I found this book pretty unconvincing, with way too few sources and way too many flimsy inferences.
However, there is a great book about CIA guys creeping around Laurel Canyon, called Chaos [0]. It's filled with sources, research, and mostly solid inferences.
The worst/most-impressive part is how difficult it is to even raise this subject without triggering everyone's thought-terminating partisan programming
I don't think I'm "triggered" when I think most of this stuff is just dumb. Like OK, Anderson Cooper was an intern at the CIA while in college. From that we're supposed to mentally jump through hundreds of hoops to get to "the CIA controls news media even though it's illegal and any patriotic employee could blow the whistle on the whole thing".
A lot of it is predicated on the "deep state" being completely evil anti-american people, which is so beyond my experience of federal law officers that it doesn't fit my world view. Look at the CIA's Bush-era legally-questionable torture program, there were tons of whistle blowers and media inquiry, it was not secret for very long at all. But somehow a clearly illegal program that controls the news media has been going undetected for decades? It's just not how the USA works.
What makes me suspicious is that disco never "died" in europe in the same way it did in the States...
(up until recently, covers of "I Will Survive" —one of which, sadly no longer available on YouTube, was even in drag— were featured annually in russian state-channel [Россия1] New Year's programming)
Disco didn't die in the states at all. It kept on going. As a mainstream genre, maybe, for a while. But it evolved into the various house and techno and the myriad of sub-genres that are still flourishing to this day.
That event always seemed so weird to me. I’m not the biggest fan of disco (some of the old and new stuff is danceable) but isn’t blowing up a crate of records similar in spirit to book burning?
The spirit was the thing was that: 1. explosions are fun, 2. this rock jock hated disco, 3. his fans and other people will pay money to go to a baseball game and see this at a time when not many people were going. It was more of a publicity stunt, than anything politically charged.
Something in the spirit of book burning today is more like banning books in public places, like schools or libraries, under penalty of prison.
Or, if you consider recorded art - its creator's thoughts and feelings being shuttled into the future - as akin to that creator living on in perpetuity, perhaps it's also similar in spirit to the assassination of a "subversive."
Not really. There was a real attack (provoked by the US) on Aug 2nd, and Johnson didn't want any evidence before escalating. Johnson even lied to Congress and the public about his plans before attacking. It's clear he would have used any excuse he could gin up.
Ed was at the end of his rope, an expression he detested. “There is no rope!”, he would scream at the laughing walls, “There is only the end. No hope; no rope.”
I recently came across a reference to this kind of thing going on in Europe, although it was more about controlling what music was popular based on some notion of what was 'safe' for the youth. The billionaire in question (Ukraine's second richest at one point) was a major behind-the-scenes actor in both pre- and post-2014 Ukraine, a backer of Zelensky at one point, but now safely on the official US/NATO-reviled list so we can talk about him:
> "As a Komsomol activist, Kolomoyskyi was involved in the so-called "disco movement" - an attempt by the authorities to promote an ideological safe alternative to the growing, underground, rebroadcast and performance of "Anglo-American" rock music including, in the 80s, heavy metal and punk."
I found this book pretty unconvincing, with way too few sources and way too many flimsy inferences.
However, there is a great book about CIA guys creeping around Laurel Canyon, called Chaos [0]. It's filled with sources, research, and mostly solid inferences.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHAOS:_Charles_Manson,_the_CIA...
see also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1hv5P4SwbU
Now do feminism
https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/feminist-was-spy
CIA does feminism: https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1429188218424078...
Now do news media: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson_Cooper#Early_career
The worst/most-impressive part is how difficult it is to even raise this subject without triggering everyone's thought-terminating partisan programming
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Carlson
https://theweek.com/speedreads/689969/tucker-carlson-tried-j...
