Cold War

Propaganda 101, retraction action and Saudi suitors + this day in history w/7/7 and our song of the day by Public Service Broadcasting on your Morning Monarchy for July 7, 2017.

In 1988 CIA director William Webster attended the Bohemian Grove, where he gave a lakeside talk about intelligence matters. His speech, now available to the public for the first time, is both amusing and at times shocking. From Tom Clancy to a voyeuristic child who wanted to join the Agency, Webster covered a variety of subjects including the relative merits and demerits of spy satellites vs fake moustaches.

What if I told you that the same man trained Meir Kahane’s killer, the World Trade Center bombers, the African embassy bombers and Osama Bin Laden’s bodyguards? What if this man was a member of the Egyptian Army unit that assassinated Anwar Sadat, and was a translator and close associate of Ayman Zawahiri? And what if he did all this while serving in the US Special Forces, as an FBI informant and working for the CIA? That man is Ali Mohamed, perhaps the most astonishing spy of recent times.

The cold war in the desert may become a new medium term reality for the Gulf and wider Middle East as both sides become more entrenched in their positions.
Qatar has refused a Saudi authored ultimatum whose contents were leaked to the press. A Qatari official has called the ultimatum “unrealistic” and “unreasonable” and it is not difficult to see why as capitulation to Saudi Arabia’s demands would essentially reduce Qatar to the status of a Saudi client state.

In 1985 the CIA produced an analysis of the French arm of the New Left - the early post-Marxist intellectual movement. Somewhat bizarrely the Agency were broadly in favour of this new movement because it provided less resistance to US goals both in France specifically, and in the world more generally. As time has shown, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing because without an in-depth understanding, all predictions are just guesswork.

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What is full spectrum dominance and where did it originate? How can we discern this overriding strategy at work in the cultural mayhem that seems global. From domestic revolutions to ‘soft power’ coups in other nations, the model of the RAND Corporation, the Neo Cons and the Pentagon is fluid and consistent over the last several decades.

Once more I joined Pearse Redmond on Porkins Policy Radio to discuss recent developments: The Reality Winner NSA leak story, Chelsea Manning and Dennis Rodman's latest trip to North Korea to visit his good friend Kim Jong-un.(Read more...)

The Intercept recently published a leaked NSA report describing a cyberattack presumed to be carried out by Russia military intelligence. While many have seen this as the confirming proof that Trump only got elected because of Putin the truth is a lot more complicated. It seems the leaker wanted to get caught, and that The Intercept helped her do it.(Read more...)

Andrew Korybko
21st Century Wire

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