"The Interview", Sony, N Korea, and the Obama admin

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Re: "The Interview", Sony, N Korea, and the Obama admin

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Tue Dec 30, 2014 8:37 pm

Large Ptarmigan » Tue Dec 30, 2014 7:27 pm wrote:Though I suspect many RI readers wouldn't necessarily like the frequent criticism of Snowden/Greenwald/Assange et. al. that can be found there.


Another subject for another thread: which forum are you currently mixing up RI with?
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Re: "The Interview", Sony, N Korea, and the Obama admin

Postby Large Ptarmigan » Tue Dec 30, 2014 8:47 pm

Ha. Hey, I'm relatively new here Wombaticus. I guess I'm basing that comment on nothing other than the user I saw who has the Snowden WIRED cover as their avatar.

At the risk of further derailing this discussion, here's an NYT Sunday Magazine profile about C(F)J and his change of heart: Right-Wing Flame War!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/magaz ... wanted=all
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Re: "The Interview", Sony, N Korea, and the Obama admin

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Dec 30, 2014 9:12 pm

Large Ptarmigan » Tue Dec 30, 2014 7:47 pm wrote:Ha. Hey, I'm relatively new here Wombaticus. I guess I'm basing that comment on nothing other than the user I saw who has the Snowden WIRED cover as their avatar.

At the risk of further derailing this discussion, here's an NYT Sunday Magazine profile about C(F)J and his change of heart: Right-Wing Flame War!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/magaz ... wanted=all


you may have missed this

Sibel Edmonds destroys Glenn Greenwald

I wouldn't lump those three together

I am fond of Assange

but have changed my view of Greenwald...thanks Nordic

Assange Amazing Adventures of Captain Neo in Blonde Land.

yes I do like Snowden

Edward Snowden, American Hero
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Re: "The Interview", Sony, N Korea, and the Obama admin

Postby Large Ptarmigan » Tue Dec 30, 2014 9:21 pm

Thanks for the links.
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Re: "The Interview", Sony, N Korea, and the Obama admin

Postby brekin » Tue Dec 30, 2014 10:22 pm

David wrote:

look, don't be such a bunch of curmudgeons. it's a silly movie made to get giggles. let your shield down for a couple hours and have a laugh. it's ok.


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Re: "The Interview", Sony, N Korea, and the Obama admin

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Dec 31, 2014 12:22 pm



and thank you for being here...post more big bird :)
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
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Re: "The Interview", Sony, N Korea, and the Obama admin

Postby David » Sat Jan 03, 2015 3:28 am

brekin » Tue Dec 30, 2014 9:22 pm wrote:David wrote:

look, don't be such a bunch of curmudgeons. it's a silly movie made to get giggles. let your shield down for a couple hours and have a laugh. it's ok.


Image


FUCKIN AWESOME
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Re: "The Interview", Sony, N Korea, and the Obama admin

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Jan 06, 2015 11:41 am

WAS NONSTOP COVERAGE OF THE SONY HACK INTENDED TO BURY THE CIA TORTURE REPORT?
MON, 1/5/2015 - BY CARL GIBSON


In the 1997 movie "Wag the Dog," Robert de Niro, whose character is hired by the White House as a professional media manipulator, enlists the help of Dustin Hoffman, who plays a famous Hollywood producer, to distract the media from a sex scandal involving the president and a young girl near the end of the president’s re-election campaign. De Niro’s character fabricates a war with Albania, and Hoffman’s character sells the war to the public with emotional propaganda, fake war heroes, and clever branding. By the end of the campaign, the fake war has dominated the news cycle, the president’s poll numbers are ahead of his opponent’s by a double-digit margin, and the news of his sex scandal was confined to the back pages of the papers. While the plot is fictional, it shines a light on the government’s history of deception in the media and raises questions of why the CIA torture report last month was so quickly forgotten.

The Senate report over the CIA’s torture practices is old news. At least, that’s what those responsible would like to have us think. What should have been the most significant story of the year has now been cleverly buried in the news cycle by a faux non-story that’s widely believed to have been perpetrated by insiders. So how were Americans convinced to forget about the proof that officials at the highest levels in our own government knowingly violated multiple international laws? And who did the convincing?



The “Hack” Overshadows the CIA Report

In late November 2014, hackers calling themselves the “Guardians of Peace” (GOP) released emails between Sony executives and producers to the internet. The emails became a hot national topic, and by Dec. 17, the New York Times reported that U.S. officials were blaming North Korea for the hack, but with only circumstantial evidence to go on.

President Obama vowed retribution, and a few days later, North Korea’s internet was blacked out. By Dec. 30, cybersecurity firms independently investigating the hack found that the hackers had to have had intimate knowledge of Sony’s infrastructure to pull it off, meaning that one of the hackers was likely a Sony insider. Despite this, U.S. officials stuck with their assumption, saying North Korea must have hired foreign hackers.

Oddly enough, the ongoing developments of the Sony hack continued to be a top news story – despite the Dec. 9 release of the Senate’s report on CIA torture practices. While the U.S. signed off on international treaties banning torture, the CIA nonetheless allowed untrained employees, some of whom had mental health issues, to inflict tremendous acts of cruelty against detainees who hadn’t even been accused of crimes. One detainee was chained to a cold concrete floor and died of hypothermia. Others were taken out of their cells, stripped naked, dragged down hallways and stairways, and punched and kicked repeatedly while their hands and feet were bound.

