Kizmet and her pals at it again

[Dennis Ruhl]

I suspect that Les Quebecois spend a lot more time thinking about English Canadians than vice-versa. As Canada is a federal state Quebec runs its own show and I don't think anyone outside of the province gives them much thought one way or another.

I think a parallel could be the perception among Arab countries that Americans are their enemy when in fact 99.9% of Americans had no opinion until planes started hitting buildings.

[Little Arminius]

I suspect that Les Quebecois spend a lot more time thinking about English Canadians than vice-versa.  As Canada is a federal state Quebec runs its own show and I don't think anyone outside of the province gives them much thought one way or another.

I think a parallel could be the perception among Arab countries that Americans are their enemy when in fact 99.9% of Americans had no opinion until planes started hitting buildings.

In my experience dealing with the Quebecois, you are absolutely, 100% correct. Individually they seem very nice in about the same percentage you find among any group of people. Collectively though,  they seem to me to be very defensive; it's almost as though they have an inferiority complex, which, being French, we know simply isn't possible.

Another analogy that may illustrate the point is New York and Chicago. People in Chicago compare everything they have to New York but few New Yorkers ever give much thought to Chicago except when their pro sports teams meet.

P.S. Kizmet is truly clueless.

[Fort Bragg]

So Kizmet is a robot.

While that may explain certain aspects of her personal life, this has to be a classic example of programming gone wrong. Who's responsible? An Easy Three grad or an Indian contractor?

[ham]

I think a parallel could be the perception among Arab countries that Americans are their enemy when in fact 99.9% of Americans had no opinion until planes started hitting buildings.

The average American may only be concerned with football and beer, but it's a fact that foreign policy in the middle East always has (and always will) met Israel's expectations...which is not exactly pro-Arab.
It's not easy to explain to an Arab living in a slum in Palestina how Israelis raiding his neighborhood while funded by and equipped with US supplies have nothing to do with 'America'.
About the planes, who tells you it's not another Beslan?
I am convinced Russia let the Beslan massacre unfold -which claimed the life of hundreds of children - so that they too could have an excuse to stop foreigners from finger pointing their 'counter-violence' in Chechnya...
Russian special troops are too skilled to have missed it if not deliberately.
Vocal critics of Russia's action in Chechnya suddenly lowered their volume and the issue no longer makes international headlines...
If this sounds too much, it's enough to think that the Germans delivered Lenin safely to Russia in a sealed wagon; that Mussolini operated his journal with French funds, etc; think about how CIA killed the scandal of prominent pedophiles pivoting around an African conservative politician, back then a raising star and later arrested for embezzlement in the late 1980s.
So they CAN kill such a scandal ( and a few people in the process ) BUT cannot bust a vast terrorist network?
What about Wacko?
Or does it work only with fringe dissidents living in a cabin with wives and children?

[Dennis Ruhl]

ham

I'm a lttle less into conspiracy theories than you. I am a bigger believer in stupidity theories. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service employed someone named Grant Briscow to help found and be part of the leadership of a white supremacist group, the Heritage Front.

In the meantime CSIS had reports of the planned bombing of an Air India flight and did absolutely nothing. Based on population differential, it was a worse disaster than 9/11.

CSIS made a value judgement that some guys sitting around drinking beer and cursing about brown people was more of of threat than the potential of several hundred brown people losing their lives.

An interesting aside is that CSIS destroyed a whole pile of evidence about the Air India bombings denying the guilty bastards a fair trial so the only convictions were for lesser charges, something to do with explosives.

The Heritage Front died a slow death as do all pariah groups and eventually disappeared. Grant Briscow will probably cost a million or two dollars in a lifetime of witness protection. Several hundred Canadians of Indian descent died.

[ham]

The problem is that so much information is available about government's 'secret' procedures and propaganda -at times penned by the very spin doctors who orchestrated it - that there is hardly any 'conspiracy' involved...check Edward Bernays who engineered the Nicaragua affair on behalf of fruit multinationals...
Or the 'secret' mind-control CIA experiments on unaware citizens involving drugs and shocks...there are thousands of pages of records...
Big brother is evil, not stupid...but of course 'stupidity theories' come handy when they have to explain double standards...
When I have to wire €20 abroad I have to answer twenty questions to x-ray my transaction and it won't go through unless I answer...when billions evaporate, it's a 'stupidity incident' because some dork cleaning toilets in a basement
accidentally unplugged the main computers and records are lost... too easy, if you ask me.

[Dennis Ruhl]

 The Canadian Security Intelligence Service employed someone named Grant Briscow to help found and be part of the leadership of a white supremacist group, the Heritage Front.

That would be Bristow not Briscow.  The idea that a CSIS agent would help found a group that he could then spy on seems a bit bizarre.

I look upon the successful counter-revolutions in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatamala as classic examples of how to deal with terrorists.  The unwillingness of NATO to employ such tactics in Afghanistan is the reason it is bound to lose.  The unwillingness of the Shah of Iran to employ mass brutality led to his overthrow.

Killing all your suspected enemies is not all that palatable to people living in liberal democracies but it is often the difference between winning and losing and winning is better.

[ham]

That would be Bristow not Briscow.  The idea that a CSIS agent would help found a group that he could then spy on seems a bit bizarre.

Visit the Jewish advocacy group site Nizkor.
I remember reading news about Jewish activists setting up fake 'hate' groups to entrap people, so it's not so bizarre.
'Agents provocateurs' were a common bait strategy, especially in the Belle Epoque...paid infiltrators who threw the first stone or excited the masses so that police would be 'forced' to fire or to arrest people...such infiltrators often -even these days- orchestrate or participate in murders and terrorism to give big brother better excuses.
One famous infiltrator was present when alleged KKK members murdered people...he was there taking part in the 'mission'.

The Bernays-orchestrated revolution in Guatemala was in 1954; I am not sure which one you are referring to. While Arbenz -much like Allende- was a socialist loud-mouth and jackass, I don't think he was a communist like Honeker or Gyorgy Lukacs.

The unwillingness of NATO to employ such tactics in Afghanistan is the reason it is bound to lose.  The unwillingness of the Shah of Iran to employ mass brutality led to his overthrow.

I told you that in the 1988 Bond movie THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS Talibans were called freedom fighters...and were carrying out "such tactics" against the USSR-inspired regime of Najibullah... on the side note, under Najibullah's regime women could work and study and all the rest, but big brother called the Talibans to take charge...

Killing all your suspected enemies is not all that palatable to people living in liberal democracies but it is often the difference between winning and losing and winning is better.

Big brother 'won' and installed the Talibans...then it realized it hadn't won at all and wanted them removed...religious fanatics and maximalists were often used against corrupt secular regimes (EG Shah/Batista ) when such regimes were asking for bigger royalties (oil in Iran ) or were becoming too expensive to fund...with the idea that maximalists and religious extremists would be busy infibulating women or passing eccentric laws and would let foreign corporations free to loot the country because all they care about is religion or some bizarre statement of principles...it turns out big brother was wrong...dead wrong...every time.

[Dennis Ruhl]

The Bernays-orchestrated revolution in Guatemala was in 1954; I am not sure which one you are referring to.

The 1980s