being pushed to the brink by the staggering impact of rising prices for essential goods and services. “We can’t continue to live like this” is the sentiment gripping ever-growing numbers of people.

Inflation in the US surged 8.6 percent year over year in May, surpassing economists’ estimates. This was the fastest increase in consumer prices since 1981, more than 40 years ago.

Gasoline prices surged the most, rising 48.7 percent from last year, up 7.8 percent in just one month. A gallon of gasoline cost a record average of $5.01 as of Sunday. In many of the country’s most populous metro areas, the price is significantly higher, averaging nearly $6.50 in Los Angeles, close to $6.00 in the Chicago region and approximately $5.60 in Phoenix, Arizona.

Shannon Jones (WSWS) observes, "Led by food and energy prices, the US inflation rate rose to an 8.6 percent annual rate in May, blowing a hole in the budgets of working class families already struggling after more than two years of a deadly pandemic. It is the highest official inflation rate since 1981, more than 40 years ago. Energy costs, including gasoline, surged in May rising a staggering 34 percent year over year. The next highest price rise was in groceries, which rose 11.9 percent over last year. Both items are core essentials."

As the standard of living falls and the prices soar, never forget that the witch of Twitter, Bette Midler, was a-okay with inflation and rising gas prices. What did that ridiculous woman say? That she'd "happily pay more for gas." She just wanted her war on Russia and for her, a piece of garbage, it was worth it. It's not worth it for the American people.

Joe Biden's war of choice is destroying the economy and the way of life of working Americans. It's time the thugs in Ukraine -- that would their government -- stopped draining the American resources. They are a pro-Nazi regime and their racism is well known. It's time to cut off all US aid and any not delivered already should not be.

At SCHEERPOST.COM, Eric Denece explains:

Since 2014, Kyiv has conducted a completely reprehensible policy towards the Russian-speaking populations of the Donbass, to whom it has prohibited the use of their language and refused any autonomy within Ukraine, multiplying harassment, embargoes and bombardments against them without let no one in Europe denounce this scandalous situation, on the pretext that it would have been in line with Russia’s arguments.

Similarly, the West has allowed Zelensky and the oligarchs who sponsor him – notably Kolomoïski – to finance neo-Nazi groups and reinforce his army in order to take over the autonomist regions by force, rejecting any attempt at conciliation. Worse, on February 17, Kyiv deliberately launched into military action in order to reconquer the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk with the support of NATO, knowing full well that Moscow could not remain without reacting, thus triggering the crisis. current.

If it must be recognized that the Russian discourse is excessive concerning the denazification of Ukraine, it is however not without foundation. Individuals and units with extremist values – Azov and Aidar “battalions”, Svoboda and Pravy Sektor parties, etc. – are a reality that the West seeks to minimize in its support for Kyiv, despite the fact that their abuses since 2014 have been proven.

Europeans have therefore become unashamed allies and donors of a regime that protects and finances neo-Nazi groups while we fight in each of our countries against the extreme right. Because these Ukrainian extremists are not harmless nationalists as they would have us believe. Their speech is clearly anti-Semitic and their fighters wear on their uniform the insignia of the infamous Das Reich division , made up of a majority of Ukrainians, responsible for the massacres of Oradour sur Glane in 1944.

Max Blumenthal Tweets:

You are paying astronomically high gas and food prices so Ukraine can lose 60-100 soldiers a day in a failing military campaign while the ruble grows stronger. If this scenario confuses or upsets you, you are likely following too many Russian-influenced accounts.

4:36 PM · Jun 12, 2022

If you're not connecting the dots, the UN is. Trevor Austin (WSWS) notes:

The United Nations Global Crisis Response Group warned in a report Wednesday that the ripple effects of the US-NATO conflict with Russia over Ukraine could exacerbate the human suffering of millions around the globe by escalating food and energy prices amid a worsening “global cost-of-living crisis unseen in at least a generation.”

According to the report, the war has the potential to amplify the ramifications of numerous challenges nations face, such as climate change, severe inflation and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Turning to Iraq, another sandstorm.

