NBC News’ hiring of former CIA Director John Brennan is the latest in a wave of intelligence community stalwarts being given jobs in the media, raising concerns over conflicts of interests, reports Caitlin Johnstone.
By Caitlin Johnstone
“Former CIA director John Brennan has become the latest member of the NBC News and MSNBC family, officially signing with the network as a contributor,” chirps a recent article by The Wrap, as though that’s a perfectly normal thing to have to write and not a ghastly symptom of an Orwellian dystopia. NBC reports that the former head of the depraved, lying, torturing, propagandizing, drug trafficking, coup-staging, warmongering Central Intelligence Agency “is now a senior national security and intelligence analyst.”
CIA Information Operations Center logo. (Public domain)
Brennan, who played a key role in the construction of the establishment’s Russia narrative that has been used to manufacture public consent for world-threatening new cold war escalations, is just the latest addition in an ongoing trend of trusted mainstream media outlets being packed to the gills with stalwarts from the U.S. intelligence community. Brennan joins CIA and DoD Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash on the NBC/MSNBC lineup, who is serving there as a national security analyst, as well as NBC intelligence/national security reporter and known CIA collaborator Ken Dilanian.
Former Director of National Intelligence, Russiagate architect, and known Russophobic racist James Clapper was welcomed to the CNN “family” last year by Chris “It’s Illegal to Read WikiLeaks” Cuomo and now routinely appears as an expert analyst for the network. Last year CNN also hired a new national security analyst in Michael Hayden, who has served as CIA Director, NSA Director, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and an Air Force general.
Former CIA analyst and now paid CNN analyst Phil Mudd, who last year caused Cuomo’s show to have to issue a retraction and apology for a completely baseless claim he made on national television asserting that WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is “a pedophile”, is once again making headlines for suggesting that the FBI is entering into a showdown with the current administration over Trump’s decision to declassify the controversial Nunes memo.
More and more of the outlets from which Americans get their information are being filled not just with garden variety establishment loyalists, but with longstanding members of the U.S. intelligence community. These men got to their positions of power within these deeply sociopathic institutions based on their willingness to facilitate any depravity in order to advance the secret agendas of the U.S. power establishment, and now they’re being paraded in front of mainstream Americans on cable news on a daily basis. The words of these “experts” are consistently taken and reported on by smaller news outlets in print and online media in a way that seeds their authoritative assertions throughout public consciousness.
The term “deep state” does not refer to a conspiracy theory but to a simple concept in political analysis which points to the undeniable reality that (A) plutocrats, (B) intelligence agencies, (C) defense agencies, and (D) the mainstream media hold large amounts of power in America despite their not being part of its elected government. You don’t need to look far to see how these separate groups overlap and collaborate to advance their own agendas in various ways. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, for example, is deeply involved in all of the aforementioned groups: (A) as arguably the wealthiest person ever he is clearly a plutocrat, with a company that is trying to control the underlying infrastructure of the economy; (B) he is a CIA contractor; (C) he is part of a Pentagon advisory board; and (D) his purchase of the Washington Post in 2013 gave him total control over a major mainstream media outlet.
Bezos did not purchase the Washington Post because his avaricious brain predicted that newspapers were about to make a profitable resurgence; he purchased it for the same reason he has inserted himself so very deeply into America’s unelected power infrastructure – he wants to ensure a solid foundation for the empire he is building. He needs a potent propaganda outlet to manufacture support for the power establishment that he is weaving his plutocratic tentacles through. This is precisely the same reason other mass media-controlling plutocrats are stocking their propaganda machines with intelligence community insiders.
Time and again you see connections between the plutocratic class which effectively owns America’s elected government, the intelligence and defense agencies which operate behind thick veils of secrecy in the name of “national security” to advance agendas which have nothing to do with the wishes of the electorate, and the mass media machine which is used to manufacture the consent of the people to be governed by this exploitative power structure.
America is ruled by an elite class which has slowly created a system where money increasingly translates directly into political power, and which is therefore motivated to maintain economic injustice in order to rule over the masses more completely. The greater the economic inequality, the greater their power. Nobody would willingly consent to such an oppressive system where wealth inequality keeps growing as expensive bombs from expensive drones are showered upon strangers on the other side of the planet, so a robust propaganda machine is needed.
And that’s where John Brennan’s new job comes in. Expect a consistent fountain of lies to pour from his mouth on NBC, and expect them to all prop up this exploitative power establishment and advance its geopolitical agendas. And expect clear-eyed rebels everywhere to keep calling it all what it is.
Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium. Follow her work on Facebook, Twitter, or her website. She has a podcast and a new book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.
Thank you Caitlin! Good job! I especially like: “Nobody would willingly consent to such an oppressive system where wealth inequality keeps growing as expensive bombs from expensive drones are showered upon strangers on the other side of the planet, so a robust propaganda machine is needed.” I agree! NO ONE is “willfully ignorant”. NO ONE chooses to be under the influence of government mass mind control/propaganda. Mind control is something that is “done to” people —– whether the perpetrator is a psychopathic spouse or cult leader; religious indoctrinator, military boot camp sargeant, and/or the voice of government control of the media. Blaming victims of mind control for being mind controlled and therefore being “willfully ignorant” is just another form of mind control used to discount the reality of mind control.
It becomes more evident by the day that we live in a military dictatorship. One of the incidents that brought this realization home to me was when John Kerry had negotiated a deal with the Russians regarding military operations in Syria. The military took it upon themselves to nullify that deal when it purposely attacked and killed 60 Syrian soldiers. That was a clear case of insubordination that should have led to firings of the military brass who ordered that strike. Instead, Obama just carried on as if nothing happened except that the negotiated deal was null and void.
And of course the press said nothing about the blatant criminality of the military action.
What president is willing to stand up to the military and the Department of Skullduggery AKA the CIA anymore? Who is really calling the shots?
Really happy to see Caitlin writing on this forum. Keep up the good work Caitlin. You’ll never be short on material to write about. If what we’re witnessing in this point in time is any barometer, we’re in for a world of hurt. Orwell is in his grave wishing he had two more hands. He has to choose whether to cover his eyes or ears. What a sad state of affairs…
John Brennan – “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” That guy is evil, and nothing good will come of this.
Sean Hannity on Fox is doing a stellar job of exposing the Department of Justice, FBI, and all of the other characters re the Steele dossier and Russiagate. Every night more information is revealed; it’s like a spy novel. None of the other outlets are even talking about this stuff. Crickets. If you want the latest on criminality, go there. Meanwhile, Zero Hedge says:
“Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley’s push to force the DOJ to open a criminal investigation into ex-British spy and ‘Trump dossier’ author Christopher Steele is being met with resistance from the bureau, the latest sign that it doesn’t want information about its relationship with Steele to be shared with the public.”
The Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC had paid Steele for his dossier. But the FBI also hired Steele, and just before they paid out $50,000.00 to Steele for his work, they discovered he lied, didn’t pay him, but still continued to spy on Trump and his team. With Steele’s dossier now discredited in the eyes of the FBI, they should have stopped their spying, but they didn’t. Russiagate has been based on this Steele dossier, and yet there was “no there there”, and the DOJ and the FBI knew it.
Zero Hedge goes on:
“Furthermore, a section on a second memo by Steele says he received information from the State Department, which in turn got it from a foreign source who was in touch with ‘a friend of the Clintons.’
‘It is troubling enough that the Clinton Campaign funded Mr. Steele’s work, but that these Clinton associates were contemporaneously feeding Mr. Steele allegations raises additional concerns about his credibility,’ Grassley and Graham wrote in their criminal referral.”
So Steele was receiving information from the State Department and a friend of the Clinton’s? How impartial is that?
Link for the above Zero Hedge piece:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-05/grassley-graham-blast-fbi-censoring-memo-calling-criminal-probe-trump-dossier
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
~ The Bard
The Reality TV Show Presidency has great ratings.
Do you think Nikki Haley got the red rose? Apparently Michael Wolf, the author of “Fire and Fury,” is backing down on that bit of salacious gossip “news.”
Daniel – and a line I like to quote from Shakespeare applies so well to the Clinton’s:
“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.”
Just what does democracy look like to these cowards who sell prejudice, discrimination, hate and violence?
Here is an example of how much they think of their (our) own kids, if they even dare to speak to the teachers & preachers:
…
On May 2nd 1970, Governor James A. Rhodes (R-OH), says of student protesters at Kent State University:
“They’re worse than the brown shirts and the communist element and also the night riders and the vigilantes. They’re the worst kind of people we harbor in America. I think that we’re up against the strongest, well-trained, militant revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America.… We’re going to eradicate the problem, we’re not going to treat the symptoms.” Two days later, on May 4th, National Guardsmen kill four unarmed students on the Kent State campus and wounded nine others.
