Worldwide Nightmare Theatre, Empire of Chaos Enhanced and Expanded

[ewmayer]

o How Many <strike>Damn</strike> Fucking Times Do I Have to Explain This? | Power of Narrative

Over a period of more than ten years, I have written numerous articles (at least 15 or 20 major essays, as well as many shorter entries) examining the entirely fraudulent nature of "intelligence" in general. I have also examined many particular instances of "intelligence" being entirely, often grievously wrong -- and "intelligence" is almost always wrong. Here, I will provide only a brief summary of the argument, but I will provide links for those who are interested in the details of the reasoning and evidence involved (either for the first time, or as a reminder).

From "You, Too, Can and Should Be an 'Intelligence Analyst'":

...
I will mention only briefly one aspect of the New Yorker article which reveals the author's bias to the careful reader. In addition to the Iran episode involving the Reagan administration and Iraq, the article mentions the Vietnam War, the Spanish-American War, and the Mexican-American War. I feel compelled to mention that a much more colorful discussion of the loathsome lies and intentions behind the Mexican-American War will be found in Hampton Sides' work, which I excerpted here. For example:

Do you notice any significant omissions from the article's list of the U.S.'s "long history of provoking, instigating, or launching wars based on dubious, flimsy, or manufactured threats"? I can think of two, neither of which is lost in the mists of time: Kosovo and Libya. Curious, that. Both of those war crimes were deliberately instigated under Democratic administrations, and very recent ones. Both involved a monumental series of lies, including claims of atrocities that never happened. ("Oh, but we had to stop a genocide!" Except the genocide never happened.) For a lengthy discussion of Kosovo, please consult this post; on Libya, you may consult "If Pictures Were Arguments ..."

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by Till

Me too ;-) Try this one:

Well, the real link would be not hard to get from the initial post, my point was why the people don't use the youtube tag we have here on the forum, to place inline videos, and prefer to put unnecessary information (read; tracking, cookies, whatever) in directly copy/pasted links. Even your link has additional stuff in it, what is after "&" (and including) has no use there.

[kladner]

Here is another parable, or allegory in the spirit of a piece by Pepe Escobar I posted.
https://www.mersenneforum.org/showpo...&postcount=424
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/05...ike-a-bad-dad/

Every spare moment of his free time, the man of the house is either coming home with an expensive new piece of home security equipment or adjusting and tinkering with the ones he already has. He can’t be bothered with his needy children, who he angrily shoves away whenever they dare approach him asking for things.

“No time for that!” he yells while piling new redundant security systems on top of old redundant security systems. “I’ve got to protect the family from all potential intruders!”

When he’s not doing that, he’s prowling around the block bullying his neighbors. He forces them to join the neighborhood watch, which he controls with an iron fist and runs around the clock. He insists that they submit to his leadership and relate to their neighborhood with the same aggressive hyper-vigilance that he has, and if any of them refuse to bow to his demands, he sets to work on grinding them into compliance.

He sabotages their investments and works to get them fired from their jobs so they won’t have any money. He circulates pernicious rumors about them to undermine the possibility of anyone coming to their aid. He patrols the neighborhood with a large loaded pistol in each hand, and if anyone so much as looks at him funny he runs up to them and points both barrels in their face until they lay down on the ground with their hands behind their head and apologize. With particularly noncompliant neighbors he’ll burst into their house late at night and beat them within an inch of their lives until they agree to his demands, then get all his other neighbors to testify in court that he did it in self defense. Sometimes he’ll even stage events to make it look like a neighbor attacked him, then he’ll go to their house and murder them in cold blood.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

o How Many <strike>Damn</strike> Fucking Times Do I Have to Explain This? | Power of Narrative

Much too simplistic. I give as counter-examples, the intelligence produced under the code names Magic and Purple.

[kladner]

Originally Posted by xilman

Much too simplistic. I give as counter-examples, the intelligence produced under the code names Magic and Purple.

As well as "RED". These decrypting projects play a major role in Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I highly recommend the book.

[kladner]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51655.htm
by Caitlin Johnstone

Do have a look at the links in bold red.

The Institute for Public Accuracy published a report today about the leaked engineering assessment from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons investigation into an alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria which directly contradicts the findings of the official OPCW report on the matter. Until the unauthorized release of this internal document the public was kept entirely uninformed of its existence, despite the serious military consequences of the questions it raises; the official story that the Syrian government had dropped chemical weapons in Douma was used to justify an airstrike on Syria days later.

