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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

#231

Post by sillystuff »

ANarrativeApe wrote: post #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, a…

If this book interests you, here are a couple additional books to add to your reading list with similar subject matter:

Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala - Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer

Las venas abiertas de América Latina - Eduardo Galeano

The English translation is titled, Open Veins of Latin America

(Isabel Allende said she carried a copy of Galeano's book with her as she fled the 1973 US backed coup that overthrew the democratic government in Chile and installed the brutal far-right murderous dictator Pinochet)

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#232

Post by jjk166 »

Convolutional wrote: post #222
jjk166 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 . It's in the first paragraph. Emphasis mine. How could the CIA have aided foreign dictators prior to its existence?

The first sentence blames the delay on the dictator of Guatemala, quite explicitly. Then in the next sentence it says the CIA aided in the suppression of the novel, which it did. The text never days the CIA delayed the novel, it says the CIA aided in suppressing the novel. The CCF didn't even exist until the 1950s.

"This act" refers to the delay. It is explicitly distinguished from other acts of suppression he faced at other points in his life.

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#233

Post by smcin »

Convolutional wrote: post #196
jjk166 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it does say that.

You would think if it was inaccurate, the inaccuracy could be quoted from and pointed to. You do not do so. I see claims there is an inaccuracy there. I see people doing paraphrases and inventing conditionals and saying they are inaccurate. Which they are. But they're not the original text. It's pretty simple, quote some text and say why it is inaccurate. As there are no inaccuracies of the type mentioned, this does…

Asturias was by chance discussed recently in "The Inventor of Magical Realism" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35860892

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#234

Post by the_af »

jjk166 wrote: post #215
the_af wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you take the full article as context, where they mention specific incidents in the 50's onwards, the context is not the period prior to 1946. I think it's just this specific paragraph that's clumsily worded.

No, it is very clear even with the full context that at this point in the article they are referring to the delay of the book being published. The very next sentence states that there were multiple such examples of suppression over his career, indicating that "this act" was a specific one in a sequence of many.

I think that "this act" is poor editing. You cannot ignore the rest of the article.

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#235

Post by sharkjacobs »

legitster wrote: post #228
sharkjacobs wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you dispute? I don't know if running dozens of literary magazines for decades costs more or less than launching dozens of cruise missiles, but it's still a "fortune" in terms of money being thrown around in literary criticism circles.

They did not fund the literary magazine, they just exerted influence on who was the editor. They did not do it to suppress a single book. A bad review is not the same as suppression in any way. So every piece of the headline is wrong. This book achieved widespread success and notoriety in every part of the world after it was published and the book was not really on the CIA's radar at all.

> They did not fund the literary magazine, they just exerted influence on who was the editor.

I'm not an expert on this topic but I think that this is incorrect

> The Congress for Cultural Freedom is widely considered one of the CIA’s more daring and effective Cold War covert operations. It published literary and political journals such as Encounter, hosted dozens of conferences bringing together some of the most eminent Western thinkers, and even did what it could to help intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain[1]

> A bad review is not the same as suppression in any way.

Receiving negative reviews from critics sponsored by the CIA is not the same as having publication of your book blocked by a CIA backed dictatorship, experiencing one after the other could warrant the use of such a term.

[1] https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/19...

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#236

Post by kcatskcolbdi »

hutzlibu wrote: post #34
pjc50 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A much darker problem is that people disagree to extraordinary extents as to what counts as "wrongdoing".

Well yes, because what "wrongdoings" were exactly exposed with the full leaking of diplomatic cables for example? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cab... It mostly just embarrassed the US foreign ministry. I mean as a german I can live with that, but I fail to see Assange as a hero in this instance.

I'm not sure if you read the link you posted but I would consider the following wrongdoings:

>The leaked cables revealed that diplomats of the U.S. and Britain eavesdropped on Secretary General Kofi Annan in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, in apparent violation of international treaties prohibiting spying at the UN.[27][28] The intelligence information the diplomats were ordered to gather included biometric information, passwords, and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications.[28][29] It also included Internet and intranet usernames, e-mail addresses, web site URLs useful for identification, credit card numbers, frequent flier account numbers, and work schedules.[28][30][31] The targeted human intelligence was requested in a process known as the National Humint Collection Directive, and was aimed at foreign diplomats of US allies as well.[31] WikiLeaks released the cable on 28 November 2010.

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#237

Post by berdario »

_kbh_ wrote: post #91
berdario wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about criminal proceedings here, it's not a "talking point" for which you can doubt its veracity. There's plenty of corroboration https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/01/11/alina-lipp...

Much better thank you. > https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/01/11/alina-lipp... but I don't understand how your claims hold up when this is one of the lines of the article. >> It is understood that there had been no warrant for her arrest.

I feel like you're trying to poke holes in other people's arguments, and not really engaging with an open mind.

The straightforward answer is: you don't need a warrant to risk ending up in jail.

I'm not a German jurist, but I believe that warrants are used if there's a risk that a suspect would commit violent crimes or alternatively if prosecution found someone guilty in absentia. For Alina Lipp, the prosecution just started.

It's not the only case, btw. Another famous case is Steven's Dozinger. I think that Legaleagle's video is quite evenhanded and yet entertaining in explaining his situation:

https://youtu.be/B7d2KoXmPXk

Another more recent case, is Omali Yeshitela's

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/breaking-four-citizens...

My point is that being silenced in such ways in the west is more likely than people think. Dissenting speech gets granted a lot of leeway, but that's only until it has few chances to influence people.

As soon as dissent can actually threaten the establishment, that's when you start to see a reaction against it.

Of course, in wartime little leeway will be granted for dissent.

Re: A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress

#240

Post by bombolo »

mschuster91 wrote: post #94
okal wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The annexations, and proxy wars in Africa weren't relevant? I'm struggling a little to reconcile your two statements, that you simultaneously don't have much knowledge about the situation, but seemingly enough to decide that the deaths of thousands/millions of people in proxy wars is irrelevant to the discussion.

Whatever goes on in Africa hasn't concerned Western politicians at all for decades, it was not relevant for policy discussions anywhere - not even the worldwide Kony 2012 campaign had a real measurable effect. That only began to change with the rise of al-Quaeda and Islamic State-linked terrorists, but even that didn't warrant more attention than throwing some bombs. Nowadays, China and Russia's Wagner group have ess…

> Whatever goes on in Africa hasn't concerned Western politicians at all for decades

I'm sure lybians and ivorians disagree.

Just because you personally don't read the news, doesn't mean it's not happening.

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