A common practice at CIA torture facilities was anally forcing nutrients into detainees as a form of feeding, which one academic has said is equivalent to rape. By 2005, most of the torture operations had been outsourced to private contractors, and by 2007, the CIA granted legal immunity to all of the private parties involved in torturing detainees.

Knowledge of these practices carried up to the highest levels of government, and great measures were taken to keep other government officials around the world in the dark. On pages 13 and 14 of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of the report, it was found that the White House instructed the CIA to keep the secretaries of Defense and State in the dark about the program, saying “Secretary Powell would blow his stack” if he was given the details.

The CIA also didn’t tell U.S. ambassadors about its torture of detainees, and instructed foreign governments in countries that hosted CIA torture prisons to not inform U.S. ambassadors of the facilities. The CIA had even previously acknowledged to Congress that torture as an interrogation tactic was “counterproductive” and would “probably result in false answers,” yet tortured anyway.

The calls for prosecution of torturers and their bosses has been widespread, from the editorial boards of the Washington Post and New York Times to famed actor/director Robert Redford. However, prosecution seems less likely after the din of the Sony hack and the resulting jabs between the U.S. and North Korean governments took hold of the news cycle. Sony needed to promote its new film The Interview, slated for a Christmas day release, and the CIA needed to be out of the spotlight. This begs the question: could Sony and U.S. government officials have possibly been collaborating to help each other?



Sony’s Recent History with U.S. Agencies

The suggestion that a major movie company and the U.S. government are in cahoots isn’t that outlandish. On Dec. 18, The Daily Beast published segments of a leaked email by Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, in which he says he “spoke with someone very senior at State” about the final scene of The Interview, in which Kim Jong-Un is killed. The State Department later admitted this “very senior” person who talked with Sony executives was Daniel Russel, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

That Daily Beast report also shows through correspondence between Lynton and Bruce Bennett – a RAND Corporation analyst specializing in North Korean affairs – that Robert King, a U.S. Special Envoy for North Korean human rights issues, was a consultant for the film. While the State Department maintains that production studios aren’t required to have their content approved by government officials, the full picture shows the high-level access and cozy relationship Sony executives have with the U.S. government.



The CIA’s Intimate History with the Corporate Media

To suggest that the CIA is intimately involved in steering what the media covers isn’t conspiracy theory, but a substantiated fact. Washington Post veteran and Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Bernstein, who helped break the Watergate Scandal with Bob Woodward, has written extensively about Operation Mockingbird, the CIA’s infiltration of mainstream media organizations going back 60 years.

According to Bernstein’s explosive 25,000-word investigative report in Rolling Stone, published Oct. 20, 1977, the CIA enlisted the help of approximately 400 prominent journalists, newspapers and broadcasting outlets In the 1950s and 1960s to carry out intelligence operations, share their notes, share their editorial staffs, and even hire CIA employees as reporters. Publications that cooperated over the years include Time magazine, the Associated Press, ABC, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, Reuters, United Press International, the Miami Herald, the Louisville Courier-Journal, Scripps Newspapers, and Newsweek magazine. Bernstein says the CIA’s influence on the major media networks and papers extends far deeper than the agency publicly acknowledges.

One clear example of the CIA’s influence on reporting is highlighted in the 1999 King vs. Jowers civil case in Memphis, Tenn., in which a jury found U.S. government agencies guilty of taking part in a conspiracy to assassinate Martin Luther King. One of the witnesses who testified was Earl Caldwell, a New York Times reporter sent to Memphis to cover King’s march for sanitation workers. According to Caldwell, New York Times editor Claude Sitton, who was in charge of covering the civil rights movement for the Paper of Record, sent Caldwell to Memphis with a specific directive to “nail Dr. King.”

But the CIA’s influence on the media didn’t stop after civil rights movement leaders were assassinated. An investigation by Robert Parry revealed that in 1983, CIA director William Casey arranged a meeting between President Ronald Reagan, Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and five leading ad executives where the group discussed how to “sell” Reagan’s controversial Central American foreign policy to American media consumers.

One person that this cabal worked to fund for the initiative was Brian Crozier, a journalist with an illustrious career working for Reuters, The Economist, and the BBC, who said in a 1984 memo that he was seeking private sector funding to cover “anti-Americanism overseas.” Crozier wrote in his memoir about how he saved his best stories for the CIA.

After Murdoch helped Reagan, the Reagan administration reciprocated. Reagan’s FCC would later loosen regulations on broadcast ownership to allow a single entity to own up to 12 TV stations by 1985. Thus, between 1983 and 1986, Murdoch made moves to form the Fox Broadcasting Company, expanding his media empire from the Star tabloid and the New York Post to include a major stake in 20th Century Fox and six Metromedia stations. Reagan also dismantled the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, allowing Murdoch’s news organizations to adopt a rabidly conservative bias.