MIT professor Theodore Postol provided IPA with a basic analysis of some of the data in the engineering assessment, adding that he “will have a much more detailed summary of the engineering report later this week.”

“A second issue that is raised by the character of the OPCW engineering report on Douma is that it is entirely unmentioned in the report that went to the UN Security Council,” Postol concludes after his analysis. “This omission is very serious, as the findings of that report are critical to the process of determining attribution. There is absolutely no reason to justify the omission of the engineering report in the OPCW account to the UN Security Council as its policy implications are of extreme importance.”

“A leaked OPCW document challenges claim that Assad used chemical weapons in Douma in April 2018, the basis for US military strikes,” tweeted journalist Aaron Maté of the new IPA report. “So far, Western media has ignored it, w/ only exceptions at the margins. Ted Postol is a leading expert; this should be impossible to ignore now.”

Note the gaslighting** in the governments statement, below. This is pure projection of what the Empire is doing: cooking up irrational, unsubstantiated accusations.

The State Department’s release actually reads like a government trying to regain control of an important narrative. It begins with an unsubstantiated allegation of a chlorine gas attack by the Syrian government this past Sunday, and warns that the US and its allies will respond militarily if chemical weapons have been used. It condemns the Syrian government’s offensive to recapture the Al Qaeda-occupied Idlib province, then veers off into sheer narrative management, accusing the Russian government of lying about the White Helmets and citing the OPCW as a trustworthy source of authority:

**Russia’s recent allegations against the White Helmets and others are part of a continuing disinformation campaign by the Assad regime and Russia to create the false narrative that others are to blame for chemical weapons attacks that the Assad regime itself is conducting. Similarly, on November 24, 2018, the Assad regime and Russia attempted to fabricate a chemical weapons attack near Aleppo and blame it on opposition forces. At times, Russia and the Assad regime have made these false allegations as a pretext in advance of the Assad regime’s own barbaric chemical weapons attacks.

The facts, however, are clear: the Assad regime itself has conducted almost all verified chemical weapons attacks that have taken place in Syria—a conclusion the United Nations has reached over and over again. The former Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)-UN Joint Investigation Mechanism repeatedly verified and reported the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons. The Assad regime’s culpability in horrific chemical weapons attacks is undeniable.

Chemical weapons, particularly chlorine gas, are not an efficient way of killing people. As Moon of Alabama once put it, “Chemical warfare is ineffective. That is why everyone agreed to ban it.” There is nothing about chemical weapons that is inherently more horrific than, say, nuclear weapons; the difference is that they’re just not a very efficient way of killing a large number of people, whereas nuclear weapons are. The Syrian government and its allies have been securing military victory after military victory over the occupying militias which had taken over large territories, and they have been doing so using far more effective conventional munitions. Assad would stand absolutely nothing to gain and absolutely everything to lose by using chemical warfare now.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by kladner

Bull pucky. Is Russia surrounding the US with hostile parties, in spite of promises to the contrary? In how many countries is Russia exerting military force without the invitation of the government? Your gingoistic chauvinism is truly pathetic.

I know that this is ancient history you would rather forget, but in addition to the carve-up of Poland pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the Soviet Union invaded Finland during WWII, and Karelia was part of the Soviet Union until 1956. Most of the Czarist Russian Empire, in fact, became part of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, Byelorussia, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldavia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenia, Tajikistan, and autonomous regions.

In addition, the Soviet Union occupied Eastern Europe after the war, causing "regime change" and installing puppet regimes as needed.

Of course, Communism had to be upheld at all costs, as enunciated in the "Brezhnev Doctrine." The Soviets invaded Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The Soviets also invaded China in 1969 during a border dispute. The undeclared war lasted seven months.

BTW, my all-time favorite "Take this job and shove it" picture is this one, Conrad Schumann´s "Jump to Freedom," also captured on video, followed by a short interview.

You may recall that Gerald Ford's malapropism regarding Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe became a campaign issue that contributed to his losing the 1976 election.

Which reminds me -- during Carter's term, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The horrific brutality of their tactics makes us US-ers look like a bunch of Casper Milquetoasts in comparison.

The Soviets also put a great deal of pressure on Poland after the rise of Solidarność; among other things, prompting the Polish regime to declare martial law.

