entertain & conquer - how pentagon uses entertainment industry for propoganda

punjab47

महाबलामहावीर्यामहासत्यपराक्रमासर्वाग्रेक्षत्रियाजट
Banned
Joined
Jul 31, 2015
Messages
1,059
Likes
598

ezsasa

Designated Cynic
Mod
Joined
Jul 12, 2014
Messages
31,728
Likes
147,030
Country flag
Sure, I believe this theory. Why only Americans!!!Chinese ,North Koreans porkis Full fledged along with Iran and india to an limited extent do the same thing.

Usually this happens when a country has to justify their military spending. I don't see anything wrong with it.

The movie "wag the dog" gives some perspective to this theory.

America is a slightly different story because their films act as advertisements for gun industry and associated industries, unlike other countries. You will find their civilians imitating tactics and gear similar to what their military wears in movies, only downside being their civilians cannot buy fully automatic assault weapons legally.

I don't find anything wrong in such a practice, moreover I believe we need to have a similar setup in place.
 

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag
Yeah...
From fighting aliens to creating godzillas and then killing them...there sure We_American_we_save_world flavor.

Screen Propaganda, Hollywood and the CIA

“One of the most pervasive trends in 21st century western culture has become somewhat of an obsession in America. It’s called “Hollywood history”, where the corporate studio machines in Los Angeles spend hundreds of millions of dollars in order to craft and precisely tailor historical events to suit the prevailing political paradigm.” (Patrick Henningsen, Hollywood History: CIA Sponsored “Zero Dark Thirty”, Oscar for “Best Propaganda Picture”)

Black Hawk Dawn, Zero Dark Thirty and Argo, those are only a few major recent productions showing how today’s movie industry promotes US foreign policy. But the motion picture has been used for propaganda since the beginning of the 20th century and Hollywood’s cooperation with the Department of Defense, the CIA and other government agencies is no modern trend.

With Michelle Obama awarding Ben Affleck’s Argo the Oscar for best movie, the industry showed how close it is to Washington. According to Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, Argo is a propaganda film concealing the ugly truth about the Iranian hostage crisis and designed to prepare the American public for an upcoming confrontation with Iran:

Foreign policy observers have long known that Hollywood reflects and promotes U.S. policies (in turn, is determined by Israel and its supporters). This fact was made public when Michelle Obama announced an Oscar win for “Argo” – a highly propagandist, anti-Iran film. Amidst the glitter and excitement, Hollywood and White House reveal their pact and send out their message in time for the upcoming talks surrounding Iran’s nuclear program [...]

Hollywood has a long history of promoting US policies. In 1917, when the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information (CPI) enlisted the aid of America ’s film industry to make training films and features supporting the ‘cause’. George Creel, Chairman of the CPI believed that the movies had a role in “carrying the gospel of Americanism to every corner of the globe.”

The pact grew stronger during World War II […] Hollywood ’s contribution was to provide propaganda. After the war, Washington reciprocated by using subsidies, special provisions in the Marshall Plan, and general clout to pry open resistant European film markets […]

As Hollywood and the White House eagerly embrace “Argo” and its propagandist message, they shamelessly and deliberately conceal a crucial aspect of this “historical” event. The glitter buries the all too important fact that the Iranian students who took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran , proceeded to reveal Israel ’s dark secret to the world. Documents classified as “SECRET” revealed LAKAM’s activities. Initiated in 1960, LAKAM was an Israeli network assigned to economic espionage in the U.S. assigned to “the collection of scientific intelligence in the U.S. for Israel ’s defense industry” (Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich Oscar to Hollywood’s “Argo”: And the Winners are … the Pentagon and the Israel Lobby)

For a real account of the Iranian hostage crisis, a CIA covert operation, Global Research recommends reading Harry V. Martin’s article published in 1995: The Real Iranian Hostage Story from the Files of Fara Mansoor:

Fara Mansoor is a fugitive. No, he hasn’t broken any laws in the United States. His crime is the truth. What he has to say and the documents he carries are equivalent to a death warrant for him, Mansoor is an Iranian who was part of the “establishment” in Iran long before the 1979 hostage taking. Mansoor’s records actually discount the alleged “October Surprise” theory that the Ronald Reagan-George Bush team paid the Iranians not to release 52 American hostages until after the November 1980 Presidential elections [...]

With thousands of documents to support his position, Mansoor says that the “hostage crisis” was a political “management tool” created by the pro-Bush faction of the CIA, and implemented through an a priori Alliance with Khomeini’s Islamic Fundamentalists.” He says the purpose was twofold:

Zero Dark Thirty is another great silver screen propaganda piece which spurred outrage earlier this year. It exploits the horrific events of 9/11 to present torture as an effective and necessary evil:

Zero Dark Thirty is disturbing for two reasons. First and foremost, it leaves the viewer with the erroneous impression that torture helped the CIA find bin Laden’s hiding place in Pakistan. Secondarily, it ignores both the illegality and immorality of using torture as an interrogation tool.

