For some time now, I've been pointing out that President Barack Obama's mother and father had more links to CIA (and affiliated American organizations of influence, such as the Ford Foundation) than, in all likelihood, your mom and dad had.* Obama's parents were exactly the kind of leftist -- but not Communist -- cosmopolitans and exotics whom CIA cultivated.
Now, conspiracy blogger Wayne Madsen exhaustively tallies up the Obama family links and possible connections to CIA, adding in his stepfather Lolo Soetoro and grandmother Madeleine Dunham, whose Honolulu bank supposedly handled the accounts of a CIA front company. (Not even Madsen, however, can come up with a world-historical role for the President's feckless furniture salesman grandfather Stan.) Here's his article on Obama's father's Kenyan CIA connections and here's his article on his mother's Asian CIA connections.
Madsen comes up with no smoking guns, and some of it's over the top and other parts are extremely tangential, but, all in all, it does make a decent case that Obama's parents traveled in CIA-related circles. Obama himself made clear in Dreams from My Father that his mother knew CIA agents when she worked at the US Embassy in Jakarta.
The notion of Obama as CIA's Manchurian Candidate is excessive. But if you conceive of CIA less as the Master Puppeteer and more as a well-funded part of the Global Favor Bank, then otherwise odd bits of the President's biography like his feeling like a "spy behind enemy lines" at Business International, a firm that had admittedly provided cover as business journalists for four CIA agents, make more sense.
* By the way, when I first started thinking about the Obama family's CIA connections, I thought, "Wow, his mom and dad had a lot more CIA connections than, say, my mom and dad did." But, then I got to thinking. Back in the 1940s, my mom became dear friends with another secretary at Lockheed, who went on to marry an engineer named Henry Combs. Henry became one of the chief designers of the CIA's U-2 spy plane (still in service) and was the head structural designer of the CIA's legendary SR-71 superplane. We used to go out to the Combs' ranch in Santa Clarita and I would play hide-and-go-seek with their six kids.
I also have in-laws based in the Virginia suburbs of D.C. who get assigned to odd, but strategically important, locations around the world, and you're not supposed to ask them what they do on the job.
In other words, the American intelligence apparatus is quite large, and lots of people have lots of connections of varying degrees with it.
I always thought that it was strange for a man in his early 30's, with no great achievements, no fame, not a musician, actor, athlete, being an unknown individual, to have written an autobiographical book. Anyone else find this unusual? Seems like this product, brand Obama, was being put together for possible future use.Public discontent was high, so seemingly out of nowhere came this charming, articulate person who was going to be different and thus stoked people's wishful thinking. In retrospect he appears to have undergone a grooming process for a long time. Looking at it like this a lot of the pieces seem to come together.
ReplyDeleteKind of makes you laugh at the idea that the CIA is some ultraconservative, jingoist organization. Nah, they don't really like America too much.
ReplyDelete"In other words, the American intelligence apparatus is quite large, and lots of people have lots of connections of varying degrees with it."
ReplyDeleteThis certainly jibes with a recent Drudge headline informing readers that over a million people in the US have top security clearance. And if so, that means your odds of knowing someone who knows government secrets are nearly as high as knowing somebody with a PhD.
And the man who threatened to "tear the CIA to pieces" was killed in the city whose mayor was the brother of one of the CIA officials that he fired.
ReplyDelete"This certainly jibes with a recent Drudge headline informing readers that over a million people in the US have top security clearance. And if so, that means your odds of knowing someone who knows government secrets are nearly as high as knowing somebody with a PhD."
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't mean there are a million CIA operatives in the US. A lot of IT workers, for instance, have top security clearances in order to spy on web users. Also, there are many levels of security clearance above 'top secret'.
Let me predict the response to such musings on Obama's CIA connections:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.gifbin.com/bin/sw50sw8sw578.gif
Obama had CIA links.
ReplyDeleteSailer had CIA links.
They seem to have been born at about the same time.
Hmmm. Has anyone seen them both in the same photo?
