The CIA - what exactly does it do

Ever wondered what the Central Intelligence Agency actually does? In the words of the accomplished CIA officer Philip Agee:

The CIA, after all, is nothing more than the secret police of American capitalism, plugging up leaks in the political dam night and day so that shareholders of US companies operating in poor countries can continue enjoying the rip-off. The key to CIA success is the 2 or 3 percent of the population in poor countries that get most of the cream, while the marginalized 50, 60 or 70 percent are getting a lesser share. Philip Agee in CIA DIARY.

Secret police is secret police regardless of the acronym it uses, which suggests that one may substitute the "CIA" for any country’s intelligence agencies / secret police, and to the poor of other countries one may add the struggling masses of one’s own compatriots. If one does it one shall see what one’s sweat-and-blood-drenched taxes are paying for: one’s own enslavement. But one should not despair, not everything is so gloom and doom: one gets a break now and then – some of the secret police funds come from black operations, the drug smuggling and weapons sales that would embarrass one’s high and mighty rulers if the truth became known.

I’m kidding of course - no amount of filth and lies will embarrass a politician.

What is good for Venezuela

Reading Philip Agee's CIA DIARY, in light of the events taking place today in Venezuela, one cannot help but conclude that what is good for Chavez' country might be good for USA:

American capitalism, based as it is on exploitation of the poor, with its fundamental motivation in personal greed, simply cannot survive without force - without a secret police force. The argument is with capitalism and it is capitalism that must be opposed, with its CIA, FBI and other security agencies understood as logical, necessary manifestations of a ruling class's determination to retain power and privilege.

Now, more than ever, indifference to injustice at home and abroad is impossible. Now, more clearly than ever, the extremes of poverty and wealth demonstrate the irreconcilable class conflicts, that only socialist revolution can resolve. Now, more than ever, each of us is forced to make a conscious choice whether to support the system of minority comfort and privilege with all its security apparatus and repression, or whether to struggle for real equality of opportunity and fair distribution of benefits for all of society, in the domestic as well as the international order. Philip Agee in CIA Diary.

Agee wrote it in 1974, while still under the impression of the Cuban revolution, the American defeat in Vietnam, and the Watergate scandal, but he might as well have written it yesterday. His words apply to the USA, Venezuela and everywhere else. Agee was a CIA officer who worked in Latin America, and that's were his eyes opened. Mine did, and your will too if you step beyond those Acapulcos and Cancuns...

One thing that Agee does not see, is that socialism, much as capitalism requires repressive apparatus of secret police to sustain itself.