After the fraud of the 51 retired intelligence agents claiming Hunters laptop was Russian disinformation and other nonsense, I’m thinking the weight of retired intelligence agents is essentially zero.
To those with any sense, yes. To those who swallow mainstream media’s output whole, unquestioningly, this particular document, or rather the sound bites and headlines that will be used to sensationalise it, it will only strengthen their opinions against the administration. These people are just like those retired military, sitting on the boards of weapons manufacturers, while guesting on news channels, as talking head “experts”, and without any disclosure by them or the networks about their current lucrative positions, constantly push forward the narrative that war with China, or Russia, or whoever, is going to occur within the next couple of years, with unquestioned certainty. It has ramped up in recent years, with Putin being the bogeyman that will sweep across Europe unless…, etc. They advocate for big spending on armaments and bringing back conscription, amongst other things. The same types that stirred up the hysteria about WMDs post 9/11.
The idea that those involved in regime changes in other countries, when the leaders would not play ball, are concerned about democracy is off the scale hypocrisy. The NSA and CIA have been running their own authoritarian regime for as long as I can remember, with the surveillance program they set up since the noughties being the cherry on top of their success.
Health experts”, push the required narratives. All are, broadly speaking, under the same umbrella. A very profitable position for them to be in. A position that means all manner of catastrophic consequences for ourselves and our families.
If I was a violent man, which I try not to be,( anymore ), these bastards would be first against the wall!
Exactly! This has played out for decades. News channels were turned into recruitment propaganda for the armed forces, and fear was instilled in Joe Public so the money that was spent on war and weapons could be justified. It’s ramping up again in Europe, with conscription making a comeback in Germany, and being sought in other neighbouring countries, because “Putin bad”, and China “will attack.. we must be ready”.. bullshit. It’s like they have crystal balls, instead of the truth, which is they themselves, as regular talking heads on the “news” are advertising the very companies that will make the new shiny weapons, and end rich them in turn. I haven’t watched in years.. I’ve seen snippets.. nothing has changed bar the names of the new menace to “ liberty” and “sovereignty “.. total bs.
That’s right. A fearful person is easier to control and will accept measures they would normally object to being imposed, as its human nature to want things to go back to ‘normal’. It’s why the msm is constantly negative. Truth goes out the window, if only things go back as before. People generally don’t like change. Fear porn also sells well, as the newspaper and tv news channels know. It’s why I stopped buying and looking at it after the lies that were spread during , after, and especially just before the 08 crash.
It’s a larger number than we might think, depending on the issue. Between 10 and 20 per cent will not bow down to peer, or government pressure. The trouble comes when trying to form a cohesive group out of that minority. There are the endless, outrage provoking news cycles, that can run with a story for a couple of days, then suddenly there’s a switch to the next hot topic. The distractions and infighting amongst those just not having the narrative on offer, ensure any meaningful attempts to organise are either hijacked at leadership level by people wishing to further other agendas, or the energy of the dissidents gives way to apathy, as the machine has deep pockets, as well as government and media backing, so the odds are stacked in their favour. Common sense has become most uncommon!
No need to talk you out of it, Chris. This is treason.
The enemies of America have been trying to start a color revolution domestically (at least) since Trump was re-elected. They are failing, and now they are openly calling for it.
The culprits of this particular faction most likely are members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the nexus of intelligence agencies and business people. Pick a random Fortune 500 company and look at the board of directors' bios. There will be at least one board member who also is a member of CFR, and usually two or three CFR members. At least one of those CFR plants is former CIA, FBI, DARPA.
Just a tiny bit of inductive reasoning leads one to suspect the companies have prior knowledge of the next hotspot in the world to protect assets or profit from the color revolution. These traitors on a Venn diagram would encompass overlapping of the deep state, the EU leadership and the Davos crowd with the City of London smack in the middle.
Trump knows what he is up against. He has shut down the Israel/Iran assets that created all the Mideast crises, cut off military equipment to NATO's war on Russia, prevented the City of London from moving its financial center to Qatar or Dubai or any of UAE states, cut off USAID and is strangling the narcoterrorist network money flow to the City of London. The actors in the Venn diagram are running out of collateral and are being forced to use their own capital instead of raping the US taxpayer to pay for own destruction.
I also believe Bessent and Powell have been waging a ferocious yet quiet war behind the scenes and have mostly neutered the bad actors' ability to disrupt the U.S. Treasury and stock markets. The bad guys tried and failed miserably during the tariff tantrum in April. The bad guys still have a lot of ammunition in the tax havens such as the Caymans and British Virgin Islands.
Pray for Trump and the men and women around him. They are literally trying to free America, once and for all, from the grips of the financialists taking orders from the City of London.
For a lot of young, and older people, completely disconnected and disillusioned with regimes of the last few decades, it actually did. In a good way. Unwilling to accept the narratives that had been force fed to them throughout their lives, they sought change in Trump, and engaged in the electoral process to ensure he got back to the White House. Now, whether he is the man to see the changes they wanted brought about, is another matter.
But to see how the Dems ran their last campaign against him, and how quickly their construct of the last thirty years has fallen apart, as well as their inability to offer anything new, is to be welcomed. I, for one, did not like the brinksmanship by the Biden administration with Russia, as if a nuclear response by them was nothing to worry about. It came pretty close on more than one occasion, and as someone with kids depending on me for their safety I was not, and never will be impressed by the cavalier attitude of the Dems and Biden. Not forgetting Kamala, of course. Thank God she was rightly hammered at the ballot box. So, I get your point, regarding the NSA and CIA and the reporting on this document, but what you say is true in other ways. Take care. God bless, and have a peaceful weekend.
They are so terrified that Trump is going to break them that they are moving up the timetable on the regime change scheme they have always planned to implement. It's absolute evidence that Trump is right over the target. But now he has to start dropping bombs, maybe even real ones.
Bingo! It’s blatantly done. Or should that be brazenly. Or shamelessly!
“on a trajectory “ is a broad term to use, where inconvenient truths can be nullified by pointing at other possible developments.. the ifs and maybes are a dime a dozen in this case.
The "document" is unsubstantiated (no citations) and poorly argued opinion. It thus reads like armchair speculation.
I don't want to spend time thinking about or attempting to counter this particular piece of drivel.
I do want to read, think about, and discuss how the steady stream of vapid "reporting"/"analysis" and the academic/journalistic ecosystem that feeds from it - e.g., Snyder, David French - can be disrupted before its propagators permanently handicap the generations already suffering from inability to discern and think critically. It's a plague of stupification.
I think about how counter things like this too—- no point in battling with the people who created it. But can the vapidity of it be pointed out to others? Especially to those who may be inclined to believe it without guidance as to its shallow reasoning?
I agree, I couldn’t even get through the whole thing because it frustrated me so. But did think it was all very high-level, no details at all given, mostly conclusions presented as “analysis.” Feels incredibly fake— surely a report by real intelligence agents would be better, yes?
He also shot and paralyzed Jim Brady, of Brady Bill fame, Reagan’s press secretary, and a secret service member and a police officer, all to ‘impress Jody Foster’.
I remember the other people that were shot that day.. I was young at the time, but that was a big deal, so the name rang a bell.. as for the mental health side of things, the increase by 70 per cent of antidepressants and anxiety medications since those lockdowns were introduced, way back in the day, or so it feels, saw no increase in the services to treat those in need, victims of a politicised health response, but cut loose and set adrift to cope with their own problems, regardless of the root cause. The lack of resources dedicated to treating those of us that succumb to a mental health issue, be caused by the increased use of AI online , will be exposed as totally inadequate by this time next year. There’s a tsunami of psychological trauma headed our way, as the epidemic of loneliness that is prevalent globally, will be met by AI interactions that will ultimately only make matters worse.