The thriller opens with the words “based on first-hand accounts of actual events.” After showing footage of the horrific 9/11 attacks, it moves into a graphic and lengthy depiction of torture. The detainee “Ammar” is subjected to waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, and confined in a small box. Responding to the torture, he divulges the name of the courier who ultimately leads the CIA to bin Laden’s location and assassination. It may be good theater, but it is inaccurate and misleading. (Marjorie Cohn, “Zero Dark Thirty”: Torturing the Facts)

Earlier this year the Golden Globe awards made some analysts criticize Hollywood’s dark “celebration of the police state” and argue that the real Golden Globe winner was the military-industrial complex:

Homeland won best TV series, best TV actor and actress. It IS a highly entertaining show which actually portrays some of the flaws of the MIIC system.

Argo won best movie and best director. It glorifies the CIA and Ben Affleck spoke with the highest praise for the CIA.

And best actress went to Jessica Chastain of Zero Dark Thirty, a movie that has been vilified for propagandizing the use of torture.

***

The Military Industrial Intelligence Complex is playing a more and more pervasive role in our lives. In the next few years we’ll be seeing movies that focus on the use of drone technology in police and spy work in the USA. We’ve already been seeing movies that show how spies can violate every aspect of our privacy– of the most intimate parts of our lives. By making movies and TV series that celebrate these cancerous extensions of the police state Hollywood and the big studios are normalizing the ideas they present us with– lying to the public, routinely creating fraudulent stories as covers for what’s really going on. (Rob Kall cited in Washington’s Blog, The CIA and Other Government Agencies Dominate Movies and Television)

All these troublesome Hollywood connections have been examined in an in-depth report Global Research published in January 2009: Lights, Camera… Covert Action: The Deep Politics of Hollywood. The article lists a great number of movies in part scripted for propaganda purposes by the Defense Department, the CIA and other government agencies. It is interesting to note that this year’s Oscar-winning director Ben Affleck cooperated with the CIA in 2002 as he starred in The Sum of All Fears.

Authors Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham explain that compared to the CIA, the Department of Defense “has an ‘open’ but barely publicized relationship with Tinsel Town” which, “whilst morally dubious and barely advertised, has at least occurred within the public domain.” Alford and Graham cite a 1991 CIA report revealing the sprawling influence of the agency, not only in the movie business but also in the media where it “has relationships with reporters from every major wire service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation.” It was not until 1996 that the CIA announced it “would now openly collaborate on Hollywood productions, supposedly in a strictly ‘advisory’ capacity”:

The Agency’s decision to work publicly with Hollywood was preceded by the 1991 “Task Force Report on Greater CIA Openness,” compiled by CIA Director Robert Gates’ newly appointed ‘Openness Task Force,’ which secretly debated –ironically– whether the Agency should be less secretive. The report acknowledges that the CIA “now has relationships with reporters from every major wire service, newspaper, news weekly, and television network in the nation,” and the authors of the report note that this helped them “turn some ‘intelligence failure’ stories into ‘intelligence success’ stories, and has contributed to the accuracy of countless others.” It goes on to reveal that the CIA has in the past “persuaded reporters to postpone, change, hold, or even scrap stories that could have adversely affected national security interests” [...]

Espionage novelist Tom Clancy has enjoyed an especially close relationship with the CIA. In 1984, Clancy was invited to Langley after writing The Hunt for Red October, which was later turned into the 1990 film. The Agency invited him again when he was working on Patriot Games(1992), and the movie adaptation was, in turn, granted access to Langley facilities. More recently,The Sum of All Fears (2002) depicted the CIA as tracking down terrorists who detonate a nuclear weapon on US soil. For this production, CIA director George Tenet gave the filmmakers a personal tour of the Langley HQ; the film’s star, Ben Affleck also consulted with Agency analysts, and Chase Brandon served as on-set advisor.

The real reasons for the CIA adopting an “advisory” role on all of these productions are thrown into sharp relief by a solitary comment from former Associate General Counsel to the CIA, Paul Kelbaugh. In 2007, whilst at a College in Virginia, Kelbaugh delivered a lecture on the CIA’s relationship with Hollywood, at which a local journalist was present. The journalist (who now wishes to remain anonymous) wrote a review of the lecture which related Kelbaugh’s discussion of the 2003 thriller The Recruit, starring Al Pacino. The review noted that, according to Kelbaugh, a CIA agent was on set for the duration of the shoot under the guise of a consultant, but that his real job was to misdirect the filmmakers, the journalist quoted Kelbaugh as saying [...] Kelbaugh emphatically denied having made the public statement. (Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham, Lights, Camera… Covert Action: The Deep Politics of Hollywood)

During the Cold War the CIA’s Psychological Strategy Board (PSB) agent Luigi G. Luraschi was a Paramount executive. He “had secured the agreement of several casting directors to subtly plant ‘well dressed negroes’ into films, including ‘a dignified negro butler’ who has lines ‘indicating he is a free man’”. The purpose of these changes was “to hamper the Soviets’ ability to exploit its enemy’s poor record in race relations and served to create a peculiarly anodyne impression of America, which was, at that time, still mired in an era of racial segregation.” (Ibid.)

