We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, February 25, 2018

CIA, Media & The Mind-Controlled Opposition

Click here if you wish to access this rather lengthy (nearly 1hr and 17minutes), but important video directly from YouTube that I have embedded below my commentary. (At 7:45 AM on 2/27/2018 I edited the last paragraph to clarify my views regarding Seymour Hersh.)
In this edition of Probable Cause Newsbud Founder and Editor Sibel Edmonds is joined by Douglas Valentine, author of several non-fiction books, one novel, and one volume of poetry. He has lectured and appeared on TV and radio talk shows, testified as an expert witness, served as a documentary film consultant and worked as a private investigator. His most recent book is The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World. Edmonds and Valentine discuss the influence and operations of the CIA abroad and domestically, while controlling the Media.
After introductory remarks the host of the show and founder of Newsbud, formerly Boiling Frogs Post, and well-known whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds interviews Douglas Valentine (see this and this), author of many books, the most recent of which is entitled The CIA as Organized Crime. She starts out by asking Valentine about his impressions of the Neflix production of Wormwood (on my recommended films list). He tends to go on and on making cynical statements about Seymour Hersh which overwhelms the significance of the Wormwood series that mostly exposes the bio-weapons research that scientist Frank Olson was engaged in, and his subsequent murder in 1953 at the hands of the CIA when he posed a threat to expose what they were doing.

Following this Edmonds asks about the CIA to which Valentine engages in a lengthy answer with various statements that suggest that they are a nebulous bureaucracy with agents embedded everywhere: in corporate media, government, military, educational institutions like Harvard, in left-wing organizations, etc. 

When she asks him about the relationship of the CIA to the Deep State, his answer is even more nebulous: "they are millions of people working together." He doesn't seem to make any distinction between the CIA and the Deep State. Much later in the interview he makes several references to a "ruling class" in relation to the creation of heroes in American culture (in order to promote the consumption of products), but this is totally absent when he answers her question about the relationship of the CIA to the Deep State. It's clear to me that he doesn't really know much about the contemporary ruling class and their interests in promoting the Empire's capitalist interests and hegemony. He's so obsessed with the CIA that he can't see the bigger picture. 

With my long time experience with Edmonds' websites, I don't think she understands either about the economic and political nature of the Deep State as the executive political network of the ruling capitalist class. 

However, I don't wish to downplay the excellent contributions by Edmonds and Valentine who have frequently exposed the machinations of the secret intelligence agencies or the fake journalists that serve them. Except for Hersh about whom I am withholding judgement, as the Brits would say, they are "spot-on"! (def.)