~ Jim Hunt; ‘They Said What?’; 9/1/ 2009
…
On May 5th 1970, Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA) says of the efforts to stop student protests on university campuses:
“If it takes a bloodbath, then let’s get it over with..”
~ Jim Hunt; ‘They Said What?’; 9/1/ 2009
…
.. And, 10 years later, in 1980, America elected who??
Who will the sellers offer up in 2024? Are we closing in on the end of the era of the puppet?
Perhaps it will be a pro. (with media experience on the resume, to boot) .. A John Brennan-ite?
If there is a hell, then certainly there must be a special spot reserved for those who are the worst of the guru’s in greed. But, in the meantime, for America’s own good, maybe someday soon, the International Community will close Guantanamo.. .. And, do all of the citizens of the planet a great justice by reopening it in the middle of the Mohave Desert. These cowards that corporatize & commercialize prejudice, discrimination, hate and violence, they can be the honorary members. And since it is they who have long killed their conscience, then maybe that desert heat will serve as a small reminder for what a little heat really feels like.
I feel your pain cmp thank you for your post. For you and others interested in this combination of Student Anti-War activism and Government Surveillance, I’d like to recommend a truly insightful book entitled, “Subversives”: The FBI’s War On Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise To Power by Seth Rosenfeld. Matt Taibbi remarked in a review of this book which now seems understated, that “Domestic intelligence forces will tend to use all the powers they’re given (and even some that they’re not) to spy on people who are politically defenseless, irreverent from a security standpoint and targeted for all the wrong reasons”.
Bob, “Thank You!” I have made a note to look for Lansdale, Carl Oglesby, and now Seth Rosenfeld. All of this I know, will be such great reading for me!
I also sent you some follow up on the 28th. Did you receive those two? Would you like for me to send them again?
I look forward to all of your posts – Keep up all of your great work Bob!
“America is ruled by an elite class which has slowly created a system where money increasingly translates directly into political power, and which is therefore motivated to maintain economic injustice in order to rule over the masses more completely. The greater the economic inequality, the greater their power. ” This is backwards. The elite does not create economic injustice to maintain and solidify their power for then there would have been no French, Russian, Cuban, Chinese revolutions. The capitalist system leads to economic injustice because it steals unpaid labour power from the working class and puts into the hands of the capitalists. The reason they keep wages lower is to increase the rate of profit not to keep power thought they try to hold on to the power to maintain that system. And the more that inequality is produced the weaker they become because the working class then realises it has nothing to lose and revolts. This is basic marxism which the writer seems to be unaware of. The greater the economic inequality, the greater the distress of the working class is and greater the motivation to change their condition.
Chris – you are right, conditions must be favorable for any action to take place. It is when the crowd gets a taste of fear that they move.
I’m afraid the population has been so thoroughly incapacitated via a Dumbing Down Education System coupled with 24/7 Media Misinformation and the Stultifying Effects of Social Media that there will be no Revolution. Instead, it looks like it will be a steady capitulation and acquiescence of personal sovereignty all the way to the Gas Chambers and no doubt when or if that time comes, there will be an a nifty Application from Silicon Valley to guide you through your Final Processing.
Cold N. Holefield – a “Dumbing Down Education System”, but also lots of benefits on the lower end: food stamps, disability, subsidized housing, free cell phones, etc. If these things were removed (no, I’m not saying they should be), things would be completely different. There’d be a riot in a fortnight.
If your stomach is empty, it doesn’t really matter how dumbed down you’ve become, you are going to feel fear and react. That’s why they keep the lower end placated.
It is the middle class who is slipping down into the lower class, and these are the people who are getting angry and fearful, mainly for their children. Those people have actually lost something.
I don’t know how you know about the so-called safety net. I know because I had to use it while undergoing treatment for 2 types of stage 4 breast cancer the past 4 years. It is NOT what people think. It beats the already vulnerable into the ground —– this is not placating —– it is psychological breaking of human minds until they submit. The paperwork is like undergoing a tax audit —- every 6 months. “Technicians” decide one’s “benefits” which vary between “technicians”. Food stamps can be $195 during one period and then $35 the next. The technicians/system takes no responsibility for the chaos and stress they bring into their victims’ lives. It is literally crazy making. BTW: I am white, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, have a masters’ degree, formerly owned my own business and while married lived within the top 10%. In addition, most of those on so-called social programs are children, the elderly, chronically ill, veterans. You are correct that the middle class is falling into poverty but you are not understanding what poverty actually looks like when the gov holds out its beneficial hand. It is nothing short of cruelty.
