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Most criticism comes with the implicit belief that the US has cleaned up its act since the terrible experiments of the Cold War era. That's an intellectual fal

by sph 3y ago

Most criticism comes with the implicit belief that the US has cleaned up its act since the terrible experiments of the Cold War era. That's an intellectual fallacy it's easy to fall prey of: if most cultures and nations have committed heinous acts in their past, one should assume they are still doing terrible things to this day. MK-ULTRA is dead, but history teaches that one day we'll learn of something even worse that's occurring right under our noses in 2023. It is disingenuous to criticise what the CIA and other three letter agencies have done, while not being totally opposed to their existence to this day. Who knows how they are experimenting with people on US soil, how they are fomenting revolts and financing drug lords in South America today. Sadly, any such criticism can be easily waved away by calling it a conspiracy theory, which is how they keep operating with impunity. The only difference between an outlandish conspiracy theory and history are the existence of declassified government documents.

guerrilla 3y ago
> if most cultures and nations have committed heinous acts in their past, one should assume they are still doing terrible things to this day. Yeah, here's a list, plenty still ongoing: https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrociti...
- xtracto 3y ago
  This is a great text. Most internet English language forums have a heavy American culture bias. So it's not easy to find places to talk in a calm and unbiased manner about US imperialism. In a couple 100s of years , history will be talked about this era of "Pax Americana" and the lengths that the US Gov went trying to cling to its power. Is it good, is it bad? Depends on where you are really.
  - NLPaep 3y ago
    Having such a list on two American sites is noteworthy. On pikabu.ru, there is no war going on. Mass censorship.
    - xtracto 3y ago
      And on NK there's no internet at all. So what? Why this fixation in changing the focus out of the US with whataboutism? Others' worse actions dont make ones bad actions better.
      - JohnBooty 3y ago
        I understand how it could be seen as whataboutism, but think it's extremely relevant in a discussion about American imperialism. If nothing else, it's certainly interesting and unique. America is the first (and maybe only, ever?) major imperial power that allows such open discussion of its atrocities. I say this not from the standpoint of defending or attacking America. I just find it fascinating.
        anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        > America is the first (and maybe only, ever?) major imperial power Swift's "A Modest Proposal" was from 1729.
        JohnBooty 3y ago
        I'll attempt to clarify. America is the first (and maybe only, ever?) major imperial power that allows such open discussion of its atrocities. I did not claim that America was the first imperial power to allow public dissent. That, as I'm sure you'd agree, is manifestly untrue. So it's unclear to me what point you're attempting to make by pointing out a single instance of prior public dissent in the British Empire. Particularly since Swift's work of satire was not exactly a direct criticism of the British Empire, nor a catalogue of its atrocities. If you do the minimum feasible amount of research and read the Wikipedia article, you will learn that it was largely a parody of other such popular contemporary treatises, a thing that is easy to miss in 2023 if you aren't familiar with the context in which "A Modest Proposal" was written. Back to my original post... I certainly don't think America was the first to allow such dissent. I think it is the first to do so on such a scale. (I also don't necessarily think America allows such dissent for entirely noble purposes. As has been often pointed out, legitimate criticism and evidence often gets lumped in with whackadoo fake conspiracy theories and is therefore discredited by default in the public's mind. The end result is a more effective form of suppression than could be achieved by direct totalitarian repression. The US government will let you talk about the MKUltra experiments or Guantanamo all day long because barely anybody will believe you, or care.)
  - sh34r 3y ago