Hinckley and Chapman, on the face of things, were symptoms of the problems that are still ubiquitous today, thanks to the internet!
Mark Chapman was Lennons shooter. His name was bugging me. I also mixed Hinckley’s name up with Myra Hindley, the moors child murderer. I need a shower from just thinking about these people. Narcissistic psychopaths with guns, and Hindley a torturous, murdering, callous bitch. God had a special place for her to go to.
They are Fear Merchants, selling their anxiety-producing wares to a gullible, left-leaning public that was broken by Covid. In particular, histrionic women and the beta males who submit to their panic attacks are the targets of this marketing campaign. Ask them, directly, which rights they've lost. Laugh at their hemming and hawing.
I should have written "political diversity." Many Democratic administration. appointments; no Republican administration appointments. Also, it's sort of a B-team (or less) for the Deep State. When having been a former Ambassador to Paraguay or the Marshall Islands is your main credential, you were not important.
Sad to see this development. Disappointing that these people are regurgitating MSM themes. Especially the ones who were all in for the Iraq War. How embarrassing it must be, maybe not, as that requires introspection and humility.
Someone left a comment to this document mentioning that IC is about 17 years behind, then mentioned how President Wilson greatly expanded presidential powers.
I replied to that comment with stats about executive orders issued per President, because Wilson comes in third after Hoover and FDR for most executive orders. I also pointed out how many executive orders of presidents are to undo executive orders of their predecessors (which I would not personally call undoing actions as “authoritative”.
The author left this comment to me:
“The number of Executive Orders is not really a good metric to determine use or abuse. They are used for many things, and are often not really necessary, so the numbers vary considerably.”
Which is insane because in their document their first piece of “evidence” of authoritarianism is EXACTLY the number of executive orders issued by Trump.
IC doublespeak. They routinely contradict themselves. In the same sentence. With zero awareness. Then they sit back, pleased as punch at how awfully smart they all are.
Hell* is a big party with flat, warm, cheap champagne, watered down drinks, Harry and Meghan hosting, techno music, and former IC cretins trying to pick me up. Short. Comb-overs. Speak about themselves in the third person, and ask me where I know “Prince” Harry from. (Unrelated question: Why is that little rat faced red head “the First Amendment is bonkers” foreigner who interferes in our elections still in the United States? Can anyone tell me?)
*Worrying that I will end up in this self-important CFR hell keeps me close to Jesus, so there’s that.
I can’t finish this report. It hurts my head. It’s so obviously damn partisan, I can’t stand to read any more of past the first four key findings.
The idea that Trump of all people is expanding executive power is just absurd when (a) so far Bill Clinton ranks higher for the number of executive actions issued, and (b) FDR outranks every President by leaps and bounds in the number of executive actions issued.
Also, the Supreme Court was weaponized long ago with liberal courts in the past who created laws rather than interpreted them. Court appointments have always been partisan. But current court is and has been trying to correct for decades of judicial overreach. To call this correction evidence of authoritarianism is such a gross misunderstanding of what is happening.
They've increased their numbers; only 51 spooks signed off on the Hunter Biden laptop, now we've got 340 out of work color revolutionist fomenting insurrection.
Thanks; the list is a good reminder of how “CIA-adjacent” many in the State Dept. are. Makes you wonder just how large the Intel Community really is. We need to reimagine all aspects of intelligence.
I wonder if there are any Gov. agencies / entities that don’t have I.C. people embedded / attached. . . and the same probably goes for all those hundreds of NGOs.
I think the Deep State, and the entire globalist progressive establishment, feels cornered by Trump (and by rising nationalist populism elsewhere). Their response flirts with sedition, if not treason, and it seems unworkable. Their USAID machinations have been defunded and exposed. The NGO funding is under heightened scrutiny. Only a small fraction of the population supports them. Trump has at least nominal control over the intelligence community, and despite the “resistance” pearl-clutchers shrieking about “fascism," he has the law on his side.
I think Trump is intentionally turning up the pressure and forcing his domestic enemies into a choice. 1) They can escalate the Resistance into clear violations of federal law and get indicted for it, or 2) they can back down. Trump is doing something similar with Democrat governors and mayors: either resist ICE and face federal law, or cave. Either way, Trump wins.
Yes but the object is to provoke Trump into going after them, thereby fulfilling his assigned role of deranged paranoid tyrant, and retroactively justifying the coup they were totally not calling for. I've seen this show before.
That’s a very dangerous game, though. For them to win, Trump would have to go after them in stupid and illegal ways, losing in court and alienating the public. If he simply avoids Biden-style made-up lawfare and just enforces long-standing federal law, they’re sunk.
Sort of, yes. But the idea of a well-executed color revolution play is to create an impossible choice for the regime you want removed: they must either prove they're actually "good guys" by acquiescing and allowing the astroturfed regime change, or else prove they're the "bad guy" they're being framed to be by resisting it or shutting it down.
We'll see. Trump (or at least his advisors, who know this game well) have maneuvered around several of these. But they've all been pretty half-assed compared to what they pulled in, e.g. the Arab Spring color revolution rainbow.
I know how color revolutions work, but it’s one thing to pull one off in Bumfuckistan or the Middle East, and quite another to make one happen in the USA. The most they could do here were the BLM riots and the 2020 steal, but that playbook won’t work again. Their tactics are known, official institutions are far sturdier, they don’t have public support, and there’s a large chunk of the public that would be unofficial but armed opposition.
They are indeed, but the BS factor on the left is so high, and always has been, that I wonder who is actually going to do the sedition part. This requires risk, action, and maybe even real life consequences. You can’t do it all with PR and spin.
Agree. My guess is that they don’t really kick things off until 2028. I don’t see them winning but they will fight like the cornered animals they are. Their major liability, as I see it (through a glass darkly) is that they don’t have enough useful idiots. They have money and covert networks of power, but they don’t have enough real people to cover up the machinations very well. Geriatric baby boomers don’t count. Fewer and fewer every day, and the control freaks hate them too.
Trump has vast amounts of political ammunition to use over the next three years. He used to run a reality show, so I’m convinced he’s planning a timed series of bombshell revelations and indictments.
Exactly this. In a open fight the useful idiots wouldn't be overly useful. That said the danger would be to have another Biden type in power after Trump allowing the little demoralised minions to cause havok and be protected from the legal system, not to mention far more funding free flowing into the chaos ops all over
The only boomers they have are the elites, who chose to not have kids and have too much money they didnt work for. Most "boomers", especially offspring of first generation immigrants, the silent generation, are still working, have kids and grandkids they want to grow up free and are not against Trump.
I'd say they're way past flirting now: rolling in sweet baby sedition's arms, entirely seduced by her charms. They went home with her last night and the mail train ain't coming back.
It's a bit more nuanced on support. 10-15% support the ideological agenda- cultural progressives who see the West as inherently 'oppressive'. A further 10-15% are one world cosmopolitans- post-nationals. They probably agree with soft policies like affirmative action in education and hiring, but recognise the stupidity of DEI when they encounter it first-hand. Unfortunately, they are terrified by the cultural progressives and the accusation of being called an -ism, plus they vehemently disagree with Trump on immigration and would be happier if supranational agencies like the UN or the WHO had more power over national governments.
The rest of the support are low information or the young. They don't watch the news much. They probably get their news from the default settings programmed into smartphones. They don't read the articles (other than the first paragraph), just the headlines. They care most about the economy and inflation.
There are a couple of things which Trump needs to do win over the third group.