Diana Lee – I hope you are well now. It breaks my heart what you went through. No, I cannot imagine.
I didn’t mean the lower class were living “well” on food stamps and welfare. All I meant was that it helped, and without it all hell would break loose. If you lived in the top 10% at one point, then you would surely notice a difference, but for many who have been raised in this environment, they don’t notice at all. It becomes a way of life. And, yes, you are right, it is cruelty. A loss of life.
Cold, you may know that the original use of the term “American Exceptionalism” was Stalin’s description of how the USAmerican working classes seem incapable of revolting against capitalist exploitation, no matter how egregious it becomes. We are “the exception” to Marx’s theories about the tipping points for revolutions.
Yes, but increasingly there is no “working class” in America due to outsourcing and automation.
I hear that Trump wants to reverse all of that and put children to work in forward-to-the-past factories (versus back-to-the-future) and mines working 12 hours a day 7 days a week as part of his Make America Great Again initiative.
With all the deregulation, I can’t wait to start smoking on airplanes again. Those were great times. Flying bombs with fifty or more lit fuses in the form of a cigarette you can smoke. The good old days.
Cold N. Holefield – it’s like Ross Perot said re NAFTA and globalization: “When the rest of the world’s wages go up to $6.00/hour and our’s come down to $6.00/hour, globalization will end.” That’s what’s happening, isn’t it? Our wages are being held down, due in large part to low-skilled labor and H-1B’s flooding into the country, and wages in Asia are rising. I remember Ross Perot standing right beside Bill Clinton when he said this, and I also remember the sly smile on Bill Clinton’s face. He knew.
Our technology was handed to China on a silver platter by the greedy U.S. multinationals, technology that was developed by Western universities and taxpayer dollars, technology that would have taken decades for China to develop on their own.
Trump is trying desperately to bring some of these jobs back. That’s why he handed them huge corporate tax breaks and cut some regulations.
Things “should” be made locally. There’s no reason, especially with declining energy resources, that a toaster should be shipped from thousands of miles away by boat, plane, truck, rail. That’s simply ridiculous, never mind causing a ton of extra pollution. We end up working at McDonald’s or Target, but, yay, we just saved $5.00 on our toaster.
Trump is trying to cut back on immigration so that wages can increase, but the Left want to save the whole world, doing themselves in in the process. He wants to bring people in with skills the country can benefit from, but for that he’s tarred and feathered.
P.S. I remember sitting behind a drunk on a long flight, and I saw him drop his cigarette. It rolled past me like it knew where it was going, and I couldn’t find it. I called the stewardess, and she and I searched for a few anxious seconds until we found it. Yes, the good old days.
Due to automation, offshoring and transnational communications/internet, the elitists no longer need a large domestic underclass of undocumented workers to artificially lower wages. That is likely the reason that every Administration since Slick Willy have sought to reduce illegal immigration.
After all, it was the Obama Administration that deported more undocumented immigrants than any other in history, and it was in those years after the 2008 economic crash that saw net migration from Mexico hit zero, or even negative numbers.
What the MSM is telling us is that the Trump Administration is more draconian in carrying out practices that have been US policy for decades. That might even be true.
Daniel – “…the elitists no longer need a large domestic underclass of undocumented workers to artificially lower wages.”
Oh, sure, that’s why corporations and the Chambers of Commerce are fighting so hard to keep chain migration, legal and illegal immigration numbers up! Because they don’t need them. Yeah, right.
And technology companies are clamoring for more H-1B’s so they can pay them less.
Come on, Daniel.
backward,
Please provide evidence that the “Chambers of Commerce are fighting so hard..” Please try to keep your rebuttal to my statement that “elitists no longer need a large domestic underclass of undocumented workers” and not various forms of legal migration. Because I do agree that there is a market for “skilled labor” who are legal. Part off the reason for this labor market is the drop in STEM-educated USAmericans.
Meanwhile, I spent 30 seconds to find proof that what I wrote about net migration was true in 2012 and 2015.
h
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/04/23/net-migration-from-mexico-falls-to-zero-and-perhaps-less/
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-than-coming-to-the-u-s/h
Have they done anything illegal?! If yes, then inform law enforcement agencies. If not, then if you do not trust them change the TV channel you are watching and stop listening to them…………Smart people know how not to listen to garbage…………
We are all victims of the pernicious 24/7 scientifically-designed propaganda apparatus. It has little to do with the victim’s intelligence since almost all human opinions are formed by emotional reactions that occur even before the conscious mind registers the input.