The latest award-winning movie productions show that the Manichean view of the world put forward by the US foreign policy agenda has not changed since the Cold War. The Hollywood-CIA alliance is alive and well and still portrays America as the “leader of the free world” fighting “evil” around the world:

The interlocking of Hollywood and national security apparatuses remains as tight as ever: ex-CIA agent Bob Baer told us, “There’s a symbiosis between the CIA and Hollywood” […] Baer’s claims are given weight by the Sun Valley meetings, annual get-togethers in Idaho’s Sun Valley in which several hundred of the biggest names in American media –including every major Hollywood studio executive– convene to discuss collective media strategy for the coming year. (Ibid.)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/screen-propaganda-hollywood-and-the-cia/5324589
 

sorcerer

Senior Member
Joined
Apr 13, 2013
Messages
26,920
Likes
98,472
Country flag
Why Hollywood War Propaganda Like ‘American Sniper’ is So Effective


Following the release of Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper,the masses of America have been chomping at the bit to slaughter Muslims. The film, which portrays the deadliest sniper in United States history, is a hit among the sect of Americans that tends to demonize Hollywood for being too liberal and anti-American.

But is that claim actually true? Hollywood churns out war films and pro-government propaganda at a rate Josef Goebbels would applaud. The propaganda is so effective that anyone who criticizes the most recent glorification of the war machine is labeled an American-hating, Muslim-loving pussy. But this is not a new trend. Argo, Zero Dark Thirty andHomeland are just a few of the relatively recent films and television shows intent on building up America’s interventionist, militaristic foreign policy. Other shows and movies glorify the FBI and police

But why is the propaganda soeffective? It helps that for decades mainstream news has been fear-mongering against Muslims and blowing the trumpets of war. The government, its politicians and agencies have played up the risks of terrorist attacks, though they are often plotted by the government.

Hollywood propaganda, then, merely has to slip in cultural, entertainment versions of these already implanted beliefs. Rather than instilling mass opinions about government and war, Hollywood reinforces them in a relatable way. One of the reasons it is so effective at this, however, is that it has the full support of the American government.

The documentary, Hollywood and the Pentagon: A Dangerous Liaison, exposes the close working relationship of Hollywood and the Pentagon. If Hollywood studios and filmmakers want to use the military’s equipment to portray war stories, they must let the government review and modify their scripts.

This “collaboration” led to the wild success of Tom Cruise’s Top Gun in the ‘80s, which inspired a huge spike in Air Force enlistments. In this case, it wasn’t that Americans hated the Air Force and Hollywood changed their minds. Rather, Hollywood romanticized the job and therefore inspired people to “care” more. This is how films like American Sniper rouse “patriotic” sentiments that drive people to shamelessly advocate mass murder. No doubt, this latest installment of war propaganda was reviewed by military officials before it was filmed and released.

By holding state-of-the art props above a filmmaker and studio’s head, the Pentagon corners them into complying. No filmmakers wants to settle for unrealistic or sub-par equipment and rather, are lured by the shiny toys of the Pentagon. Given the fact that the government has a direct channel to the masses with final say in what a military script says, it is obvious why Americans are so successfully affected by the propaganda.

It also helps that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)–the essential lobby of conglomerated studios headed by former Senator Chris Dodd–contributes millions to Congress in favor of internet censorship. It therefore has a vested interest in supporting the state and is known for approving desensitizing, vulgar violence (often government-inflicted) while censoring sex.

In spite of the pervasiveness of Hollywood propaganda, however, there are signs of hope. If Hollywood films are reflections of sentiments that are already harbored, there is a large representation of opposition to mindless war and government propaganda. Take Minority Report, theBourne Identity, the Matrix, V for Vendetta and the recent, huge success ofThe Hunger Games.

For every conditioned mind that adheres to the state, there is another that identifies with anti-authoritarian films such as these–all of which were massive box office successes.

House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, both hit Netflix original television series, openly portray the corruption, incompetency, and cruelty of the state.This reflects not only trends in creative expression, but a growing appetite for representation of these views. The rise of independent production companies and the Internet has limitlessly expanded the ability of artists to make anti-authoritarian cinema–perhaps even some that can change minds.

Then again, a romantic film about how Michelle and Barack Obama met in Chicago is going into production this year, so we might all be doomed.

This article is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author andTheAntiMedia.org. Tune-in to The Anti-Media radio show Monday-Friday @ 11pm EST, 8pm PST.

http://theantimedia.org/hollywood-war-propaganda-like-american-sniper-effective/
 

Illusive

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 20, 2010
Messages
3,674
Likes
7,310
Country flag
Thats why they are a superpower, they sell the American Dream and they are pretty good at it, not fighting wars.
 

punjab47

महाबलामहावीर्यामहासत्यपराक्रमासर्वाग्रेक्षत्रियाजट
Banned
Joined
Jul 31, 2015
Messages
1,059
Likes
598
They just pour more money into it, my point of making thread was: when other country do it, they are straight up about it.

America hides it, because it has no aukaat to talk straight up. :pound:
 

Latest Replies

Global Defence

New threads

Articles

Top