Hollywood’s Mission: To Make The Empire (and its Crimes) Entertaining

Argo’s Oscar Win — Hollywood’s ‘Coming Out’

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

26 February, 2013
Countercurrents.org

Foreign policy observers have long known that Hollywood reflects and promotes U.S. policies (in turn, is determined by Israel and its supporters).

This fact was made public when Michel Obama announced an Oscar win for “Argo” – a highly propagandist, anti-Iran film. Amidst the glitter and excitement, Hollywood and White House reveal their pact and send out their message in time for the upcoming talks surrounding Iran’s nuclear program due to be held tomorrow – February 26th.Hollywood has a long history of promoting US policies. In 1917, when the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information (CPI) enlisted the aid of America’s film industry to make training films and features supporting the ‘cause’. George Creel, Chairman of the CPI believed that the movies had a role in “carrying the gospel of Americanism to every corner of the globe.”

The pact grew stronger during World War II, when, as historian Thomas Doherty writes, “[T]he liaison between Hollywood and Washington was a distinctly American and democratic arrangement, a mesh of public policy and private initiative, state need and business enterprise.” Hollywood’s contribution was to provide propaganda. After the war, Washington reciprocated by using subsidies, special provisions in the Marshall Plan, and general clout to pry open resistant European film markets[i].

Hollywood has often borrowed its story ideas from the U.S. foreign policy agenda, at times reinforcing them. One of the film industry’s blockbuster film loans in the last two decades has been modern international terrorism. Hollywood rarely touched the topic of terrorism in the late 1960s and 1970s when the phenomenon was not high on the U.S. foreign policy agenda, in news headlines or in the American public consciousness. In the 1980s, in the footsteps of the Reagan administration’s policies, the commercial film industry brought ‘terrorist’ villains to the big screen (following the US Embassy takeover in Tehran – topic of “Argo”) making terrorism a blockbuster film product in the 1990s.

China: Yinggehai Coal Power Plant Brings Chinese Villagers Clashes With Police Over Pollution

By LOUISE WATT, Associated Press,  10/22/12

BEIJING — Residents of a south China town protesting the building of a coal-fired power plant threw bricks at police who fired volleys of tear gas and detained dozens in the country’s latest unrest over an environmental dispute, townspeople said Monday.

At least 1,000 people in the small town of Yinggehai on China’s Hainan island launched several days of protests starting last week after construction resumed on the plant, which had been halted by earlier demonstrations. Dozens have been injured and many detained by police, who have put the town under strict surveillance, residents said.

Police and local officials declined to comment.

“They fired tear gas to disperse the crowds in the past few days,” said a resident who gave only his surname, Xian, because he didn’t want to be identified by authorities. “We don’t want a power plant here that will cause serious pollution.”

Three decades of rapid economic expansion in China have come at an environmental price, and residents have become increasingly outspoken about pollution in their backyards. In July, a southern town in Sichuan province scrapped plans for a copper plant after thousands clashed with police, and another community in eastern Jiangsu province dropped a waste water plant after similar demonstrations.

The protests are especially sensitive because they come ahead of next month’s change in China’s top leaders, who will have to balance a push for economic growth with maintaining public stability. Meanwhile, local leaders must balance their desire to attract industry with a public who do not want it in their neighborhoods.

Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans Protest, Throw Their Medals at NATO Summit!

May 20, 2012 CHICAGO (Reuters) – Nearly 50 U.S. military veterans at an anti-NATO rally in Chicago threw their service medals into the street on Sunday, an action they said symbolized their rejection of the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The I Am Trayvon Martin Project

[The Trayvon Martin murder has brought the issue of systematic abuse and racial profiling to a new level of recognition and response.  Now there are new efforts to gether evidence and publicize not only on this case, but of the ongoing horrors which Black, Brown, and all targeted communities and oppressed people face daily and hourly–an experience which refutes the false claims of “American democracy” and “post-racial society.”   One such effort among many was announced in the Huffington Post by Rob Smith–whom we do not know, but we applaud this initiative.  He describes himself in this way: “Rob Smith is a writer, lecturer, activist, and Iraq War Veteran. His work has appeared on Salon.com, CNN.com, and USA Today among others, and he is currently working on a memoir detailing his time spent in the Army as a young gay man. He makes his literary debut this summer in the anthology book ‘For Colored Boys.’ Smith currently resides in New York City.  He can be reached at robsmithvet@gmail.com.”  — Frontlines ed.]

03/28/2012

by Rob Smith (Iraq War Veteran, Writer, Lecturer, and Activist)

A month ago, a black teenager named Trayvon Martin was shot dead in Florida while walking back from running an errand for his brother. His killer was not tested for drug or alcohol. Trayvon was. His killer has not been arrested. In the past 30 days the case has received a great deal of media attention, but we’ve heard little about the fear, anger, and oppression that black men feel every day for being constantly profiled as criminals. Those voices aren’t being heard as much as they should be, which is where the “I Am Trayvon Martin Project” comes in.

