RECYCLING GOVT. LIES: Smearing Young Peace Protesters Is Nothing New
In all it’s bully-boy posturing, the arthritic American police state is as creaky as it is morally blind and pants-wet fearful.
Cartoon and photo by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
“I am so done listening to people bitch about Gen Z. After watching what superstars and leaders these kids have been on Gaza these last seven months, we shouldn’t be asking how we can guide them, we should be asking how they can guide us.”
— Caitlin Johnstone, I Criticize The US Power Alliance Because It's The Most Destructive Force On Earth
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (5/15/24)
Nothing ever changes in the cancerous, corrupt, rapidly collapsing American Empire of Hypocrisy & Dirty Potty Lies, especially when it comes to the never-ending orgasmic profiteering off war, genocide and capricious slaughter. More than military adventure, it is the blind obsession of late-stage capitalist profiting in which winning or losing is not the issue; it’s all about resources and quarterly-profit growth.
Something else that never changes in the American Empire of Corporate Crime is the demonizing of those who call out the obvious, speak up for the victimized, call for peace and point out the grubby hypocrisy of a society in clear contradiction to all its touted principles.
A government that is a mockery of the democracy it pretends itself to be.
Cowards & Real Heroes
In such a dank, upside-down universe, the thousands of students — both Muslim and Jewish — who stand together on college campuses at peace encampments, protests and sit-ins are battered by combat-armed and trained — often by Israeli security consultants — university, municipal and state police forces. The heroes are not the armed-up uniformed brutes and thugs, they are the defenseless students, faculty and supporters we have seen bludgeoned, thrown to the ground, zip-tied, gassed and hauled away.
When violence does occur, such as the recent Zionist Brown Shirt attack on Gaza supporters at the University of California-LA campus, funded in part by Zionist comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s wife, Jessica, the cops stood passively nearby for four hours as fireworks were launched into the peace encampments and a number of protesters beaten with sticks and poles.
History shows, the meddling of the CIA and police agencies goes far beyond spreading a few rumors and smearing a leader or two. As detailed below, they infiltrate movements. Fascists don’t fight nice.
We live in a nation where critical thinking and empathy are seen as anti-American foreign propaganda. The exposed corrupt corporate state is skittery, knowing critical thinking and empathy are like acid on the hood of a Hollywood liberal’s shiny new Porsche.
In all it’s bully-boy posturing, the arthritic American police state is as cranky and creaky as it is morally blind and pants-wet fearful. Like South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem managing a frisky puppy, violence and abuse are the only tools and imagination at hand.
Another old tool from all the way back to the Woodrow Wilson campaign to trick the nation into World War I is fear of foreigners and “subversive ideas”. The turd was polished and re-purposed by Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s Red Scare wave of fascism. In the 60s and 70s it was fine-tuned and geared up by the CIA and national security state to take out JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X and Fred Hampton to cripple the civil rights movement and discredit the student peace movement against the empire’s War Of The Day in Vietnam.
Inside stock trader warns of national threat
Right on cue we now have Democrat Rep. Nancy Pelosi — the corrupt inside stock trader so successful there are websites following her ballooning investment portfolio — saying of the Gaza protesters: “Some, I think, are connected to Russia. And I say that having looked at this for a long time now, as you know.”
Following the well-thumbed greasy script, she added ominously, “I think some financing should be investigated, and I want to ask the FBI to investigate that.”
As an expert of shady financing in need of investigation, who could disagree with her, eh?
Meanwhile, the gaseous, gelatinous blob of goop in Sen. McCarthy’s grave in Appleton, Wisconsin grins in orgasmic glee: “I live forever!!!”
Gravestone of Sen. Joseph McCarthy — yes, that Joe McCarthy — in St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery, Appleton, WI. — Photo by Mark Taylor, DeMOCKracy.ink
BEWARE young protesters and organizers:
History shows the meddling of the CIA and police agencies goes far beyond spreading a few rumors and smearing a leader or two. As detailed below, they infiltrate movements. Fascists don’t fight nice. Stay alert.