1) Affordable housing. Not a government program. A federal bill to deregulate building plots and restore property rights to small landholders. 35-40% of increased housing costs are regulatory or regulatory compliance. It's twice as big as immigration and the inelasticity of housing supply.
2) Healthcare. Most countries push medical costs arising from traffic accidents back onto auto insurers. Traffic accidents account for 2-3% of all medical costs in America. It would cost the average driver $66-90 a year. On a positive note, it actually reduces accidents, because risks are heavily weighted towards young male drivers under 25. It forces them to get insured under dad's insurance, and the fear of adding costs to dad's insurance makes them a little more responsible when they drive.
The shift empowers a $42 billion a year war chest. Medical bankruptcies are around $88 to $140 billion a year. 80% are due to poor coverage rather than no coverage. Nobody likes this reality, and healthcare is one of Trump's weakest issues. That $42 billion won't cover all the bills or prevent repossessions, but it might just act as a relief fund or represent a fresh start for people unlucky enough to be hit by cancer or sudden illness in their immediate family.
He should call it the Angel Act, because in many circumstances that's exactly what people are praying for. No father or mother should be forced to choose between life-saving medicine or the financial security of their family, but all too often that's exactly what people are forced to do.
Of the 80% of medical bankruptcies or foreclosures due to medical debt which had insurance, 70% had private coverage. Of these, 80% had private plans beyond ACA minimums.
Approximately 15–18% of Americans with private healthcare coverage beyond ACA minimums are exposed to the potential risk of home loss or bankruptcy due to underinsurance.
People should get a quote for wraparound coverage. It's what your employer hasn't told you you're not covered for. If it's too expensive on a comparison site, then try fiddling with the deductible or the co-pay percentage.
Anyway, the Angel Act would be a major win for Trump, because the Democrats really don't have a reasonable case for opposing it.
Another good idea would to make it a statutory requirement that whenever somebody joins a new medical plan they have to receive a quote to see what they're not covered for. It's cheap and easy these days, with AI and the online world. A lot of the hatred for insurance companies stems from the fact that most employers tell their employees they have great plans. This is rarely the case- only a rare few cover wraparound.
The shit of it is I then went ahead and watched a clip on America's spiralling health insurance costs. $25,572 for a family plan (WSJ) per year, 25% paid by the employee and 75% by the employer. That's messed up! Here in the UK we're no better. 28..8% of UK tax revenue now gets spent on the NHS. It feels like putting a plaster on an axe wound. I plan to do a deep dive on where all the added costs are coming from which are hitting Western medical systems. I have some suspicions. I will probably write an essay once I've done my research.
Lol. Thomas Sowell had it right. No such thing as solutions, only trade-offs- in this case, give with one hand, and take with the other. More multimillionaires fled the UK than any other country in the world in 2024. The average émigrée paid £470K in income taxes, and that's only a portion of the other taxes paid. At the same time we've been importing low wage migrants at unprecedented rates. The boat people are a small percentage compared to legally allowed migration, although visa overstays and people who fly in and don't leave are far more substantial in terms of numbers than anyone can accurately count.
When the East Germans built a wall dividing Berlin to keep people from fleeing to the West, at least they didn't import Africans and Middle Easterners at the same time.
Re-legalizing catastrophic care plans would be a great start. For those of us who have high-dollar full coverage but never use it, catastrophic coverage would be a game changer. People with catastrophic-only coverage don't go to the ER for a Tylenol. The full coverage plans and layers of regulation are what are driving costs through the roof.
I agree. What you really need is a transparent medical exchange, where consumers or their doctors can search by location for the best price and rating for a particular treatment or procedure. At the moment commissioning medical is incredibly opaque from everything I've read on the subject.
I used an AI to search for a range of costs for an MRI in the tri-state areas. Prices ranged from $292-325 from the lowest cost supplier to over $10,000 for a high end private hospital. Prices averaged $1325, with a number of good mid-range suppliers in the $400-800 category.
The shit of it is I then went ahead and watched a clip on America's spiralling health insurance costs. $25,572 for a family plan (WSJ) per year, 25% paid by the employee and 75% by the employer. That's messed up! Here in the UK we're no better. 28..8% of UK tax revenue now gets spent on the NHS. It feels like putting a plaster on an axe wound. I plan to do a deep dive on where all the added costs are coming from which are hitting Western medical systems. I have some suspicions. I will probably write an essay once I've done my research.
The shit of it is I then went ahead and watched a clip on America's spiralling health insurance costs. $25,572 for a family plan (WSJ) per year, 25% paid by the employee and 75% by the employer. That's messed up! Here in the UK we're no better. 28..8% of UK tax revenue now gets spent on the NHS. It feels like putting a plaster on an axe wound. I plan to do a deep dive on where all the added costs are coming from which are hitting Western medical systems. I have some suspicions. I will probably write an essay once I've done my research.
It could also get them out in the open - like with paying people to riot, or to post shit on TikTok, or whatever can be used to trace them back up their food chain? Just asking "for a friend".
Yeah, just a few problems. First, the Hunter Biden laptop letter from the 51 retired intelligence persons, was so egregiously false that it takes a lot of nerve for this bunch to try the same gambit again. Second, they claim that until Trump was re-elected, we had a "fully functioning democracy". Really? I can think of a few thousands ways in which we had no such thing. Finally, the CIA itself does not have a glowing record of supporting "democracy" ANYWHERE. So... yeah, just a few problems with this letter.
It would be laughable if not for the fact that the spooks actually have a lot to lose. How many ostensibly private, legitimate businesses do they control? How much money laundering takes place with their knowledge and/or complicity? How much of the drug trade is protected and/or sponsored for the black cash it throws off? Hope many people are paid and/or threatened to look the other way?
The fourth branch that supposedly doesn’t exist (they’re all just loyal executive branch technocrats, remember?) is big mad that Trump won’t go to war with Russia. All 340 former spooks should have their security clearances cancelled immediately.
I also have been calling the spook shops the fourth branch. The power they wield is undeniable yet hidden - much like a black hole you know it’s there because everything it touches gets sucked in and disappears
👍 De nada, my pleasure. Been saving those links for years just for the right moment. 😉🙂
But can't say that I've delved very deep into the history and geopolitics referenced. Bits and pieces here and there -- though I have a book on this particular "case study" on my shelves, largely unread:
Wikipedia: All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror is a book written by American journalist Stephen Kinzer. The book discusses the 1953 Iranian coup d'état backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in which Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran's democratically elected prime minister, was overthrown by Islamists supported by American and British agents (chief among them Kermit Roosevelt) and royalists loyal to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
The old, out in the pasture, guard is scared to death that the American people will find out, through the transparency of the current elected administration, that their role in the current world order has been a less than stellar one. Every one of our current predicaments, from Iran to N Korea, Chinese power and Russian politics have been either missed or exasperated by those very people who are whining to the Guardian about authoritarianism. The Guardian, a left tilting mouthpiece for authoritarian leftist regimes everywhere, is who they selected to air their grievances. Good fit. The one thing that would work against the old spies complaining is the evidence of their incompetence when they were in power, unless the current state of affairs was the agenda and they have succeeded wildly under BushClintonBushObamaBiden. They were challenged but managed to thwart Trump1 but G.A.S. Trump 2 is proceeding without deferring to their “advice” or guidance. They are losing their greatest asset, the compliant media and its compliant followers who are, little by little abandoning them to find better information sources and solutions to their problems. The battle is joined, the struggle is not over but perhaps a ray of sunshine is appearing and the deep state’s days are numbered.
I know that dirty deeds done dirt cheap (and sometimes at top dollar) are part of what it sometimes takes to run with the big dogs on this sad old earth, glowspookly speaking.
