Daily Kos: CIA Controlled Opposition?

[sunny]

Has there been any attempt to discuss this at DailyKos? Has Kos himself responded in any way or explained his position?

I carried the link to My Left Wing over to FDL. Here is what transpired:

sunny says:

August 8th, 2007 at 7:13 am
Forgive totally OT link, but thought you all might like to read a little background on Kos.

[CHS notes: I’ve disabled the link here. If you want to find this unsubstantiated dreck, you’ll have to do it with your own Google. Markos has been dealing with this conspiracy-theory idiocy long enough, and I’ll not have it peddled in the comments here at FDL. If you have questions as to why, feel free to e-mail me, but we don’t deal in character assassination without all of the facts being completely substantiated, and this one is so far out in tinfoil hat territory as to be laughable. Sorry, but there you are, and I’m not helping to spread it.]

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/08/08/t ... ent-882064

137
Steve-AR says:

August 8th, 2007 at 8:28 am
sunny @ 28

Forgive totally OT link, but thought you all might like to read a little background on Kos.

[CHS notes: "".]

Thanks for the clarification..Maybe it’s a sign of FDL’s increasing influence and success, but there sure seem to be more, one time new screen name, concern trolls trashing the Dem party.

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/08/08/t ... ent-882211

151
sunny says:

August 8th, 2007 at 9:10 am
Steve-AR @ 137

sunny @ 28

Forgive totally OT link, but thought you all might like to read a little background on Kos.

[CHS notes: "".]

Thanks for the clarification..Maybe it’s a sign of FDL’s increasing influence and success, but there sure seem to be more, one time new screen name, concern trolls trashing the Dem party.
**

First of all, I have posted here several times under my own screen name, “sunny”, in the last 18 months or so.

Second of all, the Dem party deserves trashing. Literally.

Lastly, over the weekend, several commenters here, and a couple of front pagers as well, expressed alarm at the quasi-corporate atmosphere of YKos and many others were wondering at the motivations and actual agenda of Kos himself. And while I realize most here are unwilling to question the agenda and background of leading rock star bloggers, others are not willing to blindly follow a potential right-wing mole over the abyss. Did no one find it interesting that Kos found it necessary to ban people who even mentioned the 2004 election might have been stolen?

The link I provided was to My Left Wing, a site many here probably click regularly. The piece was documented not only by research into the background of Kos, but by his own words. Information like that is important to some who feel we need real progressive leaders.

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/08/08/the-rule-of-some-laws-but-not-others/#comment-882304

CHS is Christy Hardin Smith. There were no further replies to my comment, save one who simply said "Divide and conquer" as tho I were trying to win some kind of battle over FDL. I had one purpose, as I knew this informaiton would be rejected by the majority-to try and reach those few good hearted souls over there who really care about the truth, and are not simply following the party line/herd. I'm satisfied I got the attention of some of them.

[MacCruiskeen]

Thanks, sunny. It's a weird spectacle, this kind of mental short-circuiting when people are faced with information they can't or won't assimilate. They go into emergency mode, and their language just breaks down into these particles of readymade antithought. "Conspiracy-theory! Conspiracy-theory! Idiocy! Unsubstantiated dreck! Character assassination! Does not compute! Does not compute! Tinfoil hat! Tinfoil hat! Tinfoil HAAA----- FFFFTSSSsssssss...."

Yet, as you say, "The piece was documented not only by research into the background of Kos, but by his own words." They heard that, but they didn't hear it. It reminds me of the way abused children simply deny their own experience: "Daddy didn't do that, even if he did. And if he did, he must have had his reasons."

[Sounder]

This is a trance test. It happened in February 2002 also, in the form of three stories implying govt. ops that killed their own citizens for larger political imperatives.

We will have general recognition of these events and their implications only when we have a framework that can integrate a wider array of facts (within our communal representations.)

[pepsified thinker]

Memory Hole Time at Daily Kos?

When the story came out (at AltNet? AltPress?--'alt' something or other) about 56 of 80-some Ohio counties having lost or disposed of the ballots from 2004, even though a federal court order directed them to save them, I posted a diary about it at Dkos.

In doing that I had to pick topics (key words) that my dairy entry related to.

There wasn't anything that clearly stood for the 2004 election. The 2000 election, and the 2006 and the 2008 elections were there.

I don't always buy Hugh's schtick--sometimes I think he's got something--but this seems like one time when the term 'key word hijacking' undeniably applies--'cept it's not 'hijacking', it's, uh, 'disappearing'?

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

I just listened to the Commonwealth Club inteview of June 2, 2006.

http://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-Directory/Politics/Contemporary-Issues/Commonwealth-Club-Radio-Program-Podcast/18764#3

2004 and lots of things are missing from Markos' world. But his head is full of the horse race details of politics and he gives seven-minute highly detailed answers to questions.
That's common among people who think they know politics because they know lots of overt stuff. And does make sense of the overt theater pretty well despite the missing underworld.

His comments on his applying for the CIA and what liberal internationalists they are runs from 12:15 through 16:45.