Sandstorm brings Iraq to standstill, Baghdad airport closed http://bit.ly/WCcjiB

6:36 AM · Jun 13, 2022

AFP reports:

Iraq temporarily closed Baghdad airport Monday as choking clouds of dust blanketed the capital, the latest crippling sandstorm in a country that has warned climate change poses an “existential threat.”
It is the tenth duststorm since mid-April to hit Iraq, which has been battered by soil degradation, intense droughts and low rainfall linked to climate change.
Earlier this month, to mark World Environment Day, President Barham Saleh warned that tackling climate change “must become a national priority for Iraq as it is an existential threat to the future of our generations to come.”

This is a serious issue, as Betty pointed out in yesterday's "Roundtable" for THIRD:

If you've missed it, for at least two weeks now, Iraq's been getting some attention from the western media. Why? A city, that might be the ancient city of Zakhiku -- dating from 1550 to 1350 BC -- has been discovered -- a place, several buildings. And this is resulted in giddy coverage. And maybe it deserves that because of the discovery. But the coverage should include the reality that this not good news. This is the result of climate change. The city, over 3,400 years old, has only been discovered because climate change is impacting Iraq and the water level of the Tigris River has gotten dangerously low. Again, cover the discovery. But at least equal space to the fact that we're seeing the effects of climate change. As much I appreciate the discovery of the city, I'm more concerned with the Iraqi people who are about go through a very hot summer and do so facing water shortages and drought.

Ayaz Ahmet (HABER TUSBA) notes of the sandstorms:

Experts attribute this phenomenon to climate change, lack of rain and desertification. Iraq is among the top five countries most vulnerable to climate change and desertification in the world, especially due to the increasing drought with high temperatures exceeding fifty degrees Celsius during the days in the summer. Early in the morning, the sky of Baghdad was covered with a layer of dust, which reduced visibility by several hundred meters. Therefore, the Baghdad International Airport Authority has decided to suspend flights in the morning before they can resume at 10:30 am Baghdad time, an airport source said. The dust storm forced authorities in Najaf province, south of Baghdad, to close the city’s airport for several hours before returning to work. Najaf Airport, which includes important religious centers, annually receives millions of visitors from around the world. In May, dust storms in Iraq killed one person and suffocated thousands.

In an interview with an Iraqi news agency, the director general of the Iraqi environment ministry’s technical department warned of an increase in sandstorms, especially after the number of dusty days rose to “272 days a year for two decades.” And he expected: “In 2050, the number of dusty days per year will reach 300.” According to the ministry, increasing vegetation cover and planting dense trees that act as windbreaks are the most important decisions needed to reduce the frequency of sandstorms. At the beginning June, Iraqi President Barham Salih called for action to combat climate change, saying, “Combating climate change must become a national priority for Iraq, and there is no room for inaction as it is an existential threat to Iraq.”

Meanwhile, the political stalemate continues. October 10th, elections were held and they still don't have a prime minister or a president. The Court has stated that the carry over government has limited powers. This hasn't been taken to the court yet but that also means this 'Cabinet minister meets with Saudi Arabia counterpart' nonsense the press keeps reporting really needs to stop as well and don't be surprised if this gets taken before the Court. They're not allowed to do certain things. They were supposed to be dissolved. Now a new hiccup, Qassim Abdul-zahra (AP) reports:

Dozens of lawmakers who make up the biggest bloc in Iraq's parliament resigned on Sunday amid a prolonged political impasse, plunging the divided nation into political uncertainty.

The 73 lawmakers from powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s bloc submitted their resignation based on his request, to protest a persisting political deadlock eight months after general elections were held.

Parliament Speaker Mohammed Halbousi accepted their resignation.

Al-Sadr, a maverick leader remembered for leading an insurgency against U.S. forces after the 2003 invasion, emerged as the winner in the election held in October.

The election was held several months earlier than expected, in response to mass protests that broke out in late 2019, and saw tens of thousands rally against endemic corruption, poor services and unemployment.

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