"Kind of makes you laugh at the idea that the CIA is some ultraconservative, jingoist organization"
ReplyDeleteNot really - since Obama is clearly no leftist. Running a pseudo "liberal", pseudo "black" man was an incredibly smart way to coopt the left at a time when the right had really screwed up and was in danger of losing to a true radical. Obama has also deflected a lot of right wing rage that should be directed at Bush. If you think the CIA's job is to protect the Establishment at all costs then Obama as CIA tool makes a lot of sense.
I had top security clearance at my old job at Secret Service. I was a nobody financial analyst and seriously couldn't tell you anything interesting.
ReplyDeleteBusiness International was also connected to the Oglesby wing of the S.D.S.
ReplyDelete"Government secret" is an oxymoron. They'll give almost anyone a security clearance. The Agency used to be primarily conservative American males; today it is just as self-consciously "cosmopolitan" and female/minority friendly as any other branch of the federal government. They've degraded any sense of espirit d'corps among the actual intelligence officers so that the analists (yes, I know how to spell and this is deliberate) can feel good about themselves. Remember all the applause Obama got when he visited Langley? That's the type of person they've been hiring for years now.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous post 1:
ReplyDeleteI suspect Obama's autobiography is more likely part of the "first black X" phenomenon. That is, he had an interesting life and all, but was mainly notable for being the first black editor of the law review, and for more generally being a hopeful sort of story wrt race relations. If that's right, there's certainly some irony there....
Steve's phrase "the global favor bank" seems like a useful one for understanding the world. Giant conspiracies must almost inevitably look like vast bureaucracies, and that suggests a lot about their likely effectiveness. But a huge network of invisible-hand-guided mutual back scratching, that works both in terms of fitting with organizational behavior and in agreeing with what we see in the world.
That doesn't mean there are a million CIA operatives in the US. A lot of IT workers, for instance, have top security clearances in order to spy on web users. Also, there are many levels of security clearance above 'top secret'.
ReplyDeleteRight. At the age of 20 I had a Top Secret Crypto/Cosmic Top Secret clearance and I was a nobody SP4 in the US Army Signal Corps.
Once upon a time I had a secret clearance, and sometimes certain "special access" clearances (adaptive optics stuff, now public).
ReplyDeleteI remember when a co-worker was about to be read in for special access: I told him beforehand that it was a lot like 'special class', and did a fair version of Bill Cosby's routine about trying to get into special class. Cosby wanted in because the kids there didn't have to work hard, got to takes trips to the zoo and Hong Kong, and sounded like Mortimer Snerd, the very incarnation of dumb.
I must have made an impression, since my co-worker started giggling during the briefing, giggling made all the worse because he was trying so hard to suppress it. For some time afterwards, I could reliably crack him up by simply stating "we're going to the zoo today!" in my best Snerd/Cosby voice: particularly just before we were about to run into the boss or his henchman, which meant he had to try to suppress it again. After a week or so, we got to the point where I could, at will, plunge him into hysterical laughter just by _threatening_ to Snerd him: at the end, merely lifting an eyebrow sufficed.
Now that's power.
Generally I was disappointed in the secrets they handed out: they were boring. I was hoping for something cosmic and interesting, something like a time machine or a city in a bottle, but no such luck. My working hypothesis nowadays is that I know more interesting shit that the Feds don't than the other way around.
- gcochran
Its entirely possible. But the CIA is not the CIA of the popular imagination. Robert Baer, in a series of articles, painted the picture of the CIA as less than 1,000 actual case officers, capable of running informants who bring in information. Most of the CIA are analysts, who spend most of their career at Langley, at a desk, in a cubicle or if they advance, to an office. Most according to Baer are monolingual.
ReplyDeleteThe international favor bank sounds pretty much the modern CIA. Which explains the systematic failure of the CIA to predict things: the fall of the Shah, the USSR, the rise of bin Laden, Pakistan's nukes, Iran's nukes, North Korea's nukes. Much less the 9/11 attacks or Saddam's WMD (found after the 1991 Gulf War during inspections, including chemical, bio, and missile programs the CIA completely missed). The CIA missed Syria's reactor (which Israel bombed) and completely bungled the snatch of some jihadi in Italy, and the disastrous Afghanistan operation that led to 8 CIA top bin Laden hunters dead speaks to lack of any operational experience.