I'm open to hearing that some of the things I'm most pissethed about--done in my name and with big slices taken out of my income and savings potential but against my agreement--were "necessary." Or that there wasn't any other way to do it. Or that, ceteris paribus, it was the best/only choice at the time for reasons I will never know, and would probably be happier never knowing.
I'm even open to revising my opinion of Bushes pere and fils (ugh, it cost me to type those words).
And I'm open to learning that my support for DJT was wrong in this or that ways, or perhaps in toto. (He's way too cozy with Israel for my taste, e.g., but I'm not seeing that that makes him any different than BCBOB.)
But damnitall, to call it "the destruction of democracy" when an election ISN'T overturned, and the elected chief executive is doing the stuff that countless Americans have yearned, asked, begged, and screamed for...that's just...psychopathic. And I'm sick of psychopaths.
I watched this the other night, Steve; surprised to find it still up.
My favorite part continues to be around 3:00 where DJT talks about the media being a political special interest group representing globo...and the photo of the press corps has Mrs. Alan Greenspan there on the right.
We have come so far in the past decade. If they think things are going to go back to 2015, it's more evidence of how unfit they are to rule.
I agree. I grew up in the Cold War military and was a participant in a nuclear Nato defending democracy from the Ruskis and in Vietnam fighting against the dominos. All was a part of the great conflict between freedom and authoritarianism that birthed the Intelligence Community for good or ill. I didn’t vote for Trump to do all things well but to be a disruptive force to the status quo. I’m pleased with some things and not so much with others. I’m glad for his Israel support but unsure about some domestic issues. Overall I’m glad he is our President and that he has the intelligence community clutching their pearls and whining.
The audience of traditional media is shrinking for the same reason the audience for unfunny late shows is: silent generation aged into the nursing homes and the oldest boomers are almost 80 now, and they’re also aging into nursing homes.
Thanks alot. I’m a year from 80 but to my credit I gave up on the mainstream media, network TV and newspapers 15 years ago. No home yet, independent except for my VA agent orange induced disability. All that time they kept telling me that it was harmless, liked covid vaccines and so much other crap the media has fed this wiser old boomer.
No, not forgetting. I remember my father questioning the wisdom of that decision when I was a kid. He was stationed in Japan from 47-49 and had seen the results , long and short term, of the bombs.
No rational person seeing wide scale destruction of a war can help but wonder if the path not taken might have been better.
My understanding is that the War Dept estimated losing 1M dead from a sea invasion of the Japanese Home Islands, with Japanese losses exceeding 5M, of which a fair number would be suicides after losing.
The thing that many doubters of the nuclear end to the war may not appreciate is that it obtained what a conventional invasion could not: an order from the Emperor to surrender. An invasion would have seemed conquerable to the last defender. A single plane delivering a bomb that could destroy 4 square miles and a third of the city’s population could not be defended against by a nation short of fuel and aircraft.
I watched a great video yesterday about the role of Japanese physicist Yoshio Nisha in persuading his government to surrender once Nagasaki was bombed and he grasped the inherent size of the Manhattan Project: the scale of the necessary enrichment process and the resources to have developed both uranium AND plutonium bombs. He realized the U.S. was poised to rain nuclear weapons on Japan until it became uninhabitable.
My father’s take was that the use of the bombs was totally justified. He spent much of the war in Burma. The Japanese troops remaining at the end of the war killed themselves by attacking vastly superior forces in charge after charge. He agreed with the war department that not only would we risk losing over 1M men but that if ordered to do so, soldier and civilian deaths would have been in the multi millions. He had many former Japanese soldiers working for him and this opinion was reinforced in conversations with them.
My comment wasn’t about the use of the nukes, it was that exposing our soldiers was an unnecessary exercise. We knew the effects perfectly well.
I hope I didn’t make you feel bad. I was thinking of my mother, who is 78 and in a nursing home due to dementia and the inability to walk more than a few steps without falling.
She made a lot of poor health choices and sedentary lifestyle choices that I think influenced her early decline, and she has a lot of peers in her nursing home who are younger than her.
Nah, we all get handed a different set of circumstances. I did what I could and despite many mistakes have done okay. Sorry about your experience with your mom. The end of life can be a tough time for many. I have been blessed with decent health despite my self destructive tendencies.
Those poor SEVENTEEN SCORE (17!) InTeLlIgEnCe AnAlYsTs were looking forward to long retirements of side gigs n continued influence n extended perks n keys to stuff n special parking...
...and BIG ORANGE MEANIE and the SHORT NAZI JEW are stealing it from them!
THIS IS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TO OUR DEMOCRACY!!
I got nothin for ya bro. It's...appalling. Concerning. Infuriating. All so tiresome.
The whole document from the unnamed retired intel officials is on Substack:
https://steadystate1.substack.com/p/accelerating-authoritarian-dynamics
Will get into it tomorrow, and welcome your thoughts.
After the fraud of the 51 retired intelligence agents claiming Hunters laptop was Russian disinformation and other nonsense, I’m thinking the weight of retired intelligence agents is essentially zero.
To those with any sense, yes. To those who swallow mainstream media’s output whole, unquestioningly, this particular document, or rather the sound bites and headlines that will be used to sensationalise it, it will only strengthen their opinions against the administration. These people are just like those retired military, sitting on the boards of weapons manufacturers, while guesting on news channels, as talking head “experts”, and without any disclosure by them or the networks about their current lucrative positions, constantly push forward the narrative that war with China, or Russia, or whoever, is going to occur within the next couple of years, with unquestioned certainty. It has ramped up in recent years, with Putin being the bogeyman that will sweep across Europe unless…, etc. They advocate for big spending on armaments and bringing back conscription, amongst other things. The same types that stirred up the hysteria about WMDs post 9/11.
The idea that those involved in regime changes in other countries, when the leaders would not play ball, are concerned about democracy is off the scale hypocrisy. The NSA and CIA have been running their own authoritarian regime for as long as I can remember, with the surveillance program they set up since the noughties being the cherry on top of their success.
A curse on all their houses.
Analogous to all the retired FDA/NIH/CDC “experts” who now grift for Big Pharma and other parts of the medical-industrial complex.
In exactly the same way the health “talking head
Health experts”, push the required narratives. All are, broadly speaking, under the same umbrella. A very profitable position for them to be in. A position that means all manner of catastrophic consequences for ourselves and our families.
If I was a violent man, which I try not to be,( anymore ), these bastards would be first against the wall!
Exactly! This has played out for decades. News channels were turned into recruitment propaganda for the armed forces, and fear was instilled in Joe Public so the money that was spent on war and weapons could be justified. It’s ramping up again in Europe, with conscription making a comeback in Germany, and being sought in other neighbouring countries, because “Putin bad”, and China “will attack.. we must be ready”.. bullshit. It’s like they have crystal balls, instead of the truth, which is they themselves, as regular talking heads on the “news” are advertising the very companies that will make the new shiny weapons, and end rich them in turn. I haven’t watched in years.. I’ve seen snippets.. nothing has changed bar the names of the new menace to “ liberty” and “sovereignty “.. total bs.
It’s all about fear. Fear of losing the social group they are in, fear of whatever else… blackmail perhaps.
That’s right. A fearful person is easier to control and will accept measures they would normally object to being imposed, as its human nature to want things to go back to ‘normal’. It’s why the msm is constantly negative. Truth goes out the window, if only things go back as before. People generally don’t like change. Fear porn also sells well, as the newspaper and tv news channels know. It’s why I stopped buying and looking at it after the lies that were spread during , after, and especially just before the 08 crash.
Very few are brave enough to stand apart from the safety of their social group and risk bring cast out.
