In the Pentagon and China’s propaganda wars, greedy Hollywood is a happy helper for both – the people and art are the victims

by Michael McCaffrey

Hollywood won’t choose between the totalitarian Sauron of China and the authoritarian Darth Vader of the US military, but instead will support both evils, and the people of the world and the art of cinema will suffer greatly.

A propaganda war is being waged by China and the US military for control of Hollywood, and therefore the minds of the public, for their own nefarious purposes. 

Not surprisingly, like whores at a battlefield brothel, the morally ambiguous harlots of Hollywood are trying to profit from servicing both combatants. PEN America, a group championing free expression, recently released an exhaustive report detailing how China has taken control of Hollywood.

The report states: “The Chinese government, under Xi Jinping especially, has heavily emphasized its desire to ensure that Hollywood filmmakers - to use their preferred phrase - ‘tell China’s story well.’” 

China strictly controls films released in its own market, which is soon to become the largest box office in the world, and Hollywood wants in on that lucrative action. So, it appeases its Chinese overlords by obeying censorial demands, like whitewashing a Tibetan character from Marvel’s ‘Dr. Strange’, and strenuously self-censoring, like when it canceled a planned sequel to ‘World War Z’. 

This Orwellian sentiment of controlled storytelling to fit a government-approved narrative is not limited to the communists of China, however. The US military has long had a very fruitful arrangement with Hollywood in which it exchanges free military equipment, expertise, personnel and locations in exchange for ultimate control over scripts. Capt. Russell Coons, Director of Navy Office of Information West, sounded like Xi when he described Pentagon expectations while cooperating with a movie. “We’re not going to support a program that … presents us in a compromising way.” 

PEN America is aware of the Pentagon’s propaganda program and notes that “...the United States government has benefitted from, encouraged, and at times even directed Hollywood filmmaking as an exercise in soft power.” However, it then disingenuously dismisses it, claiming “this governmental influence does not bring to bear a heavy-handed system of institutionalized censorship, as Beijing’s does.” 

That is an absurd contention as the Pentagon picks movies based on a studio’s willingness to conform to its rigidly pro-military narrative standard, which is, in function, if not form, just like China picking which Hollywood movies it allows to run in its country based on their adherence to a pro-China criteria.

Regardless, the reality is that if Hollywood can financially benefit by acquiescing to the Pentagon and/or China’s demands, it certainly will. In response to China’s Hollywood propaganda, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) proposed the egregiously titled Stopping Censorship, Restoring Integrity and Protecting Talkies Act, or SCRIPT Act. 

Cruz’s bill aims to kneecap Hollywood studios by withholding access to US government support - the Pentagon propaganda program - if they alter their movies to appease Chinese censors. Of course, SCRIPT will never go anywhere as the Motion Picture Association of America will aggressively lobby to get the whole thing scuttled to keep both Chinese and Pentagon money flowing into La La Land.

On the bright side, the SCRIPT Act has at least frightened the propagandists in the Pentagon and Hollywood enough that they are now openly touting their shadowy alliance. 

For example, the Military Times recently ran a jaw-dropping op-ed by Jim Lechner which shamelessly espoused Hollywood’s Pentagon propaganda. Lechner admits that “limits on the cooperation with skilled storytellers at the American movie companies would significantly degrade the ability of the US government to tell its own story”.He also boasts that “over the decades, Hollywood has provided one of the most powerfully positive images of our military. No Pentagon-based press relations operation could come close to what Hollywood has achieved through its films.”

Over the last three decades, the Pentagon-Hollywood alliance has drastically altered American’s perception of the military and successfully neutered filmmakers as artists and truth-tellers. In the 70s and 80s, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick and Oliver Stone made great anti-war films like ‘Apocalypse Now’, ‘Full Metal Jacket’, ‘Platoon’ and ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ that explored the dark side of American militarism and empire.

That type of artistic and intellectually challenging anti-war movie went on the endangered species list in 1986, when the Pentagon collaborated on the making of the blockbuster ‘Top Gun’, and has since become extinct, which is why we haven’t had any great movies detailing the heinous fiascos in Iraq andAfghanistan. 