Private Spy Freaks Out Over US Student Protests
The Grayzone (5/13/24)
The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate discuss the meltdown by Alex Karp, the CEO of the private spying firm, Palantir, at a recent DC gathering of spooks, over the wave of student protests against the US-backed destruction of Gaza.
15-minute video
PROTESTERS BEWARE! Student Protest Counter-Subversion: Lessons Of Vietnam-Era CIA Operation CHAOS
The scandals of the 1970s have provided ammunition down to the present day for critics of the US in general and the CIA in particular. The example of Operation CHAOS is powerful illustration of the risk of exaggerating foreign covert action capabilities.
By Tom Griffin
Tom Griffin / On Intelligence History (5/5/24)
‘When officials exaggerate the efficacy and impact of foreign influence operations, the ones who benefit the most are the very regimes that produce it.’1 That is the warning delivered by a group of academic experts on covert action in Foreign Affairs on Friday.
They highlighted recent examples from both sides of the US political system, but one in particular has a strong historical resonance.
In a CNN interview in January, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that protests against Israel’s military operation in Gaza were inspired by Russia.
what we have to do is try to stop the suffering in Gaza. This is women and children, people who don't have a place to go. So let's address that. But for them to call for a ceasefire is Mr. Putin's message, Mr. Putin's message.
Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see. Same thing with Ukraine. It's about Putin's message. I think some of these protestors are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some I think are connected to Russia. And I say that having looked at this for a long time now, as you know --
BASH: Do you think some of these protests are Russian plants?
PELOSI: I think they're plants. I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the FBI to investigate that.2
There are increasingly unavoidable parallels between today’s Gaza protests and those that wracked the US over Vietnam more than half a century ago. Then as now, a president who a progressive domestic record faced student opposition to his foreign policy. Then as now, it seems, his supporters were tempted to attribute that opposition to foreign machinations.
In the late 1960s, that tendency had disastrous results. Under pressure from President Johnson, CIA director Richard Helms established Operation CHAOS within the agency’s Counterintelligence Staff.3 According to an August 1967 cable this was intended ‘to find out [the] extent to which Soviets, Chicoms (Chinese Communists) and Cubans are exploiting our domestic problems in terms of espionage and subversion.’ 4 In July 1968, the the CIA’s Deputy Director for Plans, Thomas Karamessines, told field stations abroad that CHAOS was a ‘high priority program’ concerning foreign ‘contacts’ with the ‘Radical Left,’ defined as ‘radical students, antiwar activists, draft resisters and deserters, black nationalists, anarchists, and assorted “New Leftists.”'5 This remit continually expanded over the following years, encompassing the domestic activities of American activists. Successive presidents gave the operation strong support, despite the provisions of the National Security Act of 1947 which explicitly prohibited the CIA from exercising internal security functions.
In February 1969, the agency produced ‘Restless Youth’, an analytical paper which included a 12-page section on ‘Radical Students in America.’
In a covering note to Henry Kissinger, Helms warned that this section 'is an area not within the charter of this Agency, so I need not emphasize how extremely sensitive this makes the paper. Should anyone learn of its existence, it would prove most embarrassing for all concerned.'6
Helms would later testify that broad surveillance was necessary to convince the President that there was no foreign hand behind US protests.7 In the face of successive CIA reports which attributed student protest to organic domestic sources, Nixon and his staff assistant Tom Huston continued to demand more intelligence coverage. 8
The most developed phase of Operation Chaos took place between 1969 and 1972, a period which saw increasing concern from CIA stations overseas about the amount of collection they were asked to undertake on US citizens not involved in espionage.9
In the wake of the Watergate scandal in 1973, the CIA became sufficiently worried about its legal vulnerabilities to compile a record of potential breaches of its charter. Operation CHAOS was a key item in the resulting ‘Family Jewels’ report, which caused a firestorm of controversy when it was leaked to Seymour Hersh of the New York Times the following year.10
Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller was appointed to head a commission examining the CIA’s domestic activities. It concluded that although the declared mission of gathering intelligence abroad about foreign influence on American dissidents was proper, some aspects of Operation CHAOS were unlawful, particularly the accumulation of 'large quantities of information on the domestic activities of American citizens.'11
CHAOS came under similarly intense scrutiny from the Church Committee of the US Senate, which recommended that the CIA should be prohibited from conducting domestic security activities, with certain specified exceptions.12
The over-reach of the late 1960s and early 1970s would be followed by years of retrenchment, which saw many departures from the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, beginning with the top layer of the Counterintelligence Staff, which resigned within days of the Family Jewels exposé.