It’s a larger number than we might think, depending on the issue. Between 10 and 20 per cent will not bow down to peer, or government pressure. The trouble comes when trying to form a cohesive group out of that minority. There are the endless, outrage provoking news cycles, that can run with a story for a couple of days, then suddenly there’s a switch to the next hot topic. The distractions and infighting amongst those just not having the narrative on offer, ensure any meaningful attempts to organise are either hijacked at leadership level by people wishing to further other agendas, or the energy of the dissidents gives way to apathy, as the machine has deep pockets, as well as government and media backing, so the odds are stacked in their favour. Common sense has become most uncommon!
I don’t disagree. I’m hopeful that previous recent events have allowed for some additional wisdom but…..
No need to talk you out of it, Chris. This is treason.
The enemies of America have been trying to start a color revolution domestically (at least) since Trump was re-elected. They are failing, and now they are openly calling for it.
The culprits of this particular faction most likely are members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the nexus of intelligence agencies and business people. Pick a random Fortune 500 company and look at the board of directors' bios. There will be at least one board member who also is a member of CFR, and usually two or three CFR members. At least one of those CFR plants is former CIA, FBI, DARPA.
Just a tiny bit of inductive reasoning leads one to suspect the companies have prior knowledge of the next hotspot in the world to protect assets or profit from the color revolution. These traitors on a Venn diagram would encompass overlapping of the deep state, the EU leadership and the Davos crowd with the City of London smack in the middle.
Trump knows what he is up against. He has shut down the Israel/Iran assets that created all the Mideast crises, cut off military equipment to NATO's war on Russia, prevented the City of London from moving its financial center to Qatar or Dubai or any of UAE states, cut off USAID and is strangling the narcoterrorist network money flow to the City of London. The actors in the Venn diagram are running out of collateral and are being forced to use their own capital instead of raping the US taxpayer to pay for own destruction.
I also believe Bessent and Powell have been waging a ferocious yet quiet war behind the scenes and have mostly neutered the bad actors' ability to disrupt the U.S. Treasury and stock markets. The bad guys tried and failed miserably during the tariff tantrum in April. The bad guys still have a lot of ammunition in the tax havens such as the Caymans and British Virgin Islands.
Pray for Trump and the men and women around him. They are literally trying to free America, once and for all, from the grips of the financialists taking orders from the City of London.
With few exceptions likely best described as editing errors, the world began on January 20, 2025.
For a lot of young, and older people, completely disconnected and disillusioned with regimes of the last few decades, it actually did. In a good way. Unwilling to accept the narratives that had been force fed to them throughout their lives, they sought change in Trump, and engaged in the electoral process to ensure he got back to the White House. Now, whether he is the man to see the changes they wanted brought about, is another matter.
But to see how the Dems ran their last campaign against him, and how quickly their construct of the last thirty years has fallen apart, as well as their inability to offer anything new, is to be welcomed. I, for one, did not like the brinksmanship by the Biden administration with Russia, as if a nuclear response by them was nothing to worry about. It came pretty close on more than one occasion, and as someone with kids depending on me for their safety I was not, and never will be impressed by the cavalier attitude of the Dems and Biden. Not forgetting Kamala, of course. Thank God she was rightly hammered at the ballot box. So, I get your point, regarding the NSA and CIA and the reporting on this document, but what you say is true in other ways. Take care. God bless, and have a peaceful weekend.
100% true. The US is trending towards authoritarianism and has been for decades.
Think about the Biden regime and where another 4 years would have gotten us.
But like everything else the left tells us, it's projection (and a bit of jealousy).
Unless it mentions a team of slavic prostitutes urinating on bedroom furniture of some kind, I'm not interested.
They are so terrified that Trump is going to break them that they are moving up the timetable on the regime change scheme they have always planned to implement. It's absolute evidence that Trump is right over the target. But now he has to start dropping bombs, maybe even real ones.
"This document draws solely on open-source information—media reports, public statements, academic studies, and independent watchdog analyses"
Reading through, you would think that intelligence analysts should do better than repeating mainstream media claims.
they are the ones giving the msm the claims to say, so this is very circular.
Bingo! It’s blatantly done. Or should that be brazenly. Or shamelessly!
“on a trajectory “ is a broad term to use, where inconvenient truths can be nullified by pointing at other possible developments.. the ifs and maybes are a dime a dozen in this case.
The "document" is unsubstantiated (no citations) and poorly argued opinion. It thus reads like armchair speculation.
I don't want to spend time thinking about or attempting to counter this particular piece of drivel.
I do want to read, think about, and discuss how the steady stream of vapid "reporting"/"analysis" and the academic/journalistic ecosystem that feeds from it - e.g., Snyder, David French - can be disrupted before its propagators permanently handicap the generations already suffering from inability to discern and think critically. It's a plague of stupification.
I think about how counter things like this too—- no point in battling with the people who created it. But can the vapidity of it be pointed out to others? Especially to those who may be inclined to believe it without guidance as to its shallow reasoning?
I agree, I couldn’t even get through the whole thing because it frustrated me so. But did think it was all very high-level, no details at all given, mostly conclusions presented as “analysis.” Feels incredibly fake— surely a report by real intelligence agents would be better, yes?
I remember. Reagan.
He also shot and paralyzed Jim Brady, of Brady Bill fame, Reagan’s press secretary, and a secret service member and a police officer, all to ‘impress Jody Foster’.
Theres was a huge push for the gun control measures, but I don’t recall any organized movement demanding increased mental health support. Do you?
The Lennon shooter also had mental illness as his justification was to become famous?
I remember the other people that were shot that day.. I was young at the time, but that was a big deal, so the name rang a bell.. as for the mental health side of things, the increase by 70 per cent of antidepressants and anxiety medications since those lockdowns were introduced, way back in the day, or so it feels, saw no increase in the services to treat those in need, victims of a politicised health response, but cut loose and set adrift to cope with their own problems, regardless of the root cause. The lack of resources dedicated to treating those of us that succumb to a mental health issue, be caused by the increased use of AI online , will be exposed as totally inadequate by this time next year. There’s a tsunami of psychological trauma headed our way, as the epidemic of loneliness that is prevalent globally, will be met by AI interactions that will ultimately only make matters worse.
Hinckley and Chapman, on the face of things, were symptoms of the problems that are still ubiquitous today, thanks to the internet!
Mark Chapman was Lennons shooter. His name was bugging me. I also mixed Hinckley’s name up with Myra Hindley, the moors child murderer. I need a shower from just thinking about these people. Narcissistic psychopaths with guns, and Hindley a torturous, murdering, callous bitch. God had a special place for her to go to.
They are Fear Merchants, selling their anxiety-producing wares to a gullible, left-leaning public that was broken by Covid. In particular, histrionic women and the beta males who submit to their panic attacks are the targets of this marketing campaign. Ask them, directly, which rights they've lost. Laugh at their hemming and hawing.
They are named, sort of. See https://thesteadystate.org/our-members/.
With a half hour to spare I went through the first dozen alphabetically listed members. I did not find any notable intellectual diversity.
This does not reveal who wrote the report (it was not all 340 members) or how membership agreement was obtained.
I should have written "political diversity." Many Democratic administration. appointments; no Republican administration appointments. Also, it's sort of a B-team (or less) for the Deep State. When having been a former Ambassador to Paraguay or the Marshall Islands is your main credential, you were not important.
Doesn’t Hinckley’s actions remind you of the De Niro character in Taxi Driver?
Absolutely. That is a genius comparison, actually.
Sad to see this development. Disappointing that these people are regurgitating MSM themes. Especially the ones who were all in for the Iraq War. How embarrassing it must be, maybe not, as that requires introspection and humility.
Did anyone else immediately think of John Hinkley, Jr?
