Yes, we can. But to prevent it, more people need to wake up. We all need to do something to prevent NATO's push to start World War 3 and build a global Reich.
Bravo! A great clarification of your previous post, "How will Biden start a full-fledged war with Russia?" It fully expands on what I tried to hint at in my comment there.
As if saving the world from WWIII isn't reason enough, "Americans waking up," as you say, is actually very much in our own best interest. Why? Chalmers Johnson explains this best in his "Sorrows of Empire" series of books. In short, no country in history has ever remained for long, both an empire abroad and a democracy at home. Our domestic decline, and fading democracy, is very much in line with the consequences of empire he predicts.
So if "We all need to do something," then what is that something? The first step, of course, is that Americans must see through elite propaganda and fully realize that Russia is not a threat to them. This is the essential work you are doing. Knowledge is imperative, but then what do we do with it? There needs to be general consensus on the answer to this question. In the past, organized labor was a big part of the answer, but the power of labor has been both crushed and co-opted. Look at what happened to the railroad strikers last year: Biden simply used the power of the state to outlaw their strike!
I have an idea of what needs to happen, but a critical mass of people must agree.
"The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside." - Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 1987.
Thanks, Andy. I very much appreciate the comment and support. And that's a great quote from Bloom. Brilliant. So true. Isn't that what has happened in the U.S.? Americans already can't imagine any other system; they can't even remember how the U.S. used to be, when it was free in the pre-2001 period... Finally, what are your ideas of what needs to happen? I'd love to hear... cheers, JV
Harry Truman who created the CIA, regretted it in an Opinion piece in The Washington Post December 22, 1963 essentially saying the CIA went rogue.
Luckily I copied it years ago because no matter what search terms I use, Google can't find the original Washington Post article, and searching The Washington Post internal search machine, it still doesn't come up.
The Washington Post December 22, 1963 – page A11
Harry Truman Writes: Limit CIA Role To Intelligence
INDEPENDENCE, MO., Dec. 21 — I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.
I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President's performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West. This is an immense task and requires a special kind of an intelligence facility.
Of course, every President has available to him all the information gathered by the many intelligence agencies already in existence. The Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Interior and others are constantly engaged in extensive information gathering and have done excellent work.
But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what's worse, such intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.
Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department “treatment” or interpretations.
I wanted and needed the information in its “natural raw” state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions—and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating.
Since the responsibility for decision making was his—then he had to be sure that no information is kept from him for whatever reason at the discretion of any one department or agency, or that unpleasant facts be kept from him. There are always those who would want to shield a President from bad news or misjudgments to spare him from being "upset."
For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.
I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.
With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about "Yankee imperialism,“ ”exploitive capitalism,“ ”war-mongering,“ ”monopolists," in their name-calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.
I well knew the first temporary director of the CIA, Adm. Souers, and the later permanent directors of the CIA, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg and Allen Dulles. These were men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity—and I assume this is true of all those who continue in charge.
But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field—and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.
We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.
Thanks Tom. Never heard of Brave Browser before your comment. It does show many different sites with Truman's Opinion, but like Google, it does not find the original December 22, 1963 article in The Washington Post.
Thank you for an excellent article that is continuation of your previous post, John! It clearly explains what happened in the world and sets the question what doing to save our peoples from the next World War, maybe the last war, that to lead everyone to the worst end. I feel like if the mankind to have lost in the Labirint of Minotavr were going to its perish at Armagedon, the mindkind have to return back to the point on the path where it started to move on wrong way. We need to return back at that point of the time where we were on bright side to correct the wrong direction according Christianity love and prosperity of all mankind. We should recollect the best time of our history to realize what we need to remember and as like recreate again in our current situation as leading light.
Thank you for your comment and support. Indeed, the most important act of defiance now (for those of us who live in the West) is to express opposition to the intrigues and greedy ambitions of our ruling class.
Bravo! A great clarification of your previous post, "How will Biden start a full-fledged war with Russia?" It fully expands on what I tried to hint at in my comment there.
As if saving the world from WWIII isn't reason enough, "Americans waking up," as you say, is actually very much in our own best interest. Why? Chalmers Johnson explains this best in his "Sorrows of Empire" series of books. In short, no country in history has ever remained for long, both an empire abroad and a democracy at home. Our domestic decline, and fading democracy, is very much in line with the consequences of empire he predicts.
So if "We all need to do something," then what is that something? The first step, of course, is that Americans must see through elite propaganda and fully realize that Russia is not a threat to them. This is the essential work you are doing. Knowledge is imperative, but then what do we do with it? There needs to be general consensus on the answer to this question. In the past, organized labor was a big part of the answer, but the power of labor has been both crushed and co-opted. Look at what happened to the railroad strikers last year: Biden simply used the power of the state to outlaw their strike!
I have an idea of what needs to happen, but a critical mass of people must agree.
"The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside." - Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 1987.
Thanks, Andy. I very much appreciate the comment and support. And that's a great quote from Bloom. Brilliant. So true. Isn't that what has happened in the U.S.? Americans already can't imagine any other system; they can't even remember how the U.S. used to be, when it was free in the pre-2001 period... Finally, what are your ideas of what needs to happen? I'd love to hear... cheers, JV
Harry Truman who created the CIA, regretted it in an Opinion piece in The Washington Post December 22, 1963 essentially saying the CIA went rogue.
Luckily I copied it years ago because no matter what search terms I use, Google can't find the original Washington Post article, and searching The Washington Post internal search machine, it still doesn't come up.
The Washington Post December 22, 1963 – page A11
Harry Truman Writes: Limit CIA Role To Intelligence
INDEPENDENCE, MO., Dec. 21 — I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.
I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President's performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West. This is an immense task and requires a special kind of an intelligence facility.
Of course, every President has available to him all the information gathered by the many intelligence agencies already in existence. The Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Interior and others are constantly engaged in extensive information gathering and have done excellent work.
But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what's worse, such intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.
Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department “treatment” or interpretations.
I wanted and needed the information in its “natural raw” state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions—and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating.
Since the responsibility for decision making was his—then he had to be sure that no information is kept from him for whatever reason at the discretion of any one department or agency, or that unpleasant facts be kept from him. There are always those who would want to shield a President from bad news or misjudgments to spare him from being "upset."
For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.
I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.
With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about "Yankee imperialism,“ ”exploitive capitalism,“ ”war-mongering,“ ”monopolists," in their name-calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.
I well knew the first temporary director of the CIA, Adm. Souers, and the later permanent directors of the CIA, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg and Allen Dulles. These were men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity—and I assume this is true of all those who continue in charge.
But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field—and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.
We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.
Use Brave browser. I found it immediately. I never use Google browser.
Thanks Tom. Never heard of Brave Browser before your comment. It does show many different sites with Truman's Opinion, but like Google, it does not find the original December 22, 1963 article in The Washington Post.
Thanks. That’s very interesting. I wasn’t aware of Truman’s regrets.
Thank you for an excellent article that is continuation of your previous post, John! It clearly explains what happened in the world and sets the question what doing to save our peoples from the next World War, maybe the last war, that to lead everyone to the worst end. I feel like if the mankind to have lost in the Labirint of Minotavr were going to its perish at Armagedon, the mindkind have to return back to the point on the path where it started to move on wrong way. We need to return back at that point of the time where we were on bright side to correct the wrong direction according Christianity love and prosperity of all mankind. We should recollect the best time of our history to realize what we need to remember and as like recreate again in our current situation as leading light.
Thank you for your comment and support. Indeed, the most important act of defiance now (for those of us who live in the West) is to express opposition to the intrigues and greedy ambitions of our ruling class.