The Tail Wags the Dog

Glenn Greenwald recently pointed to both the Washington Post and New York Times granting anonymity to “senior administration officials” to justify claims of North Korea’s alleged responsibility for the Sony hack. In each specific example Greenwald cited, neither article mentioned the skepticism of multiple cybersecurity officials who doubted the hackers did the job from North Korea. Rather, the authors spent the rest of the article discussing ways the U.S. could retaliate against North Korea. This set the narrative for the coming week of coverage.

TV talking heads perpetuated the same behavior of assertion that the hack could have only been done by North Korea, despite mounting skepticism. CNN’s chief national security correspondent joined in the chorus, repeatedly asserting that North Korea was behind the attack and that the government was now looking for ways to respond. On MSNBC, Al Sharpton hosted a panel about the Sony hack in which North Koreans were called “terrorists.” Dennis Blair, former director of national intelligence for the Obama administration, insinuated on Bloomberg TV that the hack signified that North Korea was “threatening Americans.”

In the midst of all of the accusations, North Korea maintained its innocence. Kim Jong-Un actually offered to conduct a joint investigation with the U.S. to find the source of the Sony hack. And despite the North Korean leader’s notoriety for bluster, he recently said he would be open to talks “at the highest level” with the South Korean government – an unprecedented new direction for North Korean policy toward its southern neighbor. And while there were a few dissenting voices in the media who doubted the government narrative, the greater goal of obfuscating the details of the CIA report with a blitzkrieg of coverage over a non-story has largely been accomplished.

For there to be real justice for the CIA and the administration officials who knew about illegal torture and hid it from the public, the media needs to remain vigilant and continue the conversation without being distracted by shiny objects. Now that The Interview has been released online, the hacked emails discussed far and wide, and theories about North Korean involvement largely debunked, it’s time for the media to get back to doing the job it was made for – holding power accountable.
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Re: "The Interview", Sony, N Korea, and the Obama admin

Postby 82_28 » Tue Jan 06, 2015 1:56 pm

Well, whatever transpired, I bet it was FUCKIN AWESOME. Lighten up guys and enjoy some PSYOP Jello. Why not? What's to lose -- other than your soul and critical thinking abilities?

D. you're a troll who thinks that you can rummage through various websites and shift minds or at least scatter to the breeze algorithms to be picked back up and repackaged to be re-sent. Your attempt was definitely a FUCKIN AWESOME FAIL here. Post some other places on RI and then we can all talk it out.

On the surface, there was nothing comedically edifying or freeing about even considering all the shit surrounding the "release" of The Interview. Number one and I can't get past numero uno. I don't like Rogen. So anyhow.

FUCKIN AWESOME.

Keep it up, David. You're doing a good job and I look forward to every single comment you pen.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: "The Interview", Sony, N Korea, and the Obama admin

Postby David » Wed Jan 07, 2015 2:21 am

PSYOP Jello.

Let's not bring Cosby into this. I think there's a separate thread.

you're a troll who thinks that you can rummage through various websites and shift minds or at least scatter to the breeze algorithms to be picked back up and repackaged to be re-sent.

I have no idea what this means but it sounds really cool.

Your attempt was definitely a FUCKIN AWESOME FAIL here.

Probably. I just wanted yall to watch the thing and have some laughs. Please forgive me.

I don't like Rogen

Franco is the funny one in this. How about you watch the movie? Then come beat on me some more if you want. I don't mind.
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Re: "The Interview", Sony, N Korea, and the Obama admin

Postby 82_28 » Wed Jan 07, 2015 2:58 am

I won't "beat on" you at all. You see the bigger picture. I couldn't really give a fuck less about this movie or its reviews one way or the other. Personally, I am pretty calm about this. A: Because I don't care about the "comedy" of this as I am fully into all sorts of comedy and can get my fix when I want to. B. Because what are you going to do with a hotbed of propoganda/agitprop and see the humor in it when you are concerned about "global issues" that lie outside the actual film?

It's right there in front of you chief.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Re: "The Interview", Sony, N Korea, and the Obama admin

Postby 82_28 » Wed Jan 07, 2015 4:56 pm

The latest blockbuster from CIA Pictures: The Interview

By Andre Damon and David Walsh
29 December 2014

Directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg; screenplay by Dan Sterling

The Interview, a Hollywood comedy about two celebrity journalists recruited by the CIA to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, has improbably enough emerged at the center of international geopolitics. The reader will likely be familiar with the controversy that first led Sony Pictures to shelve the film—in response to threats from hackers who leaked thousands of embarrassing internal studio emails and documents—and subsequently to release it last week.

Co-directors Seth Rogen (who also plays a leading role) and Evan Goldberg and screenwriter Dan Sterling have created a work that consists largely of a series of unconnected vulgar jokes and gags strung over a plot that glorifies state murder. One of the sharper characterizations of the film is to be found in the emails from Sony executives, who panned The Interview as “desperately unfunny and repetitive.” The studio officials termed the film “another misfire” by Rogen and [actor James] Franco, in which “Franco proves once again that irritation is his strong suit.”

The film’s approach to comedy can perhaps best be described as “throw enough mud at the wall and some of it will stick.” The topics touched upon in this “satire” include incest, bestiality, sodomy, defecation, urination and various other bodily functions.