Ironically, ‘Top Gun’ isn’t only a symbol of the Pentagon’s propaganda prowess, but of China’s as well. In the poster for the sequel due out this year, Tom Cruise’s Maverick is still wearing his signature leather jacket, but in order to appease Chinese censors, gone from its back are the prominent Japanese and Taiwanese flags from the original. 

As a cinephile and a truth-seeker, I want to see films made by true artists that chronicle the dramatically potent moral and ethical atrocities of both America and China. The plethora of post 9/11 American evils (surveillance, torture, Iraq, Afghanistan) and the brutal Chinese atrocities against the Uighurs, Tibetans and members of the Falun Gong are fertile cinematic ground.

But sadly, thanks to Hollywood’s insidious, incessant and insatiable greed, none of those important stories will ever be told on the big screen. The reality is that the propaganda war is already over and the authoritarian and totalitarian corporatists, globalists and militarists of Hollywood, Washington and Beijing have handily won... and we the people, and the art of cinema, have lost.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/497687-hollywood-propaganda-us-china/

 

... and please note that of the several military bases in the Spratly Islands, only three are Chinese. The others are Philippino, Taiwanese, Malaysian and Vietnamese...

 

 

 

Russian commentary on an article about missile defence

 

We have taken note of an article posted on the US Department of Defence website saying that missile defence is allegedly becoming an element of rivalry between the great powers. Citing an unnamed Pentagon official, the article claims that Russia and China are developing several increasingly sophisticated missile defence systems in the context of rivalry with the United States. As follows from the text, the US military sees this as a threat.

We take this post as part of a targeted disinformation campaign seeking to discredit Russia. Clearly, there are unscrupulous attempts to ascribe to us some aggressive and dangerous plans, this time in missile defence. Unmistakably, this is about the United States trying to justify its own large-scale and expensive programmes for creating and modernising weapons and plans to build up its military presence around the world. In order to substantiate these efforts by the United States to ensure overwhelming military superiority to the detriment of the security interests of other states, Pentagon propagandists are using the traditional “rivalry between powers” approach.

By itself, this fake news usually does not contain an in-depth analysis or even a balanced reflection of the situation. The attempts to create the appearance of a “responsible” US approach to anti-missiles made in the article do not hold water and are doomed from the start. We can begin by saying that Washington threw out the 1972 ABM Treaty, thus destroying one of the pillars of the global strategic stability system. Of course, the article doesn’t mention this. The fact that the United States has carried out numerous destabilising anti-missile projects is not mentioned, either.

Notably, the US military is deploying strategic missile defence infrastructure not only within the national boundaries of the United States, but around the world, which makes it a global system in nature. Washington is also thinking about developing the space segment of its missile defence system, in fact, planning to deploy attack weapons in outer space. In addition, in the context of missile defence at the doctrine level, the Pentagon has left open the possibility of delivering preventive “disarming” strikes against other countries in order to destroy missiles before they are launched. Moreover, the United States claims these are defensive actions.

It is important to understand that the fast-expanding architecture of the US missile defence system is changing the strategic balance of forces in the sphere of offensive weapons, creates major additional global instability risks and contributes to forming dangerous conditions for stepping up a nuclear and space arms race.

Russia has repeatedly expressed concern over unilateral and unrestricted US moves to deploy a global missile defence system. After the United States scrapped the ABM Treaty, Russia has more than once come up with initiatives designed to remove any “annoyances” and to establish cooperation in the anti-missile sphere. Washington and its allies have refused to move in this direction and are reluctant to take Russia’s interests into account. So, the desire to shift onto us the responsibility for the situation created by the United States is at least unseemly.

Once again, we urge Washington to take a responsible position and to take a critical look at its missile defence plans, which, if implemented, will not be beneficial for the security of either the United States or its allies. It would also be helpful to abandon these tactics of shifting responsibility to others, which is undignified behaviour for a great power, in order to divert the attention of Americans and the entire international community from their own actions of seeking to ratchet up tensions and break the international stability system.

More than ever before, the world doesn’t need rivalry, which the current US administration is betting on, but cooperation, especially in security. We are ready to discuss missile defence issues with the United States as part of a bilateral strategic dialogue.

 

Read more:

https://www.voltairenet.org/article210627.html

 

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Open letter to Australians

We need to let you know about new Government regulation that will hurt how Australians use Google Search and YouTube.