The scandals of the 1970s have provided ammunition down to the present day for critics of the US in general and the CIA in particular. The example of Operation CHAOS is powerful illustration of the risk of exaggerating foreign covert action capabilities. The warning by Thomas Rid and his colleagues is a salutary one.
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OPERATION CHAOS: The Vietnam Deserters Who Fought The CIA, The Brainwashers & Themselves (2018)
From a political cult to the heart of the Washington establishment – the bizarre and untold story of how the CIA tried to infiltrate a radical group of US military deserters during the Cold War.
Stockholm, 1968. A thousand American deserters and draft-resisters are arriving to escape the war in Vietnam. They’re young, they’re radical, and they want to start a revolution. The Swedes treat them like pop stars – but the CIA is determined to stop all that.
It’s a job for the deep-cover men of Operation Chaos and their allies – agents who know how to infiltrate organizations and destroy them from inside. Within months, the GIs have turned their fire on one another, and the group dissolves into interrogations and recriminations.
When Matthew Sweet began investigating this story, he thought the madness was over. He was wrong. Instead, he became the confidant of an eccentric and traumatized group of survivors – each with his own intricate theory about the traitors in their midst.
All Sweet has to do is discover the truth . . . and stay sane.
Reminiscent of Jon Ronson’s The Men who Stare at Goats and as compelling as Ben McIntyre’s Agent Zigzag, in Operation Chaos Matthew Sweet’s fascinating journey of discovery sheds new light on one of the great untold tales of the Cold War, where the facts are wilder than any work of fiction.
Link to Amazon review, but order from your local bookseller
SOLIDARITY: Crackdowns On Campuses Won’t Intimidate Students
NOTE: At the 18-minute mark of the video there is good advice about protester legal rights and matters.
The Electronic Intifada (5/14/24)
Unbowed by the harsh crackdowns and attempts at repression, students across the United States and around the world are continuing to protest against the American- and European-backed genocide and their institutions’ role in it. We are joined by Shahd al-Hadid, a student at the University of Sheffield in the UK. She is a member of the Sheffield Campus Coalition for Palestine, which is leading a mass encampment in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Sabiya Ahamed, a staff attorney at the civil rights organization Palestine Legal, tells us about efforts to defend students against the widespread violations of their rights.
26-minute video
Your cartoons always a bullseye. Wish people would share them more often. When I worked as an internal management consultant for a large company we would explain to employees, “You don’t have to like each other or be friends BUT you must work together.” It seems we have lost that capability on an International, National and even the most personal level. This inability to listen and compromise is our death knell. Nancy Pelosi and her 100 dollar ice cream has no sense of reality, Russian plants. Plant ‘this’ Nancy. And Blinken singing songs of peace in Kiev knowing full well Zelensky is dead and so is Ukraine. Biden sending billion or billions more to Israel … where is the 320 million floating dock there Joe? Criminal and head dolt Trump ready to become president again…. My God… who are we? We are the lost. Sitting in a toilet bowl waiting for the crap of karma to catch up.
Western nations and their neoliberal governments have bully-boy written all over them.