In 1977, Carl Bernstein, famed for his Watergate reporting, disclosed that more than 400 journalists and executives of mostly liberal US media organisations had worked for the CIA in the past 25 years. They included journalists from the New York Times, Time and the big TV broadcasters.
– John Pilger in his powerful article, The New Propaganda is Liberal
The article starts off a bit slow, but John really gets going toward the end and completely knocks it out of the park. In particular, he attacks propaganda films Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, which are essentially nothing more than war propaganda flicks straight out of the Joseph Goebbels playbook. The fact that Argo won best picture is an embarrassment to the higher arts in America. Some of my favorite excerpts:
The militarist violence perpetrated against hundreds of thousands of nameless men, women and children by “our” governments is never a crime against humanity. Interviewing Tony Blair ten years on from his criminal invasion of Iraq, the BBC’s Kirsty Wark gifted him a moment he could only dream of. She allowed Blair to agonise over his “difficult decision rather than call him to account for the monumental lies and bloodbath he launched. One is reminded of Albert Speer.
This reflects the whole absurd and dangerous meme of “it’s ok if we do it.”
Hollywood has returned to its cold war role, led by liberals. Ben Affleck’s Oscar-winning Argo is the first feature film so integrated into the propaganda system that its subliminal warning of Iran’s “threat” is offered as Obama is preparing, yet again, to attack Iran. That Affleck’s “true story” of good-guys-vbad- Muslims is as much a fabrication as Obama’s justification for his war plans is lost in PR-managed plaudits. As the independent critic Andrew O’Hehir points out, Argo is “a propaganda movie in the truest sense, one that claims to be innocent of all ideology”. That is, it debases the art of film-making to reflect an image of the power it serves.
In 1977, Carl Bernstein, famed for his Watergate reporting, disclosed that more than 400 journalists and executives of mostly liberal US media organisations had worked for the CIA in the past 25 years. They included journalists from the New York Times, Time and the big TV broadcasters. These days, such a formal nefarious workforce is quite unnecessary. In 2010, the New York Times made no secret of its collusion with the White House in censoring the WikiLeaks war logs. The CIA has an “entertainment industry liaison office” that helps producers and directors remake its image from that of a lawless gang that assassinates, overthrows governments and runs drugs.
In my own filmmaking career, I have never known a time when dissenting voices in the visual arts are so few and silent.
That’s why they are ale to get away with it so easily.
According to Gallup, 99 per cent of Americans believe Iran is a threat to them, just as the majority believed Iraq was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. “Propaganda always wins,” said Leni Riefenstahl, “if you allow it.”
The best part about all this is that 90% of Americans looks at other nations and laugh at how they are propagandized. All the while they have not a clue how intentionally and easily they are being manipulated on a daily basis.
In Liberty,
Mike
Follow me on Twitter!
Donate bitcoins: 35DBUbbAQHTqbDaAc5mAaN6BqwA2AxuE7G
Follow me on Twitter.
Corrupt to the core global ponzi Trueman show
Any questions ?
Mark Twain – “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
See I didn’t think of Zero Dark Thirty as propaganda. It showed the US torturing people, blatantly violating their natural rights as human beings, just so they could capture one man who no doubt posed a greatly exaggerated threat. To me it showed a realistic picture of how the US has no fear of using violent and immoral methods to achieve its goals and left it up to the viewer to decide whether he was okay with that.
Check out “Homeland” … I’m watching S3 at the moment and it depicts a high level Iranian government official being recruited by the CIA and debriefed and returned to Iran to act as an informant for the CIA. It makes you wonder who on the world stage may actually be CIA assets and agents provocateur e.g. Putin, Netanyahu, etc. I personally believe Hollywood is a branch of the CIA to aid in their psy-ops and is used to visualize and streamline any operations they have in the works from script to screen or reel to reality! Check out 9/11 subliminals embedded throughout films and TV shows etc. before it happened (like “The Lone Gunmen” pilot) in this ebook at http://www.scribd.com/doc/64559213/Imagining-9-11 I reckon “Argo” shows you just how Hollywood is the CIA’s bedfellow to the point it makes me wonder if any actors are actually CIA agents…
This is nuts. Iran’s Islamofascist government is active in at least Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, if not the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as well. How is this NOT a threat, considering the Anti-American and Anti-Semitic comments coming from Iran’s Islamofascist governmental leaders? And, now they are building nuclear material and an intercontinental missile program that can house nuclear bombs. ARGO is about American hostages that these Islamic nuts kidnapped and held against their will! It’s the CIA’s JOB to find ways to free those hostages, by fair means or foul. And, ZERO DARK THIRTY is about tracking down terrorists who deliberately murdered thousands of civilians. If these Muslims are honestly upset about American foreign policy, they should attack MILITARY places housing American soldiers and their military weapons, not an office building in NYC! They don’t because they are gutless jerks who like to oppressively control women and children and feed their lust for blood, not because they have an honest, moral cause, much less a Godly one.
Oh please, in Oceania everyone is an enemy and everyone is an ally. It’s just a giant game on a chessboard for them.
As the Atlantic recently noted, the USA will be in bed with Iran before you can say “we have always been at war with Eastasia.”
From Warming to Iran: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/warming-to-iran/383512/
The practical approach to Islamist terrorism is not always to fight terrorists everywhere, but to play Shiites against Sunnis and vice versa, depending upon the circumstances. By warming up to Iran, we would not be siding with the Shiites against the Sunnis per se, but rather manipulating both sides more effectively than we have in the past. Nor should ending our belligerence toward Shia Iran mean deserting our Sunni allies in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Persian Gulf, and elsewhere. We must go to great lengths to reassure them, in fact. I am not endorsing a flip-flop—an exchange of one alliance for another. Handled properly, a détente with Iran need not jeopardize our relationships with Sunni nations. It could, however, motivate them to be more honest allies than before. For decades, the Sunni dictatorships in Egypt and Saudi Arabia took their military alliances with the United States for granted, even as they fostered the hateful climate that produced the 9/11 terrorists. As for the Sunni jihadists themselves, they are already our committed enemies. We must continue to deal with them through a combination of military strikes, support for Sunni moderates (where they can be found), and creative diplomacy (of the sort that might be exemplified by a rapprochement with Iran).
Finally, an American-Iranian détente has all the force of culture behind it. Anti-Americanism has been in retreat in Iran for decades. Shia Iran is partially democratic and far more sophisticated, enlightened, and Westernized than benighted, culturally sterile Wahhabi Saudi Arabia. Americans would feel much more comfortable in Tehran than in Riyadh.
If the Obama administration is wise, it will recognize that the opportunities of a historic shift in Middle East policy are far too great to be hindered by a who-insulted-whom soap opera between Obama and Netanyahu. It must disregard both the Israel lobby and Israel’s most determined critics. The mechanical verities of geopolitics matter much more. The United States will never be free of Middle East chaos, but if it can employ a new relationship with Iran to add a measure of regional stability, it can over time shift more of its attention eastward.
Before you know it, the entire “Axis of evil” will be the Axis of friendship, and we will have to invent some new enemies. As always.