Around 62:00 he spends a few minutes talking about protecting his blog's credibility and disses TruthOut's Jason Leopold for jumping on a false story that Rove had been indicted. He sounds like he's competing with Will Pitt's TruthOut.org.

Markos says early in the interview that the reason he's mad at the Dems is "they lose."

So he is remaining willfully ignorant (?) of the fact that a Democratic presidential candidate won in 2000 and 2004 in stolen elections.

He plays up the 'conservative' media machine as a force to be countered but makes no recognition of Operation Mockingbird CIA/State Department control of mainstream media.

Slim possibility that he might be just another ignorant dupe instead of a perp. There are lots of dupes who really don't know anything about spook media and have that James Bond agent or Robert Redford analyst image of CIA.

But he touted the collective intelligence of the blogosphere that revealed Cheney's lies in his debate against Edwards. So I'm sure he's read plenty of posts that point at the cryptocracy's colorful schemes and his ignorance would have to be very willful.

I found a better candidate for media spook on the website with Commonwealth Club audio - Sarah Chayes formerly of Harvard and NPR. She "quit journalism" to run an organization in Afghanistan and makes comments defending NATO's role there.

Sarah Chayes, former reporter, NPR; author The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban

Author: Commonwealth Club of California
Wed, Nov 08, 2006

Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban

Former National Public Radio reporter for Paris, North Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East, Sarah Chayes, will tell us what inspired her to put reporting on the backburner and start a nonprofit in post-war Afghanistan. The founder of Afghans for Civil Society is steering the organization to help bring to Afghanistan some of the intellectual resources necessary for formulating constructive public policy. It is also sponsoring community-to-community projects, such as a sister-school initiative and the rebuilding of houses destroyed during the recent conflict. Based out of the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, Afghans for Civil Society is proving that Afghanistan and its people are ready, and capable, of creating a new country from the rubble of the past.

Author of the new book The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban, Chayes continues to live in Kandahar. She also runs Arghand, a small agri-business in the city. Prior to her stewardship at Afghans for Civil Society, Chayes covered numerous locales as a reporter for National Public Radio. Her reporting during the Kosovo crisis earned her the 1999 Foreign Press Club and Sigma Delta Chi awards.

Chayes also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco. She holds a master’s degree in History and Middle Eastern Studies and Bachelors Degree from Harvard University. She received the Radcliffe College History Prize for best senior thesis written by a woman.

This program was recorded live on September 19, 2006

Sarah Chayes wiki entry confirms the liklihood that she's CIA-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Chayes

Sarah Chayes (b. Washington, D.C., 5 March 1962) is a former reporter for National Public Radio.

Sarah Chayes is the daughter of law professor and Kennedy administration member Abram Chayes. She graduated from Harvard University in 1984, with a degree in history. She later served in the Peace Corps in Morocco, returning to Harvard to earn a master's degree in history and Middle Eastern studies, specializing in the medieval Islamic period.

Chayes began her reporting career free-lancing from Paris for The Christian Science Monitor and other outlets. From 1996 to 2002, she served as Paris reporter for National Public Radio, earning 1999 Foreign Press Club and Sigma Delta Chi awards (together with other members of the NPR team) for her reporting on the Kosovo War. She has also reported from other nations.

She has lived in Kandahar, Afghanistan since 2002. Having learned to speak the Pashto language, she has helped rebuild homes, set up a dairy cooperative. In May 2005, she established the Arghand Cooperative, a venture that encourages local Afghan farmers to produce flowers, fruits, and herbs instead of opium poppies, by buying their products and producing soaps and other scented products from them for export.

She is the author of The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban, published in August 2006.

In July 10, 2007 Chayes published an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune saying that NATO was not to blame for the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. "When things go wrong, it is typical to blame the equipment, or the help. In the case of the unraveling situation in Afghanistan, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has become the favorite whipping boy of American officials In fact, after watching rotation after military rotation cycle through here since late 2001, I see NATO as an improvement over its American predecessors."

[theeKultleeder]

Ahhh dupes. Specimens that will prove the efficacy of a skinner-box. God bless 'em.

[MacCruiskeen]

Talking of Skinner boxes...



...I always wondered why the guy who started Democratic Underground chose to go under the pseudonym "Skinner".

The topic of 9/11 has been in the dungeon for ages, and "Skinner" recently banned any expression of support for Cindy Sheehan's campaign against Nancy Pelosi. (Quoting from memory: "This site is called Democratic Underground for a reason.")

[FourthBase]

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, owner of the DailyKos website, now admits that he spent six months in the employ of the US Central Intelligence Agency in 2001

This thread needs to be bumped.

I saw this guy on that MTP show "debating" Ford, and at the time he seemed like a nerdy schlub underdog liberal putting Ford and the Democrat establishment on the ropes. Of course, in that RI part of my brain, I figured "he's probably a spook and there's loads of theater concealing parapolitical subtexts going on"...but it was just a small "probably just paranoid" hunch, and I gave myself over to viewing the show from a mainstream norm perspective. But no, it was exactly as cynical as my "paranoid" hunch. Kos has been completely exposed as a gatekeeping instrument, and therefore the very existence of liberal gatekeeping has been confirmed, and this needs to be advertised more.

