I’ve read several news stories talking about the CIA’s attempts at negotiations with the Israeli government, parallel with the US State Department’s incredibly brazen charades, lies, coverups, and stonewalling. I’ve heard a couple times that the CIA has been actually attempting to move things back toward the status quo.
Now I see they’ve trotted out Obama’s CIA director to go on CBS Sunday Morning to talk about Israel’s terror attacks on Lebanon and directly call it terrorism. That’s got to be coordinated with the current agency, and comes across as very intentional signaling. Matthew Miller is basically acting like nothing happened, while the CIA is publicly calling Israel a terrorist state.
My question is why? What are their incentives here? Are these stories just PR bullshit by the CIA? What does the CIA stand to lose in an all-out regional war, that makes them willing to go around the President and apparently make the only real efforts to negotiate?
I’ve got nothing but vibes to back this up, but I suspect Israel going full terrorism, at a time when much of the US’s attempts at isolating Russia and China are backfiring into a stronger BRICS, have raised concerns among folks who aren’t just blithely following the wants of the military industrial complex. Whether it’s Covid, Climate Change, or China, much of the US government seems to have drank their own Kool-Aid and it would not surprise me if some of the Kool-Aid makers are horrified that things are becoming unhinged at a much more rapid pace than they have the resources to adapt to.
I have a very similar “drank the kool-aid” vibes based theory, too. The current crop in charge charge had over 3 decades of post-Soviet collapse to be mediocre and actually take to heart the exceptionalism narrative and a sort of complacency that follows.
My read is this: American exceptional used to mean “if America tries it does the best” and now it means to them “America is the best and therefore doesn’t have to try.” A failure to adapt, as you pointed out. Without something to constantly check itself against the systems and those that control them have become calcified and lost the dynamism that they relied on to stay competitive.
This rot has set in across the board, from domestic and foreign policy, corporate practice, tech development, everything. In this case specifically, intelligence and espionage that hovers in the gray area between hard and soft power.
There is a micro development parallel that can be pointed to within the 2 dominant political parties but most clearly within the Republican party. Where previously they used AM radio types and pretended to pay homage to evangelical talking points the party is now rife with the people who came up drinking that ideological slop. They don’t know or don’t care that this was all a big game being played to dupe the rubes. One of the fatal flaws of cynically using something like religion as a means to power is that once the cynics die off you’re stuck with True Believers replacing them.
lol, largely agree. You’ve tied together a number of comments I’ve made over the past few days about the assholes on capitol hill ignorantly protecting the material interests of their owners, and that the current US is basically a cargo cult of peak empire US.
Fuck.
It’s a “fuck” for the american population who are going to see a continuous decline over the course of several decades as the empire gets mismanaged by toolbags and idiots, but for the whole world and the future of the socialist movement it’s a positive one.
The monsters like Kissinger that truly knew what they were doing have been pushed out, and that is a good thing.
The problem is more for the rest of the world that the United States never stopped holding it hostage. So while the empire is behaving like a lunatic and destroying everything, the design of the empire also isolates it from the worst of their own behaviour and ensures that it takes most of the world with it, should things actually turn ugly.
This is not the picture I see. The US used to be massively more capable and massively more monstrous than it is today. Its power has diminished drastically and it only weakens further and further. The big issue is of course if it creates a nuclear war, but provided that does not happen all I see is continual decline for it and a continual weakening of its power to do anything.
Every day that passes it is only getting weaker. I am an optimist in this regard, we either die in nuclear hellfire or have a positive outlook.
The US wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want a right-wing, outwardly hostile state in the region to destabilize it’s neighbors, but they do not want it so hostile that the regional and global community decide it needs to be put down.
I think the CIA is probably speaking the true intentions of the US. They’re probably afraid they are going to lose control of Israel and the situation in general, and thus possibly lose their greatest asset in the region, or at the very least cause further damage to the US’s public image by proxy.
Just my thoughts, I’m not an expert or anything.
Have we not already “lost control” as you say.
I mean I think the US has lost control. The tail is definitely wagging the dog in Israel. If the US were to cut off supplies and guns to Israel or put stipulations on it’s use of said guns and supplies it would not just say “oh okay thank you for the support so far” it would go nuclear, figuratively and possibly literally.