North Korea's "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung was installed in 1948 by Stalin himself, and the "Democratic Peoples' Republic" is now in its third generation as the family business. Fortunately, everybody there is very, very happy.

Apart from DPRK, the culminating triumph of Stalin's system came in 1989, in which so many Soviet citizens simply crossed out the names of the only candidates running for offices (Communist Party candidates), thereby spoiling their ballots, that the elections for those offices were invalidated. That is to say, the 1989 election featured Communist Party candidates running unopposed -- and losing. Within a couple of more years, the Soviet Union was no more.

Of course, the Russian Federation has been a pacifist nation since then -- as long as you don't count two internecine wars in Chechnya, the invasion of Georgia, their land grab of Crimea.

Japan may also point to the Soviet -- now Russian -- occupation of the Kuril Islands, which came as part of the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation, after the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. The islands remain in dispute until this day.

[kladner]

That was then, this is now. The acts of the Soviets were in a different time under different circumstances. That is not to excuse them, but context is important. In the same period the US was busy overthrowing Latin American democratically elected governments and subverting elections in Italy, at least. Once again, tell your jingoistic tales to the shades of Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens and Juan Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán.

Of course, the Russian Federation has been a pacifist nation since then -- as long as you don't count two internecine wars in Chechnya, the invasion of Georgia, their land grab of Crimea.

You are toeing the War Parties line here. The US went after terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia went after terrorists in Chechnya. The Georgia situation is murky, to say the least. Accounts vary depending on POV. Crimea, like East Ukraine, is populated largely by ethnic Russians who identify with Russia and were/are threatened by the neo-Nazis the US installed in Ukraine via the coup "midwife(d)" by Victoria Nuland: a warmongering pal of the warmongering Hilary Clinton.

World affairs are far more nuanced than your simplistic descriptions let on.

[ewmayer]

Interesting that Dr.S mentions the USSR's "horrific brutality" in Afghanistan and then their relationship with North Korea nearly in the same breath.

Why Do North Koreans Hate Us? They Recall the Korean War | The Intercept

Yes, the Korean War. Remember that? The one wedged between World War II and the Vietnam War? The first “hot” war of the Cold War, which took place between 1950 and 1953, and which has since been conveniently airbrushed from most discussions and debates about the “crazy” and “insane” regime in Pyongyang? Forgotten despite the fact that this particular war isn’t even over — it was halted by an armistice agreement, not a peace treaty — and despite the fact that the conflict saw the United States engage in numerous war crimes, which, perhaps unsurprisingly, continue to shape the way North Koreans view the United States, even if the residents of the United States remain blissfully ignorant of their country’s belligerent past.

For the record, it was the North Koreans, and not the Americans or their South Korean allies, who started the war in June 1950, when they crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded the south. Nevertheless, “What hardly any Americans know or remember,” University of Chicago historian Bruce Cumings writes in his book “The Korean War: A History,” “is that we carpet-bombed the north for three years with next to no concern for civilian casualties.”

How many Americans, for example, are aware of the fact that U.S. planes dropped on the Korean peninsula more bombs — 635,000 tons — and napalm — 32,557 tons — than during the entire Pacific campaign against the Japanese during World War II?

How many Americans know that “over a period of three years or so,” to quote Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, “we killed off … 20 percent of the population”?

Twenty. Percent. For a point of comparison, the Nazis exterminated 20 percent of Poland’s pre-World War II population. According to LeMay, “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea.”

Every. Town. More than 3 million civilians are believed to have been killed in the fighting, the vast majority of them in the north.

How many Americans are familiar with the statements of Secretary of State Dean Rusk or Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas? Rusk, who was a State Department official in charge of Far Eastern affairs during the Korean War, would later admit that the United States bombed “every brick that was standing on top of another, everything that moved.” American pilots, he noted, “were just bombing the heck out of North Korea.”

Douglas visited Korea in the summer of 1952 and was stunned by the “misery, disease, pain and suffering, starvation” that had been “compounded” by air strikes. U.S. warplanes, having run out of military targets, had bombed farms, dams, factories, and hospitals. “I had seen the war-battered cities of Europe,” the Supreme Court justice confessed, “but I had not seen devastation until I had seen Korea.”

How many Americans have ever come across Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s unhinged plan to win the war against North Korea in just 10 days? MacArthur, who led the United Nations Command during the conflict, wanted to drop “between 30 and 50 atomic bombs … strung across the neck of Manchuria” that would have “spread behind us … a belt of radioactive cobalt.”

