Quote:
The CIA and Western intelligence agencies seek to mold a compliant and passive populace while elites enrich themselves, according to a former White House official.
Retired White House analyst Richard Cook has provocatively claimed that the CIA's goal is to create a “depleted population of compliant zombies” as Western elites enrich themselves amid atrocities in Gaza and around the globe.
Independent journalist Jim Kavanagh joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Friday to discuss the claim, which was dissected by analyst Jeremy Kuzmarov in an article in Covert Action Magazine.
“The most dangerous people in the world are people who are brainwashed,” said Kavanagh, referencing an infamously candid quote from former CIA director William Casey. “The American and Western people, but especially the American people, are brainwashed by the media – they're proud of it now. MSNBC is a hotbed of CIA and military people. They're proud of being the spokespersons for the deep state national security intelligence complex.”
“The twin ideologies [Americans] internalize are, ‘oh, we're all temporarily embarrassed capitalists and billionaires who will just get there someday, we have to keep that path open for us,’ and, ‘we're all part of the greatest country in the world,’” he continued, claiming Americans are indoctrinated to believe the country must “save democracy for everybody.” “We have to send our armies to fight everybody for this or send our proxies to fight everyone for that. And as long as people are held in that ideology that is the most dangerous thing in the world. “
Kavanagh claimed that Western elites maintained “a very tight control” over the promulgation of information after World War II via influence over major media outlets. Crusading investigative journalist Carl Bernstein revealed some of the CIA’s methods via a program known as Operation Mockingbird in 1977, publicizing the secretive intelligence agency’s efforts to influence coverage in major newspapers and broadcast networks.
“That was disrupted for a decade or so with the internet and with social media and people have got access to a lot more information than they had before and a lot more opinion and analysis than they had before,” said Kavanagh. “Now they're having to crack down on that because that breaks the hold and it's extremely dangerous, but this is the job.”
“A lot of work went on behind the scenes before. Now, it's all out in the open and they're trying very hard to reinstall the gates that were being kept over the American mind, and they're doing a pretty good job of it and it's gonna be hard to fight. It's gonna get worse. They're gonna be more adamant about it.”
Kavanagh claimed the depravity of the Western ruling class is best revealed by Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, which have killed over 40,000. US President Joe Biden and other Western leaders have claimed there are no “red lines” barring support for the country as it protects Western interests in the oil-rich Middle East.
“In my life I've seen, from Vietnam on, terrible atrocities created by the United States,” said the journalist. “This thing in Gaza and now in Lebanon… this is clearly a war to just exterminate and expel a whole people. And it's a deliberate slaughter of children, of doctors, of bombing hospitals.”
“It is the Western world, it's the United States that is in the forefront of this, which is not only supporting it, but doing it, providing the weapons, providing the intelligence, providing the real time support,” he continued. “And the rest of the Western world [and] European governments are supporting it. It couldn't happen without all of that.”
“This is a disgrace. It's a version of watching Auschwitz on livestream and saying, ‘we're gonna support it and there's nothing that you can do to make us not support that.’ And that's the position that the Western world is in right now. They've lost moral authority in many ways a long time ago.This is kind of just the depth of depravity… and I don't know what the result of it is going to be because I don't think it's going to change.”
Quote:
'Americans Believe the NED Fairy Tale': Nuland's New Position in the Nonprofit
In his article, Kuzmarov noted that Nuland expressed “glee” after the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was bombed and destroyed. Speaking to Congress, she said she was “very gratified to know” that the pipeline is “now… a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea.”
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) announced in mid-September that it would be appointing Victoria Nuland to its Board of Directors, “effective immediately.” Nuland holds a lengthy political career in the US and has worked to promote a “foreign policy of intervention, coups, proxy wars, aggression, and occupation… in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine.” Dr. Jeremy Kuzmarov, an editor and author, wrote for Covert Action Magazine.
"Nuland fits very well within this crowd, particularly as a key architect of one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in modern history—the Ukraine War—which NED and the neo-conservative establishment has fervently championed," Kuzmarov writes.
Kuzmarov joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Thursday to discuss Nuland’s new role in the nonprofit group which works to “assist those abroad who are working to build democratic institutions and spread democratic values”, according to the organization’s program description.
“...firstly these kind of people… they should be sent to the front line themselves and see if they like being in the trenches in eastern Ukraine or the h*** hole that they created from their comfortable offices in Washington,” said Kuzmarov. “...[Nuland will continue] to wield influence on the foreign policy establishment, on the direction of US policy now with the National Endowment for Democracy, which specializes in promoting propaganda and, basically, subversion in countries around the world that are targeted by the US regime change.”
“They finance civil society groups. They often provoke students to revolt against the government. They finance media outlets that will spread incendiary propaganda that countries that have more nationalistic and left-leaning policies that US corporations don't like,” he continued.
“So, yeah, she's going to continue to wield influence there and it's a prestigious appointment for her after all the havoc and horror she's caused all around the world. So, it sends a terrible signal [to] those who adopt these kinds of warmongering policies that's the way to get ahead in Washington,” the author explained.
In a separate article, Kuzmarov writes that after World War II, US banking interests such as the Federal Reserve, pushed for the creation of the CIA as the “enforcement arm of US foreign policy that was expert in propaganda”. And in 1981, he notes, CIA Director William Casey told President Ronald Reagan that “we will know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
Since then, the CIA has worked with the rest of the “national security state, including government support think tanks, mainstream media and nonprofits” to further the disinformation program, Kuzmarov writes citing Richard C. Cook, an author and retired US federal analyst.
The CIA wants to create a “depleted world population of compliant zombies, drained of creative energy, incapable of independent thinking, riddled with fear, obedient to every conditioned impulse, running from every virus, hating every designated enemy, parroting the mass media, spending as advertising directs, numbed by drugs and medication, and ready to die at the whim of their masters,” writes Cook, who served under President Jimmy Carter, NASA, and the US Treasury.
“...the CIA has penetrated academia, the media and they spread disinformation; they spread this false narrative about US foreign policy, that it's altruistic, that it promotes democracy abroad, that it's not like former colonial powers out to exploit the economic resources. And that's totally false, but many American believe in the NED fairy tale narrative because they control all universities and they purge academics who present a kind of leftist critical analysis,” the analyst explained.
“Those academics have been purged mostly from the academy today, just like in the media. You won't find critical voices in the Washington Post or New York Times, or critical analysis of the economic imperatives or some of the genocidal policies,” he added. “Although, occasionally, it does filter out, like, the Israel genocide because it's so egregious.”
Citing Cook, Kuzmarov also writes that the US proxy war with Russia is an attempt to sever relations between Germany and Russia so the two cannot collectively challenge Anglo-American hegemony. The most significant result of this plot, he adds, was the blowing up of the Nord Stream II pipeline, which would have “interlinked Germany and Russia’s economies and fueled an economic boom in Germany”.
“...NED was very active for instance in Ukraine before the coup, which Nuland played a crucial role in... I mean, she's a natural fit for NED, but, NED set the groundwork by financing the groups, mobilizing them together to wave this Maidan square uprising that toppled the pro-Russian leader,” Kuzmarov claimed.
“And they framed it as this ‘great pro-democracy movement toppling this Russian-backed tyrant’ and, meanwhile, they've ushered in a tyranny in Ukraine and it plunged the country into civil war and they were basically used for the US agenda, trying to attack and destabilize Russia," he added. "And it's such a disaster for Ukraine's population and the death of those youth - at least half a million youth have died in Ukraine.”