Yeah. It’s reminding me of all our power vacuum plays. Eventually they become fascists or terrorists and we are stuck warring what we created. Ughh
If not by design, it’s a feature of all NATO ruling class decisions thus far, so the rest of the world has every right to reject it and proceed… The main risk being the potentially thermonuclear tantrum that could precipitate…
They know America is going to get some serious blowback following Bibi off a cliff. The pager reveal has inevitably left questions of how deep and wide spread is it really?
I remember when Vault 7 and Snowden leaks came out they said something along the lines of man in the middle planting physical chips in electronics that the manufacturer didn’t know about. Between the factory and shipping. Back doors and such. If Pissreal is willing to do shit that exposes things and alters markets such as fuck anything from Taiwan, or create panic in major market sectors where the CIA / NSA / FBI
loses a good portion of their own intel network in the processes that might make them hit the “hold on there good buddy let’s not get carried away”. Who knows what else Bibi would expose that’s out there in his arrogance and hubris?People around the world are now asking what else is there? How far does / could it go? Phones are now made with sealed cases where you can not conviently pop out the battery and see the innards of the device. Right to repair is made harder on many more things all the time. Makes it much more easy for an attack like this just waiting. Israel didn’t just terrorize Lebanon.
Yeah that tracks, the former CIA director actually emphasized the supply chain infiltration aspects. They’re really worried about the world switching to China
We already know there are “realist” factions within the CIA and the Deep State who think the empire has over-stretched itself, so this is not at all surprising.
However, in my opinion the realist faction is also fundamentally incorrect with trying to steer the US towards competing with China on industrial terms. There is simply no way (and too late) for the US to re-industrialize itself, not only because Wall Street finance capital already has a death grip on the US economy, but also because the US simply does not have the productive capacity to catch up to China’s industrial and technological growth. The war is already lost before it has begun.
The neocons, on the other hand, are playing the correct strategy by fully leaning into the only weapon that the US has left - financial warfare. The best hope the empire can slow its own decline and threaten to bring the whole world down with it if they don’t submit to its demand is to go full landlord mode, using its vast control of the global market and global capital flows to blackmail the world’s economies. And if worst comes to worst, threaten to reset the slate with nukes. The only way out of this is mass de-dollarization, and that requires the Global South to understand what’s at stake and willing to do the necessary sacrifice.
In any case, this is simply how historical forces interact. Finance capital (represented by the US) and industrial capital (represented by China) will eventually have to come to a blow. There may be some people who try to delay it, but the tide of History does not care. This is Marxist materialist logic in action. It is as natural as air molecules flowing through temperature and pressure zones. The best we can do is to use these knowledge to prepare for what’s to come for the future, and pray that the world doesn’t blow itself up in the process.
We already know there are “realist” factions within the CIA and the Deep State who think the empire has over-stretched itself, so this is not at all surprising.
That makes a lot of sense. Supplying Ukraine is a strain on US war production, but doable. Ignite one or two more wars, and we actually have to start letting “allies” fall
let me help you: mossad is a branch of the CIA. Does that help?
I think we are seeing that relationship splinter.
James Angleton is historically the most important individual we know of, he managed the Israeli account as head of Counterintelligence at CIA during and after the Kennedy years. His testimony to the Church Committee reads as an admission of Israel’s role and interest in seeing JFK dead. While far from perfect, for Kennedy nuclear proliferation was an obstacle to peace, and an existential threat obviously. Angleton has no less than 2, possibly 3 statues in Israel. None in the US. One overlooks Jerusalem from foothills outside the city.
Basically Zionist got the bomb and they got all the blackmail and plenty of operations outsourced to Mossad, Epstein is very plausibly Mossad, etc.
There are networks and associations between people which supercede a lot of this though, it’s unclear how much going on today is “CIA” versus the organized criminals, “terrorists”, foreign intelligence services, and business interests they’ve flooded with cash, guns, and technology for decades. There’s possibly just enough parties with resources now that we can’t really make much sense of specifics in real time
The Pentagon wants to go for China, the State Department wants to go for everyone and the CIA wants to keep all the balls in the air so they can do more colour revolutions everywhere
