It’s well known that aid agencies are sometimes used as a front by the CIA for spying and funding regime change activities (such as its involvement with USAID, famously documented in the “Family Jewels” documents, which details a joint USAID–OPS operation concerning training foreign police in bomb-making, sabotage, etc).
Narco raises a lot of interesting questions about the timing, motivation, recipients and utilisation of the funding that MCC sent into Honduras just prior to the coup.
Tomorrow is my 2nd Twitter anniversary so it’s the perfect opportunity to take stock of what it means to me.
At the time of writing this, I’ve done 19,563 public posts (not counting DMs) which works our to about 27 per day over two years. As I’m usually online about 18 hours a day, that works out to an average of only 1.4 posts per online hour.
I often have people who aren’t yet using Twitter ask "how do you find the time?" Although I guess I’m possibly a fairly heavy user of Twitter compared to most, I only post on average once every 45 minutes. Each post takes… what… ten seconds? Hardly a big time waster. Let’s say I spent another couple of minutes every hour scanning replies, DMs and general tweets in my feed. I guess if I was generous, I might say I spend 6 minutes an hour reading and responding – that’s 1.8 hours a day (6 minutes x 18 waking hours) or 10% of my day. And it does sound like a lot. Until I factor in the following:
1. I work from home. No daily commute to listen to the radio and catch up on the morning news / gossip. Let’s say most people spend an hour a day commuting, either in their car or on public transport. That’s an hour they spend (out of 18 hours in the waking day) probably reading or listening to some kind of media. On those rare occasions during the week when I am in the car, heading to meetings etc, I’m normally listening to podcasts.
2. I don’t watch TV news. The only TV I watch at all is pre-recorded stuff on my laptop (at the moment – Mad Men, The Daily Show, Kings and DVDs). Most people spend 30 – 60 minutes a day watching some kind of news / current affairs (including those god-awful morning shows). I get my news from Twitter and from scanning the blogs. Oh and from podcasts when I go for my run, of course.
3. I’ve been living alone for the last year, my girlfriend living half a world away, and so I’ve had no social life and tweet mostly (I suspect) in the evenings to provide some relief from work. Wow… that sounded a lot more pathetic than it feels. 🙂 I guess it’s true – people on Twitter are losers who have no social life.
So, I figure most people spend a couple of hours a day watching, listening or reading the news. I might (and it’s a stretch) spend the same amount of time on Twitter. If I counted the amount of time I spend on Twitter and reading blogs, I’d say it’s about the same. So, for me, Twitter and blogs have replaced mainstream media.
As I said, I’m probably a fairly heavy user of Twitter, which is justified somewhat by the line of work I am in (social media). Having a good handle on how Twitter works is my business.
Let me tell you some of the things I dislike about Twitter at the moment:
MLM chumps.
Affiliate pimps.
People who auto-send DMs pimping stuff when you follow them.
Follow Fridays.
The way people are jumping on the Iran bandwagon without much evidence of critical thinking. Cmon people – think.
For the record, I immediately un-follow people who commit the first three crimes.
Okay, now the things I like about Twitter:
Intelligent debate – it’s hard to find, but it’s out there. Too many people seem to think you can’t have an intelligent discussion 140 characters at a time, but that’s just wrong. It just requires discipline and clarity.
Support – Twitter is better than any tech support service I’ve ever used. But I’m not just talking about tech support. Mention that you’ve got any sort of problem, and you’ll usually have a stream of people – most of whom you’ve never met in real life and probably never will – offering to help out. These people counter-balance the brain dead MLM and affiliate folks and stop me from giving up all hope for the human race.
The sense that this is the dawn of…. something. Something big. Something important. Something profound.
Twitter kind of reminds me of the skin jobs on BSG when they are on their base ship, dipping their hands into the pink water that somehow plugs them into the control feed of the ship. It’s also a bit like being Superman with his super hearing, just letting the entire planet’s voices wash over you.
I often find myself wondering about what a mind-blowing platform Twitter (and the interwebs in general) could be in an historical sense for the human race – just imagine jumping in the TARDIS and scooting back 100 years to 1909, then trying to explain the concept of Twitter to folks. What potential! The whole world (well… the connected world) talking to each other! The kids in New York shouting out real time support to the kids (or are they embedded CIA operatives pretending to be kids?) in Tehran! I wonder what the folks in 1909 would want to do with it. Or imagine going back another 30 years to 1879 and explaining it to Karl Marx. I wonder if he’d think it was the perfect medium to discuss MLM, Jon & Kate (and I honestly have NO frakking idea who they are), and whether or not Megan is as hot as Angelina.