A proposed law, the News Media Bargaining Code, would force us to provide you with a dramatically worse Google Search and YouTube, could lead to your data being handed over to big news businesses, and would put the free services you use at risk in Australia.

The way Aussies search every day on Google is at risk from new regulation

You’ve always relied on Google Search and YouTube to show you what’s most relevant and helpful to you. We could no longer guarantee that under this law. The law would force us to give an unfair advantage to one group of businesses - news media businesses - over everyone else who has a website, YouTube channel or small business. News media businesses alone would be given information that would help them artificially inflate their ranking over everyone else, even when someone else provides a better result. We’ve always treated all website owners fairly when it comes to information we share about ranking. The proposed changes are not fair and they mean that Google Search results and YouTube will be worse for you.

Your Search data may be at risk

You trust us with your data and our job is to keep it safe. Under this law, Google has to tell news media businesses “how they can gain access” to data about your use of our products. There’s no way of knowing if any data handed over would be protected, or how it might be used by news media businesses.

Hurting the free services you use

We deeply believe in the importance of news to society. We partner closely with Australian news media businesses — we already pay them millions of dollars and send them billions of free clicks every year. We’ve offered to pay more to license content. But rather than encouraging these types of partnerships, the law is set up to give big media companies special treatment and to encourage them to make enormous and unreasonable demands that would put our free services at risk.

This law wouldn’t just impact the way Google and YouTube work with news media businesses — it would impact all of our Australian users, so we wanted to let you know. We’re going to do everything we possibly can to get this proposal changed so we can protect how Search and YouTube work for you in Australia and continue to build constructive partnerships with news media businesses — not choose one over the other.

You’ll hear more from us in the coming days — stay tuned.

Thank you,

Mel Silva, Managing Director, on behalf of Google Australia 

 

 

Read more:

https://about.google/intl/ALL_au/google-in-australia/an-open-letter/?

 

Google has gone down the drain... Many search are geared to promote the advertisers and often leave you in the lurch, despite the 3,000,475.6 search-results in 0.32 seconds... of which only 4.2 items are relevant...

 

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Google should stop using its vast platform to threaten Australians and start paying media companies for their journalism, an open letter about the digital giant’s response to a proposed mandatory news code states.

The federal treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, instructed the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to develop a mandatory code between media companies and Google and Facebook to save journalism but the platforms are opposing the move.

The Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology, an independent thinktank that placed the letter, said Google’s recent open letter and yellow warning signs on the search engine’s website were bullying.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/aug/20/google-accused-of-bullying-australians-with-news-code-letter-and-yellow-warning-signs

 

 

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By Jochen Scholz

 

From the beginning of the construction works the USA made it clear that they would leave no stone unturned to prevent the second pipeline from Russia through the Baltic Sea to Germany. While in the beginning attempts to exert influence through diplomatic channels or via the media were aimed at members who are in bondage to the US of the EU Commission, the European Parliament and those EU member states whose governments have been spreading the chimera of a Russian threat for years, the US Congress and administration have now tightened the thumbscrews considerably. However, this will only work if those affected do not set crystal-clear limits against the encroachment on their sovereignty.

    What is this about? The USA is determined to impose sanctions on companies and individuals involved in the construction and subsequent operation of the pipeline on the basis of Section 232 of the “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act” (https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/3364/text?q). These sanctions are without question contrary to international law because a national law of a state is applied extraterritorially. We have seen this behaviour on the part of the USA over and over again in recent years, as in the case of Iran. Without going into detail at this point: the sanctions imposed could only be effective because of the role of the US dollar in the global financial system. Generally speaking, such action is called extortion.

    The German government has publicly forbidden any interference in the business activities of Germany. However, this is not enough to dissuade the USA from its intention to prevent the Nord Stream 2 project. After all, a criminal who demands money from a citizen with a drawn revolver will not be turned away by friendly coaxing. What is at stake here is nothing less than the international legal order created by the Charter of the United Nations after 1945. It is increasingly being replaced by the law of the fist, a development that has already gained momentum since the end of the Soviet Union.