    I think it'll be a lot shorter than 100 years. It didn't take 100 years for the British empire to collapse. It showed its weakness during WWII, and the Suez crisis put the old dog out of its misery a mere 10 years later. Chernobyl preceded the fall of the USSR by only 5 years. How long after COVID will America fall? China's already brokered peace in the Middle East between our best friend and our worst enemy in the region. The Universe has a sense of humor. Given the historical precedent, will we mark the end of the US empire with China negotiating peace in occupied Ukraine or in occupied Palestine? I'm clearly the furthest thing from a patriot, but I am fairly certain the history books will place our collapse somewhere between the Soviet Union and the British Empire on the atrocity scale. If we outdo Churchill's genocide in India, it's going to involve nuclear hellfire, and then there won't be any history books to remember it by anyway.
- bsnnkv 3y ago
  Your post is showing as downvoted for me right now. I tried upvoting it so it doesn't show as greyed out. Thanks for sharing this resource; I had not come across it before and I think it is a valuable resource to share and a meaningful contribution to the discussion on this topic.
- civilitty 3y ago
  I jumped to the section on Europe and the only entry for the last 20 years is: > In late 2019, CIA agent Anne Sacoolas hit and killed a British teenage pedestrian named Harry Dunn with her car, while she was driving on the wrong side of the road, near the RAF Croughton base in the UK where she and her husband (both CIA agents) worked. List of atrocities, indeed…
- fwungy 3y ago
  Thank God the good guys won all the wars. -Norm McDonald
zaroth 3y ago
I can’t help but reflect how much of the tragedy, conflict, and war in human history has been caused by these agencies run amok. What’s striking about these MKUltra type programs is the magnitude of horrible things stemming from a relatively small number of clandestine operatives doing insane experiments on the population. Based in the article in The Times yesterday, I’d say we can confidently add global pandemic to this list, and a reminder that the US doesn’t have a monopoly on this particularly deranged form of violence. Up until 2019 I’d say the USA was the worst offender, but let’s hope no one ever catches up to what China did in Wuhan.
- mrangle 3y ago
  > but let’s hope no one ever catches up to what China did in Wuhan. You have to look into the history of these programs, further, to gain some perspective.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  > I can’t help but reflect how much of the tragedy, conflict, and war in human history has been caused by these agencies run amok. A relatively small amount most likely. Maybe on par with the amount that has been caused by yellow journalism (e.g. the Spanish-American war, anti-ethnicity political cartoons). Most of anything "caused" by them is not from them running amok, but from them doing the job they were ordered to do by higher officials. And, of course, we only rarely see what they prevented from happening.
- dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - rowanG077 3y ago
    Did I miss something? Was it confirmed that Covid-19 was deliberately released by the chinese?
    - dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
      Nope, didn't quite mean that. What I meant was the overall gravity of what was the pandemic. Quite possible that something that happened in one place was much more serious, or even totally different in other place, and in other places it was life as usual. For me the jury is out there, if indeed there was a pathogen out there. For all you know it could have been a radiation leak. In other cases it could have been cases of cold or flu. What I can confidently say is that it was not the pandemic of large proportions as it was made out to be. (no one I knew died). What I can also confidently say is that no one can really say with a high degree of certainty that it was a virus, the tests (PCR) are flaky, the symptoms can be attributed to many things etc. etc.
mrangle 3y ago
MK-ULTRA was only one such program. It had predecessors and parallel programs. Beginning at least as early as the post WWII 1940's.
dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
>That's an intellectual fallacy it's easy to fall prey of: if most cultures and nations have committed heinous acts in their past, one should assume they are still doing terrible things to this day. >MK-ULTRA is dead, but history teaches that one day we'll learn of something even worse that's occurring right under our noses in 2023. Very astute observations.
sh34r 3y ago
> MK-ULTRA is dead, but history teaches that one day we'll learn of something even worse that's occurring right under our noses in 2023. In the grand scheme of American violations of human rights, MK-ULTRA barely even registers. I can think of a dozen worse things we know are happening right now off the top of my head. Trump and Biden's internment camps, the tent cities in every US city, kids as young as 12 working in slaughterhouses, solitary confinement in prisons... I'll spare everyone from this turning into a rant.