Franco plays Dave Skylark, a bottom-feeding celebrity interview show host, and Rogen is Aaron Rapaport, his producer. The latter, seeking to prove he is capable of covering “real news,” decides to try to set up an interview with Kim Jong-un (Randall Park). Much to Rapaport’s surprise, the North Korean leader, a fan of Skylark’s show, agrees to the globally televised conversation. Learning of the upcoming event, the CIA, through its Agent Lacey (Lizzy Caplan), proposes to the duo that they assassinate Kim during his trip, to which they agree without too much hesitation.

Once the two American journalists have arrived in North Korea, Skylark at first falls under Kim’s seductive spell. The unlikely pair spends a day playing basketball, drinking margaritas, hanging around with sexy girls and, eventually, joyriding in a tank, by which point the talk show host is fully taken with Kim. However, the North Korean leader shocks Skylark when he throws a tantrum after the more or less accidental deaths of his two right-hand men and threatens to burn “a billion people across the earth and in my own country.” Moreover, the same evening, Skylark discovers that a well-stocked grocery store he passed earlier in his trip is actually a fake, and he reaffirms his commitment to the plan to get rid of Kim.

Skylark declares his intention to reduce Kim to tears in the interview (and thus demonstrating to the people of North Korea that their leader is not a god), which he accomplishes by referring to Kim’s fondness for margaritas and singing the lyrics of a silly pop song the supreme leader has a fondness for. Embarrassed, Kim soils himself, at which point Skylark declares, “Ladies and gentlemen, Kim Jong-un has just pooed in his pants.” This supposedly triggers an uprising in the country.

Back in the video control room, Rapaport and Sook (Diana Bang), a prominent North Korean official, fend off an attack by guards that involves numerous close-ups of fingers getting bitten off. Sook, Rapaport and Skylark escape in the same tank, whose large-caliber cannon they use to blow Kim’s head off (in slow motion, no less). The duo is then extracted by Seal Team Six, the American commando unit that assassinated Osama bin Laden.

Within the framework of The Interview, oddly enough, the only individual for whom the viewer feels much sympathy is Kim himself, amusingly played by Park.

This meager, implausible and terribly unfunny story is extended to a nearly mind-numbing 112 minutes by means of innumerable and strained gags. To the above-mentioned topics of the supposed humor, one might add the jokes at the expense of African Americans, women and Asians. The second half leans heavily on stock Asian gags such as “Guess who’s going to America, where they don’t eat doggies.” As if this were not enough, the writers felt compelled to add this kind of thing: “Don’t shake his hand, Aaron is a Jew!” No film of this genre would be complete without puerile sexism, centering on the two unfortunate female characters, Agent Lacey and Sook.

One feels ashamed for the performers and crewmembers involved, and one feels embarrassed to have watched the film.

Is this merely “adolescent humor”? Although there are adolescents who will respond to it, something else, far nastier and “grown up,” is at work in The Interview.

The Rogen-Goldberg effort is a hybridization of much that is the worst about American filmmaking at present. It unpleasantly combines the lowest common denominator “raunchy,” tasteless sensibility of blockbusters such as The Hangover series (and other Rogen-Judd Apatow undertakings), touches of the sadistic violence of Quentin Tarantino and Kathryn Bigelow’s devotion to the military-intelligence apparatus (Zero Dark Thirty).

In regard to the latter, aside from its hearty endorsement of the CIA, alias “Murder Inc.,” The Interview is peppered with nods to the military, including a convincing sequence of a drone pilot firing a missile, the appearance of the Navy commandos and numerous dramatic cuts to soldiers watching the interview with Kim.

The film reeks not only of political ignorance and reaction, but of laziness and intellectual complacency. Its affluent creators do and represent whatever seems “natural” to them, whatever comes most easily and effortlessly, i.e., they give in to every wretched petty bourgeois assumption about the world. The Interview is the work of those who have chosen to go entirely and wholeheartedly with the (bourgeois, conventional, foul) flow. The racial insults or backwardness, the sex innuendos and the pro-imperialist outlook itself all speak to an upper middle-class layer that has broken with liberal respectability and restraint, so to speak.

There is nothing genuinely critical-minded or unconventional in The Interview. Its claim to “edginess” is based on the fact that supposedly no subject is taboo. Yes, nothing is taboo…except US foreign policy, US military and intelligence operations, US geopolitical interests, and so forth. The humor has nothing liberating about it because it comes from a privileged and officially sponsored source. To the extent that the filmmakers take on “political correctness” or identity politics, they do so from the right.

How daring of Rogen and Goldberg, with the full weight of the American state and media behind them, to make a film about Kim Jong-un! Truly, what audacity and bravery!

The critics, for the most part, have lapped it up. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, for example, concludes that the film is “stupid. It’s in bad taste. It [sic] impossible.” But then Travers adds, “It’s a farce, people.” He continues, “The Interview hits the sweet spot for raunchy fun and spiky lampooning because Franco and Rogen are effing hilarious and fearless about swinging for the fences. It’s the American way.”

According to The Interview’s creators and leaked internal correspondence from Sony, the film was made in consultation with US intelligence agencies and the State Department. After Sony announced that it would continue with its plans to release the film, President Barack Obama, on vacation in Hawaii, and mid-way through a round of golf, declared, “I’m glad it’s being released.”