    So, what is my advice to the federal government? Under no circumstances should it try to give back as you were given, i.e. to resort to sanctions. For then it fuelled the erosion of international law, which it is currently lamenting. The Charter of the United Nations points the way. Germany is a non-permanent member of the Security Council until the end of the year and held the chair until the end of July. It should take the initiative to apply Article 96 of the Charter:

“Article 96
(1) The General Assembly or the Security Council may request the International Court of Justice to give an advisory opinion on any legal question.
(2) Other organs of the United Nations and specialised agencies, which may at any time be so authorised by the General Assembly, may also request advisory opinions of the Court on legal questions arising within the scope of their activities.”

This would put the issue on the world stage and increase its visibility, whereas at present it is largely debated only in the American and European1 public. This also applies to the probable case that the US would veto the Security Council.

    The decisive reason for the obstruction of the USA by its power elite, acting independently of the respective presidency, is geopolitical in nature. Cooperation between Germany and Russia in the energy sector is undoubtedly a building block on the long road to a Eurasian economic area, which would also inevitably entail a new security architecture. This would have meant that the Anglo-American struggle for decades for the “world island”, whose domination, according to Halford Mackinder, is the prerequisite for world dominance.2 Other reasons, such as the sale of the American fracking gas in liquid form to the EU, play a subordinate role and serve President Trump at best as an election campaign issue. In contrast, the pipeline project is important for Russia both in geopolitical terms and, given its economic structure, in economic terms.
    In this respect, it would be welcome if Russia, as a permanent member of the Security Council, would consider applying Article 96 of the Charter.  •
1 This includes the Russian Federation.
2 https://www.lettre.de/beitrag/mccoy-alfred-w_herzland-und-weltinsel

* Jochen Scholz was a Lieutenant Colonel in the German Armed Forces. As such, he served for several years with NATO in Brussels and afterwards – during the NATO war against Yugoslavia – in the German Ministry of Defence. There he learned that the official speeches of the responsible politicians about blatant human rights violations by Serbia did not correspond with what he could learn from the reports of the experts on the spot. Because of these lies of the politicians he left the SPD in 1999

Read more:https://www.zeit-fragen.ch/en/archives/2020/no-17-17-august-2020/nord-stream-2-and-the-us-sanctions.html
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Did you ever wonder why 'western' mainstream media get stories about Russia and other foreign countries so wrong?

It is simple. They hire the most brainwashed, biased and cynical writers they can get for the job. Those who are corrupt enough to tell any lie required to support the world view of their editors and media owners.

They are quite upfront about it.

Here is evidence in form of a New York Times job description for a foreign correspondent position in Moscow:

Russia Correspondent

Job Description

Vladimir Putin’s Russia remains one of the biggest stories in the world.

It sends out hit squads armed with nerve agents against its enemies, most recently the opposition leader Aleksei Navalny. It has its cyber agents sow chaos and disharmony in the West to tarnish its democratic systems, while promoting its faux version of democracy. It has deployed private military contractors around the globe to secretly spread its influence. At home, its hospitals are filling up fast with Covid patients as its president hides out in his villa.

If that sounds like a place you want to cover, then we have good news: We will have an opening for a new correspondent as Andy Higgins takes over as our next Eastern Europe Bureau Chief early next year.


Read more:http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/november/21/how-western-media-select-their-foreign-correspondents/

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A Washington Post reporter said the French president wanted to give Muslim children identification numbers, raising an outcry from the French majority and executive. 

She later apologized. 

Several LREM elected officials strongly criticized a message posted on the social network Twitter on November 21, 2020 by Karen Attiah, columnist at the Washington Post. 

The journalist had estimated in a tweet, since deleted, that "the non-white French have been sounding the alarm on Macron for years. But [that] the world media wanted to portray him as a centrist saint, the person who saved France from Marine Le Pen. Now he wants to give Muslim children ID numbers to go to school. “ 

And we also drink baby's blood for breakfast In a second tweet, the columnist wanted to "clarify”: 

"the bill [on separatism] wants to give all children identifiers. But the rest of the tweet still stands. To say that Macron's actions do not fuel Islamophobia is just madness. ”

To specify, the bill wants to give all kids IDs. But the rest of the tweet still stands. To act like Macron isn’t stoking Islamophobia is simply folly.

https://t.co/Sp9UCCLlK7— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) November 22, 2020

A tweet to which LREM deputy Aurore Bergé replied in English by denouncing fake news from the American journalist:

"The Washington Post spreads false news and disinformation against France. We are not talking about a different cultural approach, white privilege or color consciousness, we are talking about facts. And your lies ”.

