Remember there is c/documentaries! You might find something good there too.

Taken for a Ride - The U.S. History of the Assault on Public Transport in the Last Century - This documentary takes a look at the old public transport system of Los Angeles and follows the step-by-step process by which it was dismantled by General Motors. IMO it’s a good one for seeing a concrete example of the actual steps that privatization can take – GM bought the streetcars after a campaign calling them inefficient/run down etc., then after buying them, let them degrade in quality and service, then replaced them with a supposedly superior bus system. Then they allowed the buses to give poor service, ultimately promoting individual cars over buses and highway expansions as the solution to traffic congestion.

Former CIA Agent John Stockwell Talks about How the CIA Worked in Vietnam and Elsewhere - This interview clip is only 15 minutes long but gives a very concise and specific example of how the CIA manipulates the media by having contacts with reporters and passing them a mixture of true and false stories, basically coming up with bullshit and fake photos that will go viral and spread CIA talking points while the “source” of the information becomes more and more obscured as the story is passed around different news agencies, as well as how the CIA have funded the production of countless books, whose authors were allowed to write whatever they wished as long as they included this or that specific point, and that these authors have gone on to have solid and respected careers in academia.

Cybersocialism: Project Cybersyn & The CIA Coup in Chile - From what I recall it gives a good overview of what happened in Chile. In my opinion, due to Chile’s case being so well-documented, it’s a case which people without a lot of background knowledge can start to learn about the process of CIA coups from and how it relates to protecting the interests of the bourgeoisie. A viewer of this documentary can then start applying that knowledge to many other cases where a similar pattern comes up (country tries to nationalize industries/resources which are in foreign imperialist hands => economic loan denial/asset freezes/sanctions are implemented by the imperialists & opposition groups and terrorists in the country are funded & coups are orchestrated by the imperialist power.)

The Human Face of Russia - Simply, lots of footage of everyday life in 1980s USSR. As I recall, it was a foreign group going there to film and fact-check about the living standards and learn about various political and social activities of the people. IIRC it was a pretty calm and positive documentary, a good one if you need some time away from more heavy and upsetting topics.

The Weight of Chains - About the breakup of Yugoslavia.

The U.S. School That Trains Dictators & Death Squads - About the School of the Americas.

Gaza Fights For Freedom - About the Great March of Return.

The Lobby - Four-part undercover investigation into Israel’s covert influence campaign in the United States.

Man I hate this dude

The history of the Middle East since 1948 shows Israel constantly striving for peace, only to be rebuffed time and again by the Arabs.

– Antony J. Blinken, “Lebanon and the Facts”, 1982

Israel is not, has never been, nor will ever be the irreproachable, perfectly moral state some of its supporters would like to see. Israelis are, after all, only human. Still, one pedestal the Jewish state can stand on–and stand on alone in the Middle East–is that of a democracy. Yes, there are tragic excesses in the occupied territories. True, the invasion of Lebanon claimed many innocent lives. The fact remains, though, that Israelis question themselves and their government openly and honestly. Eventually, as in other democracies, those responsible for wrongdoing are held accountable.

– Antony J. Blinken, “Israel’s Saving Grace”, 1982

The summer of 1982 may be remembered in history as the time Israel passed from adolescence to adulthood. The illusions of a child are left behind. But the Jewish state remains special, an oasis in a desert. Its citizens have built a working democracy from scratch in a region that has no others. Israelis must treasure that democracy, protect it with all their will. For if they don’t, the growing pains that are Lebanon, Shatila and Sabra, the repression of Arabs and the feud between Ashkenazim and Sephardim could turn into a plague.

– Antony J. Blinken, “The Danger Within”, 1983

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Ultimately it means meet/talk with other people and engage in planning and work to accomplish something together, whether that thing is big or small.

Easiest thing to do is look around for people who are already organized, e.g., a party or other org focused on a particular issue. IMO if someone has no experience with organizing whatsoever, then they can benefit from joining almost anything, even something run by liberals, anarchists, etc., just simply to see what kind of dynamics are at play when people are trying to work together to accomplish something. A lot of orgs and such are not easy to find online. It’s better to just go to protests and demonstrations or to community projects and start meeting people and learning about what they are doing by word of mouth. People who are involved in organizing are typically going to be open to teaching/involving new people. A demonstration is the kind of place where people are purposely trying to educate and involve the public. Just don’t come across as a cop and be wary that some people trying to involve you in things might be cops themselves lol. Approach groups with a critical eye, join a small-scale/low-risk org whose goals you support to learn about the practical dynamics of how organizing works and to build up a network of acquaintances and friends, and keep learning from there. Trying to organize something from scratch with no experience is possible but if you don’t have a clear idea of what you’re doing nor have a group of other people who are keen and intrinsically motivated to work on the goal, it’s going to be pretty difficult.

