Dear Michael,
I dare say that Sartre was considered a "tool" of the Soviets or the
Communists, he was a card carrier of the French C.P. for a while...He
even supported so called communist ideals and states...many people did,
not just the intellectuals. When he learned from his mistakes and
changed his position and left the communist party, I dare say that the
KGB and the Soviets saw him as a C.I.A. stooge or capitalist camp
follower...dissent and disinformation, deceipt and black operations
abounded then as now. What was it Bush said in relation to the
Cooperation of the Willing in the war on Iraq..."If you aint for us, you
are agin us." that included the United Nations, which wouldn't give its
support.
Anyone who even knew about the K.G.B. in them days, was likely
considered as an asset of the KGB as far as the US/UK intelligence and
security establishment was concerned, they were "UnAmerican or
anti-American, or anti-British, anti-monarchy" particularly those who
were in, or were card carrying members of Her Majesty's Communist Party
or its associated Youth Movement, the Young Communist League, or
associated with, or expressed "Communist " views or supported
"Communist" organisations ... Political movements, political parties,
peace movements, religious movements, aetheist organisations or sects,
trade union movements, cultural movements, educational movements and
establishments, social think tanks, youth movements, liberation
movements, human rights movements...even singers, composers, writers,
sculptors and artists of all kinds..whatever they were...except for
those which were funded by the C.I.A. and other western organisations of
such ilk, were considered as a potential threat and tabs of varying
degrees were kept on them. They were all fair game...the question was
and still is, who are the gamekeepers and who are the poachers. Who are
the good guys and who are the bad guys.
All countries, friends or alien, allies or enemies, were treated
equally by the US/UK in that respect. Moral rearmament was the key, the
spectre of communism, the lock.
see url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Re-Armament
for an intro...
I well remember, receiving the leaflet from MoralRearmament
production company; which was distributed for free to every house in the
UK, (where did it get its funding?)as part of our education on how to
be nice citizens, and warned us to be wary of those who had chosen the
way of dissent, subversion, sedition, treachery and otherwise
undermining the state and our economy. The only difference between then
and now is that the security, collection and enforcement services are
much more numerous, much more powerful and much more disparate, and
working on a global scale, especially now that computers and storage
facililities are so cheap and it is easy to set up programs to sift and
sort data and turn it into "useful" information.
The introduction of the lie detector, positive and negative vetting,
increased monitoring and improved selection techniques, rather than
relying on just the old school tie, a good and well paid career path has
produced a more loyal and efficient workforce. The same can't be said
of the bureacracy, which has grown more numerous and disparate, and the
growth of foreign intelligence services are more numerous and becoming
equal if not surpassing the power and scope of the US security
community. And of course, huge numbers of people are now employed in
the associated industries and have signed the official secrets acts and
contracts, so there are more dissaffected get through the net, and it
becomes more difficult to keep information classified, even on a "need
to know" compartmentalised basis.
The "good" bit is that one of the things which has remained the same, is
that the world security and intelligence services are even better at
really fucking things up, creating all sorts of different organisations,
all sorts of different scenarios, where they all stick their fingers in
the pie and mince up the pastry with the stew, secret measures which are
supposed to solve a problem, but which instead, create so many more,
both out of the present situation and what is going to come to fruition
tomorrow...and all in the name of protecting their native populations
from being harmed by others. In the "good ole days", wars tended to be
waged by armies fighting armies to the point of attrition and the
winners took the spoils, nowadays, it is armies of drones fighting the
civilian populations, knocking out the utilities, gas, phones
electricty, water supply etc, putting in puppet governments and
arranging financial deals which suck the local economies dry and
transfer the goods and materials to the "advanced" countries as cheaply
as possible, from which...we, in the advanced capitalist companies
benefit...and which our populations tend to support, provided war and
starvation isn't waged upon us of course...c'est la vie...
ATB
Dougie.
P.S. Winston Churchill, "War is conducted on all fronts" No stone is
left unturned. Each generation has to learn anew.
On 15/01/2016 13:33, Michael Best wrote:
Actually, there was one other thing - Sartre as a KGB asset/agent. I actually hadn't heard this before, but after a little digging I was able to find several other sources including alleged insiders that accused him of it. The multiple accusations don't mean it's true, of course, but it makes it less likely to be total nonsense. I have a draft FOIA request with MuckRock for his FBI file, which was previously released. It'll be interesting to see what it says.
Has anyone heard about this before, or reviewed any of the allegations against him? So far I've only seen enough to convince to me to keep looking, nothing conclusive.
One of the reports I saw described him as unwittingly being used (I have yet to track down the original source though, it was a footnote) which is what I would rather believe since I liked his work. It wouldn't be unusual for a "lefty" philosopher to have been seduced by the good aspects of socialism and then exploited (change the political affiliations in that sentence and it still holds true of most groups, generally speaking everyone is/was exploited by someone).
--Mike
On Fri, Jan 15, 2016 at 8:12 AM, Michael Best <themikebest@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:themikebest@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
One thing has stuck in my mind since reading the book, about
Russia's long series of campaigns to undermine the Catholic
Church. I wonder if they took any part in fanning the flames in
the aftermath of the molestation scandal a few years back. Clearly
it wasn't faked, but it did change the way many people look at the
Catholic Church. Like the KGB disinfo after the JFK assassination,
it would mostly require a light touch - especially since, unlike
the JFK assassination, people know which organization to blame for
the molestation scandal.
Pure speculation, of course.
