Douglas Valentine on the CIA as Organized Crime (must watch) and education: “Structural violence is the tool of the professional.”

I won’t write much in this post. I would like to start by quoting something, but I also want to say that this entire video is a “must-watch” if you want to understand what is happening and see the real world behind the veil of the world of the naive.

Part 2

26:03

So, is the intent and purpose of the CIA and American involvement in Ukraine to topple Russia and to balkanize Russia? Oh, absolutely. But it is also to steal Ukraine’s—to take all the natural resources that are available there and the profits that can be had. I mean, it’s capitalism. It’s American nationalists and businessmen. I mean, as soon as the CIA arranged that coup and installed a pro-American government, Joe Biden’s son became the head of one of the biggest oil companies, I think it was, in Ukraine.

I mean, American businessmen just swooped down like vultures to take over any business they could, like Mafia dons and Mafia gangsters who steal everything. That’s exactly what they’re doing, especially in eastern Ukraine where a lot of the natural resource industries are based. That’s why it’s so contentious there. The CIA, through its assets in private industry, is trying to bring all those people—all those people who are considered “compatible”—into the American fold.

You don’t see it at its dirty level: the level of blackmailing people, the level of extorting people, or the level of the CIA using its underworld contacts to squeeze these people and force them out of business. They make life miserable for them so that they give up their associations with Russians and Russian businessmen. But that’s what’s going on at the very basic level. I mean, militias are being formed to terrorize anybody who is supporting Russia, like in Donbas and places like that.

Again, you would have to spend years studying the details to understand. I suggest you just read the books to see how the CIA has relationships with the security services in Ukraine. As soon as the coup was launched, it took over control of those security services and started drawing up hit lists, targeting people it could go after. The reason it’s targeting those people most highly is that they are sitting on natural resources that American businessmen want. It’s not going after plumbers and carpenters; it’s going after major businessmen. That’s what the CIA does: it paves the way for American business interests by using illegal methods to install politicians in Ukraine who will follow the American line—things that you don’t know are going on and that you’re not told about by the media.

Regarding the American military, one of the things that makes America truly exceptional is that it has the largest military in the world. It has 800 military bases around the world. Its military is as big as all the other militaries in the world combined. That’s a lot of power that assures the United States of a lot of influence all around the world. If anybody starts “acting up” anywhere in the world, the United States military is there with its Air Force and its Navy. The Marines are ready to swarm, and American military advisers work with the military in almost every country in the world.

One of the things these American military bases and American military advisors do is provide the CIA with cover. As I was telling you earlier, the CIA does not work in foreign countries by advertising itself. It works under cover of American Special Forces, Military Intelligence, the State Department, and private businesses.

The U.S. CIA is comparable to the American military; the CIA is as big as all the other intelligence services of the world combined. There’s a CIA station in every country in the world. The CIA operates everywhere, and all that information goes back to Langley headquarters where it is analyzed by supposedly benign analysts. They are no more benign than a Mafia bookkeeper who says, “I never killed anybody; I just gave you the names of the people who owed you money.” Don’t believe that.

In these countries, just like in Ukraine, the whole idea is to secretly diminish the power of any political and social factions that are working against American business, political, or military interests. That’s the job of the CIA. Every CIA station operating in every country has that as its mandate. It helps if it is in a relationship with the military and secret services in that country. It provides them with the most modern technology, helps them create agent networks, and passes “black bag” money to politicians secretly to enable them to get elected so that they will promote American policies.

In countries like Venezuela, it operates not through the government or in liaison relationships with the Venezuelan secret services or military, but instead recruits army officers secretly. It provides them with bank accounts and money to help them subvert the military services. It works with security officers and businessmen secretly to help them subvert Venezuelan services. It will even create and fund radio stations to promote propaganda against the government.

The CIA works with media people—and through American media people who serve as cutouts—in order to propagandize within Venezuela, Syria, or any country whose government is actively working against American interests. It subverts them in a thousand different ways. I should add that the military is doing the same thing through its agent networks. The Navy, for example, is working to subvert the Venezuelan Navy. It’s not just the CIA, but the CIA coordinates all American efforts. It does so largely through private businessmen and its infiltration of civic institutions, where it organizes what it calls “compatible” political and social movements to work against those governments.