I hate googling for info when it is on the tip of my tongue.. he shot Lennon? No?
Someone left a comment to this document mentioning that IC is about 17 years behind, then mentioned how President Wilson greatly expanded presidential powers.
I replied to that comment with stats about executive orders issued per President, because Wilson comes in third after Hoover and FDR for most executive orders. I also pointed out how many executive orders of presidents are to undo executive orders of their predecessors (which I would not personally call undoing actions as “authoritative”.
The author left this comment to me:
“The number of Executive Orders is not really a good metric to determine use or abuse. They are used for many things, and are often not really necessary, so the numbers vary considerably.”
Which is insane because in their document their first piece of “evidence” of authoritarianism is EXACTLY the number of executive orders issued by Trump.
IC doublespeak. They routinely contradict themselves. In the same sentence. With zero awareness. Then they sit back, pleased as punch at how awfully smart they all are.
Hell* is a big party with flat, warm, cheap champagne, watered down drinks, Harry and Meghan hosting, techno music, and former IC cretins trying to pick me up. Short. Comb-overs. Speak about themselves in the third person, and ask me where I know “Prince” Harry from. (Unrelated question: Why is that little rat faced red head “the First Amendment is bonkers” foreigner who interferes in our elections still in the United States? Can anyone tell me?)
*Worrying that I will end up in this self-important CFR hell keeps me close to Jesus, so there’s that.
I can’t finish this report. It hurts my head. It’s so obviously damn partisan, I can’t stand to read any more of past the first four key findings.
The idea that Trump of all people is expanding executive power is just absurd when (a) so far Bill Clinton ranks higher for the number of executive actions issued, and (b) FDR outranks every President by leaps and bounds in the number of executive actions issued.
Also, the Supreme Court was weaponized long ago with liberal courts in the past who created laws rather than interpreted them. Court appointments have always been partisan. But current court is and has been trying to correct for decades of judicial overreach. To call this correction evidence of authoritarianism is such a gross misunderstanding of what is happening.
They've increased their numbers; only 51 spooks signed off on the Hunter Biden laptop, now we've got 340 out of work color revolutionist fomenting insurrection.
Exactly my thoughts.
Their being out of work might not be a bad thing, though. I wouldn’t mind seeing a lot more of these people out of work, truth be told.
Here's link to their names: https://thesteadystate.org/our-members/
Thanks; the list is a good reminder of how “CIA-adjacent” many in the State Dept. are. Makes you wonder just how large the Intel Community really is. We need to reimagine all aspects of intelligence.
we're not even allowed to know their annual budget, sure we can't know who is taking the money.
I wonder if there are any Gov. agencies / entities that don’t have I.C. people embedded / attached. . . and the same probably goes for all those hundreds of NGOs.
no doubt their eyes are everywhere
The unelected Deep State warning of the threat to "our democracy". Brilliant.
I think the Deep State, and the entire globalist progressive establishment, feels cornered by Trump (and by rising nationalist populism elsewhere). Their response flirts with sedition, if not treason, and it seems unworkable. Their USAID machinations have been defunded and exposed. The NGO funding is under heightened scrutiny. Only a small fraction of the population supports them. Trump has at least nominal control over the intelligence community, and despite the “resistance” pearl-clutchers shrieking about “fascism," he has the law on his side.
I think Trump is intentionally turning up the pressure and forcing his domestic enemies into a choice. 1) They can escalate the Resistance into clear violations of federal law and get indicted for it, or 2) they can back down. Trump is doing something similar with Democrat governors and mayors: either resist ICE and face federal law, or cave. Either way, Trump wins.
They are VERY MUCH "flirting with sedition," and doing less and less well at hiding it.
Yes but the object is to provoke Trump into going after them, thereby fulfilling his assigned role of deranged paranoid tyrant, and retroactively justifying the coup they were totally not calling for. I've seen this show before.
That’s a very dangerous game, though. For them to win, Trump would have to go after them in stupid and illegal ways, losing in court and alienating the public. If he simply avoids Biden-style made-up lawfare and just enforces long-standing federal law, they’re sunk.
Sort of, yes. But the idea of a well-executed color revolution play is to create an impossible choice for the regime you want removed: they must either prove they're actually "good guys" by acquiescing and allowing the astroturfed regime change, or else prove they're the "bad guy" they're being framed to be by resisting it or shutting it down.
We'll see. Trump (or at least his advisors, who know this game well) have maneuvered around several of these. But they've all been pretty half-assed compared to what they pulled in, e.g. the Arab Spring color revolution rainbow.
I know how color revolutions work, but it’s one thing to pull one off in Bumfuckistan or the Middle East, and quite another to make one happen in the USA. The most they could do here were the BLM riots and the 2020 steal, but that playbook won’t work again. Their tactics are known, official institutions are far sturdier, they don’t have public support, and there’s a large chunk of the public that would be unofficial but armed opposition.
Precisely
They are indeed, but the BS factor on the left is so high, and always has been, that I wonder who is actually going to do the sedition part. This requires risk, action, and maybe even real life consequences. You can’t do it all with PR and spin.
Fat-Boy Pritzer's Gotta Whole New Lap Band
Musta lost a couple hundred pounds
Presidential Perennial Pipedreams
Agree. My guess is that they don’t really kick things off until 2028. I don’t see them winning but they will fight like the cornered animals they are. Their major liability, as I see it (through a glass darkly) is that they don’t have enough useful idiots. They have money and covert networks of power, but they don’t have enough real people to cover up the machinations very well. Geriatric baby boomers don’t count. Fewer and fewer every day, and the control freaks hate them too.
Trump has vast amounts of political ammunition to use over the next three years. He used to run a reality show, so I’m convinced he’s planning a timed series of bombshell revelations and indictments.
they have millions of "useful idiots", the real problem is most of them aren't very useful. They have been preselected for being incompetent losers.
Exactly this. In a open fight the useful idiots wouldn't be overly useful. That said the danger would be to have another Biden type in power after Trump allowing the little demoralised minions to cause havok and be protected from the legal system, not to mention far more funding free flowing into the chaos ops all over
The only boomers they have are the elites, who chose to not have kids and have too much money they didnt work for. Most "boomers", especially offspring of first generation immigrants, the silent generation, are still working, have kids and grandkids they want to grow up free and are not against Trump.
I'd say they're way past flirting now: rolling in sweet baby sedition's arms, entirely seduced by her charms. They went home with her last night and the mail train ain't coming back.
And I replied that they were merely asking to be steadies with it. I acknowledge being outdone with your superb reference.
It's a bit more nuanced on support. 10-15% support the ideological agenda- cultural progressives who see the West as inherently 'oppressive'. A further 10-15% are one world cosmopolitans- post-nationals. They probably agree with soft policies like affirmative action in education and hiring, but recognise the stupidity of DEI when they encounter it first-hand. Unfortunately, they are terrified by the cultural progressives and the accusation of being called an -ism, plus they vehemently disagree with Trump on immigration and would be happier if supranational agencies like the UN or the WHO had more power over national governments.
The rest of the support are low information or the young. They don't watch the news much. They probably get their news from the default settings programmed into smartphones. They don't read the articles (other than the first paragraph), just the headlines. They care most about the economy and inflation.
There are a couple of things which Trump needs to do win over the third group.
1) Affordable housing. Not a government program. A federal bill to deregulate building plots and restore property rights to small landholders. 35-40% of increased housing costs are regulatory or regulatory compliance. It's twice as big as immigration and the inelasticity of housing supply.
