Tag: CIA
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Decline? Yes. Collapse? No.
Decline? Yes. Collapse? No. Collapse would mean CIA spooks scribbling op-eds on Substack and hawking $10-a-month subscriptions like two-bit grifters at a carnival sideshow. The agency boys in their ill-fitting suits, slumped in coffee shops from Langley to Lincoln, churning out think pieces titled “The Death of American Empire: A Personal Journey” or “How I…
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Aleppo
Somewhere north of the rotting heart of Aleppo, where the roads are just suggestions and the sky is the same dull gray as the mortar dust, the Pentagon’s militia went to war with the CIA’s boys. It wasn’t news to anyone on the ground, least of all the fighters pulling triggers with American ordnance, but…
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Opium
Scene: A Dimly Lit Room, Somewhere in Southeast China *The year is 1887. The British empire still has a firm grasp on its colonies, and in the Southeast Asian trade networks, opium flows like gold. Inside a luxurious but worn-out room, adorned with Qing dynasty artifacts and British imperial emblems, a British opium trader, *Charles…