Obama's family would have been well positioned for the CIA favor bank, it explains **perhaps** where he got the money to go to Pakistan during Junior Summer at Columbia. Traveling wasn't cheap, Obama wasn't working.
OT, but this is interesting: DIY Muslim ritual slaughter available at a farm in the DC area: "Business caters to Muslim immigrants seeking to fulfill ritual animal sacrifices". Maybe they'll include one of these in the big Islamic Center in lower Manhattan?
ReplyDeleteI once worked with a guy named Tom whose life story was generally similar to Obama's mother. I had always assumed Tom was a leftist with probable Soviet connections ... until I read one of Buckley's spy novels and found Tom's life story VERBATIM as the cover story for one of WFB's fictional CIA men.
ReplyDeleteIt's a hall of mirrors for sure.
"The notion of Obama as CIA's Manchurian Candidate is excessive."
ReplyDeleteI think it's most likely a case of "it's not what you know, it's who you know."
People involved even tangentially in those kind of circles are more likely to be known about among the intersecting circles of government and business.
So imagine a group of people involved in business circles are discussing bringing up an unknown democrat politician as a candidate so he'd be completely dependent on his backers, and someone else mentioned it would be good if he was black as they could then use the racism charge to shut down any opposition, then lastly a third person who was connected to CIA circles might mention the kid of some people he knew in jakarta who he heard had got involved in politics.
Fast forward to a successful audition for the part and the rest is history.
Broadway politics.
"Anyone else find this unusual?"
ReplyDeleteBlair and now Cameron are the same. Relative newcomers to politics but good on camera, picked up, groomed, funded and given favourable media coverage and then suddenly they're Prime Minister without any relevant previous experience of anything.
They're not politicians they're actors. They're given an audition and if they get the part they become the front man for other people - except actually having the official power can change that dynamic as soon as they're elected like a medieval child-king coming of age and turning against the regent.
No way. CIA created AIDs to genocide African-Americans, so there's just no way Obama would have connections to CIA.
ReplyDeleteWasn't that the pitch of that Washington Post expose a few weeks ago? That the US, the world, is crawling with US spies?
ReplyDeleteNo wonder we had such a hard time winning the cold war. With the CIA cultivating and using people like that, whaddya expect?
ReplyDelete"I always thought that it was strange for a man in his early 30's, with no great achievements, no fame, not a musician, actor, athlete, being an unknown individual, to have written an autobiographical book."
ReplyDeleteIt's like his Nobel Prize. He was rewarded with a book deal in the hope of accomplishing something great in the future. Of course, the very people who hoped he might do something 'great' one day had the power and influence to elevate him to the place of 'greatness'.
The very people who predicted that he would one day be emperor had the means to make him emperor. When the prophets also control the profits, the game is rigged.
I will just note here that the CIA never seems to get its budget cut. It has a secret budget, and, as far as I know, that budget just grows and grows.
ReplyDeleteI also have a suspicion that the CIA can get off-the-books cash printed for it whenever it wants. Like those billions of $100 bills that showed up in Iraq.
Thus the CIA is a very well-funded, politically powerful institution that has been taking care of itself very well.
If Sarah Palin were elected president, or Ron Paul, the CIA would not do so well--so I would expect them to oppose those people and support their friends, as everybody does in politics.
If I were president, I would completely wipe out the CIA on my first day in office. Not a stone would be left standing upon a stone. Then I would plow salt into the soil. This is probably one reason among many why the CIA has never helped my career.
i would be inclined to say that this sort of innuendo is beneath you but no, it's exactly you.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. Has anyone seen them both in the same photo?
ReplyDeleteThey both lived and worked in Chicago.
My working hypothesis nowadays is that I know more interesting shit that the Feds don't than the other way around.
ReplyDeleteJust sounds like arrogance to me. Not surprising considering the fact that you stole most of your ideas from Jim Bowery.
Jim Bowery came up with the ideas that frequency > 1% + high fitness cost = infectious disease? And a larger population size means accelerated evolution?
ReplyDeleteObama's mother and father had more links to CIA... cosmopolitans and exotics whom CIA cultivated...