Here’s my question for you all – are we smart enough for Twitter? Or will we waste it?
False flags ops happen regularly and are a standard technique for creating violence and then blaming it on your enemies. Hitler used it in the burning of the Reichstag. According to “Legacy Of Ashes”, the CIA has funded and organised quite a few over the last 60 years, in places such as Iran and Cuba, as well as in Chile and Zaire.
Why would the CIA want to escalate the conflict between India and Pakistan?
Well in recent months, there have been growing tensions between Pakistan and the USA, in large part because of continual US bombings on Pakistani territory which have resulted in the deaths of Pakistani soldiers. The USA claims it is attacking “terrorists” (the catch-all excuse for everything these days) but the reality is probably that they are using drones to locate and destroy Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, as part of their long-term plan to protect Israel, their most important military base in the middle east, from attacks by regional Islamic interests.
Musharaff, until recently the President/military dictator of Pakistan, was a strong puppet ally of the USA during their “War On Terror”, especially after Bush’s Undersecretary of State, Richard Armitage made the General an offer he couldn’t refuse… “either cooperate with us militarily, against the will of your own military, security service and people…and accept more than $10 billion over the next five years…or we will bomb you back to the stone age.”
So – back to Mumbai. If – and I have no evidence for this, it’s just a thinking point – if the CIA orchestrated a false flag op, blamed it on Pakistani ISI, and got their press puppets around the West to spin out the Pentagon-written media releases, just like they did during the Iraq invasion, then it might be their way of sending a message to the Zardar administration – “Take the money – and give in to our demands – or else.”
In honour of the great Che Guevara’s 80th birthday (officially the 14th June), here’s a documentary on his life for those of you who have only heard the CIA propaganda and lies.
I just finished reading Tim Weiner’s book “Legacy Of Ashes: The History Of the CIA” and thought I should talk more about it. I think this is one of the most important books that have come out in the last decade. Why? Listen to the show to find out. I start by reading out a list of countries that the CIA has committed acts of terrorism and violence in, either directly or indirectly, over the last 60 years. It’s a long, long list.
The music on today’s show is “Echoplex” from the new Nine Inch Nails album “THE SLIP“, which is licensed under a creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike license.
NIN encourage you to
remix it
share it with your friends,
post it on your blog,
play it on your podcast,
give it to strangers,
etc..
The Iranians wanted to nationalize their oil. They had done a deal with the British in 1901 to explore Iran for oil and just before WWI, Winston Churchill moved the British navy from coal-burning ships over to oil-burning ships and then basically took control of Iran’s oil production, leaving them with only 16% of the profits. The Iranians weren’t happy with the situation, to the British installed a Shah of their liking on the throne.
During WWII, Churchill invaded Iran, got rid of the Shah (who was thought to be too friendly with the Nazis) and installed his son on the throne.
After WWII, the Iranians decided to take control of their oil production back. And Churchill wasn’t happy. Britian took their case to the International Court of Justice at The Hague – and lost. So Churchill asked the American government to intervene. The President (Truman) said no. So MI6 turned to the CIA who said “sure that sounds like fun”.
They then spent millions of dollars undermining the government, spreading lies about them, hiring thugs to commit crimes around the country and then blaming it on communists, on propaganda accusing the Iranian Prime Minister Mossadeq of being a communist, etc. The BBC in Britian did their part, also broadcasting anti-Iranian propaganda to lend the events legitimacy.
Eventually US-backed troops stormed the Prime Minister’s offices, arrested him, and he spent the last years of his life in prison, replaced by a General Zahedi, picked by the US and Britian to be Mossadeq’s puppet successor.
What happened next? 25 years later the Iranian revolution happened, fueled by memories of the coup, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took control and the country has hated the US and Britian ever since. Can you blame them?
Of course, the US and Britian denied all of this ever happened for almost 50 years until internal CIA documents were leaked in 2000.
So – the next time you hear about how Iran “hate our freedoms” or about the US trying to overthrow a country and other “conspiracy theories”, remember – Iran 1953.