by sph 3y ago

guerrilla 3y ago

> if most cultures and nations have committed heinous acts in their past, one should assume they are still doing terrible things to this day. Yeah, here's a list, plenty still ongoing: https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrociti...

xtracto 3y ago
This is a great text. Most internet English language forums have a heavy American culture bias. So it's not easy to find places to talk in a calm and unbiased manner about US imperialism. In a couple 100s of years , history will be talked about this era of "Pax Americana" and the lengths that the US Gov went trying to cling to its power. Is it good, is it bad? Depends on where you are really.
- NLPaep 3y ago
  Having such a list on two American sites is noteworthy. On pikabu.ru, there is no war going on. Mass censorship.
  - xtracto 3y ago
    And on NK there's no internet at all. So what? Why this fixation in changing the focus out of the US with whataboutism? Others' worse actions dont make ones bad actions better.
    - JohnBooty 3y ago
      I understand how it could be seen as whataboutism, but think it's extremely relevant in a discussion about American imperialism. If nothing else, it's certainly interesting and unique. America is the first (and maybe only, ever?) major imperial power that allows such open discussion of its atrocities. I say this not from the standpoint of defending or attacking America. I just find it fascinating.
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        > America is the first (and maybe only, ever?) major imperial power Swift's "A Modest Proposal" was from 1729.
        JohnBooty 3y ago
        I'll attempt to clarify. America is the first (and maybe only, ever?) major imperial power that allows such open discussion of its atrocities. I did not claim that America was the first imperial power to allow public dissent. That, as I'm sure you'd agree, is manifestly untrue. So it's unclear to me what point you're attempting to make by pointing out a single instance of prior public dissent in the British Empire. Particularly since Swift's work of satire was not exactly a direct criticism of the British Empire, nor a catalogue of its atrocities. If you do the minimum feasible amount of research and read the Wikipedia article, you will learn that it was largely a parody of other such popular contemporary treatises, a thing that is easy to miss in 2023 if you aren't familiar with the context in which "A Modest Proposal" was written. Back to my original post... I certainly don't think America was the first to allow such dissent. I think it is the first to do so on such a scale. (I also don't necessarily think America allows such dissent for entirely noble purposes. As has been often pointed out, legitimate criticism and evidence often gets lumped in with whackadoo fake conspiracy theories and is therefore discredited by default in the public's mind. The end result is a more effective form of suppression than could be achieved by direct totalitarian repression. The US government will let you talk about the MKUltra experiments or Guantanamo all day long because barely anybody will believe you, or care.)
- sh34r 3y ago
  I think it'll be a lot shorter than 100 years. It didn't take 100 years for the British empire to collapse. It showed its weakness during WWII, and the Suez crisis put the old dog out of its misery a mere 10 years later. Chernobyl preceded the fall of the USSR by only 5 years. How long after COVID will America fall? China's already brokered peace in the Middle East between our best friend and our worst enemy in the region. The Universe has a sense of humor. Given the historical precedent, will we mark the end of the US empire with China negotiating peace in occupied Ukraine or in occupied Palestine? I'm clearly the furthest thing from a patriot, but I am fairly certain the history books will place our collapse somewhere between the Soviet Union and the British Empire on the atrocity scale. If we outdo Churchill's genocide in India, it's going to involve nuclear hellfire, and then there won't be any history books to remember it by anyway.
bsnnkv 3y ago
Your post is showing as downvoted for me right now. I tried upvoting it so it doesn't show as greyed out. Thanks for sharing this resource; I had not come across it before and I think it is a valuable resource to share and a meaningful contribution to the discussion on this topic.
civilitty 3y ago
I jumped to the section on Europe and the only entry for the last 20 years is: > In late 2019, CIA agent Anne Sacoolas hit and killed a British teenage pedestrian named Harry Dunn with her car, while she was driving on the wrong side of the road, near the RAF Croughton base in the UK where she and her husband (both CIA agents) worked. List of atrocities, indeed…
fwungy 3y ago
Thank God the good guys won all the wars. -Norm McDonald

zaroth 3y ago

I can’t help but reflect how much of the tragedy, conflict, and war in human history has been caused by these agencies run amok. What’s striking about these MKUltra type programs is the magnitude of horrible things stemming from a relatively small number of clandestine operatives doing insane experiments on the population. Based in the article in The Times yesterday, I’d say we can confidently add global pandemic to this list, and a reminder that the US doesn’t have a monopoly on this particularly deranged form of violence. Up until 2019 I’d say the USA was the worst offender, but let’s hope no one ever catches up to what China did in Wuhan.

mrangle 3y ago
> but let’s hope no one ever catches up to what China did in Wuhan. You have to look into the history of these programs, further, to gain some perspective.
anonymouskimmer 3y ago
> I can’t help but reflect how much of the tragedy, conflict, and war in human history has been caused by these agencies run amok. A relatively small amount most likely. Maybe on par with the amount that has been caused by yellow journalism (e.g. the Spanish-American war, anti-ethnicity political cartoons). Most of anything "caused" by them is not from them running amok, but from them doing the job they were ordered to do by higher officials. And, of course, we only rarely see what they prevented from happening.
dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
[flagged]
- rowanG077 3y ago
  Did I miss something? Was it confirmed that Covid-19 was deliberately released by the chinese?
  - dennis_jeeves1 3y ago
    Nope, didn't quite mean that. What I meant was the overall gravity of what was the pandemic. Quite possible that something that happened in one place was much more serious, or even totally different in other place, and in other places it was life as usual. For me the jury is out there, if indeed there was a pathogen out there. For all you know it could have been a radiation leak. In other cases it could have been cases of cold or flu. What I can confidently say is that it was not the pandemic of large proportions as it was made out to be. (no one I knew died). What I can also confidently say is that no one can really say with a high degree of certainty that it was a virus, the tests (PCR) are flaky, the symptoms can be attributed to many things etc. etc.

mrangle 3y ago

MK-ULTRA was only one such program. It had predecessors and parallel programs. Beginning at least as early as the post WWII 1940's.

dennis_jeeves1 3y ago

>That's an intellectual fallacy it's easy to fall prey of: if most cultures and nations have committed heinous acts in their past, one should assume they are still doing terrible things to this day. >MK-ULTRA is dead, but history teaches that one day we'll learn of something even worse that's occurring right under our noses in 2023. Very astute observations.

sh34r 3y ago

> MK-ULTRA is dead, but history teaches that one day we'll learn of something even worse that's occurring right under our noses in 2023. In the grand scheme of American violations of human rights, MK-ULTRA barely even registers. I can think of a dozen worse things we know are happening right now off the top of my head. Trump and Biden's internment camps, the tent cities in every US city, kids as young as 12 working in slaughterhouses, solitary confinement in prisons... I'll spare everyone from this turning into a rant.