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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

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

uh,,, gaddafi, saddam come to the top of my mind.

The iraq war was based on lies and financial interest. Do you really want to pretend, Saddam was the primary goal? And that nation building was accomplished, sir! And gaddafi was toppled over french/sarcozy interest. One who doesn't know history is doomed to repeat it. Post hoc justification of own atrocities is exactly the sort of cognitive failure that patriotic delusion (and thus the future of such) can cause.

The loss of Gaddafi basically put the slave markets into overdrive, destroyed the power grids and water infrastructure, and generally did far more harm than good. Compared to other dictators that the US put in place, Gaddafi was far from the worst.

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#162
What discredits a piece should be its accuracy, not its political leaning.

That the CIA was not created till 1947, as already pointed out by serallak, will, not stop me from adding the novel to my reading list.

What saddens is the willingness of the community to defend inaccuracy when they agree with the underlying point the inaccuracy is supporting. The author of the article could have said US Intelligence Assets, and forgone the clickbait of CIA. Putting SEO requirements ahead of factual accuracy, particularly when the fact is so easily fact checked, is not how the world gets changed for the better.

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#163

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.

The truth is that few American voters really give a shit if the CIA blows up a bunch of foreigners in Arabistan.

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#164

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…

“deep state” is insanely vague. Does it mean the part of the government that has lots of secrets it fights tooth and nail to make sure is never revealed and even potentially engages in illegal acts? Or does it mean bureaucracy? From what I’ve heard most people complaining about the “deep state” they always seem to express their complaint about the bounds of normal bureaucracy and less about secret/covert/illegal acti…

One thing I would add to the accurate description that responded to you, is that it is by its very nature very amorphous and evasive. It’s not really all that unique or special, it is the same entropy that the tech community is far more aware of than the government/politics community is. The reason for that difference is that there is immediate benefit that comes from the deconstruction and corruption of structure in government/politics, which is generally not only not the case in tech but the opposite is true.

There are no benefits or advantages I can think of that come from sloppiness and deconstruction. In politics/government there are not only immediate but ever growing benefits from corruption and reconstruction of the processes and structures that come to the people at the top and the apparatchiks/aristocracy/bureaucracy they bring along as bolster and shielding.

People call it different things, but what is clearly emerging in all western societies simultaneously is not at all what the ruling class claims, but rather the authoritarian default that the American Revolution in particular has been a thorn in the eye of for a few centuries now. It is why these duplicitous forces have been attacking and undermining the Constitution of the USA for so long, because it is the only document/philosophy in history that has determined the limits the people place on government rather than government determining the limits on the people.

In many ways, the US Constitution was the only real revolution in human history, one that turns the power dynamic on its head. That is being destroyed right now and I guarantee when (if?) that dam breaks, it will be far worse for the rest of humanity than America. The world takes for granted that everything we enjoy is a function of the US Constitution that is being destroyed right now.

It may all end super well for the elevated privileged classes in this community in particular, but at best it will end horribly for most everyone else. Another possibility is that it all goes sideways as things are wont to and many here end up a head shorter.

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#165

A magazine that was funded by a non-profit that was partially influenced by CIA officials wrote a bad review. There is not a lot of evidence that either a fortune was spent, or the goal of the CIA was over suppression of the book.

Did you not read the article or are you disputing the facts of it?

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#166

What discredits a piece should be its accuracy, not its political leaning. That the CIA was not created till 1947, as already pointed out by serallak, will, not stop me from adding the novel to my reading list. What saddens is the willingness of the community to defend inaccuracy when they agree with the underlying point the inaccuracy is supporting. The author of the article could have said US Intelligence Assets, a…

This piece covers a period of time from the 1930s into the 1960s.

What is actually inaccurate? The CIA was doing the things the piece mentions from its inception onward.

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#167

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 .

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Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#168

Something I do not understand ... From the link: > But its 1946 debut reflected a delay of more than a decade by the country’s real dictators, who disrupted the novel’s genesis and sent its author into exile. And in this act of suppression, Asturias’s censors and exilers were aided by the US, specifically the CIA. From Wikipedia: the CIA was founded September 18, 1947. How did the CIA "specifically" helped delay the…

It didn't. Nor do the sentences you quote say that.

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#169

And it hasn't been translated into English yet? This is a viral marketing campaign if ever I saw one; it should be a publisher's wet dream. "The nobel-prize winning novel that the CIA doesn't want you to read! "

It's been translated and is widely available in English. It's an excellent book and one of the most important Latin American novels of the mid-1900s.

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#170

What discredits a piece should be its accuracy, not its political leaning. That the CIA was not created till 1947, as already pointed out by serallak, will, not stop me from adding the novel to my reading list. What saddens is the willingness of the community to defend inaccuracy when they agree with the underlying point the inaccuracy is supporting. The author of the article could have said US Intelligence Assets, a…

The title is correct: the CIA spent a significant amount of money to suppress the book. That the CIA was founded shortly after the book was published doesn't make that impossible.
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