{"id":271738,"date":"2023-08-01T06:34:02","date_gmt":"2023-08-01T06:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=271738"},"modified":"2023-08-02T07:19:18","modified_gmt":"2023-08-02T07:19:18","slug":"why-we-must-fix-the-media-and-save-the-world-hollywoods-just-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=271738","title":{"rendered":"Why We Must Fix the Media \u2013 and Save the World. Hollywood\u2019s \u201cJust Wars\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew Alford \u2013 Global Research July 28, 2023<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Imagine if you will\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAn\u00a0evil dictator is on the brink of making a nuclear bomb at a secret facility carved deep inside the Zagros mountains. With no option, the American military deploys jets and, against all odds, destroys the factory \u2014 then flies home to the strains of\u00a0\u201c[Highway to the] Danger Zone\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

An evil dictator is on the brink of using a nuclear bomb. With no option, the American military deploys secret agents and, against all odds, triggers a democratic revolution by blowing up the dictator in his helicopter to the strains of Katy Perry\u2019s\u00a0\u201cFirework\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve just outlined the plots of\u00a0Top Gun: Maverick<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0starring Tom Cruise<\/strong> and\u00a0The Interview<\/a>\u00a0starring Seth Rogan.\u00a0But\u00a0the plots\u00a0also describe real world aspirations \u2014 here towards\u00a0Iran and North Korea<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0from top policymakers across NATO\u00a0countries.<\/p>\n

These parallels are no coincidence. Because each film was subject to script changes\u00a0imposed<\/a>\u00a0by Washington. In the documentary\u00a0Theaters of War<\/em>, we show how the CIA and Department\u00a0of Defense\u00a0have exercised editorial control over thousands of films and TV shows in exchange for lending equipment\u00a0such as helicopters to producers to use on screen.<\/p>\n

Such films reflect and construct the paranoid fantasies of our imperial masters, most of them with direct script input: kindly Marines unjustly slaughtered for handing out grain to hungry Africans in\u00a0Black Hawk Down<\/em>; US politicians too innocent to realise that arming Islamic terrorists will lead to 9\/11 in the Julia Roberts hit\u00a0Charlie Wilson\u2019s War<\/em>, and the Gerard Butler film\u00a0Kandahar<\/em>\u00a0in which an evil dictator is on the brink of manufacturing a nuclear bomb at a secret facility carved deep inside a mountain. With no option and against all odds..:<\/p>\n

Is it any wonder that\u00a030% of Americans<\/a>\u00a0in one poll said they want to bomb Agrabah, the capital city in Disney\u2019s Aladdin?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Is it any wonder that our politicians, as though clutching rosary beads, prefigure Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine with the word \u201cillegal\u201d with no sense of irony and \u201cunprovoked\u201d with no sense of history? When was the last thing you saw a depiction of Russia which didn\u2019t have it crawling with tyrants?<\/p>\n

Red Dawn<\/em>?\u00a0Rambo<\/em>;\u00a0Air Force One<\/em>;\u00a0Hunter Killer<\/em>;\u00a0James Bond<\/em>;\u00a0Jack Ryan<\/em>;\u00a024<\/em>;\u00a0Homeland<\/em>;\u00a0Stranger Things<\/em> \u2026 the\u00a06 O\u2019Clock News<\/em>?<\/p>\n

The US government has suppressed scripts<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0but on others it has overturned<\/a> their original messages. In the\u00a0Iron Man<\/em>\u00a0screenplay<\/a>, Robert Downey Jr\u2019s hero was opposed to his father\u2019s arms business. After rewrites,\u00a0he became the ultimate evangelist for a bloodless industry: \u201cPeace means having a bigger stick than the other guy\u201d.<\/p>\n

For four decades, almost all script changes had been suppressed until our team used the law to acquire large bundles of government documentation. Regardless, the Defense Department\u2019s entertainment\u00a0boss<\/a>\u00a0compared his role in the \u201ccourt\u201d of Hollywood to that of a \u201cminor eunuch\u201d. This from a man who controlled hundreds of titles including 12 of the top 20 grossing film franchises\u00a0\u2014\u00a0more than Steven Spielberg. His squadron of censors have ensured none of the scripts passing their desks depict: war crimes; coups; assassinations; torture, or indeed anything that \u201creminds the public\u201d of the \u201cnasty conspiracies<\/a>\u201d in which America has engaged.<\/p>\n