Through critical thinking, we can overcome these emotional impulses, but only with effort, and a pre-existing skepticism of all information sources. And even still, I have no doubt that all of us who are aware of the propaganda still accept some falsehoods as true.
It could be that having former Intelligence Agency Directors as “news” presenters, and Goldman Sachs alum and Military/Industrial complex CEOs running important government agencies makes clear to some the reality that we live in an oligarchy with near-tyrannical powers. But most people seem too busy surviving and/or being diverted by the circus to notice the depths of the propaganda.
Speak for yourself………..if you choose to be a victim, then do not blame others if they take advantage of you…..
As exposed by Julian Assange: https://swprs.org/the-american-empire-and-its-media/
Mainstream liberal pundits used to talk like this, blasting the privileged insiders “feeding at the trough” and such. Now they have become just a bunch of crybaby spoilers and haters because their push for power via the Hildebeast movement came crashing down. If they can’t have it, they’d rather break it. They couldn’t beat the warmongering neocons or the rapacious neoliberals, so they joined ’em. They became what they always professed to hate.
Their followers, being just mindless tribalists rather than the perspicacious philosophers they are told they are, leap in lockstep over the precipice. They can never give you a coherent or logical reason why, just vapid slogans usually diametrically at odds with any real truth. All that matters to them is receiving daily affirmation from their fellow ranks of sloganeering nincompoops. In their newfound McCarthyism they’ve morphed into the lost boys from “Lord of the Flies” who went so far as to kill Piggy, Piggy’s counterpart being Al Franken and his career as a champion of liberal causes in the U.S. senate.
But, in a world where one can purportedly choose any identity one pleases with no basis in reality, these self-immolations merely win accolades from the right-thinking media clerics as society in general goes into a death spiral. Living the “theatre of the absurd” has become the new “American way of life.” Now, if we could just quickly get out of the way of the rest of the world, things might turn out all right for the rest of humanity. Unfortunately, they’ve designed an “app” to prevent that, it’s called the MIC, and it’s not user friendly.
Johnstone tells it like it is. It’s a pure pleasure to read her ripping out the guts of the oligarchic monster creating our present deepening dystopia. Wouldn’t it be nice if every American could read her little piece, and think about what it says? Maybe I can get a few of my friends to read it. You have to start somewhere to wake people up. If enough of us gently encourage our friends to take a brief dip into reality, who knows what might come from it?
Agree wholeheartedly. Spread the word about this invaluable website.
Looks like the Obama/British connected warmongering intel agents have decided to eliminate the “middle-men” (and women) and go directly on record. Rachel, Chris,Jim and Wolfe, your jobs are in jeopardy, Not to be left out, I expect that Comey, McCabe, Strzok, and perhaps Mueller, are filling out their own applications right now.
This article by Caitlin just helps me to be glad that I never bought cable TV. I didn’t realize how many former government criminals/ex-officials populated their polluted networks. Former head spook Mike Morell on CBS doesn’t seem like an anomaly any more. The hens are fattening the foxes guarding the air and cable waves. No wonder those with little time, due to work and family matters, know so little about what’s actually going on.
Re, The Deep State and the “media.”Do: “Birds of a feather produce propaganda together?
—————————————————————————————
December 25, 2015
Are the Corporate Media and Others Covering Up The Treachery of The War Criminals?
…
There is plenty of evidence that people in positions of power planned and plotted a number of “illegal” wars [1] in “defiance of international law.” Unfortunately, this information is suppressed and censored in most of the corporate monopoly media. Instead we are fed propaganda that attempts to disguise the truth, and covers up the massive human suffering caused by the warmongering criminals of these 21st century war crimes. This has resulted in the creation of millions of refugees, [1a] many soldiers dead and maimed, countries destroyed, millions dead, children dead and contaminated, and the war criminals are FREE. [2]…
[read more at link below]
http://graysinfo.blogspot.ca/2015/12/are-corporate-media-and-others-covering.html
Thank you Stephan J. Here is a link that you provided from a Robert Parry piece.
If one goes through the commentary, you will see that comments have always been decent, informative and educational on this truly wonderful site.
Man oh man I miss Robert Parry and F. G. Sanford where are you?
(Caitlin Johnstone you’re our new leader, and apparently another fine journalist. Thank You)
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/12/19/neocons-object-to-syrian-democracy/
Maybe we should view this as a good sign that they need to “call in the National Guard” for corporate media back-up reinforcements. The propaganda machine is sputtering and sparking, overheated from working OT to push flimsy narrative, which only accentuates the cartoonish spectacle of it all.