2) Healthcare. Most countries push medical costs arising from traffic accidents back onto auto insurers. Traffic accidents account for 2-3% of all medical costs in America. It would cost the average driver $66-90 a year. On a positive note, it actually reduces accidents, because risks are heavily weighted towards young male drivers under 25. It forces them to get insured under dad's insurance, and the fear of adding costs to dad's insurance makes them a little more responsible when they drive.
The shift empowers a $42 billion a year war chest. Medical bankruptcies are around $88 to $140 billion a year. 80% are due to poor coverage rather than no coverage. Nobody likes this reality, and healthcare is one of Trump's weakest issues. That $42 billion won't cover all the bills or prevent repossessions, but it might just act as a relief fund or represent a fresh start for people unlucky enough to be hit by cancer or sudden illness in their immediate family.
He should call it the Angel Act, because in many circumstances that's exactly what people are praying for. No father or mother should be forced to choose between life-saving medicine or the financial security of their family, but all too often that's exactly what people are forced to do.
Of the 80% of medical bankruptcies or foreclosures due to medical debt which had insurance, 70% had private coverage. Of these, 80% had private plans beyond ACA minimums.
Approximately 15–18% of Americans with private healthcare coverage beyond ACA minimums are exposed to the potential risk of home loss or bankruptcy due to underinsurance.
People should get a quote for wraparound coverage. It's what your employer hasn't told you you're not covered for. If it's too expensive on a comparison site, then try fiddling with the deductible or the co-pay percentage.
Anyway, the Angel Act would be a major win for Trump, because the Democrats really don't have a reasonable case for opposing it.
Another good idea would to make it a statutory requirement that whenever somebody joins a new medical plan they have to receive a quote to see what they're not covered for. It's cheap and easy these days, with AI and the online world. A lot of the hatred for insurance companies stems from the fact that most employers tell their employees they have great plans. This is rarely the case- only a rare few cover wraparound.
Great ideas.
The shit of it is I then went ahead and watched a clip on America's spiralling health insurance costs. $25,572 for a family plan (WSJ) per year, 25% paid by the employee and 75% by the employer. That's messed up! Here in the UK we're no better. 28..8% of UK tax revenue now gets spent on the NHS. It feels like putting a plaster on an axe wound. I plan to do a deep dive on where all the added costs are coming from which are hitting Western medical systems. I have some suspicions. I will probably write an essay once I've done my research.
I was told government heathcare was free, lol.
Lol. Thomas Sowell had it right. No such thing as solutions, only trade-offs- in this case, give with one hand, and take with the other. More multimillionaires fled the UK than any other country in the world in 2024. The average émigrée paid £470K in income taxes, and that's only a portion of the other taxes paid. At the same time we've been importing low wage migrants at unprecedented rates. The boat people are a small percentage compared to legally allowed migration, although visa overstays and people who fly in and don't leave are far more substantial in terms of numbers than anyone can accurately count.
We're importing our way to national poverty.
When the East Germans built a wall dividing Berlin to keep people from fleeing to the West, at least they didn't import Africans and Middle Easterners at the same time.
Mass deportations will eventually lower housing demand and thus prices. For healthcare, we need pro-free-market reforms.
Re-legalizing catastrophic care plans would be a great start. For those of us who have high-dollar full coverage but never use it, catastrophic coverage would be a game changer. People with catastrophic-only coverage don't go to the ER for a Tylenol. The full coverage plans and layers of regulation are what are driving costs through the roof.
I agree. What you really need is a transparent medical exchange, where consumers or their doctors can search by location for the best price and rating for a particular treatment or procedure. At the moment commissioning medical is incredibly opaque from everything I've read on the subject.
I used an AI to search for a range of costs for an MRI in the tri-state areas. Prices ranged from $292-325 from the lowest cost supplier to over $10,000 for a high end private hospital. Prices averaged $1325, with a number of good mid-range suppliers in the $400-800 category.
For (fill in the blank) we need pro-free market reforms.
Please spread these ideas far and wide.
The shit of it is I then went ahead and watched a clip on America's spiralling health insurance costs. $25,572 for a family plan (WSJ) per year, 25% paid by the employee and 75% by the employer. That's messed up! Here in the UK we're no better. 28..8% of UK tax revenue now gets spent on the NHS. It feels like putting a plaster on an axe wound. I plan to do a deep dive on where all the added costs are coming from which are hitting Western medical systems. I have some suspicions. I will probably write an essay once I've done my research.
The thought that went into your post is much appreciated!
The shit of it is I then went ahead and watched a clip on America's spiralling health insurance costs. $25,572 for a family plan (WSJ) per year, 25% paid by the employee and 75% by the employer. That's messed up! Here in the UK we're no better. 28..8% of UK tax revenue now gets spent on the NHS. It feels like putting a plaster on an axe wound. I plan to do a deep dive on where all the added costs are coming from which are hitting Western medical systems. I have some suspicions. I will probably write an essay once I've done my research.
They're not just flirting, I think they're asking sedition to go steady with them.
It could also get them out in the open - like with paying people to riot, or to post shit on TikTok, or whatever can be used to trace them back up their food chain? Just asking "for a friend".
Yeah, just a few problems. First, the Hunter Biden laptop letter from the 51 retired intelligence persons, was so egregiously false that it takes a lot of nerve for this bunch to try the same gambit again. Second, they claim that until Trump was re-elected, we had a "fully functioning democracy". Really? I can think of a few thousands ways in which we had no such thing. Finally, the CIA itself does not have a glowing record of supporting "democracy" ANYWHERE. So... yeah, just a few problems with this letter.
We had a “fully functioning democracy” run by them, the Three Letter Intelligence Agencies!
A "fully functioning imitation democracy."
Indeed!!!
💯
It would be laughable if not for the fact that the spooks actually have a lot to lose. How many ostensibly private, legitimate businesses do they control? How much money laundering takes place with their knowledge and/or complicity? How much of the drug trade is protected and/or sponsored for the black cash it throws off? Hope many people are paid and/or threatened to look the other way?
Democracy = a system of government in which (s)elected officials dutifully obey all directives from career spooks.
Authoritarianism = a system of government in which elected officials assert control over spooks.
Wait a minute.
So the professional liars are confirming what the pseudoscientists have been telling us?
I'm excited to see where this leads.
😂 so accurate
The government warns we should defy the government?
The unelected part of the government warns that we should defy, resist, and prepare to remove the elected part of government.
The fourth branch that supposedly doesn’t exist (they’re all just loyal executive branch technocrats, remember?) is big mad that Trump won’t go to war with Russia. All 340 former spooks should have their security clearances cancelled immediately.
I also have been calling the spook shops the fourth branch. The power they wield is undeniable yet hidden - much like a black hole you know it’s there because everything it touches gets sucked in and disappears
Exactamundo!
These analysts could have written the same report during Biden’s admin… but they didn’t, they chose to remain silent back then. 🙄😡
Always remember 2 things:
1. What they accuse others of is what they want to do or are doing.
2. If it's in The Guardian it's dem/deep-state in origin.
Well yes, it was “fully functional” back then. 😖
🤣
"retired intelligence analysts confirm what the political scientists are telling us"
Jonathan Livingston Seagull-tier midwittery in that line.
ICYMI, some golden oldies on that theme:
"America's Coup Machine: Destroying Democracy Since 1953
U.S. efforts to overthrow foreign governments leave the world less peaceful, less just and less hopeful."
http://www.alternet.org/world/americas-coup-machine-destroying-democracy-1953
Archive link: https://archive.ph/GdaDE
WikiLeaks: CIA has interfered in 81 national elections not including coups.
https://x.com/wikileaks/status/854419203201404930
Links to this NPR article:
https://www.npr.org/2016/12/22/506625913/database-tracks-history-of-u-s-meddling-in-foreign-elections
Karma, baby:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma#Comparable_concepts
Note the 1918 cartoon about Krupp.