You see the same thing happening wherever there’s a “color revolution.” That’s the CIA creating, funding, directing, and managing political and social operations against governments that are antithetical to American interests. You see it in China; you see it in Russia; you see it everywhere. That’s the job of the CIA: to coordinate all clandestine operations to sabotage and subvert these governments and their civic institutions.

Our big problem is that we believe the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. It’s a big cover story for what really happens behind the scenes. We have the myth of the American hero: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Cruise, or Matt Damon—the American who’s really just a “good guy.” He may have to do bad things now and then, but he’s really a good guy. That’s not the way it is. It’s a cover story that we’re told over and over again, just like Santa Claus or a fantasy belief that makes you feel good about yourself.

The fact of the matter is the United States has stated goals and unstated objectives. The stated goals are what you hear over and over: that the United States has nothing but good intentions. Behind the scenes, the government has unstated objectives that it’s really trying to achieve. You never hear about them. These unstated objectives are to influence elections in foreign governments—whether that government is in France, Germany, or England.

The CIA is working in friendly countries through agent networks that have been there for decades to influence them for American business interests. Even if a supposedly friendly government like a Labor government is put in place in England, you can be sure the CIA is doing everything it can to subvert it and work with conservative elements to make it possible for the American arms industry to have greater sales. They do it in friendly countries as well as enemy countries, but you’re never going to hear that. CBS and CNN do not report on CIA operations.

These are the unstated objectives of the government as advanced by the CIA secretly. The entire judicial system in the United States has been structured by the powers that be to make it illegal for anybody in the media or any private citizen to expose these unstated policies. If people in the CIA were to come out of their shells and start talking about what the CIA does, they would immediately be gagged, like John Kiriakou, and put in prison if they told you about the torture, blackmail, and extortion that the CIA engages in.

So, we live in an alternative reality. It cracks me up when people talk about “alternative facts.” You haven’t got any idea. They keep trying to suggest that an “alternative fact” is something that betrays the narrative we’re supposed to hear. To them, the only “facts” are those associated with anything that supports the cover story you’re told about your government and its benevolence.

“Alternative facts” are anything that reveals the government’s unstated policy and its basically evil intentions. It is the absolute evil embodied in the 1% that rules us—their greed and their desire to control the entire world and all its resources for their own benefit. And believe me, this 1% of the 1% behind all this has no more regard for you than they do for Syrians in a village they’re bombing or sending ISIS into to destroy.

If you think for a minute that by going out on Memorial Day and waving the flag you’re somehow part of some great movement to bring freedom and democracy to the world, you are self-deluded. The only way that this whole thing is going to end is if people start shaking themselves out of the delusions they have imposed upon themselves by believing in the lies they’re told.

I won’t write much, besides one thing: I constantly write about the “world of the naive,” and here you have Douglas Valentine addressing this issue.

“So, we live in an alternative reality… If you think for a minute that by going out on Memorial Day and waving the flag you’re somehow part of some great movement to bring freedom and democracy to the world, you are self-deluded.”

My issue is that when you hear many – practically most – geopolitical analysts, you see that they live in an “alternative reality” where America and the West are the “good guys.” This is why it pisses me off so much when people say, “look at what the West has become,” “I could never imagine that this would happen in the West,” or “we in the West have lost our way.”

Nothing has changed. We were always like this; you simply didn’t see it. Now that the veil creating this “alternative reality” – this “world of the naive” – is suddenly collapsing, you finally start to see the real world that was always here, but which you simply overlooked. I don’t blame those people, because I am nobody and I am self-educated, while the people we see on these programs have credentials and careers. They went through higher education, which in reality was indoctrination and brainwashing. This is why I constantly say that education is so evil, and why I am happy I didn’t go through official education. This is something Douglas Valentine also touched on at the end of this interview.

Part 2

57:00

I gave a talk to Veterans for Peace in Portland, Maine, and the lecture was called, “The War on Terror is the Greatest Covert Operation Ever.” I’d like to start talking about that with a quote from a guy named Johan Galtung. He said, “Personal violence is for the amateur in dominance; structural violence is the tool of the professional. The amateur who wants to dominate uses guns; the professional uses social structure.”