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I’d be really interested in reading that

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When reading books written in the imperial core, about the enemies/targets of imperialist nations, I would keep this in mind:

Former CIA case officer John Stockwell: Well for example, in my war, the Angola war, that I helped to manage, one third of my staff was propaganda. […] We would take stories which we would write and put them in the Zambia Times, and then pulled them out and sent them to a journalist on our payroll in Europe. But his cover story, you see, would be what he had gotten from his stringer in Lusaka, who had gotten them from the Zambia Times. We had the complicity of the government of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda if you will, to put these false stories into his newspapers. But after that point, the journalists, Reuters and AFP, the management was not witting of it. Now, our contact man in Europe was. And we pumped just dozens of stories about Cuban atrocities, Cuban rapists–in one case we had the Cuban rapists caught and tried by the Ovimbundu maidens who had been their victims, and then we ran photographs that made almost every newspaper in the country of the Cubans being executed by the Ovimbundu women who supposedly had been their victims.

Interviewer: These were fake photos?

Stockwell: Oh, absolutely. We didn’t know of one single atrocity committed by the Cubans. It was pure, raw, false propaganda to create an illusion of communists, you know eating babies for breakfast and the sort. Totally false propaganda.

Interviewer: John, was this sort of thing practiced in Vietnam?

Stockwell: Oh, endlessly. A massive propaganda effort in Vietnam in the '50s and in the '60s, including the thousand books that were published–several hundred in English–that were also propaganda books sponsored by the CIA. Give some money to a writer, “Write this book for us, write anything you want, but on these matters, make sure, you know, you have this line.”

Interviewer: Writers in this country? Books sold and distributed in this culture?

Stockwell: Sure. Yeah. English language books, meaning an American audience as a target, on the subject of Vietnam and the history of Vietnam, and the history of Marxism, and supporting the domino theory, et cetera.

Interviewer: Without opening us up to a lawsuit, could you name one of them?

Stockwell: No, I could not. The Church Committee, when they found this out, demanded that they be given the titles so that the university libraries could at least go and stamp inside “Central Intelligence Agency’s version of history,” and the CIA refused because it’s been commissioned to protect its sources and methods, and the sources would be the authors who wrote these false propaganda books, some of whom are now distinguished scholars and journalists.

Source (video interview)

Also note:

• It’s a recognized problem in south Korea that “time and time again, conservative outlets and foreign media circulate and reproduce rumors [about DPRK] based on questionable sources … retractions and apologies are rarely ever provided when the reports are shown to be false” and “Sometimes, the South Korean government itself has been the epicenter of false reports … The situation has been made worse by defector groups aggressively proliferating claims from unverified ‘North Korean sources,’ as if attempting to draw attention to themselves.”

• South Korea’s national intelligence service (NIS) forges documents to frame people and tortures them into false confessions as well as pays defectors for sensational stories and harasses and silences people who say positive things about DPRK (and takes away their passports so they can’t go back, even when they came to south Korea against their will)

• UN human rights researchers who have worked directly with defectors from DPRK have written about how testimonies are made unreliable by cash incentives paid by the NIS and other organizations: “North Korean refugees are well aware of what the interviewer wants to hear. … The more terrible their stories are, the more attention they receive. The more international invitations they receive, the more cash comes in. It is how the capitalist system works: competition for more tragic and shocking stories. … In my 16 years of studying North Korean refugees, I have experienced numerous inconsistent stories, intentional omission and lies. I have also witnessed some involved in fraud and other illicit activities. In one case the breach of trust was so significant that I could not continue research.”

Edit: So, to summarize – Former CIA case officers have discussed how they pay academics and journalists to write thousands of books about foreign communist enemies that contain whatever content the author wants as long as it pushes certain specific lines; the CIA regularly plants false stories into foreign newspapers and gets them circulated around; the NIS (formerly the “KCIA”, formed on the US-backed side during the Korean War to combat communists) is known to forge documents, extract false confessions, pay people to lie or embellish to the point that mainstream south Korean liberal media and UN researchers say it’s making it too hard to tell what’s true; defectors with sensational stories receive payments and get book deals and international speaking tours while people with positive things to say get arrested and surveilled by intelligence agencies…So, keep that info in mind as you consider what’s going on with these books.

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