ReplyDeletePardon my confusion, but I was under the impression that the Langley institution was "the CIA", while merely "CIA" referred to that much more intriguing entity just outside Poughkeepsie.
@Fred, re: DIY Muslim ritual
ReplyDelete==========================
The more I learn about that barbaric cult the more disgusting it seems. This is almost beyond belief.
The more I learn about that barbaric cult the more disgusting it seems. This is almost beyond belief.
ReplyDeleteSlaughtering an animal by slitting its throat and bleeding it while uttering a few words of prayer is "beyond belief"?
I don't really care about Muslims, and I don't think they should immigrate here. But I don't see what's so "disgusting" about this and how it's "almost beyond belief."
Truth:
ReplyDeletehttp://yhoo.it/ahETui
Every so often an isteve thread comes around that wonderfully separates the wheat from the chaff by giving commenters no choice but to humorously offer what slight amount of information they know (like gchochran did) or to go balls-to-the-wall loudly delusional (like Jeff).
ReplyDeleteThis blog has almost no normal commenters. Everyone here is either eclectically brilliant or insanely unhinged and the posts that really return these categories of people to their native lands are those that deal with innuendos of conspiracy. Any post dealing with the CIA, communists or Jews (as conspiratorial folk) is guaranteed to have each reading man and woman run to his flag - the understanding ones with their tentative yet informational comments and the terrified loons to theirs. (New scientific discoveries that relate to human beings or other discussions about previously undiscussed small groups of people are great too. The early Neanderthal posts and posts about redheads were fantastic. Of course almost everything ever written by the likes of Truth, Whiskey and Jim Bowrey are repulsively loony though each in their own special way (Jim trying on SS uniforms while Truth hurls playground insults and Whiskey tells us in that all-knowing voice of his how Obama is a secret reptilian muslim communist who has sent his female swipple armies of bacteria out to devour our souls.)
When Bush was prez there was a lot of Left opposition to the war, domestic spying, corporate looting of the US Treasury, etc.. Obama's elected, continues Bush policies across the board, and the Left gives up on opposing the agenda.
ReplyDeleteSomehow the public's attention is redirected to idiot issues such as whether Obama's a Muslim or socialist.
Well played, CIA.
Reg Caesar,
ReplyDeleteIn Washington the article is always dropped, as with many other agencies (eg, EPA). Thus, saying "CIA" rather than "the CIA" is a casual way to show you're an insider - or at least, are trying to fake it.
Obama is no more a Muslim than an anchor baby whose parents are from Guadalajara is a Mexican.
ReplyDelete"Slaughtering an animal by slitting its throat and bleeding it while uttering a few words of prayer is "beyond belief"?"
ReplyDeleteExactly. I hope Melykin never discovers what is actually involved in making meat "Kosher." Muslims never invented anything - almost every element of their tradition is stolen from Judaism or Christianity.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteTruth:
http://yhoo.it/ahETui
Ouch!
>Every so often an isteve thread comes around that wonderfully separates the wheat from the chaff
ReplyDelete[snip]<
Agreed.
The chaff are those commenters who insult the other commenters gratuitously with a long string of sputtering ad hominems.
"This blog has almost no normal commenters"
ReplyDeleteAs opposed to which other blog?
Oh hey, a picture of Michelle Obama, and you took the time to post it twice, thanks.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in the Washington D.C. area. After two years of college I had just gotten out of the Army. I was twenty one and looking for a night job I could do that would allow me to complete my degree during the day.
ReplyDeleteMy uncle got me a dealership with the Washington Post. Most dealers had dozens of paper boys working for them but I worked alone. I delivered papers to the embassies.
This was a perfect job for me except socially. It was hard to tell the women I met that I, a full grown man, had a paper route.
I was at a party one night and when asked by a lovely young thing what I did for a living I hesitated and stammered a bit. She was sophisticated in the ways of Washington, she said - "Wait, It's OK, I know you can't say - CIA".
Albertosaurus
Wonder how many of our friends and neighbors have killed somebody for the govt. (non-combat).
ReplyDelete"Peter A said...