Now, Hollywood producers and celebrities are\u00a0perfectly capable of being\u00a0terrible on foreign policy issues even without state interference. Consider Benedict Cumberbatch, who played the Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, in the 2013 film\u00a0Fifth Estate<\/em>. Assange tried reasoning with Cumberbatch, saying the studio will use him as \u201ca hired gun, to assume the appearance of the truth in order to assassinate it\u201d. Sherlock scoffed, \u201cas if I am an easily bought cypher for right-wing propaganda\u201d,\u00a0and \u201cI\u2019ve worked far less hard for more money on other projects\u201d. Cumberbatch demurred when asked to oppose the 35-year prison sentence for Assange\u2019s colleague Chelsea Manning, pontificating, \u201cIsn\u2019t it hypocritical to say, we should know everything about you as a government, but the government can\u2019t know anything about us?\u201d Curiously, while\u00a0Fifth Estate<\/em>\u00a0presents Assange as a shifty egotist, it is Cumberbatch who claims \u201cthere is only personal truth\u201d and wanted to play the Assange lead because \u201cI\u2019m a vain actor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Acclaimed as a singular journalist, Julian Assange is now well into his fifth year in Britain\u2019s highest security prison\u2014\u00a0without trial\u00a0\u2014\u00a0on a Byzantine set of espionage charges. Assange used incontrovertible documentation to expose: US massacres; sadistic detention procedures; corporate suppression of data on global warming, and the Democrat\u2019s backroom machinations to destroy their own socialist Presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, in favour of the less popular hawk, Hillary Clinton. Those\u00a0intimately involved<\/a>\u00a0in Assange\u2019s case say the state has meted out \u201ctorture\u201d, which has included providing him with an HIV diagnosis (before later claiming it was a \u201cfalse positive\u201d) and giving him a computer to conduct his defence with all the keys superglued down. And where was Cumberbatch in the middle of all this? Making\u00a0The Courier<\/em>, whose production was supported from the outset by the CIA and which mangled Cold War history to\u00a0overhype the threat from Moscow. Quelle surprise.<\/p>\n

Or consider\u00a0the political activities of another awfully nice and clever celebrity<\/a>, Sacha Baron Cohen. Cohen\u2019s production company claims they deceived the US military to gain entry into a base in Alabama,\u00a0but the scenes there feel staged, setting up Cohen\u2019s flamboyantly gay character Bruno for a series of one-liners. Cohen apparently escaped by squeezing under a rapidly closing gate while guards yelled in pursuit. Hmmm.<\/p>\n

Another time, Bruno interviewed a \u201cterrorist\u201d discovered through Cohen\u2019s CIA contact. This was,\u00a0in fact,\u00a0a Palestinian greengrocer who said Cohen told him the interview would be about his peace activism. The resultant case was settled for an undisclosed sum.<\/p>\n

In Israel, actually, Bruno was beaten by a crowd of homophobic\u00a0Israelis, who, angered by his camp clothing, started to stone him on camera. For the first time, Cohen broke character. He desperately yelled that he was an Israeli Jew, not a homosexual foreigner and fled for his life. The footage, though,\u00a0has never emerged even though it would presumably highlight racism, supposedly what\u00a0Sacha Baron Cohen<\/a>\u00a0is all about. Wrong racists.<\/p>\n

Call this propaganda, soft-censorship, or threat construction\u00a0\u2014\u00a0whatever\u00a0\u2014 these sorts of attitudes\u00a0shape\u00a0our foreign policy,\u00a0and they are ridiculous: in 2003 the Americans said Iraq had 5,000 tonnes of mustard gas but got there and couldn\u2019t even find mustard. After 13 years of punitive sanctions<\/a> a Baghdad hotdog was a rum affair indeed. This Spring, the Americans invoked the terror of China\u2019s spy balloon\u00a0\u2014\u00a0gee, I hope the Chinese don\u2019t send any more party paraphernalia. I\u2019d hate for them to make us stand on a Lego.<\/p>\n

Even\u00a0foreign relations\u00a0specialist John Mearsheimer, propelled to fame by his opposition to the war, does so on the grounds that we should be allying with Moscow to threaten China, oafishly asserting that if not Beijing will end up\u00a0stationing<\/a>\u00a0missile systems in Mexico and Canada to target the United States. This is so dumb I can hardly process it. There is no prospect of such a scenario \u2013 the US has ruthlessly enforced the Monroe Doctrine for precisely<\/a> two hundred years, claiming exclusive control of a huge sphere of influence, as Mearsheimer well knows.<\/p>\n

Of course, outside the political fictions\u00a0projected in the blue glow of our spooky little monitors, there is a real threat\u00a0\u2014\u00a0it is us.\u00a0Our hubris.\u00a0On Ukraine alone, leaks by people of conscience indicate casualties could be approaching half a million<\/a> in a deadlocked war and yet still we insist we \u201cweaken\u201d Russia indefinitely (\u201dbalkanisation<\/a>\u201d, for many) and, it seems undeniable,\u00a0detonate our own oil supply<\/a> lines\u00a0and bring the fight both to Crimea and the Kremlin.<\/p>\n

In key ways, ours is a demented, fearful political culture, egged on by hubristic, celebrity-charged<\/a> visions of its own\u00a0self-<\/a>righteousness.\u00a0We urgently need to be a purposeful peace movement, with our eyes open to how the media holds any form of compromise in abject contempt.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Originally posted at https:\/\/propagandainfocus.com\/why-we-must-fix-the-media-and-save-the-world\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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