We want to hear the stories of the young Black and Latino men from the mailroom to the boardroom who have been harassed, racially profiled, and have feared for their lives for no other reason than the color of their skin. We want to have an online space so that these voices can be heard, so that these stories can be shared, and so that the issues brought up by the death of Trayvon Martin are no longer kept to the shadows.

NBA: Miami Heat players make ‘hoodie’ protest over murder of Trayvon Martin

LeBron James game shoe

LeBron James tweeted an image of the Miami Heat players wearing hoodies along with the message #WeAreTrayvonMartin #Hoodies #Stereotyped #WeWantJustice

Dwayne Wade

By TIM REYNOLDS, Huffington Post,  03/23/12

LeBron James tweeted an image of the Miami Heat players wearing hoodies along with the message #WeAreTrayvonMartin #Hoodies #Stereotyped #WeWantJustice

MIAMI — Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat has posted a photo of himself wearing a hooded sweat shirt to his Twitter and Facebook pages, in response to the death of a black teenager shot by a neighborhood crime-watch volunteer.

Later Friday LeBron James also posted a photo on Twitter of Heat players in hoodies, all with heads bowed and their hands in the front pocket.

Wade says he posted his photo early Friday because “as a father, this hits home.”

Trayvon Martin, unarmed and wearing a hooded sweat shirt, was shot and killed Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla., by neighborhood crime-watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who says he acted in self-defense and has not been arrested.

Syria Crisis: Hamas Ditches Assad

[In a move that indicates both the declining prospects for the Syrian Assad regime, as well as the growing role of the Saudi regime in post-Mubarak Arab alignments, Hamas–which is also busily retooling its relations with the Fatah forces and the Palestine Authority as a whole–has made a significant break in relations with Syria, Hezbollah, and Iran.  This deserves some close attention.  The revolutionary  currents in the Arab world, while not invested in any of these organized and governmental forces, will find in these shifts some openings for their own initiatives, because the controllers of political life on all sides are off balance.  In every crisis, opportunities will surface–for those who dare to cast away illusions, rely on the masses, and seize the time. — Frontlines ed.]

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By Omar Fahmy and Nidal al-Mughrabi, Reuters

CAIRO/GAZA, Feb 24  – Leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas turned publicly against their long-time ally President Bashar al-Assad of Syria on Friday, endorsing the revolt aimed at overthrowing his dynastic rule.

The policy shift deprives Assad of one of his few remaining Sunni Muslim supporters in the Arab world and deepens his international isolation. It was announced in Hamas speeches at Friday prayers in Cairo and a rally in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas went public after nearly a year of equivocating as Assad’s army, largely led by fellow members of the president’s Alawite sect, has crushed mainly Sunni protesters and rebels.

In a Middle East split along sectarian lines between Shi’ite and Sunni Islam, the public abandonment of Assad casts immediate questions over Hamas’s future ties with its principal backer Iran, which has stuck by its ally Assad, as well as with Iran’s fellow Shi’ite allies in Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement.

As police stalk and harass Muslims, notorious and shameful traditions of ethnic profiling abound

[Ethnic and racial profiling has always been a central feature of US economics, politics, culture, and forceful repression.  From Africans on slave plantations, to American Indian wars and displacement, to the “Chinese Exclusion Act” the pattern is unbroken.  80 years ago this month, 500,000 Mexicans and US-born Chicana/o citizens were deported to Mexico, in a series of “El Repatriado” deportations of, eventually, nearly two million–after being falsely blamed for “taking American jobs” during the collapse of the capitalist economy known as The Great Depression.  70 years ago, 120,000 Japanese Americans were rounded up and placed in concentration camps after being falsely accused of loyalty to the Japanese Emperor during WW2.  Now, adding to these and many such reprehensible traditions, Islamophobia has become a feature which the police state is boasting about, as it destroys the human rights of privacy, speech, and association of millions of Muslims now subjected to hostile surveillance and stalking–amidst false claims of inherent Muslim criminality and terror.  — Frontlines ed.]

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Demonstration in New York, November 2011

NYPD Defends Tactics Over Mosque Spying; Records Reveal New Details On Muslim Surveillance

By ADAM GOLDMAN and MATT APUZZO, Huffington Post, 02/24/12

NEW YORK — The New York Police Department targeted Muslim mosques with tactics normally reserved for criminal organizations, according to newly obtained police documents that showed police collecting the license plates of worshippers, monitoring them on surveillance cameras and cataloging sermons through a network of informants.

The documents, obtained by The Associated Press, have come to light as the NYPD fends off criticism of its monitoring of Muslim student groups and its cataloging of mosques and Muslim businesses in nearby Newark, N.J.

The NYPD’s spokesman, Paul Browne, forcefully defended the legality of those efforts Thursday, telling reporters that its officers may go wherever the public goes and collect intelligence, even outside city limits.

The new documents, prepared for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, show how the NYPD’s roster of paid informants monitored conversations and sermons inside mosques. The records offer the first glimpse of what those informants, known informally as “mosque crawlers,” gleaned from inside the houses of worship.