The Rogen-Goldberg work is being promoted as America’s answer to North Korean totalitarianism. The release of The Interview apparently proves that freedom of artistic expression is alive and well in the US. If this trivial rubbish is what the American establishment now champions in order to assert its “values” on a global scale, that itself suggests a profound social and cultural crisis.

In addition to being a testament to the banal vulgarity of the Hollywood “elite,” the movie may well accurately speak to the cultural and moral level of American state officials. One has the impression that, while most viewers would find the film “desperately unfunny,” the pathological types of people who dreamed up the sadistic torture methods depicted in the Senate’s recently released report might well get a kick out of it.


http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/12 ... e-d29.html

Keep her coming, David. Again, can't wait!
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
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Larry Chin: Je suis CIArlie

Postby MinM » Sat Jan 17, 2015 10:50 am

Je suis CIA

Posted on January 16, 2015 by Larry Chin

Since 9/11, the imperial playbook has consisted of a favorite and time-tested tactic: the false flag operation.

Carry out or facilitate a spectacular atrocity. Blame it on the enemy of choice. Issue a lie-infested official narrative, and have the corporate media repeat the lie. Rile up ignorant militant crowds, stoke the hatred, and war-mongering imperial policy planners and their criminal functionaries get what they want: war with the public stamp of approval.

Here we are again.

The Charlie Hebdo incident is being sold as “the French 9/11.” It certainly is, in all of the most tragic ways: France, like the United States on 9/11, has been used. The masses of the world have been deceived, and march in lockstep to NATO’s drumbeat again.

All signs lead from French intelligence back to Washington—and Langley, Virginia—directly and indirectly. Red herrings and deceptions comprise the official narrative.

The Al-Qaeda narrative, the classic CIA deception, gets a fresh facelift. The fact that Al-Qaeda is CIA-created Anglo-American military-intelligence is ignored. The agenda behind the ISIS war—a massive and elaborate regional CIA false flag operation—registers even less.

The Charlie Hebdo terrorists have ties to Anglo-American intelligence and the Pentagon that the masses do not bother to think about. They are also tied to the (conveniently dead) 9/11-connected Al-Qaeda mastermind/CIA military-intelligence asset Anwar Al-Awlaki. These and other obvious connections to Washington and the CIA do not raise alarm bells among the ardent ones waving Je Suis Charlie signs (which “magically” appeared, and seem to have been mass-produced in advance).

Signs of an inside job and a still unfolding cover-up are significant, from pristine, undamaged passports found on scene to the convenient suicide of Helric Fredou, the Paris police commissioner in charge of the Hebdo investigation.

The Kouachi brothers and Amedy Coulibaly were not only well known by French authorities, French intelligence and the CIA. The Kouachis were tracked and monitored—guided—over the course of many years, arrested many times, yet were allowed to continue training and plotting with fellow Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, etc. These are telltale signs of a guided military-intelligence operation. A blatantly obvious terror cell, known to authorities, “drops out of sight,” and then is set loose at an appropriate moment. And then executed.

None of these things, which alarm seasoned observers, registers among the emotional masses; the lemmings who willfully refuse to address its real source: the architects of Anglo-American war policy.

Only the NATO war agenda benefits from any of this.

“France’s 9/11” is more accurately France’s latest Operation Gladio. As noted by Paul Craig Roberts, there is a reason why the Charlie Hebdo attacks took place when it did:

France is suffering from the Washington-imposed sanctions against Russia. Shipyards are impacted from being unable to deliver Russian orders due to France’s vassalage status to Washington, and other aspects of the French economy are being adversely impacted by sanctions that Washington forced its NATO puppet states to apply to Russia.

This week the French president said that the sanctions against Russia should end (so did the German vice-chancellor).

This is too much foreign policy independence on France’s part for Washington. Has Washington resurrected “Operation Gladio,” which consisted of CIA bombing attacks against Europeans during the post-WW II era that Washington blamed on communists and used to destroy communist influence in European elections? Just as the world was led to believe that communists were behind Operation Gladio’s terrorist attacks, Muslims are blamed for the attacks on the French satirical magazine.

Now France is militarized, just as the US was in the wake of 9/11. And the French right wing has newfound cache.

The hostile takeover of the public mind

Notice that the last two false flag operations in recent months—the false flagging of North Korea over Sony and the film The Interview, and the Charlie Hebdo deception—both revolve around the ideas of “free speech” and “free expression.”

This is a phantom battle, choreographed by those who could care less for “freedoms.” In fact, the masses are being manipulated towards supporting war and mass murder, and police state agendas that specifically curtail freedoms.

What more creative way to take away freedoms than to make people give them up voluntarily?

The hordes of American citizens that supported the “war on terrorism” to “defend freedom” got the PATRIOT Act, which gutted what liberties they had; the Constitution and the Bill of Rights will not be restored. This process continues all over the world. Ask the average uninformed French citizen today suffering from post-traumatic stress, and they will gladly give up their rights, anything so that “terrorists” are stopped.

Note how the powers that be have taken to inserting their pro-war messages even more forcefully where the ignorant public spends the majority of its time: in popular entertainment. In Hollywood products, in their cartoons, in their magazines, in their celebrities.

