CIA / INTEL AGENCIES

GLENN GREENWALD— System Update with Glenn Greenwald. On this week’s episode of System Update, Glenn Greenwald talks to journalist Vincent Bevins about his newly launched book, The Jakarta Method. The book examines the series of mass murder programs engineered by the CIA with the purported goal of fighting communism during the Cold War, and how the consequences of these programs shape the global order — and U.S. politics — to this day.

CALEB MAUPIN—The dangerous implications of working to create Cold War-style dividing lines should not be ignored. In the aftermath of the Second World War, when western leaders spoke of the “free world” standing against the “Iron Curtain” the ultimate results were horrendous. Massive military engagements by the United States in Vietnam and Korea took the lives of millions. In countries across Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific region, brutal military coups and US-led interventions killed additional millions. The 1965 US-backed coup in Indonesia, done in the name of protecting the “free world” from an elected President who seemed sympathetic to China and Russia, resulted in an estimated 500,000 deaths.

PATRICK LAWRENCE—The Deep State — and at this point it is mere pretense to object to this term — long ago made it a priority to turn the mainstream press and broadcasters to its purposes — to make a free press unfree. This has gone on since the earliest Cold War decades and is well and responsibly documented.

Navina Heyden, a German blogger, pointed this out: I don’t get the idea of some people – as long as China becomes stronger, its ties with the world will get better… No one in Europe would think so.

Some netizens sensed a subtext here: When China becomes stronger, its relations with the world could get worse. This is obviously believed by quite a few Germans in particular and Westerners in general. 

Compared with most German influencers, Heyden is relatively objective in her views about China. However, she has suffered waves of cyber violence from within Germany since 2020 simply because she said something in fairness to China’s fight against COVID-19. Her case is a vivid example of how people in Germany and other Western countries deal with China-related information through distortion. They won’t embrace voices that contradict their stereotype about China, or those that can prove China has done something right. 

BEN NORTON—Google is a CIA and Pentagon contractor that cannot be separated from the military-industrial complex. Ben Norton discusses how Silicon Valley is a key part of the US national security state.