"The Washington Post is spreading fake news and disinformation against France. We are not talking about a different cultural approach, about white privilege or color blind, we are talking about facts. And your lies." Aurore Bergé — November 22, 2020 




Read more:
https://francais.rt.com/france/80982-fake-news-journaliste-washigton-post-declenche-tolle-rangs-gouvernement-macron


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Gus: Secularity has to be the pillar of politics in France and in the rest of th world. When religions like Islam or Christianity are in the way, they need to be exposed for the lies they are (all religions are lies) and for their inhibiting of humanity's understanding of the planet. Karen Attiah should be sacked from the WaPo...

In a year that’s featured guillotines at protests and ever-increasing consciousness of social wealth disparities, perhaps deliberately invoking a term that means “rule by the best” wasn’t the most politically savvy move.

In a stunning moment of honesty, the Washington Post’s editors dropped a story about the attitudes of the US “aristocracy” toward a potential new Joe Biden administration.

With US President Donald Trump losing one state ballot count legal challenge after another, it seems increasingly likely that when the Electoral College’s electors from each state meet next month to cast their official votes for US president, it’s Biden who will come out on top. That has the country’s sociopolitical crème de la crème preparing for a White House whose doors will once again be open to their influences - and being a bit too honest about their enthusiasm.

“Washington’s aristocracy hopes a Biden presidency will make schmoozing great again,” read the original headline of a Monday story by Roxanne Roberts in the DC paper’s Style section. However, not long after the story went up, someone clearly realized the horrible optics of the headline and quickly changed it to say “Washington’s establishment” instead.

The Washington Post just published an article called: "Washington’s aristocracy hopes a Biden presidency will make schmoozing great again."

They quickly changed it to "Washington's establishment." Someone must've worried how the plebes might react: https://t.co/jeSd7v4FIm pic.twitter.com/EyHPWU35uU

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) November 23, 2020


​After all, it was only a few months ago that protesters demonstrating against Amazon CEO - and Washington Post owner - Jeff Bezos’ record profit-making amid skyrocketing poverty under the COVID-19 pandemic brought to his DC abode a facsimile of a guillotine, the French Revolution-era head-chopping device on which many an 18th-century marquis met their gruesome end.

Protesters build a guillotine outside of Jeff Bezos’s house. Yesterday the Amazon billionaire was reported to become the first man worth $200 billion. pic.twitter.com/tY1wb0F1uj

— Nic Rowan (@NicXTempore) August 27, 2020

​

 

Despite the headline shift, the text of the article continues to refer to “the aristocracy of this city,” noting the elite policy influencers in a city that voted 93% for Democratic candidate Biden earlier this month are delighted at the idea of being able to flex those lobbyist muscles once more.

One “influential Republican hostess quoted in the story - who notably spoke anonymously - told the paper that the Bidens “know how to get around Washington, how to be a part of the establishment, how to make it work for them in their everyday lives. People who have always enjoyed the Washington scene are yearning to get back to that, have some semblance of what they enjoyed so much before. There are a lot of Republicans who sat out the Trump years and bit their tongues for four years who are thrilled to have Biden.”

However, it’s not the would-be Jacobins that these patricians seem to fear: according to the story, it’s another four years with a chief executive who spurns their parlors’ rarified air.

“For the last four years, the tone from the White House was contemptuous of Washington, dismissing the permanent establishment - the longtime politicians and former administration officials who call it home - as the ‘swamp’ or ‘deep state,’” the Post opines. “The social arbiters, traditionally respectful of a new administration, quickly found themselves between a Trump and a hard place: To invite or not to invite?”

 

“Washington never forgets, sometimes forgives, and carries on,” the Post notes.

 

However, the Post isn’t the only paper worried about the opinions of US elites in a post-President Trump world. Earlier this month, a CNN story speculated about the future social life of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, noting that “Jared and Ivanka are poised to return to a Manhattan social scene that no longer welcomes them.” 

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/202011231081252534-beltway-blunder-washington-post-quickly-renames-story-on-dcs-political-aristocracy-/

 

 

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