Let George Clooney, Seth Rogen and James Franco transmit the messages of war for the CIA and the Pentagon.

Weaponize stupid movies like The Interview and crude magazines like Charlie Hebdo, and watch people become bloodthirsty, vengeful, unthinking and war-loving.


It is the CIA’s ongoing mission to plant its assets and its propaganda into the media and the arts, controlling the perception of culture as well as framing all debate. It is making a huge push at the moment, relishing the speed and effectiveness of technology and social media.

Hundreds and thousands of innocent lives have been lost in this endless, brutal and criminal war. Yet its architects and functionaries remain untouched.

Je suis Langley

No Anglo-American war of conquest, no Charlie Hebdo massacre.

No CIA, no Militant Islam, no Al-Qaeda, no ISIS, no Charlie Hebdo massacre.

No 9/11, no “war on terrorism,” no ISIS deception, no Charlie Hebdo massacre.

No war against Russia, no Charlie Hebdo massacre.

Je suis Charlie? No.

To the naïve ones who believe the lies and march on the streets carrying the signs, you are the victims, the gullible, the dupes, the pawns.

Tu est CIA.

Tu est NATO.

Larry Chin is an Associate Editor of Intrepid Report.

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MinM » Sun Dec 28, 2014 10:04 am wrote:Larry Chin is excellent .. from 9/11 .. to Watergate.
conniption » Sat Dec 27, 2014 4:21 pm wrote:
Global Research

False Flagging the World towards War. The CIA Weaponizes Hollywood

By Larry Chin
December 27, 2014


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Almost all wars begin with false flag operations.

The coming conflicts in North Korea and Russia are no exception.

Mass public hysteria is being manufactured to justify aggression against Moscow and Pyongyang, in retaliation for acts attributed to the North Korean and Russian governments, but orchestrated and carried out by the CIA and the Pentagon.


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The false flagging of North Korea: CIA weaponizes Hollywood

The campaign of aggression against North Korea, from the hacking of Sony and the crescendo of noise over the film, The Interview, bears all the markings of a CIA false flag operation.

The hacking and alleged threats to moviegoers has been blamed entirely on North Korea, without a shred of credible evidence beyond unsubstantiated accusations by the FBI. Pyongyang’s responsibility has not been proven. But it has already been officially endorsed, and publicly embraced as fact.

The idea of “America under attack by North Korea” is a lie.

The actual individuals of the mysterious group responsible for the hacking remain conveniently unidentified. A multitude of possibilities—Sony insiders, hackers-for-hire, generic Internet vandalism—have not been explored in earnest. The more plausible involvement of US spying agencies—the CIA, the NSA, etc. , their overwhelming technological capability and their peerless hacking and surveillance powers—remains studiously ignored.

Who benefits? It is illogical for Pyongyang to have done it. Isolated, impoverished North Korea, which has wanted improved relations with the United States for years (to no avail), gains nothing by cyberattacking the United States with its relatively weak capabilities, and face the certainty of overwhelming cyber and military response. On the other hand, Washington benefits greatly from any action that leads to regime change in North Korea.

But discussion about Pyongyang’s involvement—or lack of—risks missing the larger point.

This project, from the creation of The Interview to the well-orchestrated international incident, has been guided by the CIA, the Pentagon, and the State Department from the start. It is propaganda. It is a weapon of psychological warfare. It is an especially perverted example of military-intelligence manipulation of popular culture for the purpose of war.

There is nothing funny about any of it.

The Interview was made with the direct and open involvement of CIA and Rand Corporation operatives for the express purpose of destabilizing North Korea. Star and co-director Seth Rogen has admitted that he worked “directly with people who work in the government as consultants, who I’m convinced are in the CIA”. Originally conceived to be a plot taking place in an “unnamed country”, Sony Pictures co-chairman Michael Lynton, who also sits on the board of the Rand Corporation, encouraged the film makers to make the movie overtly about murdering Kim Jong-Un. Bruce Bennett, the Rand Corporation’s North Korean specialist, also had an active role, expressing enthusiasm that the film would assist regime change and spark South Korean action against Pyongyang. Other government figures from the State Department, even operatives connected to Hillary Clinton, read the script.

The infantile, imbecilic, tasteless, reckless idiots involved with The Interview, including the tasteless Rogen and co-director Evan Goldberg, worked with these military-intelligence thugs for months. “Hung out” with them. They do not seem to have had any problem being the political whores for these Langley death merchants. In fact, they had fun doing it. They seem not to give a damn, or even half a damn, that the CIA and the Pentagon have used them, and co-opted the film for an agenda far bigger than the stupid movie itself. All they seem to care about was that they are getting publicity, and more publicity, and got to make a stupid movie. Idiots.

The CIA has now succeeded in setting off a wave of anti-North Korea war hysteria across America. Witness the ignorant squeals and cries from ignorant Americans about how “we can’t let North Korea blackmail us”, “we can’t let Kim take away our free speech”. Listen to the ridiculous debate over whether Sony has the “courage” to release the film to “stand up to the evil North Koreans” who would “blackmail America” and “violate the rights” of idiot filmgoers, who now see it as a “patriotic duty” to see the film.

These mental midgets—their worldviews shaped by the CIA culture ministry with its endorsed pro-war entertainment, violent video games, and gung-ho shoot ‘em ups—are hopelessly brain-curdled, irretrievably lost. Nihilistic and soulless, as well as stupid, most Americans have no problem seeing Kim Jong-Un killed, on screen or in reality. This slice of ugly America is the CIA’s finest post-9/11 army: violent, hate-filled, easily manipulated, eager to obey sheeple who march to whatever drumbeat they set.

And then there are the truly dumb, fools who are oblivious to most of reality, who would say “hey lighten up, it’s only a comedy” and “it’s only a movie”. Naïve, entitled, exceptionalist Americans think the business of the war—the murderous agenda they and their movie are helping the CIA carry out —is all just a game.

The CIA’s business is death, and that there are actual assassination plans in the files of the CIA, targeting heads of state. Kim Jong-Un is undoubtedly on a real assassination list. This is no funny, either.

The real act of war

The provocative, hostile diplomatic stance of the Obama administration speaks for itself. Washington wanted to spark an international incident. It wants regime change in Pyongyang, does not care what North Korea or China think, and does not fear anything North Korea will do about it.

On the other hand, imagine if a film were about the assassination of Benjamin Netanyahu and the toppling of the government in Tel Aviv. Such a film, if it would ever be permitted even in script form, would be stopped cold. If it made it through censors that “magically” never slowed down The Interview (and yes, there is censorship in America, a lot of it) Obama would personally fly to Tel Aviv to apologize. At the very least, Washington would issue statements distancing themselves from the film and its content.

Not so in the case of The Interview. Because American elites actually want the Kim family murdered.

Despite providing no proof of North Korean involvement, President Barack Obama promised a “proportional response”. Promptly, North Korea’s Internet was mysteriously shut down for a day.

Unless one is naïve to believe in this coincidence, all signs point to US spy agencies (CIA, NSA, etc.) or hackers working on behalf of Washington and Langley.

Given the likelihood that North Korea had nothing to do with either the hacking of Sony, the initial pulling of the movie (a big part of the publicity stunt, that was not surprisingly reversed) or the “blackmailing” of moviegoers, the shutting down of North Korea’s Internet was therefore a unilateral, unprovoked act of war. Washington has not officially taken responsibility. For reasons of plausible denial, it never will.

Perhaps it was a dry run. A message. The US got to test how easily it can take down North Korea’s grid. As we witnessed, given overwhelming technological advantage, it was very easy. And when a war against Pyongyang begins in earnest, American forces will know exactly what they will do.

The US is flexing its Asia-Pacific muscles, sending a message not only to Pyongyang, but to China, a big future target. Some of the other muscle-flexing in recent months included the anti-Beijing protests in Hong Kong (assisted by the CIA and the US State Department), ongoing provocations in the South China Sea over disputed oil, and new defense agreements that place new anti-missile systems and missile-guided naval vessels to the region.

The bottom line is that America has once again been mobilized into supporting a new war that could take place soon. The CIA and Sony have successfully weaponized a stupid movie, making it into a cause and a battle cry.

If and when bombs fall on North Korea, blood will be on the hands of the makers of The Interview, every single executive who allowed it to be made, and the hordes who paid to see it.

If America were a decent, sane society, The Interview would be exposed, roundly denounced, boycotted and shunned. Instead it is celebrated.

The CIA should be condemned. Instead, Seth Rogen hangs out with them. America, increasingly dysfunctional, loves them. Obeys them.

The false flagging of Russia

Regarding The Interview, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich issued a statement in sympathy with North Korea, correctly calling the film’s concept aggressive and scandalous, and decried the US retaliatory response as counterproductive and dangerous to international relations.

Of course. Washington has no interest in improved international relations.

The Russians should know.

Like Kim Jong-Un, Vladimir Putin has been vilified, demonized and false-flagged, incessantly. If Kim is today’s object of ridicule, Putin is Evil Incarnate.

Consider the hysterical, desperate provocations by Washington in recent months.

A US-NATO coup, engineered by the CIA, toppled the government of Ukraine, planting a pro-US neo-Nazi criminal apparatus on Russia’s doorstep. The CIA and its worldwide network of propagandists pinned the blame on Putin and Russia for aggression, and for obstructing “democracy”.

The MH-17 jetliner is downed by Ukrainian operatives, with the support of the CIA, Mi-6, etc. etc. This false flag operation was blamed on Russia— “Putin’s Missile”. The US and NATO are still trying to pin these murders on Putin.

The war against the Islamic State—a massive CIA false flag operation—seeks to topple with the the Assad government as well as to militarily counter Russia. The ongoing Anglo-American conquest of regional oil and gas supplies, and energy transport routes is also aimed at checkmating Russia and China across the region.

The US and NATO have attacked the Russian federation with sanctions. The US and Saudi Arabia have collapsed oil prices, to further destroy the Russian economy. Full-scale military escalations are being planned. The US Congress is pushing new legislation tantamount to an open declaration of war against Russia.

What next? Perhaps it is time for the CIA to produce a Seth Rogen-James Franco movie about assassinating Putin. Another “parody”. Or how about a movie about killing Assad, or anyone else the United States wants to make into a Public Enemy? Don’t think Langley isn’t working on it.

The return of the Bushes (who were never gone)

In the midst of all escalating war hysteria comes news that Jeb Bush is “actively exploring” running for president in 2016. The long predicted return of the Bush family, the kings of terrorism, the emperors of the false flag operation, back to the White House appears imminent.

The CIA will have its favorite family back in the Oval Office, with true CIA scion to manage the apocalyptic wars are likely to be launched in earnest in the next two years: Russia/Ukraine, North Korea, the Middle East.

Jeb Bush will “finish the job”.

The 2016 presidential “contest” will be a charade. It is likely to put forth two corrupt establishment political “friends” posing as adversaries, when in fact, they are longtime comrades and conspirators. On one side, Hillary (and Bill) Clinton. On the other side, Jeb Bush, with George H.W., George W. and all of the Bush cronies crawling back out of the rotten woodwork. The fact is that the Clintons and Bushes, and their intertwined networks, have run the country since the 1980s, their respective camps taking turns in power, with Obama as transitional figurehead (his administration has always been run by neoliberal elites connected to the Clintonistas, including Hillary Clinton herself).

The collective history of the Bushes stretches back to the very founding of the American intelligence state. It is the very history of modern war criminality. The resume is George H.W. Bush—the CIA operative and CIA Director—is long and bloody, and littered with cocaine dust. The entire Bush family ran the Iran-Contra/CIA drug apparatus, with the Clintons among the Bush network’s full partners in the massive drug/weapons/banking frauds of that era, the effects of which still resonate today. And we need not remind that the Bush clan and 9/11 are responsible for the world of terror and false flag foreign policy and deception that we suffer today.

While it remains too early to know which way the Establishment will go with their selection (and it depends on how world war shakes out between now and 2016), it is highly likely that Jeb

Bush would be the pick.

Hillary Clinton has already been scandalized—“Benghazi-ed”. Jeb Bush, on the other hand, has ideal Establishment/CIA pedigree. He has waited years for the stupid American public to forget the horrors that his family—Georges H.W. and W.— brought humanity. And now Americans , with their ultra-short memories, have indeed forgotten, if they had ever understood it in the first place.

And the American public does not know who Jeb Bush is, beyond the last name. Jeb Bush, whom Barbara Bush always said was the “smart one”, has been involved in Bush narco-criminal business since Iran-Contra. His criminal activities in Florida, his connection with anti-Castro Cuban terrorists and other connections are there, for those who bother to investigate them. His Latin American connections—including his ability to speak fluent Spanish, a Latin wife and a half-Latin son (George P. Bush, the next up and coming political Bush)—conveniently appeals to the fastest-growing demographic, as well as those in the southern hemisphere drug trade. Recent Obama overtures towards the Latino demographic—immigration, Cuba—appear to be a Democratic Party move to counter Jeb Bush’s known strengths in the same demographic.

Today, in the collective American mind, Kim Jong-Un and Vladimir Putin are “the bad guys”. But the mass murdering war criminal Bushes are saints. “Nice guys”.

A Jeb Bush presidency will be a pure war presidency, one that promises terror, more unspeakable than we are experiencing now, lording it over a world engulfed in holocaust.

This is not a movie.

***
Update: as I was getting ready to post this NPR played an interview with the guy that wrote the script for the 'Interview' .. Which brought to mind this little nugget from the recent obit for Mandy Rice-Davies ..
MinM » Sun Dec 21, 2014 12:58 am wrote:
@johnsimkin · Dec 19 · Sad to announce the death of my friend, Mandy Rice Davies. http://spartacus-educational.com/SPYdavies.htm
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...On 11th July, 1962, Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler, arrived in New York City. They stayed at a hotel on Fire Island. According to Rice-Davies she fell asleep on the beach and was badly sunburnt. She telephoned the studio and told them: "I've had this accident - first-degree sunburn. It will take about a month if I am lucky to get my skin back in order." The women returned to London on 18th July. It later emerged that their movements in America were being monitored by the FBI.

On her return to London, Rice-Davies met Earl Felton, a screen-writer. Felton introduced her to Robert Mitchum and for a short time she worked as his personal assistant. According to Christine Keeler, Felton was a CIA agent...

http://spartacus-educational.com/SPYdavies.htm

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Re: "The Interview", Sony, N Korea, and the Obama admin

Postby Hunter » Sat Jan 17, 2015 11:57 am

Saw John Mcafee on his FB say he knows who hacked Sony, has spoken to them himself and it was not NK. Maybe Mcafee being Mcafee, who knows.
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Re: "The Interview", Sony, N Korea, and the Obama admin

Postby 82_28 » Sat Jan 17, 2015 12:29 pm

Who hacked it would be totally knowable especially in a country as "backwards" as NK if it is as "backwards" as we're led to believe as per this stupid movie. It had to go through a CO and switch -- many switches. Thus the "exact" location of where the request to hack is known. It absolutely has to be. No way around that. I deal with this shit daily and can tell you that the databases are totally documented -- because they absolutely have to be in order to work at all. It may be complex, but it isn't some magical evil NK is able to pull off for just some "comedy" film that nobody gave a fuck about anyhow.
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