ReplyDelete""Kind of makes you laugh at the idea that the CIA is some ultraconservative, jingoist organization""
Not really - since Obama is clearly no leftist. Running a pseudo "liberal", pseudo "black" man was an incredibly smart way to coopt the left at a time when the right had really screwed up and was in danger of losing to a true radical. Obama has also deflected a lot of right wing rage that should be directed at Bush. If you think the CIA's job is to protect the Establishment at all costs then Obama as CIA tool makes a lot of sense."
That was the anonymous posters point - that a conservative organization would look out for the nation and it's people - not for an alien and hostile elite.
Somehow the public's attention is redirected to idiot issues such as whether Obama's a Muslim or socialist.
ReplyDeleteWhat's idiotic about worrying whether the ruling class wants to move us in the direction [of the philosophy] of the Taliban or of the Bolsheviks?
Or maybe your point is that there isn't a distinction between the Taliban and the Bolsheviks which is worth worrying about?
[If so, then we would be in agreement.]
"Steve's phrase "the global favor bank" seems like a useful one for understanding the world. Giant conspiracies must almost inevitably look like vast bureaucracies, and that suggests a lot about their likely effectiveness."
ReplyDeleteAlso, global favor banks encourage individual loyalties across fault lines of religion, national allegiance, ethnography, and geography, leading to the rise of powerful cosmopolitan elites like the one that got Obama elected President, over the best interests of the United States.
That would be hilarious if George H. W. Bush as DCI or CIA operative signed off on the project to guide Barack Obama to the presidency. He signed off on his son's successor!
ReplyDeleteObama's elected, continues Bush policies across the board, and the Left gives up on opposing the agenda.
ReplyDeleteSomehow the public's attention is redirected to idiot issues such as whether Obama's a Muslim or socialist.
In that regard, I have wondered why the Half Blood Prince is persisting with George Jr.'s policies in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen as well as Pakistan ( the Predator/Reaper interdictions. )
Does the CIA have some power over our Prince?
... whether Obama's a Muslim or socialist.
He's both.
You are right about the CIA cultivating leftists.
ReplyDeleteIn the Nordic countries during the Cold War, the CIA always preferred working with Social Democrats, rather than with right-wing political operators.
This made perfect sense because:
a) right-wing parties had too little political clout.
b) nobody hated the Communists like the Social Democrats did.
I suppose the American experience is different, but a great number of European leftists spent most of their lives fighting Communism. The CIA would have been foolish not to cooperate with them.
OhioStater: That would be hilarious if George H. W. Bush as DCI or CIA operative signed off on the project to guide Barack Obama to the presidency. He signed off on his son's successor!
ReplyDeleteA little off-topic, but does anyone know why Ross Perot was so determined to deny GHWB a second term - even if it meant the ascendancy of Slick Willie?
Rush Limbaugh once intimated that GHWB believed it probably had something to do with a perceived loss of face back around the time of the Iranian hostage crisis.
... whether Obama's a Muslim or socialist.
ReplyDeleteHe's both.
I doubt it - just like your average twoofer, he is likely too narcissistic & anti-intellectual to have firm religious beliefs, one way or the other. See the muddled response in one of the autobiographies to his daughter's questions about religion (although you have to read between the lines, it being ghostwritten and all). Hence, all the noise about his true religion & the Ground Zero Victory Monument is a distraction from more fundamental problems (incuriosity, SWPLism, and plain old stupidity - likely aggravated by laziness & youthful drug use).
It's so accepted that the CIA is a renegade nefarious organization that the current governor of California can appear a in a movie in which the CIA is running a cocaine smuggling operation in a fictitious banana republic and no one thinks anything of it.
ReplyDeleteTruth said...
ReplyDeleteOh hey, a picture of Michelle Obama, and you took the time to post it twice, thanks.
is she that nanny-looking heavy woman with the gorgeous brunette princess?
"whether Obama's a Muslim or socialist."
ReplyDeleteI don't think it matters much if he is or isn't. The people that provide the bulk of the funding for both parties believe in invade the world / invite the world - the only difference is the proportions.
The Republican donors are 2/3 invade the world and 1/3 invite the world.