Neoliberalism rests on a fragile foundation of financial myths that are beginning to come crashing down, aside from shooting itself in the foot in the 2008 crash. They had to admit that:
Global banks are global in health and national in death. ~ Mervyn King
A growing number of economics students are demanding to be taught economic history and not just neoclassical economics. Hayek, Friedman, Greenspan and the Apostles of Doublespeak in the academic and corporate media realm have lost all credibility. Heterodox economists like Steve Keen, Michael Hudson, Bill Mitchell and Stephanie Kelton are gaining popularity in their blinders-off clarity of how the economy actually works, sans the political spin.
Even Russia and China have decided to not allow Monsanto to control the world’s food supply, have no desire to continue working with the IMF and World Bank and are wise enough to see the futility in acquiescing to a unipolar world view. Ultimately, the US will be the bigger loser by going it alone and not accepting the vast multipolar opportunities that await, based on faulty principle. But that won’t deter them from continuing provocations in Ukraine, Venezuela (and other Latin American countries), etc., even though Western agenda’s neoliberal offerings are now considered to be an appalling joke internationally.
But this has been known for some time. It was just a matter of time before the “market society” experiment crashed and burned:
“To allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment…would result in the demolition of society.” ~ Karl Polanyi, 1944
“In 1945 or 1950 if you had seriously proposed any of the ideas and policies in today’s standard neo-liberal toolkit, you would have been laughed off the stage or sent off to the insane asylum.” ~ Susan George
Do not confuse the economic — oikos nomia — the norms of running home and community with chrematistics — krema atos — the accumulation of money. ~ Aristotle
Many thanks No More Neos. I was unaware of most of what you wrote. I have noted the names that you mentioned and I will pay more attention to them. I do know of Michael Hudson and admire his work.
It has occurred to me that there will be Rich academic histories written about the organized management of subject matter by TPTB. See my Response To cmp below.
Yankee media has degenerated into an echo chamber for the deep state structure. This is just further proof of that salient fact.
Nothing particularly new here, this has been established practice for decades. What is new about this issue and so many others now is that it is done openly, without any pretense that there is a constitution. The Imperial institutions housed in the US now act openly for the interests of an overarching transnational oligarchy.
Trump has destroyed the dominate narrative this is by far the deepest wound I have seen the Empire receive. No one really believes Clapper any more – whether it is a plurality or a majority is not the point, enough people don’t believe them that the Empire has lost control of the message. That is the source of their panic. Trotting out their apparatchiks once worked and worked for decades but – “It’s all over now baby blue.”
Trump has exposed much of the ways things have been done behind the seines for many years and unwittingly forced them into the open – this has been his biggest contribution to the weakening of the Imperial structures. Leaving them naked in their policies of slaughter. The Empire has nothing now but a huge military which it can’t use without destroying civilization so it goes around the world destroying countries and cities in its helpless thrashing around slaughtering innocent people as it looses on every front. The last gasp of Empire – kill them all if they will not submit. In its death throws the Empire will do untold damage and create vast human suffering, it might very well destroy civilization with its nuclear weapons rather that accept a place as one part of the human community not the ruler of humanity.
Trump doesn’t wear the pretty face mask that most recent Presidents had. In that, he is showing that the Emperor has no clothes (and the Empire no morals). This could be a good thing as people realize the one truth he campaigned on – “the system is rigged” is still true.
But this Administration’s faux “war” with the Establishment is serving to blind many from the reality that it is continuing and even expanding the horrible NeoCon foreign policies and Neoliberal economic policies that the Establishment desires.
This Reality TV Show Presidency is sweeping up most USAmericans. Like all Reality TV Shows, we in the audience cheer our favorites and jeer their opponents as if it was real, and not a fully-scripted performance.
I saw that recent Mudd comment regarding President Trump = 13 months vs. Hoover Org. = since 1908. The President needs to eliminate this agency. Then we can watch this asshole cough up his spleen LIVE on t.v.! I guess these creatures have license to claim anything they want and get away with it. His Assange accusation falls out of his mouth and gets repeated endlessly. Then when the weak retraction occurs, it never gets the same press/traction and the damage is already done.
