Connect the dots and build your own labyrinth.There is a tendency to anesthetize and aestheticize critical content in popular culture into a clean commercial package. Certainly films like Argo and Zero Dark Thirty which are nuanced political thrillers which are politically inspired are part of a broader pattern of state influenced meddling in mainstream culture and reinforcing what has become the sanctity of moral relativism. On one level, the films are clean narratives and at a more profound conjunction, there is an inner story of concealment, necessary lies, and the broader objectives of the pursuit of American objectives and the sustaining of the financial system on a global basis.
In the hey-day of the Dadaist movement, there was a happening in Germany where the dadaist organizers absconded with all the advance sales of lecture and never gave the performance. Taken to court , the “concept” itself meant that strealing the money was an act of performance art, that the “shock of the new” the disruptive elements, the terrorist side, joyful or otherwise was intrinsic to an overall aesthetic. The theft was justified according to the judge and the case dismissed because they were artists. Moral relativism is a recurring feature of modernism and seemingly ingrained and anchored within the context of so-called secular enlightnenment that defines the liberal democratic values. The judges call “case dismissed” is really a catchword for post- modernism where financial rigging such as the LIBOR rate fixing, the bailouts, the “known unknowns” of drone warfare, cyber-spying on the citizenry are part of a means of avoiding disruptive influences and controlling the narrative and spin when they do manifest themselves….
—Additionally, as Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham write, “academic debates on cinematic propaganda are almost entirely retrospective, and whilst a number of commentators have drawn attention to Hollywood’s longstanding and open relationship with the Pentagon, little of substance has been written about the more clandestine influences working through Hollywood in the post-9/11 world.” Indeed, one of the greatest misconceptions about the CIA is that it purposely avoids all types of media exposure; in fact, as Richard Aldrich points out, much of what we know about Langley has been deliberately placed in the public domain by the Agency itself, since it realizes the importance of controlling its public image.—click image for source…
From Tom Hayden. Nothing terribly new here. A sort of recycling of an old story, one that began when big money saved Hollywood in the the Depression and spawned the likes of Shirley Temple. Hollywood has always been the P.R. , the entertainment complex of the larger financial-military- and commerical complexes that is engaged in bullshitting critical content into the realm of kitsch and pap. It has to be accepted for what it is, warts and all:
AT A TIME WHEN THE CIA is still hiding the details of its extrajuridical drone strike assassination program from congressional watchdogs and the media, one would think it an awkward moment for Hollywood to confer Academy Awards on films that celebrate its secret agents.
But apparently not. While a robust debate has emerged about Zero Dark Thirty’s depiction of torture, the film largely celebrates the tireless spycraft of a CIA analyst who was complicit. Meanwhile, Argo is an unqualified nod towards the CIA’s collaboration with Hollywood in liberating hostages held in Iran in 1979.
Argo and Zero Dark Thirty are only the latest film productions the CIA has influenced in the 15 years since the Agency opened its official liaison office to Hollywood. Tricia Jenkins examines the history of this version of “Hollywood confidential” in The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television. Short and dry, her book raises serious ethical and legal questions about the relationship between the CIA and Hollywood, and the extent to which we consume propaganda from one through the other.
—NCESS research has revealed that Morsi’s motorcade and bodyguards cost the state LE3 million each time he goes for Friday prayers. The president prays assiduously, meaning that this habit, together with the associated motorcades and protective measures, costs Egyptians millions.
Morsi’s travels across the country cost the state budget LE9 million per trip, said the research.
Farouk said that Morsi’s prayers cost the state a fortune, as could be seen by multiplying 54 Friday prayers by LE162 million a year. Over five years, this would be LE810 million.
“This is the cost of the president’s motorcade and bodyguards for Friday prayers only. The calculations exclude the prayers for the two feasts and 30 days of night-time prayers during Ramadan,” Farouk said. The calculations also do not include the president’s trips to his home village of Al-Edwa.—click image for source…
…Morsi was first recruited to the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States while studying for his PhD in engineering at the University of Southern California. His children were born in California and are U.S. citizens. After receiving his doctorate in 1982, he taught as an assistant professor at California State University–Northridge until 1985.
He then returned to Egypt to teach at Zagazig University, where his colleagues included current Brotherhood deputy supreme guides Mahmoud Ezzat and Mahmoud Ghozlan. Some sources report that Morsi’s rise in the MB began in 2000, when he was elected as a member of the People’s Assembly and served as the Brotherhood’s parliamentary bloc leader from 2000 to 2005.Read More:http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/whos-who-in-the-muslim-brotherhood#MuhammadMorsi
( Tom Hayden continued)…Paul Barry, a CIA “entertainment industry liaison officer” Jenkins inte
wed, says that, “Hollywood is the only way that the public learns about the Agency.”
—Associated Press/Khalil Hamra – Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi waves to the crowd gathered in a stadium upon his arrival for a speech on the 6th of October national holiday marking the 1973 war with Israel, —click image for source…
Think about that: it’s not that Hollywood is in bed with the CIA in some repugnant way, but that the Agency is looking to plant positive images about itself (in other words, propaganda) through our most popular forms of entertainment. So natural has the CIA–entertainment connection become that few question its legal or moral ramifications. This is a government agency like no other; the truth of its operations is not subject to public examination. When the CIA’s hidden persuaders influence a Hollywood movie, it is using a popular medium to spin as favorable an image of itself as possible, or at least, prevent an unfavorable one from taking hold. If incestuous enough, Jenkins argues, these relationships violate the spirit or letter of government laws.
Take the case of Argo, an enjoyable, even inspiring film about the CIA’s role in freeing hostages from Iran, …Read More:http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?id=1438
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