The Democrat donors are 2/3 invite the world and 1/3 invade the world.
The politicians are allowed to argue over minor things but the two most fundamental issues are fixed.
Wandrin:
ReplyDeleteAnd both agree on the "in hock to the world" part of the strategy, if only because it makes for more goodies to hand out.
Nine of Diamonds:
His true beliefs about religion are unknowable, as is true for essentially everyone. However, Obama has not shown any obvious reluctance to continue the war on terror in all it's bloody, dysfunctional glory, which kind of undermines the whole idea that he's on the side of the taliban it AQ. But then, that was always a pretty silly idea, useful mainly fir entertaining the rubes.
"Exactly. I hope Melykin never discovers what is actually involved in making meat "Kosher." Muslims never invented anything - almost every element of their tradition is stolen from Judaism or Christianity."
ReplyDeleteIt's true that Muslims ripped off the "halal" concept from the Jews' idea of kosher, but there are a couple of key differences the article sheds light on. The first is that this isn't just about having "halal" meat but performing animal sacrifices. Jews replaced the tradition of animal sacrifice with donations to charity over a thousand years ago.
The second is shown by a telling quote from one of the Muslim immigrants in the article. He says something like, "this way we'll know it's really halal". It's a great example of how Muslim immigrants come from a low-trust society, where they can't even assume their "halal' meat is really "halal". In contrast, no Jew would question the provenance of meat certified as kosher by an appropriate authority.
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteIt's so accepted that the CIA is a renegade nefarious organization that the current governor of California can appear a in a movie in which the CIA is running a cocaine smuggling operation in a fictitious banana republic and no one thinks anything of it."
The CIA doesn't seem to mind that so many people assume the worst about them either. Of course, if the CIA is involved in drug running, that is indeed interesting. But if they're not, but are happy to be seen as such, well, that's interesting too.
@Anonymous and Peter A.
ReplyDeleteWell, you may not have a problem with ritual animal sacrifice, but is seems completely bazaar to me. They turn the goat's head towards Mecca and say "Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar" as they pin it down and slit its throat (without stunning it first). As one commentator on the Washington Post site remarked, does the goat get 72 virgins after it's demise?
Here a quote form the article:
To avoid the messy nature of on-farm slaughter, many customers take home live animals and slaughter them in residential bathtubs and garages. "We hold the animal on the garage floor and make sure the blood goes into the drain or the bushes," said Waqar Farhat, who grew up slaughtering animals in the hallway of his home in Pakistan.
Some of Farhat's friends slaughter goats in their showers. "But they clean up very well afterwards," he said.
Still, when non-Muslim neighbors discover these makeshift slaughterhouses in their midst, reactions can be sharp. In Prince William County a few years ago, when residents reported that ritual slaughter attracted a flock of vultures to their Haymarket neighborhood, authorities cracked down on the practice.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/16/AR2010081603263.html?sid=ST2010081604270
Jews replaced the tradition of animal sacrifice with donations to charity over a thousand years ago.
ReplyDeleteWell Jews also continue to cut off pieces of baby boys' penises.
It's a great example of how Muslim immigrants come from a low-trust society, where they can't even assume their "halal' meat is really "halal". In contrast, no Jew would question the provenance of meat certified as kosher by an appropriate authority.
I imagine it's also because they don't have a well-established, entrenched halal network. Unlike say the kosher network. If I look into my pantry virtually every single food package in there will have the "K" or Orthodox Union seal designating that it's kosher.
Well, you may not have a problem with ritual animal sacrifice, but is seems completely bazaar to me. They turn the goat's head towards Mecca and say "Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar" as they pin it down and slit its throat (without stunning it first).
The only really bizarre thing about it is that it's being done in my country. Other than that, it's not that bizarre as far as religion goes. There are plenty of bizarre religious activities that are extant today, such as consuming "Haman's Ears" on Purim, Mormon underwear, etc.
Someone wrote up a big conspiracy theory about Obama being a tool of Zbigniew Brzezinski & George Soros (but everyone knows that!) here.