Excellent info. Thanks.
👍 De nada, my pleasure. Been saving those links for years just for the right moment. 😉🙂
But can't say that I've delved very deep into the history and geopolitics referenced. Bits and pieces here and there -- though I have a book on this particular "case study" on my shelves, largely unread:
Wikipedia: All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror is a book written by American journalist Stephen Kinzer. The book discusses the 1953 Iranian coup d'état backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in which Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran's democratically elected prime minister, was overthrown by Islamists supported by American and British agents (chief among them Kermit Roosevelt) and royalists loyal to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Shah%27s_Men
I'd say it's all coming out now and they can't hide it, although it doesn't stop them trying.
The old, out in the pasture, guard is scared to death that the American people will find out, through the transparency of the current elected administration, that their role in the current world order has been a less than stellar one. Every one of our current predicaments, from Iran to N Korea, Chinese power and Russian politics have been either missed or exasperated by those very people who are whining to the Guardian about authoritarianism. The Guardian, a left tilting mouthpiece for authoritarian leftist regimes everywhere, is who they selected to air their grievances. Good fit. The one thing that would work against the old spies complaining is the evidence of their incompetence when they were in power, unless the current state of affairs was the agenda and they have succeeded wildly under BushClintonBushObamaBiden. They were challenged but managed to thwart Trump1 but G.A.S. Trump 2 is proceeding without deferring to their “advice” or guidance. They are losing their greatest asset, the compliant media and its compliant followers who are, little by little abandoning them to find better information sources and solutions to their problems. The battle is joined, the struggle is not over but perhaps a ray of sunshine is appearing and the deep state’s days are numbered.
My overall view and spirit as well.
I know that dirty deeds done dirt cheap (and sometimes at top dollar) are part of what it sometimes takes to run with the big dogs on this sad old earth, glowspookly speaking.
I'm open to hearing that some of the things I'm most pissethed about--done in my name and with big slices taken out of my income and savings potential but against my agreement--were "necessary." Or that there wasn't any other way to do it. Or that, ceteris paribus, it was the best/only choice at the time for reasons I will never know, and would probably be happier never knowing.
I'm even open to revising my opinion of Bushes pere and fils (ugh, it cost me to type those words).
And I'm open to learning that my support for DJT was wrong in this or that ways, or perhaps in toto. (He's way too cozy with Israel for my taste, e.g., but I'm not seeing that that makes him any different than BCBOB.)
But damnitall, to call it "the destruction of democracy" when an election ISN'T overturned, and the elected chief executive is doing the stuff that countless Americans have yearned, asked, begged, and screamed for...that's just...psychopathic. And I'm sick of psychopaths.
I watched this the other night, Steve; surprised to find it still up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2qIXXafxCQ
My favorite part continues to be around 3:00 where DJT talks about the media being a political special interest group representing globo...and the photo of the press corps has Mrs. Alan Greenspan there on the right.
We have come so far in the past decade. If they think things are going to go back to 2015, it's more evidence of how unfit they are to rule.
I agree. I grew up in the Cold War military and was a participant in a nuclear Nato defending democracy from the Ruskis and in Vietnam fighting against the dominos. All was a part of the great conflict between freedom and authoritarianism that birthed the Intelligence Community for good or ill. I didn’t vote for Trump to do all things well but to be a disruptive force to the status quo. I’m pleased with some things and not so much with others. I’m glad for his Israel support but unsure about some domestic issues. Overall I’m glad he is our President and that he has the intelligence community clutching their pearls and whining.
The audience of traditional media is shrinking for the same reason the audience for unfunny late shows is: silent generation aged into the nursing homes and the oldest boomers are almost 80 now, and they’re also aging into nursing homes.
Thanks alot. I’m a year from 80 but to my credit I gave up on the mainstream media, network TV and newspapers 15 years ago. No home yet, independent except for my VA agent orange induced disability. All that time they kept telling me that it was harmless, liked covid vaccines and so much other crap the media has fed this wiser old boomer.
Don’t forget them knowingly exposing U.S. Army & Navy personnel to profound radiation during 1950’s nuclear tests “just to see what would happen.”
No, not forgetting. I remember my father questioning the wisdom of that decision when I was a kid. He was stationed in Japan from 47-49 and had seen the results , long and short term, of the bombs.
No rational person seeing wide scale destruction of a war can help but wonder if the path not taken might have been better.
My understanding is that the War Dept estimated losing 1M dead from a sea invasion of the Japanese Home Islands, with Japanese losses exceeding 5M, of which a fair number would be suicides after losing.
The thing that many doubters of the nuclear end to the war may not appreciate is that it obtained what a conventional invasion could not: an order from the Emperor to surrender. An invasion would have seemed conquerable to the last defender. A single plane delivering a bomb that could destroy 4 square miles and a third of the city’s population could not be defended against by a nation short of fuel and aircraft.
I watched a great video yesterday about the role of Japanese physicist Yoshio Nisha in persuading his government to surrender once Nagasaki was bombed and he grasped the inherent size of the Manhattan Project: the scale of the necessary enrichment process and the resources to have developed both uranium AND plutonium bombs. He realized the U.S. was poised to rain nuclear weapons on Japan until it became uninhabitable.
https://youtu.be/lD7EvIQh_zY?si=crqEBLO-SHkXpyD-
My father’s take was that the use of the bombs was totally justified. He spent much of the war in Burma. The Japanese troops remaining at the end of the war killed themselves by attacking vastly superior forces in charge after charge. He agreed with the war department that not only would we risk losing over 1M men but that if ordered to do so, soldier and civilian deaths would have been in the multi millions. He had many former Japanese soldiers working for him and this opinion was reinforced in conversations with them.
My comment wasn’t about the use of the nukes, it was that exposing our soldiers was an unnecessary exercise. We knew the effects perfectly well.
I hope I didn’t make you feel bad. I was thinking of my mother, who is 78 and in a nursing home due to dementia and the inability to walk more than a few steps without falling.
She made a lot of poor health choices and sedentary lifestyle choices that I think influenced her early decline, and she has a lot of peers in her nursing home who are younger than her.
I salute you for staying independent and sharp!
Nah, we all get handed a different set of circumstances. I did what I could and despite many mistakes have done okay. Sorry about your experience with your mom. The end of life can be a tough time for many. I have been blessed with decent health despite my self destructive tendencies.
Oh, you're just not nice.
Those poor SEVENTEEN SCORE (17!) InTeLlIgEnCe AnAlYsTs were looking forward to long retirements of side gigs n continued influence n extended perks n keys to stuff n special parking...
...and BIG ORANGE MEANIE and the SHORT NAZI JEW are stealing it from them!
THIS IS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TO OUR DEMOCRACY!!
I got nothin for ya bro. It's...appalling. Concerning. Infuriating. All so tiresome.
No wait. I do got somethin for ya. Here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GvQ5gNKsQ4
The left always projects.
They are warning about the right being authoritarian because the left is authoritarian.
Democracy is when the left wins
A threat to democracy is when the left loses
Precisely.
Hungary, the possibly most well-ordered nation in Europe when it comes to "certain issues" right now?
The nation with zero islamic terror?
Where people do not get locked up for saying "trannies fondling little kids is a perversion"?
That Hungary?
I think the USA would do (even) great(er) if it was to emulate Hungary a bit.
It would be really funny if they were right. But then they would not dare sign their name. A true dictatorship is simply not possible in this country.
I did four years as an Intelligence Analyst in the Army. These guys and gals are using unreliable sources: namely, themselves.
If the source is unreliable then the analysis is also unreliable. Garbage in, garbage out.