Now finally for the most adventurous of you I’ll introduce you to a man I discovered in an agonizingly slow way over the course of years. His name is Carl Oglesby and as a young worker at a defense industry job he started doing research on the Vietnam War. He ultimately wrote a book called “The Yankee and Cowboy Wars” that surprisingly accurately describes our current condition. It is one of those books long out of print worth thousands of dollars in resale.
I will post a link to Spartacus
Educational below but you can find it on your own..
I promise to now shut-up and listen…
Here is the link:
http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKoglesby.htm
Bob V…no, don’t shut up!. The Off Guardian and Oglesby articles are good compliments to Caitlain’s discerning post.
Don’t watch, don’t watch, don’t watch!
Erin-
I agree. I think people need to turn off their TV sets. They are mind numbing. People like Brennan belong in jail, not on television.
I don’t think the majority of people are watching this crap anymore. It’s mainly a bunch of circle jerks mouthing off in an echo chamber. Problem is, the rest of the population is either preoccupied with making a living or playing with their gadgets to find out what’s really going on. People seem to have given up on the idea of democracy, justice and fairness and in a way I don’t blame them.
It’s kind of a curse to still have this notion that a better world is possible.
Good points. I agree. It’s as though “The News” is intended for the Oligarchs and the Political Class. The ads are a dead giveaway that’s the target market. The products they are selling are not for the Average Joe who can’t afford such luxuries.
Thanks, Caitlin. People need to learn more about Deep State and and also the One World Order. There are lots of videos on the Internet, including some featuring former CIA (whistleblower-type) agents who feel impelled to divulge the hidden government. Thanks for your links, Bob. I’ll take a look.
You’re welcome.
Thank you Caitlin Johnstone!
I’m going to refer readers to an off-guardian article running now and specifically to the comment pages where one can see Noam Chomsky’s (as a young researcher) explain cointelpro. This is an exceptional explination…
I will attempt a link below…
Here is the link mentioned above:
https://off-guardian.org/2018/02/05/bought-journalists-postscript-to-udo-olfkottes-suppressed-book/#comments
Here is the link to Wikipedia on COINTELPRO https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
The culture in DC being described recently as ‘critters in the swamp’, does not nearly come close to describing the choking filth that has taken our government over. To be clear, this coup toke place a very longtime ago, but don’t announce that to any good red blooded American Patriot, that is unless you want to be titled ‘un-American’.
My hesitation to get excited over the ‘Nunes Memo’, is my frustration over what all is missing from this Congressional members flaming Memo. Like where is Brennan, Clapper, or any DNC Operatives, as if we should have expected the MSM to be mentioned? Why, just go after a couple of cheating lovers?
Seeing Brennan join the NBC staff, is like watching him walk across the hall at Langley only to start his mischief in another CIA department. I’d love to wish the old spook good luck on his first day at his new job, but then that would be like condoning that pain be inflicted upon more unsuspecting poor souls, so I won’t.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/05/will-conspiracy-trump-american-democracy-go-unpunished/
Inserting guys like that into the center of the storm within the corporate media whose job it *should* be to expose the truth to the public is clearly a conflict of interest (because they themselves are prime suspects in the purported criminal activities) and obvious obstruction of justice because we know they are actually snow-jobbing the public and hiding the truth to protect themselves and their puppetmasters.
In all fairness, when does General Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page or Jared Kushner get to have a regular segment on the Rachel Maddow show? Why doesn’t the media interview Barack Obama himself to find out what he knows and when he first knew it, or to force him into self-incriminating or at least highly-suspicious obfuscations? It was his justice department that targeted the Trump campaign on highly problematic grounds. Or, put a microphone in front of Hillary’s face and ask her how the administration (of which she was an organic outgrowth) interfaced with the FISA court, allegedly on her behalf to spy on the competition.
This caper is not only worse than Watergate (Watergate was conducted in the shadows), this crime and subsequent cover-up are being carried out in broad daylight with the full complicity of the media. They don’t care who knows because those people, regardless of their substantiated facts, will never get a hearing in the media which now creates our moment-to-moment reality, as far as 99% of Americans know or care about.
Our MSM is lacking the honor and truthfulness of Robert Parry.
Realist, I always like reading your comments, and with this comment of yours you don’t disappoint. I too would like to know when the truth will be broadcast over our airways, and printed in our national news outlets. Although, I could watch the grass grow, or the snow melt, and have better results to jump up and down about, before the MSM will shoot straight with us viewers. I have come to the conclusion that what hurts our nation most, is we have to much corporate control, like our infamous corporate owned MSM. These pundits, and news anchors only do what they do best, and that is they promote themselves. I mean, the omissions of facts, and the over the top characterizations of world leaders and national political opponents goes to the degree of slander, and yet life goes on. I know it would be an impossible task, but wouldn’t it be great to if we news junkies could sue the MSM for fraud?
