We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, May 16, 2015

CIA-embedded Hollywood liars and their lies

Click here to access article by David Walsh from World Socialist Web Site.

The outstanding film critic Walsh, whose articles I have read for a number of years, takes aim at a widely acclaimed film produced by Hollywood spin-meisters. Once again we see a Hollywood production that films into "reality" a myth created by the directors of the Empire to serve their interests. The "reality" as presented by the film Zero Dark Thirty is the one that will be remembered by the vast majority of Americans regardless of the well researched findings of Seymour Hersh. Thus, Hollywood should be regarded as another very powerful propaganda organ of the Empire.
Zero Dark Thirty, written by Mark Boal and directed by Kathryn Bigelow, was a detestable work for many reasons. The film, released in December 2012 to much critical acclaim, was promoted as the true story of the decade-long hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, assassinated by the US military in Pakistan in May 2011.

Now we know, thanks to Seymour Hersh and his article in the London Review of Books, that, along with everything else, the Bigelow-Boal film was a pack of lies from beginning to end. About the only plot element of Zero Dark Thirty that remains unrefuted is that the CIA did indeed operate illegal “black sites” and horribly torture people.