I don't think I'm "triggered" when I think most of this stuff is just dumb. Like OK, Anderson Cooper was an intern at the CIA while in college. From that we're supposed to mentally jump through hundreds of hoops to get to "the CIA controls news media even though it's illegal and any patriotic employee could blow the whistle on the whole thing".
A lot of it is predicated on the "deep state" being completely evil anti-american people, which is so beyond my experience of federal law officers that it doesn't fit my world view. Look at the CIA's Bush-era legally-questionable torture program, there were tons of whistle blowers and media inquiry, it was not secret for very long at all. But somehow a clearly illegal program that controls the news media has been going undetected for decades? It's just not how the USA works.
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Now do tucker Carlson. https://www.mintpressnews.com/tucker-carlson-biography-nicar...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKTFfT4sMhQ
> There's this guy from the CIA and he's creeping around Laurel Canyon
Makes me look at things like Disco Demolition Night in a new light.
What makes me suspicious is that disco never "died" in europe in the same way it did in the States...
(up until recently, covers of "I Will Survive" —one of which, sadly no longer available on YouTube, was even in drag— were featured annually in russian state-channel [Россия1] New Year's programming)
Disco didn't die in the states at all. It kept on going. As a mainstream genre, maybe, for a while. But it evolved into the various house and techno and the myriad of sub-genres that are still flourishing to this day.
That event always seemed so weird to me. I’m not the biggest fan of disco (some of the old and new stuff is danceable) but isn’t blowing up a crate of records similar in spirit to book burning?
The spirit was the thing was that: 1. explosions are fun, 2. this rock jock hated disco, 3. his fans and other people will pay money to go to a baseball game and see this at a time when not many people were going. It was more of a publicity stunt, than anything politically charged.
Something in the spirit of book burning today is more like banning books in public places, like schools or libraries, under penalty of prison.
Or, if you consider recorded art - its creator's thoughts and feelings being shuttled into the future - as akin to that creator living on in perpetuity, perhaps it's also similar in spirit to the assassination of a "subversive."
Wait a minute.
This is a great place to start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident
tldr: Jim Morrison's dad started the Vietnam War when he falsely claimed he was attacked off the coast of Vietnam by the North Vietnamese.
Not really. There was a real attack (provoked by the US) on Aug 2nd, and Johnson didn't want any evidence before escalating. Johnson even lied to Congress and the public about his plans before attacking. It's clear he would have used any excuse he could gin up.
Definitely, but it's also interesting that Jim Morrison's dad was the in charge of the ginned up operation. I don't think most people know that.
Johnson wanted to go to war, eventually some excuse would have been found.
I agree, this was less than a year after the JFK assassination and of high priority to Johnson and his "supporters".
Can you finish your point?
What is the takeaway?
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Where are the facts that back this up? Shouldn't there be disclosed evidence by now? Wasn't the counter culture under surveillance regularly?
This is definitely a fitting conspiracy theory for our increasingly fascist times though.
> Shouldn't there be disclosed evidence by now?
Ed was at the end of his rope, an expression he detested. “There is no rope!”, he would scream at the laughing walls, “There is only the end. No hope; no rope.”
And The X-Files was a long ad.
This is one of my favorite rabbit holes to go down, it's nuts.
I recently came across a reference to this kind of thing going on in Europe, although it was more about controlling what music was popular based on some notion of what was 'safe' for the youth. The billionaire in question (Ukraine's second richest at one point) was a major behind-the-scenes actor in both pre- and post-2014 Ukraine, a backer of Zelensky at one point, but now safely on the official US/NATO-reviled list so we can talk about him:
> "As a Komsomol activist, Kolomoyskyi was involved in the so-called "disco movement" - an attempt by the authorities to promote an ideological safe alternative to the growing, underground, rebroadcast and performance of "Anglo-American" rock music including, in the 80s, heavy metal and punk."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihor_Kolomoyskyi
What?
The book the OP links to does make a good case of the same influence being used by the CIA as the OOP link makes with modern art… if that makes sense.