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The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

worldbeyondwar.org

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Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#81

Post by jibe »

elteto wrote: post #42
ceejayoz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contagion got things pretty much spot-on. Conspiracy theorists with fake cures, political officials who fight mitigation measures, contact tracing, panic buying, at-home substitutes for school events, fairly rapid vaccine development and the initial scarcity of it. The major difference was the mortality rate; the movie's virus killed something like 25%. One of the odd difficulties with COVID is it's deadly enough (es…

Contagion also compressed time quite a bit because it’s a movie meant to entertain. It couldn’t show the long months of research, development and testing that actual science requires. Still a great movie.

It wasn’t too bad, the movie spanned 4 months from outbreak to vaccine. Pfizer’s Covid trial started 5 months after outbreak. If Covid was killing 20% like the virus in the movie, we could have matched or beaten the movie timeline.

Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#82

Post by acqq »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #28

I simply can't take a source like this seriously. Am I denying that the government has interest in and lobbies for friendly content portrayals? No. Will I get information about it from charged up ideologue who clearly has a strong slant against the US government/military. No. It's effectively random blog tier credibility.

The sources exist:

The book, $13:

https://www.amazon.com/National-Security-Cinema-Government-H...

The article about the book:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/02/27/nsec-f27.html

"Using the Freedom of Information Act, the authors gained access to files that exposed the extent of government censorship in films between 1911 and 2017. The DOD (Department of Defense, or Pentagon) provided military equipment and “advice,” and even allowed members of the military to make appearances, in exchange for some degree of control over the content of 814 films.

The authors continue, “If we include the 1,133 TV titles in our count, the number of screen entertainment products supported by the DOD leaps to 1,947. If we are to include the individual episodes for each title on long-running shows like 24, Homeland, and NCIS, as well as the influence of other major organisations like the FBI, CIA and White House then it becomes clear that the national security state has supported thousands of products.”"

The movie discussed in the title article, streaming $4.75:

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/theatersofwar

Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#83

Post by [deleted] »

Julesman wrote: post #59
CharlesW wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The term 'conspiracy theory' was itself a product on CIA influence operations in this country, specifically intended to squash interest in the assassination of JFK. The ol' "conspiracy theory conspiracy": https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-conspiracy-theory-jfk-...

Thanks for the correction. I think it would have been better for me to say that counter-intelligence operations in the country have long intentionally colored inconvenient facts as wild conjecture, regardless of their historical foundation.

[deleted]

Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#84

Post by c420 »

wil421 wrote: post #10

Similar things have been said about the rise of FSP games. I’ve heard the military basically created FPS games for their combat simulators. They also pushed or gave money to developers to popularize FPS games. FPS=first person shooter.

It's almost the plot to The Last Starfighter...

Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#85

Post by Julesman »

CharlesW wrote: post #33
Julesman wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are three types of people circling around conspiracy theories. 1) Literate people who care about history and know that industry does what's best for profit at all costs. 2) People who don't read much looking for a hobby. 3) Liberals hoping to pass off their empty skepticism as allegiance to the mainstream.

> The term 'conspiracy theory' was itself a product on CIA influence operations in this country, specifically intended to squash interest in the assassination of JFK. The ol' "conspiracy theory conspiracy": https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-conspiracy-theory-jfk-...

I found this telling.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=conspiracy+the...

Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#86

Post by ajross »

nsxwolf wrote: post #79
ceejayoz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And an effective vaccine, as far as death and severe illness is concerned. https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/new-study-shows-fewer-p... > The findings, based on data across 2,558 counties in 48 US states, show that counties with high vaccine coverage had a more than 80% reduction in death rates compared with largely unvaccinated counties.

Definitely a big win, but 80% reduction means it prevented fewer than half of the vulnerable from death, when the hope had been much closer to preventing virtually all deaths. Those are not pandemic ending numbers, certainly not to those who espouse a zero COVID strategy.

> 80% reduction means it prevented fewer than half of the vulnerable from death

What are you trying to say here? That math doesn't make sense to me at all. Pretty clearly the reduction in deaths comes primarily from... those who would have been vulnerable to dying.

Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#88

Post by marcosdumay »

nsxwolf wrote: post #12

I wonder if "Contagion" was propaganda. It really made me believe that if a SARS pandemic ever happened, a bunch of incredibly competent scientists and government agents would swoop in and save us all. The "Olympus Has Fallen" series also made me believe that if a mob ever stepped foot on the White House lawn, a bunch of auto turrets would pop up and gun them all down. The last few years has shown that the world is r…

> a bunch of incredibly competent scientists ... would swoop in and save us all

And they did.

Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#89

Post by ttoinou »

goneri wrote: post #58
Dig1t wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that's insane. If China did that same thing today, we would be up in arms.

Insane? Really? There is nothing wrong with defending your language and the artistic industry. They've got also some similar quotas for the song in French on the radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toubon_Law .

Its promoting making bad movies and song though. Let the world compete

Re: The Pentagon and CIA have shaped thousands of movies into effective propaganda

#90

Post by usrusr »

seer wrote: post #73

Of course they did, I’m kinda surprised this is news. However the ongoing invasion of ukraine kinda showed everybody that western nations are not just “duped” into following USA, they actually want it - its an alinement of values not of convenience. Read a very good analysis of this from the acoup blog - https://acoup.blog/2023/07/07/collections-the-status-quo-coa... Which kinda suggest that things would have moved i…

Yeah, the big difference compared to a certain former superpower is that the US seems to be well capable of recognizing a win/win as a victory, not as a tie bordering on defeat.
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