How many Americans have heard of the No Gun Ri massacre, in July 1950, in which hundreds of Koreans were killed by U.S. warplanes and members of the 7th U.S. Cavalry regiment as they huddled under a bridge? Details of the massacre emerged in 1999, when the Associated Press interviewed dozens of retired U.S. military personnel. “The hell with all those people,” one American veteran recalled his captain as saying. “Let’s get rid of all of them.”

How many Americans are taught in school about the Bodo League massacre of tens of thousands of suspected communists on the orders of the U.S.-backed South Korean strongman, President Syngman Rhee, in the summer of 1950? Eyewitness accounts suggest “jeeploads” of U.S. military officers were present and “supervised the butchery.”

Millions of ordinary Americans may suffer from a toxic combination of ignorance and amnesia, but the victims of U.S. coups, invasions, and bombing campaigns across the globe tend not to. Ask the Iraqis or the Iranians, ask the Cubans or the Chileans. And, yes, ask the North Koreans.

For the residents of the DPRK, writes Columbia University historian Charles Armstrong in his book “Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950-1992,” “the American air war left a deep and lasting impression” and “more than any other single factor, gave North Koreans a collective sense of anxiety and fear of outside threats, that would continue long after the war’s end.”

[ewmayer]

[Kladner also linked to the OPCW story ... I'm just finishing working through a long backlog of links]

o Half of American adults expect war with Iran 'within next few years': Reuters/Ipsos poll - Reuters

"While Americans are more concerned about Iran as a security threat to the United States now than they were last year, few would be in favor of a pre-emptive attack on the Iranian military. But if Iran attacked U.S. military forces first, four out of five believed the United States should respond militarily in a full or limited way, the May 17-20 poll showed."

Not that that bolded bit is any kind of invitation to a false-flag incident, or anything. Even more frightening is how decades of imperial propagandizement has caused most Americans to treat things like invading a country - especially one willing and able to fight back, even is such resistance will necessarily be of the asymmetric-warfare kind - so incredibly blithely: "If Iran attacked, however, 79% said that the U.S. military should retaliate: 40% favored a limited response with airstrikes, while 39% favored a full invasion." History, terrain, Iran having powerful strategic allies and the US clearly lacking any kind of "coalition of the poodles" in the presence case make even the thought of an invasion utterly insane. But nearly half of Americans polled are effectively saying "if the government and MSM say Iran attacked the U.S., we should launch a full-blown invasion of that country." Utterly deluded imperial madness.

Syria - OPCW Engineering Assessment: The Douma 'Chemical Weapon Attack' Was Staged | Moon of Alabama -- I'm sure our local cadre of Assad-is-the-new-mideast-Hitler-and-must-be-regime-changed Exceptional Empiricists will prove immune to such inconvenient truths, perhaps one of them will link to the recent NYT "exposé" of "Assad's secret torture prisons" (the difference between those and the CIA ones around the world is that the CIA are the good guys, apparently), or some such "we're an empire now, and we make out own reality" argumentation.
Related:
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/05...-is-authentic/

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by xilman

Much too simplistic. I give as counter-examples, the intelligence produced under the code names Magic and Purple.

Some examples of non-policy-driven intelligence post-dating WW2 would be nice ... as this thread has shown over and over, the post-WW2 era is the one in which the U.S. well and truly morphed into an entity deserving the "Empire of Chaos" monicker.

Re. your examples, here is Wikipedia on Purple:

U.S. analysts discovered no hint in PURPLE of the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; nor could they, as the Japanese were very careful not to discuss their plan in Foreign Office communications. In fact, no detailed information about the planned attack was even available to the Japanese Foreign Office, as that agency was regarded by the military, particularly its more nationalist members, as insufficiently "reliable". U.S. access to private Japanese diplomatic communications (even the most secret ones) was less useful than it might otherwise have been because policy in prewar Japan was controlled largely by military groups like the Imperial Way Faction, and not by the Foreign Office. The Foreign Office itself deliberately withheld from its embassies and consulates much of the information it did have, so the ability to read PURPLE messages was less than definitive regarding Japanese tactical or strategic military intentions.

9/11 is often described as its generation's Pearl Harbor ... the analogy is ironically better than intended, as both historic events represent huge intelligence failures.