This is the basis for why the War on Terror is the greatest covert operation. It actually begins with one of our major systems – one of our major social structures – the education system here in the United States. Everybody knows that the history of the United States is quite skewed in the way it’s taught to us. From the very beginning, we’re taught that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and that America was a beacon of freedom and democracy. Nobody really focuses on the fact that Jefferson was a slave owner who, like other slave owners, raped his slaves.

We’re taught a myth about who we are, and it permeates every part of our indoctrination, which begins in public education. We are taught things about who we are and what we are that are total fantasy. However, in order to get good grades, have the prospect of getting a good job, or go to college, you have to be able to regurgitate the myths taught in school. This whole system – public education and private education systems alike – is set up by people who wish to dominate us.

The people who rule us – the wealthy 1%, the capitalists – teach us in school that communism is bad, that communists are godless, and that you have to believe in God. It is a whole litany of things that we assume to be true because they have been driven into our heads starting in first grade. What it means to be a “good citizen” and all those things would have to be reviewed as an adult; you have to go back and find out which is fact and which is fiction, because those beliefs are used to dominate us.

An offshoot of the education system is the American media industry: Hollywood, television, newspapers, and the magazines we read. People graduate from high school and go to the Columbia School of Journalism, where they are similarly indoctrinated by teachers who reinforce all the myths you learned about America. Once you go to the Columbia School of Journalism and go to work for The New York Times or The Washington Post, you have to not only believe these myths but propagate them. You’re told that your journalism has to be structured in such a way that you propagate these myths, and you cannot deviate from their perpetuation.

It’s the same thing in Hollywood. No “good American citizen” is going to want to go to a movie and see that the Russians are the good guys and the Americans are the bad guys. Nobody is going to want to see a movie where the Palestinians are the victims and the Israelis are the bad guys. There is a certain formula that must be followed. These beliefs have been put in place by people who want to dominate us, and they create these systems for that purpose.

Since 9/11, the War on Terror has become the ultimate expression of the myth and the story we’re supposed to believe. We are supposed to believe, as Americans, that we are victims of terrorism, although I have said many times that you’re more likely to die of a bee sting than in a terrorist incident. You’re much more likely to die of food poisoning or cancer from cigarettes. Those things are not considered “enemies” that require 90% of our federal budget to combat, but terrorism is.

In that sense, this whole fascination and focus on terrorism – which basically relies on the premise that Americans are victims – is the greatest covert operation ever imposed upon the American people. It is a myth that we need to expose as a total fabrication of the national security agencies, military propaganda, and CIA propaganda. It is spread in foreign newspapers and used to demonize certain social and political movements overseas, which the American media – the experts of propaganda here – relate to us as fact. This reinforces our belief that the United States is somehow a victim and that the only way it can protect its citizens is by dominating the world.

“Dominance” is the operative word, as Johan Galtung said in that quote. The people who want to dominate use social structures. Education and the media are the principal social structures they use, educating us to believe certain myths and then, through the media, reinforcing those beliefs. These have been fabricated by the military, the CIA, and their bosses in the establishment, and they are perpetrated on us for only one purpose: to dominate us.

We are secretly dominated by systems that have been put in place for hundreds of years in the United States, which become more sophisticated and ingrained as the decades go by. The National Security establishment has become more important and controls more of the information we receive. Since the War on Terror has come to determine everything we know and believe – especially through the entire Homeland Security apparatus – all of this was predictable.

People on the outside knew it was happening. One of those people was a Frenchman named Guy Debord, who wrote a book called The Society of the Spectacle back in 1968. Just as I began with a quote by Johan Galtung, I’d like to end this episode with a quote by Guy Debord, which gets to the essence of dominance. Debord said, “The secret dominates this world, and first and foremost as the secret of domination.”

The problem is that we don’t know we’re being dominated. All the secrecy that surrounds the CIA, the military, and the security services is the essential element of how we are dominated. If we ever truly want to be free and live in a democratic society, we actually have to smash that secrecy. We have to expose everyone who works for the CIA. We have to expose how it is organized and how it operates.

From the time they are in kindergarten, everyone has to be taught that we have a CIA and that the CIA promotes and advances the establishment’s unstated goals and objectives. Every American citizen, from the time they are in kindergarten, has to start learning that there is this facet of our country promoted by the CIA, and that our establishment created the CIA just so that we could be dominated. If you really want to be free, you have to start learning all about it and expose it.

