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Comment by bayesian_horse | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes propaganda is more powerful if delivered in a more neutral and objective tone. Also, historical accounts are more believable when supported by sources and evidence. Otherwise it feels a bit one sided.

The CIA has certainly done some weird and evil shit. Slanted writing like this isn't going to persuade anyone, though.

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This is literally just a timeline of known historical events. How is it slanted?

Have you read the first one or two paragraphs?

Yes, and they did us the favor of backing up those paragraphs with detailed research and facts that support their argument.

The meat of the content is the documented acts of the CIA.

But the narrative spin and rhetoric used are not. This is not an objective, dispassionate round up of the facts.

Click around the website. It's a deeply ideological source.

If you take issue with the timeline they present, you’re free to post your own fact based argument to refute it.

"If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts; if you have the law on your side, pound the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table" In this case the table pounding is in the form of saying it's not dispassionate enough for their high standards.

The detailed research is all taken from a single source.

Those are well know historical incidents that are documented with many, many sources. For instance:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

Well, then we have a slightly different view on well-researched, neutrally reported facts.

And I somehow suspect you would be absolutely outraged by an equally poorly written summary that has the opposite viewpoint. Just a guess...

It’s slanted in that it’s not clear how the first 5 items are even atrocious.

Ironically the CIA themselves is very good at writing propaganda with a neutral and objective tone. For example Radio Free Asia is generally considered neutral and objective despite its ties to the CIA.

It's not just the lack of a neutral tone, it's the way that it mixes real facts with (pulled from an ass) motivations.

It is completely plausible that the CIA has done really evil things, but with honest intentions of stabilizing regions.

The CIA has one motivation: To do whatever was decided was in the interests of the USA at a given moment.

Never fall for the PR that the CIA (or any similar agency in other countries) has any altruistic goals like freedom and democracy. Their are simply a tool of the geopolitical power struggle. Sometimes they are best friends with the worst dictators, sometimes they overthrow democratic governments. It does not matter as long as it was decided that the result would be better for the USA (again, that's the same in every country, I'm not attacking the USA specifically)

Generally, as a country you're better off when the US is "helping" you, rather than Russia or China.

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