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WHO HACKED SONY? AND OTHER ISSUES OF HOLLYWOOD CULPABILITY




Sony was hacked this month. Nobody knows who did it.

It started off with some juicy revelations in the media that Sony’s hack had revealed several interesting conversations with Sony insiders talking about Angelina Jolie. “Spoilt brat” and “minimally talented” were apparently two terms used to describe her. The articles instantly got worldwide attention. Blame was put on North Korea, for purportedly hacking the company’s email system in retaliation for making a film about its President’s assassination.

North Korea denied it had hacked Sony, but said whoever did it had done a “righteous deed.”

Obama stepped in, and said North Korea was responsible. He added it wasn’t an act of war but cyber -vandalism.

The media went crazy, printing article after article showing how North Korea was an odious human rights violating state. They said America had bowed down to North Korea by canceling screenings. It appeared serious military action against North Korea would become likely, if the hawks had their way.

North Korea’s entire Internet network went down. Somebody had clearly hacked it.

North Korea's leader came out and called Obama a “monkey from the tropics.” He also said the America was responsible for the Sony hack.

The film “The Interview” was released online, and in select theatres. It became one of the biggest grossing films that week.

The series of events that occurred leads a connect-the-dots person to conclude that the hack may have been internally engineered by the US national security apparatus, in conjunction with Sony’s insiders, including the director of the film, perhaps the actors, as well as the producers and the marketing department.

This brings up the very serious issue of Hollywood’s collaboration with the US’s national security agencies. How close are these ties? How far do people think they can go with different tactics of false flag and diversion in the US’s obviously no-holds-bar wars against different nation states?

In the case of Hollywood, it is quite clear that the scripts of everything from historical to mythological films have had input from the military-industrial complex. Funding may also be provided by the same agencies—to what extent, this remains unclear. It is also clear that actors, individually, may have relationships or pal-ly friendships with other individuals working within the Deep State. Ben Affleck, for instance, is clearly close to the CIA. His film “Argo” won the Best Film Award, not because it was a good movie, but because the military-industrial complex has infiltrated Hollywood so deeply there is no longer a peer-reviewed, meritocracy at work, but merely the same old shite of propoganda passing for creative works, as in Nazi Germany. Remember Goebbels? Good old Leni? Right, this is the same stuff, people.

There might even be a certain amount of bravado and sense of prestige working for one’s country. This is all very well and good when the cause is good. But when the country has veered off track so vertiginiously, as the US has, and whose internal working are now a matter of deep concern for the rest of the world, working for this apparatus may not be as glamorous as people may think, at first. Witness the 80,000 people who came out in opposition to Ben Affleck’s next role, as Batman. They simply disliked the idea of seeing him as Batman. If Affleck though “Argo” would jump him onto to superstardom, he was about to find out the power of the masses to destroy a career with a simple “refuse and resist” campaign. (Incidentally, I didn’t watch “Gone Girl” because Affleck was in it.)

Imagine if the US had supported a film that showed the assassination of a Western power, and then played out a complicated set of maneuvers to blame the same country for a crime committed within the US, most likely by its own security apparatus? This would violate a lot of international laws. But somehow, it is considered to be okay in the case of North Korea. Sure, North Korea has a lot of prison camps—but so does the USA, if you could the millions of adult men who spend their time in jails which spin a hefty profit for the corporations that run them. Incidentally, the prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex seems to be deeply intertwined.

It also appears a lot of idealistic young actors may get caught in the subtle web of the security apparatus, without realizing it. For instance, Django Unchained. On the surface, a very good film about slavery and freedom. But then, China banned it. Why would China ban Quentin Tarantino? Because if you watch it again, the underlying subtext, in some horrifying way, is still white supremacy, and what happens to people who oppose the entitlement of white people to enslave other people. Anybody who watches this film walks away with a creepy feeling that while this may be about history, perhaps it may be about the present as well. Leonardo Di Caprio, one of my very favorite actors, may have fallen into the liberal trap of agreeing to do a film he saw as anti-slavery—when in fact the subtext runs very much in the opposite direction. Clearly the main character walks away, free. But many others don’t. And the chill you feel watching this film is the chill of knowing that the mentality of slave-holders very much runs contemporary banking, economics, international relations, as well as domestic governance within the USA. Slavery hinges on the notion the slave can have no freedom, and this underlies the very underpinnings of new military research being done in the USA. The Brain Initiative done funded by the White House, in which brain-to-net scientific experiments are being done to download people’s thoughts onto the web, forever destroys the individual’s right to privacy by making his thoughts available to government surveillance.

How deeply does the culpability run? Do filmmakers know when they get approached by a friendly group of men with a funny idea about North Korea, and deep pockets, that they may be working for the military-industrial complex? That the aim may not be just to bring about “freedom” to those who resist it, but that there may be a deeper, more sinister reason that keeps Hollywood churning out one film after another, glorifying the supremacy of the racist, military-industrial state?














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