ReplyDeleteThe Left (by which I mean to exclude TNR type liberals) did contain a number of voices complaining about CIA torture, rendition, destroying tapes and not being prosecuted. The people who were standing up for the CIA and saying how Obama couldn't do anything lest he hurt morale at the organization were mainly on the right (though supposedly Panetta & Rahm were giving Obama that spiel from behind closed doors).
"is she that nanny-looking heavy woman with the gorgeous brunette princess?"
ReplyDeleteDude, do you ever get the feeling that your life could be summarized as one big, catastrophic waste of carbon fuels?
Wandrin said...
ReplyDeleteBlair and now Cameron are the same. Relative newcomers to politics but good on camera, picked up, groomed, funded and given favourable media coverage and then suddenly they're Prime Minister without any relevant previous experience of anything.
They're not politicians they're actors. They're given an audition and if they get the part they become the front man for other people - except actually having the official power can change that dynamic as soon as they're elected like a medieval child-king coming of age and turning against the regent.
This is essentially the plot of the Roman Polanski movie The Ghost Writer, in which Pierce Brosnan plays a British Prime Minister who so resembles Tony Blair that he might as well have a nametag (as Roger Ebert put it).
BTW, I enjoyed that movie -- Polanski still has major skills at creating an atmosphere and foreshadowing -- but found it marred by its far-fetched plot :^)
none of the above: However, Obama has not shown any obvious reluctance to continue the war on terror in all it's bloody, dysfunctional glory, which kind of undermines the whole idea that he's on the side of the taliban it AQ.
ReplyDeleteAs Whiskey would be quick to remind us, there is always a terribly disfunctional internal inconsistency in Islamic societies, between the hyper-masculine bloodthirst of the alpha males [in the Madrassas] and the homosexuality which is thrust upon the wife-less beta & gamma males [who lost out to the alpha males in the polygamy wars].
And also recall that Obama, as an underclassman at Occidental, had a homosexual lover & sugar daddy, from Pakistan, named Mohammed Hasan Chandoo [pictures, transcript], and that Chandoo remains, to this day, a major campaign contributor [and, doubtlessly, a close personal confidant].
So it wouldn't surprise me at all if the homosexual elite of Pakistan were pressuring Obama to go after the Taliban for them.
It's so accepted that the CIA is a renegade nefarious organization that the current governor of California can appear a in a movie in which the CIA is running a cocaine smuggling operation in a fictitious banana republic and no one thinks anything of it.
ReplyDeleteThe investigate journalist Gary Webb wrote the great "Dark Alliance" series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News back in 1996. It was later published as a book.
The series alleged that Nicaraguan drug traffickers had sold and distributed crack cocaine in Los Angeles during the 1980s, and that drug profits were used to fund the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras. Webb never asserted that the CIA directly aided drug dealers to raise money for the Contras, but he did document that the CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of cocaine into the U.S. by the Contra personnel.
According to Webb, the evidence demonstrates that White House officials, including Oliver North, knew about and supported using money from drug trafficking to fund the contras, and these officials neglected to pass any information along to the DEA.
On December 10, 2004, Webb was found dead from two gunshot wounds to the head. Sacramento County coroner Robert Lyons determined that it was suicide.
The CIA failed to detect the 9/11 conspiracy with ample warning flags. They are like a huge pulsating multicellular blob of a bureaucracy with no central nervous system. As an intelligence agency they are fairly useless. The only people with real power are sitting in the Langley basement pushing buttons to fire rockets at funny little guys wearing turbans.
ReplyDeleteAnd that kind of power scares me because it's only a matter of time before government agencies start using these weapons in the US to fire on citizens based on intelligence gleaned from the internet. These devices will insure that no armed uprising against an oppressive Federal Govt will ever happen.
And no, I'm not wearing a metal foil hat and standing in a closet. We don't know yet to what lengths the minority occupied government will go to stay in power. Funny how Obama doesn't seemed to be worried about reelection.
"And also recall that Obama, as an underclassman at Occidental, had a homosexual lover & sugar daddy, from Pakistan, named Mohammed Hasan Chandoo..."
ReplyDeleteInteresting name, that - Chandoo is also a term for prepared opium.