171–180 of 260 posts
It's still interesting that the CIA _tried_ to suppress it (and news to me!), but it certainly didn't work.
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 not me that is fixated on the name, it is the article that goes out of its way to assign responsibility "specifically" to the CIA - it's right in the title and in the first paragraph! And this produce what is objectively an historical howler right at the start. As the other commenter said, maybe it's just sloppy editing. But seems pretty click baity to me.
What howler? You quote it ascribing actions to the Guatemalan dictatorship in the 1930s which is accurate. Then you claim the piece says the CIA was active in the 1930s, which it does not say anywhere.
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…
The deep state is simply unelected governmental authority. And it's specifically useful because of the mainstream tendency to inaccurately attribute more power to elected authority than it really has.
And this inaccuracy often has to do with industrial bias, as the deep state is beholden to industry before any public good. The CIA, for example, was established very specifically to support US industry and support global economic ambitions.
Those people are not elected and collectively have a great deal more power than most of those we elect. So we have a name for that.
You can choose another name if you wish. But we already have one we use.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Billions of people have been lifted out of poverty due to the economic system that has been maintained via US power. Have they? Why do so many south americans emigrate then, if their continent has been rendered so rich and prosperous by the USA?
Yes they have. You're strawmanning. Progress != Perfection and South American countries have agency as well
How is an entire continent a strawman?
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?
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.
They can fail to process the customer's payment, remove your book from the marketplace, and ban your account. If you try to build your own marketplace, you won't be able to use any major payment processors.
Modern dissidents are building alternatives, but still there are roadblocks. All this to say, books are still very much being suppressed.
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.
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 author makes specific claims about the exact ways that the CIA tried to suppress the novel and author. Do you dispute any of them?
It's pretty rich to talk about "easily fact checked" when you don't engage at all with the factual basis for the claims your are disputing.
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 author of the article could have said US Intelligence Assets, and forgone the clickbait of CIA. The author makes specific claims about the exact ways that the CIA tried to suppress the novel and author. Do you dispute any of them? It's pretty rich to talk about "easily fact checked" when you don't engage at all with the factual basis for the claims your are disputing.