I could have been more strident than I was, Joe. I might have called the FISA court outright illegal and unconstitutional like Jimmy Dore did yesterday. I mean, what the hell is its role in America today? It serves as a SECRET COURT which gives permissions to intelligence agencies to SPY without limits on any American citizen they choose to target, including, apparently, their supposed boss, the president of the United States. As if the carte blanch, full spectrum eavesdropping done by DARPA on every American weren’t enough of a violation of our constitutional rights, they have to dress up some of their spying with special judicial privilege. Useful tools like Brennan, Clapper, Mueller and Comey have been justifying or fallaciously LYING about this imposition on our citizens for years now. Remember when the KGB was disbanded and folks were publicly rooting through the files in a carnival atmosphere after the Soviet Union collapsed? This country needs a dose of the same thing. We need more of our freedoms back and less of the so-called “order” imposed by the Deep State and its string pullers. I don’t believe for a moment that the Russians, the Chinese, ISIS, Al Queda, Kim Yung-Un, the Ayatollahs or a squadron of Klingon battle cruisers are waiting just outside our borders preparing to attack the United States and we all must be defended by the “Intelligence Community” by living like Winston Smith.
The U.S. is so shallow at even their attempting to address its citizens with the appropriate truth, that after 50 years to prepare for the public more information on the JFK Assassination that when the time come the government wasn’t even ready for the release. What an insult to the nation.
The purge you spoke of Realist is a dream in this purist eye. I really do welcome a much broader investigation of panoramic proportions of our nation’s massive bureaucracy, and the discovery of the elements who only conspire to enact their agendas could then be exposed.
You are right about our freedoms. We Americans are in the end going to need to put our foot down to our governments police state rules, and all of us will need to brave it out when going into public places. (Oh boy what false flag bate) At some point it will be necessary to say, enough is enough, and hopefully catch them while at their game. Joe
Ps that last part I doubt will ever happen.
Realist:
“I don’t believe for a moment that the Russians, the Chinese, ISIS, Al Queda, Kim Yung-Un, the Ayatollahs or a squadron of Klingon battle cruisers are waiting just outside our borders preparing to attack the United States and we all must be defended by the “Intelligence Community” by living like Winston Smith.”
One of the gravest dangers this country faces is the intelligence community’s threat to keep us safe.
I think you touched upon something really important referring to the “moment-to-moment reality” that media “creates”. A big problem with television “news” and the funny papers is the failure to.contextualize what’s going on today with related events or issues–even from the relatively recent past. It’s almost always about a myopic and usually distorted focus on just one particularly vexing item that generates competing opinions that must be paired and parsed to death–until there’s something else to “talk” about. Yeah, yeah! Pick a team–partisanship is entertaining don’t ya know! Rachel’s got ratings and Hannity’s one of us!
Just one for instance:
Obama relaxed constraints on sharing of NSA raw data as a parting blow to privacy that also makes it easier to “leak” and cover up the leaking. He signed a Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act which essentially is a way for government to make it harder to “counter” their disinformation and propaganda. Google and Facebook are are all in on the filter and censor project. Yet with all this and much more there isn’t a peep of a national discussion about the First Amendment and the value of protecting free and diverse expression. Oh, I know why. The Court says money is speech…so all the “important” people can buy their freedom of expression. Guess that will leave me out.
Yeah, I noticed this too and it disgusts me. It doesn’t surprise me, though. Ever since Oliver North got his own show and has been a regular contributor at Fox News, this has been the trend. CNN also gives plenty of Air Time to the disgraced John Dean of Watergate Infamy.
It underscores how vital it is We The People take back The Media from the Corporate Thieves who now own it. We need to reverse consolidation in the Media Industry and in fact, reverse the trend of Media as an Industry.
There appears to be two types of media these days. The first type plays by the “rules” of the corporate/banking/military state and gets prestigious jobs with all the perks, i.e. Nice house, good salary, steady work, etc. The second type works independent from the power structures. They have integrity; Robert Parry being a prime example. They also become media pariahs. They work hard for less pay, get denigrated, marginalized, called liars, etc. Without them we would all be as clueless as those that only read and watch MSM. Thank goodness for these brave people.
Yes, I agree. Thank goodness for the few of us who still remain and persist against all odds with no support.