[chiggerbit]

There are leaders, and then there are cult leaders. You can tell which you're dealing with by studying the characteristics of cults. The FDL response to sunny was a classic cult response. Let's see, which ones would that be? Hmmm, how about:

MILIEU CONTROL the most basic feature is the control of human communication within and environment;

DEMAND FOR PURITY the world becomes sharply divided into the pure and the impure, the absolutely good (the group/ideology) and the absolutely evil (everything outside the group) one must continually change or conform to the group "norm" tendencies towards guilt and shame are used as emotional levers for the group's controlling and manipulative influences;

LOADING THE LANGUAGE the language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliche (thought-stoppers) repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon "the language of non-thought" words are given new meanings ;

DOCTRINE OVER PERSON every issue in one's life can be reduced to a single set of principles that have an inner coherence to the point that one can claim the experience of truth and feel it the pattern of doctrine over person occurs when there is a conflict between what one feels oneself experiencing and what the doctrine or ideology says one should experience if one questions the beliefs of the group or the leaders of the group, one is made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to even question -- it is always "turned around" on them and the questioner/criticizer is questioned rather than the questions answered directly the underlying assumption is that doctrine/ideology is ultimately more valid, true and real than any aspect of actual human character or human experience and one must subject one's experience to that "truth" the experience of contradiction can be immediately associated with guilt one is made to feel that doubts are reflections of one's own evil when doubt arises;

DISPENSING OF EXISTENCE since the group has an absolute or totalist vision of truth, those who are not in the group are bound up in evil, are not enlightened, are not saved, and do not have the right to exist "being verses nothingness" impediments to legitimate being must be pushed away or destroyed

Not that FDL is a leader in any way, but more like well-programmed cult follower, with the role of spokesperson. But, I expect that Marcos is the cult leader.

Not bad, five out of eight characteristics.

[MASONIC PLOT]

Markos has been dealing with this conspiracy-theory idiocy long enough, and I’ll not have it peddled in the comments here at FDL.

Markos was on Meet The Press the Sunday after this story broke as I understand. Sounds like yet another attempt, one many many recently, to discredit the 'conspiracy theory' culture.


I dont know if the guy is CIA or not, but I certainly suspect it given this most recent twist. Of course, I suspect most internet sites dealing with these types of issues, i.e. alternative news, conspiracies, etc, are part of an overall disinformation psy op to get us all looking one way while they continue to rape and pillage in the other. Of course, that doesnt mean that none of it is true, there is likely many many kernals of truth in all of what we read on the internets, but it is blanketed nicely with a lot of misinformation. For anyone to just believe so blindly, like the fellow at FDL, is just really mind blowing to me. I dont trust anyone, really. I dont necessarily distrust everyone either. I take what people want to offer and try my best to process it and make sense of it.

[8bitagent]

Given DailyKos seems to hate 9/11 truthers and "conspiracy theorists" almost as much or more than right wing blogs...its possible.

Its like "Crooks and Liars" will ban anyone for even alluding to 9/11 truth or questioning 9/11. Seems like THEY are the Crooks and Liars.

Same thing with Counter Punch, Alternet and so many left gatekeeper sites.

TheRawStory seems to be the only lefty site that "keeps it real".

The left SHOULD know better than to label people "nuts", and its for this reason I tend to criticize the left more than the right.

[Wombaticus Rex]

I think that regardless of wether it's paid behavior or simple cowardice, the phenomenon of "left gatekeeping" is undeniably real and these people will continue to get a spotlight shown on them. And they deserve it.

I also think that anyone who owns and runs a website can run that website they own and run however they see fit.

[sunny]

Moulitsas has changed his CIA story from 6 months of Interviews to one year.
From 2001 to "Probably" the summer of 2002



http://www.radaronline.com/from-the-mag ... ards_3.php

[FourthBase]

I suspect that my op-ed piece was an eye opener—like, "What the hell is a blogger doing in the Washington Post?!"

Now we know.

I found this surprising: You almost joined the CIA as a covert operative a few years ago, after starting Daily Kos. Did you apply for a job or were you recruited?

I applied. I also applied at the State Department, but only the CIA showed interest. I was underemployed, and I didn't have very good job opportunities at the time. It was something that seemed to be up my alley. I'm interested in politics, I'm interested in foreign relations, I'm interested in analyzing stuff and writing about it. The interviewing process took a year, between security checks and all sorts of psych evaluations and drug tests.

Do you think the Agency's interest in you had anything to do with the fact that you were becoming influential in liberal politics?

I wasn't then. This was late 2002 and nobody knew I existed. I started blogging in early 2002, and it was around that summer, probably, that I applied. I don't think they knew about Daily Kos until I disclosed it. [ ] Part of my extracurricular activities and whatnot.

Would you have quit blogging had you taken the job?

That was a decision I had to make. They actually asked, point-blank, "Are you willing to give up this political stuff to work for us?" And, after I thought about it long enough, I wasn't. It would have been a weird life.

Rigggggggggggggght.

Must be a weird life, you fucking spook.

[11:11]

That FDL would give this an icy shoulder comes as no surprise. I believe they are associated with Ornicus, another global plantation tool.