I don’t blame all those people. If you want to achieve something in this world, you need to learn to accept nonsense; education is not meant to enlighten you, but rather serves the role of a societal filter. All those people you see as analysts went through this brain-rotting programming – this social filter – otherwise, they would not have succeeded. As Frank said:

I hate Chomsky, but he described it perfectly in his quote.

Well, that’s pretty much what the schools are like, I think: they reward discipline and obedience, and they punish independence of mind. If you happen to be a little innovative, or maybe you forgot to come to school one day because you were reading a book or something, that’s a tragedy, that’s a crime – because you’re not supposed to think, you’re supposed to obey, and just proceed through the material in whatever way they require.

And in fact, most of the people who make it through the education system and get into the elite universities are able to do it because they’ve been willing to obey a lot of stupid orders for years and years – that’s the way I did it, for example. Like, you’re told by some stupid teacher, “Do this,” which you know makes no sense whatsoever, but you do it, and if you do it you get to the next rung, and then you obey the next order, and finally you work your way through and they give you your letters: an awful lot of education is like that, from the very beginning. Some people go along with it because they figure, “Okay, I’ll do any stupid thing that asshole says because I want to get ahead”; others do it because they’ve just internalized the values – but after a while, those two things tend to get sort of blurred. But you do it, or else you’re out: you ask too many questions and you’re going to get in trouble.

Now, there are also people who don’t go along-and they’re called “behavior problems,” or “unmotivated,” or things like that. Well, you don’t want to be too glib about it – there are children with behavior problems but a lot of them are just independent-minded, or don’t like to conform, or just want to go their own way. And they get into trouble right from the very beginning, and are typically weeded out. I mean, I’ve taught young kids too, and the fact is there are always some who just don’t take your word for it. And the very unfortunate tendency is to try to beat them down, because they’re a pain in the neck. But what they ought to be is encouraged. Yeah: why take my word for it? Who the heck am I? Figure it out for yourself. That’s what real education would be about, in fact.

All those analysts we see on programs have higher education and careers, so they went through this process.

“Some people go along with it because they figure, ‘Okay, I’ll do any stupid thing that asshole says because I want to get ahead’; others do it because they’ve just internalized the values – but after a while, those two things tend to get sort of blurred.”

Meanwhile, I was the “behavior problem,” the “unmotivated” one, and I got in trouble because I simply could not swallow this bullshit.

Let the will of the state act, then, instead of that of the individual. Let an institution be created which shall have for its object to keep correct doctrines before the attention of the people, to reiterate them perpetually, and to teach them to the young; having at the same time power to prevent contrary doctrines from being taught, advocated, or expressed. Let all possible causes of a change of mind be removed from men’s apprehensions. Let them be kept ignorant, lest they should learn of some reason to think otherwise than they do. Let their passions be enlisted, so that they may regard private and unusual opinions with hatred and horror. (The Fixation of Belief, Charles Sanders Peirce)

The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence…Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians…and that is its aim everywhere else. (H.L. Mencken)

I will end it here thanks to everyone who stuck with me until the end of my post. And, as always…

“Knowledge will make you be free.”

― Socrates

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“Knowledge isn’t free. You have to pay attention.”

― Richard P. Feynman

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“Freedom is not free, you need to pay attention.”

― Grzegorz Ochman

“Schools are intended to produce…formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled. To a very great extent schools succeed in doing this, but…in a national order in which the only “successful” people are independent, self-reliant, confident, and individualistic…the products of schooling are…irrelevant. Well-schooled people are irrelevant. They can sell film and razor blades, push paper and talk on telephones, or sit mindlessly before a flickering computer terminal, but as human beings they are useless. Useless to others and useless to themselves.”

― John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing us Down

“A great point is sometimes made of the fact that modern man no longer sees above his head a revolving dome with fixed stars…True enough, but he sees something similar when he looks at his daily newspaper…The newspaper is a man-made cosmos of the world of events around us at the time. For the average reader it is a construct with a set of significances which he no more thinks of examining than did his pious forebear of the thirteenth century…think of questioning the cosmology.”

― Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences