edit: CIA+bribe trial+Clark/Perle+ Oil = BORAT!

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Even if Mockingbird has grown and its power has increased, extrapolating to the level of HMW's theory is an enormous, unsupported leap.

Why do you keep characterizing my "theory" as control of ALL media? This straw man just won't die with you, PP. I think LOTS of mainstream media IS. Yet you accuse me of inflation and confabulation.

Mockingbird is a cancer that is over 50 years old. Think it has grown? Gee, that just might be a rational hypothesis. What has happened since the social unrest of the Vietnam years? Think that was a motive to increase control? Think mega-media vertical and horizontal control of 'product' supports this hypothesis? Think decades of research and surveillance/polling supports this hypothesis?

I do. But when I give you reams of history and documentation you ignore or dismiss it and make the bizarre demand that I try to 'disprove' "my theory."
You won't tell me how ((or why I should even try) to "disprove" my theory?

Y'know that list of 25 Rules of Disinfo I keep citing? One on the list is "ignore facts, demand impossible proofs." PP, you dismiss the long history of militarized culture I present and demand impossible proofs. So I think that is bad research on your part to say the least.

Mockingbird was aimed primarily at influencing public opinion via news -- not entertainment (though admittedly the line between the two has blurred).

See above. Controlled news was just one part of Total War doctrine. The CIA has a long history with cultural organizations. How often shall I cite the 1951 Psychological Strategy Board or the Pentagon and CIA's long history with Hollywood?

Using cultural cues like entertainment for war purposes goes back ages.
And using movies goes back atleast to WWI.

The Nazis were very concerned about total culture war and so was the CIA after WWII since this is an effective way to control populations.

Here's the Nazi culture purge-
http://culturalpolicy.uchicago.edu/workshop/goldstein.html

PURGES, EXCLUSIONS, AND LIMITS: ART POLICIES IN GERMANY 1933-1949

Cora Goldstein

During the period 1933-1949 Germany experienced two massive art purges. Both the National Socialist government and OMGUS (Military Government in Germany,U.S.) were highly concerned with controlling what people saw and how they saw it. The Nazis eliminated what they called "Degenerate art," erasing the pictorial traces of turmoil and heterogeneity that they associated with modern art. The Western Allies eradicated "Nazi art" and excluded all military subjects or themes that could have military and/or chauvinist symbolism from pictorial representation. Both the Third Reich and OMGUS utilized the visual arts as instruments for the construction of new German cultural heritages. The fact that such dissimilar regimes used visual strategies both for political education and for the construction of new national identities and collective memories, highlights the importance of images in modern mass politics. It also underlines the importance of the political control of the visual sphere in situations that call for the creation of new paradigms of normalcy and self-understanding.

Here's a book I've read on WW1 films-
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/Warfilmbib.html

Isenberg, Michael T.
War on Film: the American Cinema and World War I, 1914-1941 / Michael T. Isenberg. Rutherford*: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, c1981.

Here's another I've read on WWII films-
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/2554.html

Hollywood Goes to War:
How Politics, Profits and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies
byClayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black

The WWII-era Office of War Information actually WROTE scripts and regulated what movies were made and massaged morale at home and at the front with their product.
Unfortunately, that's how we got fascist actors like Reagan and Schwarzenegger in office in a country that equates celebrity with power.

The Nazis used film as propaganda. Here is a 1937 article by one of Goebel's acolytes -
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/hippler1.htm

Background: The following essay was published in the Nazi monthly for propagandists. The author, Fritz Hippler, was an employee in the film section of the Propaganda Ministry. He later was responsible for the film "The Eternal Jew," the most notorious of the Nazi anti-Semitic films.

The source: "Der Film als Waffe," Unser Wille und Weg, 7 (1937), pp. 21-23.

Film as a Weapon

by Dr. Fritz Hippler

If one compares the directness and intensity of the effect that the various means of propaganda have on the great masses, film is without question the most powerful. The written and spoken word depend entirely on the content or on the emotional appeal of the speaker, but film uses pictures, pictures that for almost a decade have been accompanied by sound. We know that the impact of a message is greater if it is less abstract, more visual. That makes it clear why film, with its series of continually moving images, must have particular persuasive force.

The US Agency for International Development uses an expression they got from John Hopkins University as a contraction of 'entertainment' and 'education' to describe the films they make to change people in other countries - "enter-educate."

http://theunjustmedia.com/Propaganda/entertainment%20as%20propaganda.htm

In each case, the audience believes it is watching regular, commercial entertainment -- music and stories that reflect the people they know in their own lives. The faces are familiar, the language is their own. The visual images and themes bear some resemblance to reality. Psychologically speaking, they let down their guard. Though the messages may seem odd or even offensive, members of the audience are not aware that what they see and hear is part of a massive, systematic, carefully-planned propaganda offensive carried out by foreign government agencies.

This is an old trick. Behavioral scientists know that people will be far more vulnerable to messages that are casually introduced to the intended audience than they would be to the more crude forms of psychological warfare of the battlefield such as warnings blared out of loudspeakers and leaflets falling from helicopters. They know, too, that if a message is repeated constantly over a long period of time, intermingled with other images and themes that are culturally familiar and reassuring to the targets, it will be gradually come to seem less alien and more a "legitimate" concept within their cultural and/or political surroundings.

Heres a University of San Diego website history of the US Office of War Information's 'weaponizing' entertainment 60 years ago -
http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/st/~ksoroka/hollywood1.html

"For the benefit of both your studio and the Office of War Information it would be advisable to establish a routine procedure whereby our Hollywood office would recieve copies of studio treatments or synopses of all stories which you contemplate producing and of the finished scripts. This will enable us to make suggestions as to the war content of motion pictures at a stage when it is easy and inexpensive to make any changes which might be recommended."
--Lowell Mellett (FDR presidential liaison to media) to studio heads, December 9, 1942

Gee, do you think this is why actor Tom Hanks was just inducted into the Army Ranger Hall of Fame?
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-213098-1920947.php

June 30, 2006

Tom Hanks inducted into Ranger Hall of Fame

Associated Press

Tom Hanks arrives for a screening at the International film festival in Cannes, southern France, on May 17. Hanks was inducted as an honorary member of the U.S. Army's Ranger Hall of Fame on Thursday, for his accurate portrayal of a World War II Army Ranger company commander in the movie "Saving Private Ryan."

FORT BENNING, Georgia — Actor Tom Hanks was inducted Thursday as an honorary member of the U.S. Army’s Ranger Hall of Fame for his accurate portrayal of a World War II Army Ranger company commander in the movie “Saving Private Ryan” and for his continued commitment to honoring those who served in the war.

Besides his role in “Saving Private Ryan,” Hanks was cited for serving as the national spokesman for the World War II Memorial Campaign, for being the honorary chairman of the D-Day Museum Capital Campaign, and for his role in writing and helping to produce the Emmy Award-winning miniseries, “Band of Brothers.”

PPan continued-

Jumping to unsupported conclusions (i.e. Borat is a psyop) distracts from getting at the real issues -- what influence do intelligence agencies wield over the increasingly consoliated news media? How deep and effective is their penetration?

By remarkable coincidence, PP, that's exactly what I'm lining out. lol.

Again, my aim is not to stifle speculation on this crucial topic. But when we veer way off course, into pure speculation not based in fact, our energies are wasted. In the meantime, the real corruption of our press continues full speed-ahead.

"Real corruption" happened long ago and examining its means, motive, and opportunity is not "energy wasted" or "pure speculation."

And when people come to believe that the Intel agencies wield more power than the evidence indicates, it elevates them -- and that is surely what they want.

Examining the power they have on our children isn't "elevating them," it's finding poison in their cultural environment the better to keep our country healthy or attempt to restore some health. Fascism doesn't just go away by turning your head. You have to meet it head on, stare it down, and condemn it.

If people begin to believe they orchestrate all movies, tv shows, and books -- right down to the placement of dvds on store shelves -- that plays right into their hands. They surely must be laughing because the perception of power is enough to discourage and deflate those seeking to expose them.

They orchestrate LOTS, not "all." And I laugh in their fascist little faces and am in no way "discouraged or deflated."

To expose them, we must be rigorous and analytical in our investigations. Real investigation must be based on facts, not farfetched speculation.

EXACTLY, PP. See above. lol.

[professorpan]

Okay, so you don't say that ALL media are controlled by the CIA -- just those for which you can devise a theory to jibe with your preconceptions.

And as for your evidence -- sorry, but none of your citations support the absurd examples you regularly dole out (Borat being only the most recent), as not just myself but others have told you again and again. None of them are relevant to your holy grail of "keyword hijacking." NONE suggest the level of micromanagement your theory requires. Not a one. Show me -- I am waiting, but you'll have to forgive me if I don't hold my breath.

Wow, so the military is involved in films made about the military? Anyone with a basic understanding of U.S. history and Hollywood knows that. The cozy propagandizing during WWII is well-documented. And Tom Hanks is cozy with the military? Big fucking deal -- more guilt-by-assocation, your prime modus operandi. Maybe Hanks believes that the military in WWII was fighting an honorable war against fascism. Gosh, wouldn't that be insane!

Though you keep screaming "straw man" every time I point out the flaws in your theorizing, you refuse to see your illogical deductive leaps. When I suggest you challenge your own theory, I'm only suggesting you follow the time-tested scientific method for confirming a theory -- to seek examples that prove it wrong. If you find evidence that proves it wrong, your theory needs to be reworked or abandoned. Your failure to do so indicates to me that you fear that you may be wrong -- and that you are emotionally invested in being right.

You're not interested in determining the truth -- that's obvious from your continuing refusal to entertain or evaluate criticism. You're interested in confirming your rightness. And that, my friend, is the sign of a closed mind. And, worse, a zealot.

From the Wikipedia article on confirmation bias:

"In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias (or confirmatory bias) is a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions, leading to statistical errors. Confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias and represents an error of inductive inference toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study."

See also myside bias:

In psychology, the myside bias is the popular tendency not to seek evidence against one's existing position, and indeed to ignore such evidence. The term was coined by David Perkins, myside referring to "my" side of the issue under consideration. An important consequence of the myside bias is that many incorrect beliefs are slow to change and often become stronger even when evidence is presented which should weaken the belief. Generally, such irrational belief persistence results from according too much weight to evidence that accords with one's belief, and too little weight to evidence that does not. It can also result from the failure to search impartially for information.

Yep. You are the poster boy -- poster mammal? -- for confirmation bias.

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

(I'll get back to your psych evaluation and odd reduction of Total War Doctrine to "war movies," PP.)

I only just found these two clips of Cohen as Ali G. interviewing James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. There are more of these smirky banality clips of killers, I'm sure.

You don't think those old warriors know who he is and are using Ali for a PR sop during war and torture? Hell yeah, they are. The same way that TV anchors and politicians go on Letterman to get 'friendlied up' to the kids.

Think Ali G. is funny? 'Making people think?' Yeah, right. Sometimes. Sometimes he's doing exactly what our State Department wants, making horror glib and snarky.

Remind yourself what you are laughing at.
The laugh's on you and those being bombed and starved.

General Scowcroft-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCaiHbNz0kU&mode=related&search=

James Baker-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXbNLkNhy1M&mode=related&search=

[judasdisney]

professorpan wrote:

Good points, but I still disagree. Even if Mockingbird has grown and its power has increased, extrapolating to the level of HMW's theory is an enormous, unsupported leap. Mockingbird was aimed primarily at influencing public opinion via news -- not entertainment (though admittedly the line between the two has blurred).

Jumping to unsupported conclusions (i.e. Borat is a psyop) distracts from getting at the real issues -- what influence do intelligence agencies wield over the increasingly consoliated news media? How deep and effective is their penetration?

I agree with many of your points, Pan, but my evidence is the question that you still haven't answered.

To answer your question, "How deep and effective is their penetration," the answer is: apparently deep and effective enough to erase "Operation Mockingbird" from any discussion, mention or even awareness.

Here in 2006, that's not much of a task. American citizens don't remember which phone companies are giving Peeping George free rein to wiretap, let alone remember a 29-year-old news bombshell.

But I'm old enough to know that Operation Mockingbird was off the map in 1978, a year after the reports surfaced.

By 1992, with the mainstream media openly ridiculing (during the biased coverage of Oliver Stone's "JFK" film) the majority-view of the U.S. public that a conspiracy was involved in the JFK assassination (and this ridiculing of a majority view is in itself a curious example), "Operation Mockingbird" was well nigh down the memory hole and/or screened out of a logical moment where it would surface in debate.

It's the question of Operation Mockingbird's absence that itself is glaring evidence (or at least wasglaring evidence during the aftermath of its revelation, when it should have been remembered easily) of an orchestrated silence.

And anyone who watched either the stagecraft of the Warren Commission or the careful gatekeeping damage-control surrounding BCCI & cocaine & the CIA & Iran-Contra, all scrupulously handled by the Kerry Commission, shouldn't be so skeptical that an "orchestrated silence" is such a tall order.

Again, my aim is not to stifle speculation on this crucial topic. But when we veer way off course, into pure speculation not based in fact, our energies are wasted. In the meantime, the real corruption of our press continues full speed-ahead.

Well said, and I agree with every word. Let's indeed be rigorous.

And when people come to believe that the Intel agencies wield more power than the evidence indicates, it elevates them -- and that is surely what they want. If people begin to believe they orchestrate all movies, tv shows, and books -- right down to the placement of dvds on store shelves -- that plays right into their hands. They surely must be laughing because the perception of power is enough to discourage and deflate those seeking to expose them.

I believe the evidence indicates that Intel agencies wield enough power to weave an entirely bogus "public narrative" of lies since December 12, 2000, in the United States:

(a) a Presidential election was successfully hijacked

(b) 9 months later, a false flag operation traumatized a gullible populace

(c) for the next 18 months, Judith Miller and the N.Y. Times (notably) produced a barrage of false testimony which supported an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation; fact after fact after fact was buried, distorted, disregarded & completely excluded from any public debate

(d) much more important than the invasion of Iraq, the principals and precept of law established by WW2 was reversed

(e) innumerable violations of the U.S. Constitution, from Secret CIA Prisons to "rendering" to Guantanamo to Valerie Plame to Warrantless Wiretapping, et al, have been enabled by this false narrative

Isn't that considerable power? Let's not underestimate the damage that's been done, before the Intelligence community was purged in November 2004.

To expose them, we must be rigorous and analytical in our investigations. Real investigation must be based on facts, not farfetched speculation.

The word "farfetched" is often a red flag for me. Who could've guessed that Ben Bradlee -- the Washington Post editor who helped Woodward & Bernstein bring down Nixon -- later turned out to be himself a CIA operative? Doesn't that fact alone have such far-reaching implications that Watergate was much, much more underneath the surface?

And then for Woodward to "step forward" like a deus ex machina, with Bradlee "backing up Woodward,"that Richard Armitage was conveniently the fall-guy, er, um source on Valerie Plame?

Using the term "farfetched" in this conversation doesn't serve the goal of avoiding the real dangers of leaping to conclusions which leave us vulnerable to deceit & manipulation, and leave us open to failing at our task. "Farfetched" is a term which is used to shut-down conversation more often than to steer the conversation back to an airtight, step-by-step analysis, conclusion & prosecution.

I don't buy into Hollow Moon Theory or 9/11 Airplane Pods, either, but the use of the term "farfetched" is hot and loaded, and serves no purpose here.

The main point: it seems exceedingly obvious that Operation Mockingbird is alive and well, beyond the sheer fact of its curious absence from our collective historical memory, our collective public narrative & the explosive implications of its revelation.

And considering how easily and coveniently any probing question or uncomfortable debate is shut down with quips about "Borat" (whether in the context of discussion of Kazakhstan [or, ironically, in the context of discussion of Operation Mockingbird where it's cited as "too trivial" to be a psyop]), larger and ongoing examples of a Long Chess Game called "The Project For A New American Century" in which the Iraq War was opened on December 12, 2000, but indeed had been long-planned before that (and indeed, PNAC itself may be considered nothing more than an irrelevant piece of theatre in a much larger narrative) -- all of this is easily dismissed with the disdain and contempt of a term such as "farfetched," and from PNAC to "Bush V. Gore" to 9/11's wonderland of improbabilities, Professorpan is correct:

It all has been very farfetched.

And it couldn't have happened without a compliant media engineering public consent.

And it couldn't have happened without a mainstream media enigmatically excluding, distorting & Photoshopping/photo-cropping very real mass public dissent.

And if the media is "compliant" for nothing more than market reasons, then why was the case of Jeff Gannon, a tabloid sex & clandestine scandal dripping with salacious potential, not exploited but rather flushed to page B-15 and soon superceded by much less dramatic scandals as Natalie Holloway, a dime-a-dozen missing persons case?

Operation Mockingbird's very success thrives on such accusations as "some psyops are too farfetched."

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Exactly right, judasdisney. Well said.
And you cited tips of the iceberg, too, no matter how big those tips are.

And 'news' readers are a harder audience to mis-write for than the 'entertainment' audience, most importantly children, that merely wants amusement- novelty, spectacle, craftsmanship, diversion from boredom, affirmation of a 'system-that-works,' etc.

Total War Doctrine includes creating and sustaining the values and beliefs in the entire population that predispose them to state-sanctioned behaviors with the goal of what the army calls 'unit cohesion' and 'clarity of mission' such as:
>obedience to authority
>joining the military
>accepting one's place in the economic hierarchy
>local enforcement of Official Culture Norms
>predictable identity-based attachments and behavior, tribalism
>gender reinforcement of all the above

As your username perhaps alludes to, judasdisney, our culture is betrayed by the State's mental managers through indoctrination and social engineering of our children.
It is in fact Disney which works for the US State Department to perform this nationalist militarist authoritarian function. No doubt many other children's media are co-opted towards the same goals.

Fictional stories, just like 'news' stories, convey a message of 'how things are' and imply also 'how they should be.'

Tools used for the above list of state-sanctioned behaviors are:
>Role models
>Image conditioning
>Subliminal messaging
>Coercion
>A menu of justifications offered to match a majority of personality types

The US government's National Security State military-psychological advisory and enforcement instituitions were mandated with affecting the entire country's CULTURE in a coherently-synthesized mental-conditioning American Life Experience. (Smell Disney yet?)

The existence and value of sterotypes was discovered by Hadley Cantril in the 1930s when FDR's government was first using social research as a tool of governance. These perceived social types are still used today as 'units of meaning' played at key times in public debates over policy, rather like cards in a game of psychic poker.

Want war? Demonize with a stereotype.
Want to cut welfare? Demonize with a stereotype.
Want to be elected? Glorify with a stereotype.
(Smell Disney yet? And other 'entertainment?')

That's what the 1951 Psychological Strategy Board was formed to do, utilize pre-existing social perceptions and create new ones that support national identity, militarism, support for capitalism, and rejection of anything that contradicts those.

These functions have been shifted back into the covert beaurocracy, renamed many times, and dispersed to fronts, true believers, and other plausibly-deniable organizations to maintain its most effective attribute-secrecy.

Overt versions of this covert cultural manipulation are visible to us as 'limited hang-outs' such as Public Affairs officers and Pentagon Psychological Warfare units pointed at 'our enemies.' But the very theory and history of what is called the Revolution in Military Affairs documents that governments don't just overtly lie to us to make us like and obey them, they also covertly condition us to towards this end.

After the success of the Hollywood movie censorship by the Office of War Information during WWII, all cultural institutions were co-opted for the Cold War, journalism, academia, science, publishing, TV, radio, movies, etc. and continue to be so today.

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/oss/junker2jan1942.htm
(Social and Psychological Analysis of a Nation 1/2/42)

This ancient and outdated chart used by the Office of Special Services (OSS) during WWII shows the basic outline of what cultural elements of a nation are examined for manipulation. Decades of research and now datamining with predictive algorithms allow the 'ethno-specific' targeting of psychological demographics which closely mirror the hoped-for bioweapons such as 'smart-diseases' researched at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Why? Because culture is like a bioweapon aimed at the brain. The narratives received through our senses stimulate pleasure or stress chemicals in our brains, like endorphins and adrenalin, and we respond to this as behavior.

Thus the 'Army Corps of Social Engineering' embedded in the CIA, for instance, creates and maintains the paths trod by the masses through controlling the flow of endorphins with cultural cues

(Prof Pan, this is basic history and theory. I hope it better indicates what I have learned through long hours of critical research, not mere "confirmation bias.")

[robert d reed]

in his reply to PP on the possible employment of Project Mockingbird ( or similar operation ), JD has used examples for which a plausible and substantive argument can be mounted.

But- notwithstanding all the scholarly theoretical buttressing- those aren't the sort of examples that HMW has been bringing up in his particular brief, which I find noteworthy mostly as an appeal to the latent paranoid tendencies of solipsists.

( Sure, I'm a solipsist, but not that kind. I'm not serious about it. I'm out to milk the entertainment value. It's all Calvinball to me. To HMW, maybe that makes me part of the same plot as Ali G....)

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Wow.
Both "scholarly theoretical buttressing" and " an appeal to the latent paranoid tendencies of solipsists" ??

Rather a contradiction, RDR. But scoffing about "plausibility" keeps you out from under the buttresses, doesn't it? Just spray a little graffitti.

I wonder why no one wants to discuss Mutual Exclusivity or Cold War institutions or any number of topics I introduce. Seems discussions of my brain are a more compelling topic for some.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/solipsism

sol·ip·sism Pronunciation (slp-szm, slp-)
n. Philosophy
1. The theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified.
2. The theory or view that the self is the only reality.

Far from my 'self as the only reality.' Also:
History
Politics
Military strategy
Psychology
Sociology
Gender Studies
Cognitive Science
Anthropology
Media theory
Neuroscience
...to start with. Kooky, ain't it?

[robert d reed]

I don't have to scoff at anything, HMW.

A comparison of the examples JD provided in his post and the ones that you go on about should be sufficient to speak for itself.

[judasdisney]

In Seattle, the local 50,000-Watt AM "Heritage" Radio station, 710-KIRO (CBS affiliate -- and an entire Operation Mockingbird sub-topic within itself), broadcasts a syndicated "Old-Time Radio" series on weekend evenings called "When Radio Was."

Listening to this series, I've been amazed to discover the levels of propoganda injected into 1930s-1940s radio, before the advent of the CIA.

For example, on the evening of December 7, 1941, Orson Welles took to the airwaves to host an hour of "What Does It Mean To Be An American," which was a "performance art"-style 'travelogue' through the various meanings & expressions of U.S. citizenship, and explicitly about how each of these is "worth fighting for."

However, I find myself warming to the 1930s-40s agitprop: for example, Peter Lorre starring in a dramatic "cautionary tale" of a U.S. military coup overthrowing the government -- sponsored by racists & fascists -- complete with a climactic scene in which U.S. citizens are rounded-up and machine-gunned to death en masse in sports stadiums throughout major cities of the U.S.

All of this prior to Chile's 1973 use of National Stadium in Santiago for that very purpose.

And of course, the welcome agitprop of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath," complete with the rescue of Okies by New Deal work camps in California.

Mass-entertainment has long been adapted for propoganda purposes, before WW2 and has only sharpened afterward.

For my tastes, "Borat" and "Casino Royale" are not Leftist in their subversion at all, even though they masquerade as such. And whether they're partially psy-ops, if their de facto consequence is to disrupt serious debate about serious issues, or to cloud those issues, then the "psy-ops" controversy is moot.

For my tastes, I'll take "Bourne Identity," directed by the son of an Iran-Contra prosecutor, whose MKUltra stand-in "Operation Treadstone" is both subtle and pointed. And I'm sure the CIA's not happy with Damon (et al) for it.

I'm nostalgic for the days when the CIA's openly-produced animated classic "Animal Farm" carried pro-labor union, pro-democracy, and pro-socialist messaging.

But that was 1954, a year after the Iran Coup, the year of the Guatemala coup, and a different CIA (the Dulles brothers') was being born.

Incidentally, FOX News has been an invaluable tool of the ruling class, and its patron, Rupert Murdoch, reportedly lost a bundle (to the tune of $100 million per year for the first 5 years) keeping it afloat.

Now, why would Rupert do that?

Who is Rupert Murdoch, and what is his history? Look at his role in the bloodless coup against Gough Whitlam in Australia's history. And it's interesting that when he's popped into the news recently, it's been (a) in a big show of a theatrical "summit" with Hillary Rodham Clinton, and (b) within the past month warning Australians against "anti-Americanism" at home in Australia.

Now, why would Rupert do that?

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

My examples aside, the plausibility of mass media cultural psy-ops has a historical track record.

So it seems to me that to believe the National Security state would not promote 'programming' that:
>blunts the idealism of youth
>portrays war as inevitable and/or progress
>idealizes authority figures, mostly male
>perpetuates stereotypes to exploit
>keeps citizens hooked as an audience
>sow entertaining disinformation to use up bandwith
........is just not plausible.

Especially given the history of CIA efforts to influence post-WWII Europe with state-sanctioned culture affecting the 'thinking/sharing' middle-class who staff and run social infrastructure.

Would the recruitable masses be left out of Culture War? Of course not.
Despite my young years I could tell something odd was afoot when the TV sitcom 'Hogan's Heroes' had a laugh-track for Nazis. I'd already seen Buchenwald photos.
I recently heard Randi Rhodes joking on Air America Radio that she had learned all she knew about the Geneva Conventions from 'Hogan's Heroes' and all she knew was that "Lebeau could cook."

The history of the CIA-run Congress for Cultural Freedom is informative.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/1199petr.htm

>snip<

The CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited
by James Petras

(book review)-
Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta Books), £20.

This book provides a detailed account of the ways in which the CIA penetrated and influenced a vast array of cultural organizations, through its front groups and via friendly philanthropic organizations like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. The author, Frances Stonor Saunders, details how and why the CIA ran cultural congresses, mounted exhibits, and organized concerts. The CIA also published and translated well-known authors who toed the Washington line, sponsored abstract art to counteract art with any social content and, throughout the world, subsidized journals that criticized Marxism, communism, and revolutionary politics and apologized for, or ignored, violent and destructive imperialist U.S. policies. The CIA was able to harness some of the most vocal exponents of intellectual freedom in the West in service of these policies, to the extent that some intellectuals were directly on the CIA payroll. Many were knowingly involved with CIA "projects," and others drifted in and out of its orbit, claiming ignorance of the CIA connection after their CIA sponsors were publicly exposed during the late 1960s and the Vietnam war, after the turn of the political tide to the left.
.....
The CIA's involvement in the cultural life of the United States, Europe, and elsewhere had important long-term consequences. Many intellectuals were rewarded with prestige, public recognition, and research funds precisely for operating within the ideological blinders set by the Agency. Some of the biggest names in philosophy, political ethics, sociology, and art, who gained visibility from CIA-funded conferences and journals, went on to establish the norms and standards for promotion of the new generation, based on the political parameters established by the CIA. Not merit nor skill, but politics—the Washington line—defined "truth" and "excellence" and future chairs in prestigious academic settings, foundations, and museums.
.....
The CIA's cultural campaigns created the prototype for today's seemingly apolitical intellectuals, academics, and artists who are divorced from popular struggles and whose worth rises with their distance from the working classes and their proximity to prestigious foundations. The CIA role model of the successful professional is the ideological gatekeeper, excluding critical intellectuals who write about class struggle, class exploitation and U.S. imperialism—"ideological" not "objective" categories, or so they are told.

The singular lasting, damaging influence of the CIA's Congress of Cultural Freedom crowd was not their specific defenses of U.S. imperialist policies, but their success in imposing on subsequent generations of intellectuals the idea of excluding any sustained discussion of U.S. imperialism from the influential cultural and political media. The issue is not that today's intellectuals or artists may or may not take a progressive position on this or that issue. The problem is the pervasive belief among writers and artists that anti-imperialist social and political expressions should not appear in their music, paintings, and serious writing if they want their work to be considered of substantial artistic merit. The enduring political victory of the CIA was to convince intellectuals that serious and sustained political engagement on the left is incompatible with serious art and scholarship. Today at the opera, theater, and art galleries, as well as in the professional meetings of academics, the Cold War values of the CIA are visible and pervasive: who dares to undress the emperor?

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

To get back to specifics of my original post, does anyone really think it is a coincidence that while Kazakhstan is the center of an upcoming politically-damaging trial and a key to huge oil deposits currently being fought for....that a blockbuster movie with 'Kazakhstan' in the title is dominating pop culture?

A coincidence? And the movie is not called 'Borat.' The title is a uniquely long one.
'Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.'
And this spells telegraphing to me. Not hand-waving. WILD hand-waving.

Just like Kubrick's 1964 'thinking the unthinkable' dark doomsday comedy put out just as JFK is buried and Vietnam is ramped up,
'Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.'

Telegraphing titles. Decoys. Mutual Exclusivity. De-sensitization.

Like Disney's 1977 movie for kids (?), 'The Shaggy D.A.'
D.A.?? Kids don't know what a D. A. is and neither do many adults.
So why market a movie with that sterile enigmatic title?
Hmm. 'Shaggy dog story' is a long-meandering pointless tale, isn't it?

Perhaps....renewing the massive pop culture psy-ops to distract from/discredit D.A. Jim Garrison who prosecuted a member of the CIA's JFK murder team, Clay Shaw.
(Kids love those animal stories which have been used for several other Disney psy-ops campaigns.)
But why discredit Garrison in 1977?
Perhaps because the House Special Committee on Assassinations was attempting to re-open the JFK and MLK investigations.

There are many examples like this which only make sense in the context of their comtemporary news cycles.

[robert d reed]

"does anyone really think it is a coincidence that while Kazakhstan is the center of an upcoming politically-damaging trial and a key to huge oil deposits currently being fought for....that a blockbuster movie with 'Kazakhstan' in the title is dominating pop culture?"

Yes. I do. Think it is an unintended coincidence. Happenstance.

I'm able to enumerate my reasons for maintaining this view. In fact, I'm already anticipating the prospect of doing so, in excruciating detail...

[orz]

Yes. Me too. I really do think it is a coincidence. Or rather, it's not even a coincidence. Two totally seperate media issues relating to a WHOLE COUNTRY do not really constitute 'coincidence.'

Just like Kubrick's 1964 'thinking the unthinkable' dark doomsday comedy put out just as JFK is buried and Vietnam is ramped up,
'Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.'

Yes and that cart certainly is pushing that horse along at some speed!

You keep vaguely bringing Strangelove up but I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say. Is this maybe because if you explicitly say it, you'll look really stupid?

[Telexx]

To get back to specifics of my original post, does anyone really think it is a coincidence that while Kazakhstan is the center of an upcoming politically-damaging trial and a key to huge oil deposits currently being fought for....that a blockbuster movie with 'Kazakhstan' in the title is dominating pop culture?

Yes. Although I accept that the Western media -and especially the news media - is subject to subversion & manipulation for political gains, there are not embedded agents and/or assets micro-managing each and every facet from film titles to actors to position of news stories on "Yahoo!" to commissioning dog-related-movies-to-combat-abu-grahib-fallout (FFS).

The mass media is messier than the monolithic structure you put forward. There are many companies, divisions, sub-divisions, alliances, rivalries, and egos within media companies. It would be impossible to orchestrate something as nebulous as the mass media in accordance with some centrally conceived master plan.

Can you really comprehend the logistics required to manipulate the mass media in the near omnipotent way you suggest? The chance of detection too great, the rewards (assuaging the demoralised hearts of dog lovers everywhere FFS) too flimsy.

I enjoy your contribution to this board but I reject this model you put forward as theoretically improbable and logistically impossible.

Thanks,

Telexx

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

Just like Kubrick's 1964 'thinking the unthinkable' dark doomsday comedy put out just as JFK is buried and Vietnam is ramped up,
'Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.'

Yes and that cart certainly is pushing that horse along at some speed!

You keep vaguely bringing Strangelove up but I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say. Is this maybe because if you explicitly say it, you'll look really stupid?

Ok, orz, I'll "explicitly say it"... so you won't look stupid. Your welcome.

Rule by Fear requires alternating between creating and abating fear to keep the patient controlled, much like inserting and removing control rods in a nuclear reactor to maintain temperatures which generate energy. Ramping up fear gets people ready for war but going too far can discredit war and create peaceniks so media is used to achieve the most useful level of public stress mirroring what CIA torture expert Dan Mitrione called "the precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect."

Public fear of nuclear war led the highest levels of the Cold War National Security State to be involved in the making of the movie 'Dr. Strangelove.' Other Kubrick movies amplified NSC messages, too, like the glory of the US space program in '2001: A Space Odyssey' or masking the use of image-conditioning to create violence by showing the opposite effect in 'A Clockwork Orange.' (Even if you disagree with my characterizations of those two movies, you can see the strong influence of movies in reinforcing sanctioned contemporary attitudes.)

>Look up Herman Kahn. He and Stanley Kubrick talked and 'Dr. Strangelove' was largely based on Kahn who was a Rand Corporation nuclear war game theorist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Kahn

>Also, the beginning of the movie has a script crawl saying that the Pentagon assures us that the events portrayed are impossible due to fail-safe guards against accidental nuclear war.

The 1964 movie 'Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb' is a textbook case of managing public reaction to the absolute terror of war and even death itself with therapeutic comic fiction meant to support state-sanctioned policies, just as most topics are in a media-saturated culture. Parables and fables have socialized civilizations for eons and today is no different.

Did Kubrick get in touch with Kahn or the other way around? Does it matter?

Kahn's major contributions were the several strategies he developed during the Cold War to contemplate "the unthinkable," namely, nuclear warfare, by using applications of game theory.
.....
In 1960, as Cold War tensions were reaching their peak after the Sputnik crisis and amidst talk of a widening "missile gap" between the U.S. and the Soviets, Kahn published On Thermonuclear War, the title of which clearly alluded to the classic, groundbreaking 19th-century treatise on military strategy, On War, by famed German military strategist Carl von Clausewitz.

Kahn rested his theory upon two highly controversial premises. First, nuclear war was obviously feasible, since the United States and the Soviet Union currently had massive nuclear arsenals aimed at each other. Second, like any other war, it was winnable.

Whether hundreds of millions died or "merely" a few major cities were destroyed, Kahn argued, life would in fact go on, as it had for instance after the "Black Death" of the 14th century in Europe, or in Japan after a limited nuclear attack in 1945, contrary to the conventional, prevailing doomsday scenarios.
.....
It was said that Kubrick immersed himself in On Thermonuclear War and insisted that the film's producer also read it. Furthermore, Kubrick actually met Kahn personally, and Kahn gave him the idea for the Doomsday Machine, which would immediately destroy the entire planet in the event of a nuclear attack. In the film, Dr. Strangelove, portrayed by Peter Sellers (who also portrayed United States President Merkin Muffley and British Group Captain Lionel Mandrake) refers to a report on the Doomsday Machine by the "BLAND Corporation." The Doomsday Machine is precisely the sort of destabilizing tactic that Kahn himself sought to avert, since its only purpose was a threat or bluff rather than actual military application.

Also based upon Kahn was Walter Matthau's maverick character Professor Groteschele in Fail-Safe, in which a nuclear crisis forces the President (played by Henry Fonda) to order the U.S. Air Force to bomb New York in order to avert an all-out nuclear war.

Kahn gave speeches around the US saying not everyone would die in a nuclear exchange, just a few million. He was a lightening rod for outrage yet helped people face the topic and debate it. The same thing is happening with many of the rumors inserted onto the internet for us to chew over.

The same tactic appeared in a 1980 a book I have called 'Life After Doomsday: A Survivalist Guide to Nuclear War and Other Major Disasters' which is a combination of camping tips ala Whole Earth Catalogue and some 'science' minimizing the effects of a nuclear exchange against the US.

The author, Bruce D. Clayton, had help with his 'nuclear camping' book from "the Defence Civil Preparedness Agency (DCPA), the United States Navy, the Air Force, and the Public Health Service...MIT, UCLA, Princeton..."

Clayton poo-poohs the idea that a nuclear war would end human life which many were attributing to a recent National Academy of Sciences report.

Clayton:
"The real NAS conclusion was that there was nothing about nuclear war which can exterminate the human race. The truth doesn't count in the disarmament debate."

The first SDI director, Dr. Robert Bowman, quit SDI and warned it had been used as a way to discredit all disarmament talks in a psy-op campaign led by the Heritage Foundation in his 1985 book 'Star Wars: Defense or Death Star?'

Was this book preparation for the renewed nuclear deployments of the Reagan years or published to mollify an American public horrified by the Three Mile Island nuclear power accident? Perhaps both. Or neither. Although Clayton has written about post-9/11 terrorism, too. Hmm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_D._Clayton

Bruce D. Clayton is a noted fire ecologist as well as being the author of several books of interest within the survivalist movement. His 1980 book Life After Doomsday (Dial Press, ISBN 0-8037-4752-7), a self-described "survivalist guide to nuclear war and other major disasters" was an influential book within survivalism. His most recent book and the only one currently in print is Life After Terrorism: What You Need to Know to Survive in Today's World (Paladin Press, 2002, ISBN 1-58160-326-6) which was published in the wake of 9/11.

It seems that the public's sentiments for a nuclear freeze and disarmament have been replaced with fear of apocalyptic terrorism by non-state actors much to the chagrin of anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott.

That's specific information relevent to 'Dr. Strangelove' and attitudes about war.
Below this line is some more background and theory including addressing how massive centrally-planned psy-ops can be/is carried out without very many people being complicit which might help you digest the above.
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Once upon a time:
The post-WWII nuclear age led to a renewed moral clarity in many that war was no longer an option since it could cause the annihilation of life on earth.

But the US government had just embraced Total War Doctrine and redesigned military-intelligence institutions to keep the country permanently at war.

Reassuring the public that war was indeed not just possible but imperative was the goal of the new institutions of Total War Doctrine mandated with keeping the more cohesive and profitable social engine in 'war' gear so it wouldn't go back into 'park.'

Peace became the enemy of the state and American scientific fascism was born.

Scientific fascism uses mind conditioning through cultural cues.
Media is now war by other means.

The Psychological Strategy Board was formed in 1951 and retooling implementation of that "centrally conceived master plan" which some scoff at as "implausible and impossible" has been a work in progress as perceived need motivates planners carrying out the original PSB's mandate.

After the terrible public relations problems of the late 1950s Sputnik crisis, the 1960 U2 incident, Ike warning about the "military-industrial complex" followed by the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961, and Pentagon generals spouting off contrary to State Department script, the Senate held hearings in 1962 on 'Military Cold War Education and Speech Review Policies' to plan better propaganda for soldiers and civilians alike. I have the printed report. It reads very much like the thinking satirized (?) in the 1967 best-seller, 'Report From Iron Mountain,' an alleged leaked thinktank report from a collection of esteemed experts on the social and economic values of war which might make peace impossible.

'Iron Mountain' also mirrors a similar but real gathering of peacenik thinkers pushing for nuclear disarmament called the 'Pugwash Movement' which included Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and Linus Pauling.

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3778/brief.html

The purpose of the Pugwash Conferences is to bring together, from around the world, influential scholars and public figure concerned with reducing the danger of armed conflict and seeking cooperative solutions for global problems. Meeting in private as individuals, rather than as representatives of governments or institutions, Pugwash participants exchange views and explore alternative approaches to arms control and tension reduction with combination of candour, continuity and flexibility seldom attained in official East-West and North-South discussions and negotiations. Yet, because of the stature of many of the Pugwash participants in their own countries (as, for example, science and arms-control advisers to governments, key figures in academies of science and universities, and former and future holders of high government office), insight from Pugwash discussions tend to penetrate quickly to the appropriate levels of official policy-making.

The Pugwash Movement is a clear demonstration of the fundamental change that has taken place since World War II in the relations between scientists and society. The traditional "ivory tower" attitude of scientists, that often resulted in a sense of indifference to the social and political impact of their work, is being replaced by an increasing awareness of their moral duty to help to reduce and, when possible, to eliminate the actual and potential harmful effects of the scientific and technological explosion that have become the hallmark of our time.

So the 1967 'Iron Mountain' hoax seems to me like a way to both pre-empt Pugwash Movement peace proposals and introduce elite policy rationalizations like 'macro-economics' and 'social cohesion' to the public in the guise of satire, a form of plausibly-deniable socialization similar to the use of animated movies like 'Ice Age' used to introduce the environmental horror of global warming to kids and parents without just shocking them by abruptly announcing it in Time Magazine. First they prepare the patient with some 'bedside manner' parables.

orz, having a "centrally conceived master plan" does not mean total control of all media at every level. But it does mean having lots of assets to use and using them. If advertising firms working for Coke can get the country debating the merits of New Coke vs. Coke Classic or create a Christmas shopping panic for a Tickle Me Elmo or Cabbage Patch doll, the US government can get a message out, too.

Events are like snowballs rolled from the top of the hill and made larger simply by rolling downhill without the need of 'massive complicity' by those below. A basic understanding of economic, beaurocratic, and especially military organizations shows us that there are few 'deciders' and millions of 'order followers.' Plausible deniability is a common element of social structures. "Not my problem, I just work here and do what I'm paid to do." Policies can even be made more rigid on the way down as people cover their butts to make sure they carry out their bosses wishes. (How obvious is that? Not enough, I guess.)

The black art of psychological manipulation of the masses using movies and the new TV medium to imbue American minds with 'entertainment' narratives designed to predispose them to accept the 'news' narratives generated by the CIA's Operation Mockingbird became an enormously successful tool of governance which also generated massive profits to finance itself, much like the way CIA control of cocaine and heroin finances covert operations, secret wars, and other criminal enterprises which circumvent legal civic institutions.

Americans largely reject war and only reluctantly buy into the 'last resort' or 'humanitarian rescue' justifications, not fully realizing how we are fooled into it everytime.

This rejection of war has been a huge problem for the US government, especially after the mechanized slaughter and poison gases of WWI. Poison gas had an enormous psychological effect and many who panicked during the 1938 Orson Welles broadcast of 'War of the Worlds' assumed Germany had attacked when they heard about Martians using poison gas. Recent news stories about Chamberlain negotiating with Hitler had set the stage for believing a real attack was happening, too. Still the pubic remained solidly isolationist and rejected taking in European refugees, too.

This is why FDR had to coax the Japanese to hit Pearl Harbor, to get a nation impoverished and divided by the Great Depression to gear up and fight against fascism overseas. 9/11 was cooked up for the same reason, to motivate not just a war response but a revived Cold War mobilisation but this time FOR fascism, the control of economic resources in other countries.

9/11 was thus meant to prevent 'Vietnam Syndrome' from returning for long enough to get a firm hold on the middle east and remilitarize our culture for another generation.

Reassuring us that the 'experts and authorities' are handling things well so "just trust them and do what we're told" is supported by encouraging us to relieve stress with dark humor lest we build up an outrage that leads to attempting change. This is the social function Borat and Letterman and Doonesbury and The Daily Show all fill. Borat clowning with James Baker minimizes the horror of the hundreds of thousands of people Baker has helped to murder in oil wars.

This all-important venting of stress is now used in the military's forward operation units that see the actual battle. Soldiers stressed by killing and seeing friends killed participate in 'rankless de-briefings' where they can open up and say anything they want. This allows them to cope long enough to go back out there and keep on doing what they're doing.' The status quo is maintained.

Coping isn't a crime but can be used to reduce vigilance and thus abet criminals. And that's where movies come in.