It bears repeating that any time we see a movie that uses U.S. military hardware, the script has been approved by the Pentagon and they had a representative on-site to make sure that nothing un-American slips through. The Hollywood-Langley-Pentagon connection is as deep now as even during World War II. Very little escapes the censors.
Anyway, I am pleased to announce that the following letter was printed in CounterPunch Magazine, the print edition, June 2013, Vol. 20, No. 6:
Ed Rampell’s excellent piece on CIA and Hollywood collaboration was highly informative. He does not mention it, but I wonder about the voting process when a mediocre film like Argo secures a best picture award over an artistic achievement like Lincoln. If the agency is working the producers up front, are they also working the AMPAS voters behind the scenes?
I can think of no other reason for the award. Argo was poorly acted, Affleck was a stiff. Green screens were so obvious that it felt like a Hollywood set. I laughed out loud at the contrived airport scene.
I was shocked at rave reviews, and no less so when it got the best picture nod. I remember feeling that same shocked surprise when Bush won in 2000.
On a deeper note: American embassies house CIA stations, an open secret. CIA was deeply entangled in the Shāh’s pre-1979 Iran. The people extracted seemed to know to meet and find shelter away from the embassy during a crisis. The Canadian embassy was probably a prearranged destination. The agency had to have been extracting its own people for security reasons. I cannot imagine any other reason for such drastic measures. Rescuing innocent civilians is not CIA’s charter.
I do not know the magazine’s circulation or reach, but assume it is much less than the Atlantic Monthly, where I had a severely redacted letter printed one time many years ago. Rampell’s piece was called “The Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Entertainment Complex: Hollywood’s Year of Living Clandestinely. Unfortunately, it is behind the subscription wall.
Piece of Mindful 
Argo was painfully mediocre. I also couldn’t escape the suspicion that something was odd about the selection after I saw the movie….although alternatively it could just be that the rest of the movies nominated were equally mediocre I haven’t seen any of them so cant judge.
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Anything is possible with what is essentially a TV show done for ratings. (Why else do Clooney and Pitt get nominated for mediocre work?) And I did not expect to like Lincoln and pass on the
sophisticalhistorical [interesting word auto-correct chose there] value, but thought that it was superb.LikeLike
Hollywood plays all sides Mark.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/352440/hollywood-nazis-and-chi-coms-john-fund
Hasn’t met a dictator it didn’t like, including our dictator.
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SARFT = MPAA. Interesting you cannot see that.
Your John Fund is wearing serious horse-sized blinders, able to see censorship in China but not here. Our indoctrinary system is far more sophisticated here, as we must truly believe the lies. In a totalitarian system, there is less need for propaganda, as in the end, the state wins anyway. (If he is not wearing blinders, if he knows what is up, then you are being seriously played by the man.)
A subversive film does slip by now and then, like Wag the Dog. It is about a fake war using TV imagery to fool the public. Dustin Hoffman plays a Hollywood producer (“Stanley”) recruited to aid in the cause. When he decides to go public, he is murdered (heart attack, the CIA trademark. FBI is more into car crashes and similar “accidents”). Willie Nelson is used sparingly, but is a hoot. It’s a comedy but Washington insiders said it’s more real than anything else out of Hollywood.
Another was Three Kings, but it was Clooneyed up, half-baked and self reverent, just like George. One director, I think Scorcese but have never found it, said that truth has to be “smuggled” to us in American movies to slip by the censors. Cameron did that somewhat with Avatar.
You are typical, Swede, I’m afraid, deeply indoctrinated and unable to see through our own propaganda but focused outward on China. In saying it “works both ways,” you’re echoing Fund who says that we’re not hard enough on official enemies. Find me a film, any film, that portrays Israel as a military aggressor rather than a victim. If we had no censorship, that would come through now and then, because that is utterly fucking obvious reality.
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5 Broken Cameras, a anti Israel film nominated in 2013 for an academy award.
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A minor documentary. I am talking about mainstream fare, Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, 70 years of Hitler, Top Gun and the like.
Big picture, Swede. Big picture.
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Moving the goalposts?
“Find me a film, any film, that portrays Israel as a military aggressor rather than a victim.”
If Hollyweird was as pro-Israel as you portray them then why did they nominate the film giving it more cred and exposure?
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It was a documentary and did not win. Who has ever heard of it? How many ahve ever seen it? Such films are low-budget and done by advocates for various causes. Michael Moore is the only progressive who had access to big screens. There are progressives in Hollywood, and perhaps that would be their only outlet. In the meantime, how are Palestinians portrayed in movies?
Big picture. Please look at it at your neighborhood theater.
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I thought the most honest portrayal of Palaes was in the movie, “Back to the Future”.
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By the way (and I’m thinking you ahve just misspelled Palestinian there), I have fallen into the trap that equates propaganda and mere lies. Here’s a definition from Lasswell from 1953:
My bold.
Therefore, pledging allegiance to the flag (a drill to honor a symbol) each day as a kid is classic propaganda. Making a film about the plight of Palestinians may or be if it is sophisticated in techniques of propaganda. If it is just espousing a point of view and you are aware of the sources and are able to use critical judgment,
then it is not. Even though Five Broken Cameras was made to highlight the plight of Palestinians, and you hate Palestinians as our propaganda system dictates you must, it may indeed just be honest advocacy.
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Ya know Mark if the Palaes (shortened for spelling reasons only) had some accomplishments or even some successes in their lives maybe they’d have something more than a broken camera doc.
I can’t see a movie coming out soon about a bunch third world illiterates bitching about the neighbors, stolen land and goats.
To me it’s kinda like our current reservation system. The powers to be (like Arafat) steal all the money, repress their subjects and bitch that the white man stole their land. The unintelligent buy the “poor me it’s the white man/jews fault” and the cycle repeats.
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This is their legacy.
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Screw your links. You need depth, and video images are not depth.
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That’s very revealing.
The Palestinians are like any other people, mostly good, a few bad apples, scholars, doctors, engineers and pipefitters and teachers and clerks. What they do not have are American armaments. That is the critical factor in that area – the US decision to arm Israel. The Israelis turn around and use their advantage to imprison, murder, attack, bomb and terrorize the Palestinians, who have nothing but world opinion on their side. The US has no opinion about Palestinians, and doesn’t care what Israel does so long as Israel carries out US policy in the area.
Your decision to hate Palestinians merely reflects our indoctrination system.
Were the situation reversed, if the US were arming the Palestinians, it would be the Israelis behind walls having white phosphorus dropped on them, having their children shot for sport. People are people. Jews are incredibly annoying, but people are people.
Your understanding and compassion for conquered peoples, as exist on our reservations, is touching. While people must help themselves, conquered peoples have special hurdles that you cannot imagine.
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