: This column by John F. Sugg appeared in the May 18, 2000, issue of the Weekly : Planet. : Semper Agitprop : There were only three other moviegoers at the AMC Old Hyde Park cinema : for an afternoon showing of William Friedkin’s Rules of Engagement two : weeks ago. One was a kid who sat mesmerized and mute as scenes of horrific : violence rolled across the screen. The other two were elderly men, retired : Korean War-era G.I.s, I would learn, who quietly murmured their support of : U.S. Marines blowing the brains out of unarmed prisoners of war and mowing : down civilian women and children. : After the film, I asked the teenage youth what impact the film had had : on him. With a macho puff of his thin, boyish chest, he said he was : thinking about joining the Army. The old soldiers, also corralled by me, : nodded approvingly at what they undoubtedly perceived as the boy’s : patriotic fervor. "I can’t get upset at a few Arabs getting killed," said : one. "They’d do it to us in a flash." The other added: "We’ve got to be : there, so we might as well make sure they fear us. Otherwise the whole : world is going to go to hell." : No, I’m not going to bash those veterans, although they were warming : up to one of the most racist and xenophobic movies of all time, a film : being comp ared — when reviewers have the savvy to see its underlying : politics, which sadly doesn’t include any critics in the Tampa Bay area — : with D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. : The simple fact is that the box office hit had done its job, and the : spectators were performing their roles precisely as anticipated. Rules of : Engagement is an early 21st century manifestation of the "Two Minutes of : Hate" in George Orwell’s 1984. Instead of dehumanized machine gun-toting : Eurasian hordes threatening Oceania’s soldiers on Orwell’s telescreens, : Rules of Engagement features dehumanized machine gun-toting Arab children : blasting away at U.S. Marines on the silver screen. : We cranked up the same genre of lies during Vietnam to justify our : wasting "gooks" — women, children, elderly, infirm included. Rules of : Engagement pointedly depicts our soldiers now getting friendly with an old : Vietnam foe in the face of the new Super Global Bad Guy, the devious, : dirty, despicable ragheads/WOGs/camel-jockeys of the Middle East. : The message remains unaltered: We need to kill them (whoever "they" : currently are) before they kill us and take what is rightfully ours (which : although unstated in Rules of Engagement, means the oil under Arabs’ : soil). : Viewers are motivated to hate a strange, alien enemy. Boys get their : testosterone pumped up and rush to the Army recruiter. Job well done, : Hollywood. : Rules of Engagement is propaganda, or as Orwell called it, "agitprop," : in its purest form. The movie is lousy courtroom drama, and has a plot so : implausible that only the most gullible would buy into it. Unfortunately, : we are a nation of the most gullible. : Here’s what Orwell predicted 51 years ago would be the role of the : mass media on citizens: "They could be made to accept the most flagrant : violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of : what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public : events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they : remained sane." : In America today, we remain sane by believing the propaganda. If we : took an honest look at the blood on our hands, we’d run screaming to the : nearest asylum. : In perhaps the largest terrorist action in modern history — what will : be remembered as "The Cowards War" — NATO, from safe 15,000-foot : distances, attacked the civilian population of Yugoslavia, poisoned the : nation’s lands and water, destroyed its cities and industries, and caused : untold suffering that will last for generations. : The justification was a mountain of U.S. and British bullshit about : the Serbs killing 100,000 or more Kosovars. A year after the war, how many : Kosovar bodies have been recovered? Fewer than 3,000. The suffering of the : Kosovars is real — so is the general free-for-all persecution of virtually : all ethnic groups in Yugoslavia by one or another ancient enemy. But our : war machine wasn’t cranked up to protect people — it was to ensure, in : flagrant violation of the rule of law and the United Nations, our : strategic dominance and NATO’s colonial grasp, however many deaths : resulted. The Yugoslav war was totally and cruelly insane, but we maintain : our equilibrium via Prozac and believing the spin-doctors. : Or consider the most notorious case of agitprop in recent history. On : Oct. 10, 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah testified to : Congress about how Saddam Hussein’s troops had thrown infants out of : hospital incubators. The babes had been left to die, so the tale went, : while the Iraqis carted away the incubators as booty. The press gurgled in : enthusiasm as the generals smiled and advanced their plans for the : impending Operation Desert Storm. The number of incubators emptied and : stolen was pegged at 159 by some accounts, more than 300 by others (far : more, it would come out later, than the total number of incubators in : Kuwait). : Then the truth began leaking out — after the war was a fait accompli, : of course. Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the : United States. The tale of the incubators was either an outright lie, : vastly exaggerated, or if the machines had been emptied it was because the : Kuwaiti medical staffs had deserted them. : More important, the whole thing was vapor cooked up by a giant public : relations firm, Hill & Knowlton, which had been hired by the feudal and : repressive Kuwaiti rulers to push America into war. As Morley Safer said : on 60 : Minutes (Sept. 6, 1992): "We can only speculate on the effect of the : mysterious Nayirah’s testimony. We can say for certain it was part of a : massive campaign by the public relations firm of Hill & Knowlton to, in : their words, ‘get Kuwait’s story out.’ Others might call it the selling of : the war." : Hill & Knowlton’s top spinmeisters were Reagan-Bush confidantes Craig : Fuller and Robert Gray. The Washington Post on Aug. 2, 1992, raised this : question: "Was Fuller helping the Bush administration rally support for : the war effort on the tab of wealthy Kuwaiti citizens? Or, perhaps a : tougher question: Was he using his expertise to push the country toward : war because it was in his clients’ interests?" : Good questions, never really answered. The whole thing was nuts, and : when sanity and truth did leak out, they were largely ignored by the : public and the press of a nation still luxuriating in the jingoistic : belief that we had kicked Saddam’s butt. : Back to the movies. Other than American Indians’ bite-the-dust : savagery in filmdom’s early Westerns, no group has been more consistently : maligned than Arabs and Muslims. About the only film in recent history : that has depicted them favorably was Three Kings. Arabs are a great : villain, and demonizing them is politically popular. : The press barely reports, as Insight magazine did this month, that : "the FBI believes Israel has intercepted telephone and modem : communications on some of the most sensitive lines of the U.S. government : on an ongoing basis." That’s a real attack against America. Yet any time : an Arab walks into an airport terminal, there’s a high likelihood he is : going to be accosted by cops because the government thinks all Arabs look : like terrorists. : Three weeks ago, the State Department issued its annual report on : terrorism, stating that the biggest threats were from the Middle East and : South Asia. But a look at the data on which such conclusions were based : shows — well, total insanity. Of 169 anti-American attacks on foreign soil : in 1999, only 11 occurred in the Middle East and 6 in Asia. The clear : majority, 96, was from Latin America. : Defying logic and statistics, the State Department’s twisted : conclusions are, in reality, based on our need to have a bogeyman, : especially one with growing numbers in America so that the FBI and other : police agencies can balloon their budgets. It’s another "Red Scare," but : with a Middle East flavor. : Still, the process of vilification is incomplete unless you include : entire peoples and portray them as worthy of the most horrible deaths (as, : via our sanctions on Iraq, we have killed a half-million children). That’s : why Rules of Engagement’s ultimate terrorist villains aren’t men, but are : fanatic little girls and boys with automatic weapons trying to slaughter : our noble Marines. : Jack Shaheen, professor emeritus of media at Southern Illinois : University, has written: "Because Arabs and Arab civilization are held in : contempt by many in Hollywood, many Americans and their political : representatives have few if any positive feelings about Arabs. ... : Stereotyping tends to be self-perpetuating, providing not only information : but ... ‘pictures in our heads.’ These pictures of Arabs reinforce and : sharpen viewer prejudices. Television shows are entertainment, but they : are also symbols ... A villain is needed in (television and motion : picture) conflicts that pit good against evil. Today’s villain is the : Arab ... depicted as the murderous white-slaver, the dope dealer, the : fanatic." : If you doubt that there is sinister intelligence behind some movies — : and the media — consider two cases. It has been reported by the : alternative press and largely ignored by the mainstream media that : officers from the Army’s 4th Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group : (propaganda experts) were working in CNN’s Atlanta headquarters during the : Kosovo war. CNN even invited one Serb leader to be interviewed by Larry : King at the nation’s TV headquarters at precisely the time NATO planned to : bomb the facility. Whether CNN was acting in concert with the military or, : as is more likely, was being manipulated, hasn’t been established. : With Rules of Engagement, here’s what has been occasionally reported : but seldom questioned by the media. The movie’s plot was devised by Jack : Webb. Who’s he? Merely the former Marine commander in Vietnam and Ronald : Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy. Is he now merely pursuing another career? : Or is Webb still in the same business, just playing a different role as : Big Brother's director of agitprop? <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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