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A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

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Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#151

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #133

Hopefully on topic: a good English language book on the CIA origin story is “The Devil’s Chessboard” that was a fascinating read. While most of my reading is technical and science fiction, I also really enjoy reading history. It is difficult to understand the world ‘in real time’ but looking back into history more things make sense. In a democracy, it is important to really understand history, what we got right and w…

On the shorter side, there is a very good article from the New Yorker which was published last October for the 75th birthday of the CIA entitled "Has the C.I.A. done more harm than good?" [1]

The journalist is clearly verging on the side of more harm.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/10/10/has-the-cia-do...

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#152

Post by pessimizer »

dumpsterdiver wrote: post #13
theFco wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this scenario, the CIA is not protecting against greater evil for the people of the country. They are just protecting the interests of the US. Now, the CIA's mission is to protect the US interests, there is nothing wrong. However, the means they use to do so may have something wrong with that. Installing and protecting dictators that are favorable to the US is unethical. Also the CIA does not furter "American valu…

To play devils advocate, I would posit that so-called "American values" don't actually matter much to real Americans (source: red-blooded American here). What matters is living in comfort, and wielding fiscal power. When you speak of our "values" then you start sounding like the propaganda that quite frankly, American's are tired of hearing about. We aren't all one-trick ponies here, just like any other place, we hav…

You're criticizing someone's use of the term "American values" when they both put scare quotes around it and said that the CIA was not interested in them. You're ignoring the actual comment and replying to the term "American values" in isolation with a response you've probably given many times before.

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#155

Post by pier25 »

noisy_boy wrote: post #117

There isn't much need to suppress novels anymore. People no longer have sufficient attention span to even finish a 5 minute video and need to be fed bite-sized shorts. No need to kill the producer, consumers have been killed.

But someone probably will read those books and make a TikTok about it

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#157

Post by MSFT_Edging »

kodah wrote: post #150
frankfrankfrank wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The official formation of the CIA was also only a formality, it essentially already existed in its components and other forms, e.g., the OSS. You can’t get so fixated on the official title, it’s the underlying people and their motivations that are the thing. It’s why people have such a hard time understanding and believing the “deep state” and why it hates even being called that because it identifies them. What the w…

> It’s why they like “classifying” to keep their evil deeds covered and hidden behind an vail of authority. I found classified docs pretty boring. Most of them remained classified because the information presented had limited distribution, which could identify sources. I never worked at the CIA though, so maybe you're right, the entire CIA is just a Ton Clancy novel.

They declassify the boring ones.

Not making a judgment on the JFK assassination, but I'm sure that one would be interesting and still has not been fully declassified.

one very odd thing is that they brought Allen Dulles in to investigate after he had been fired by JFK, and ended up running a decent portion of the investigation out of his home.

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#159

Post by friend_and_foe »

Reminds me of "Behold a Pale Horse" which was suppressed domestically by the CIA, for what reason I have no idea as it is obviously outlandish. The version that was finally published is missing 37 pages from the original, I believe you can find a version with those pages on Library Genesis.

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#160

Post by stavros »

kornhole wrote: post #132
noisy_boy wrote: post #117

There isn't much need to suppress novels anymore. People no longer have sufficient attention span to even finish a 5 minute video and need to be fed bite-sized shorts. No need to kill the producer, consumers have been killed.

Refuting adopted positions on complex issues usually requires more than the five minutes allotted either in video programming format or in the conditioned mind you describe. Concision reinforces the conventional narrative as explained in this 5 minute video https://youtu.be/xIbfl7OQ0y4 .

> this 5 minute video

TLDR?

EDIT: I posted this as a joke, but the video is very interesting. Chomsky says that a need for concision favors conventional thoughts, because needing concision means you can only say things that don't need elaboration (ie only things everyone already agrees with).

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