"For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years."
Of course modern art also is a great means to throw lots of money around, which is probably a bonus for these sorts of programs.
They used the art. The difference here is that the CIA is actually painting the pictures.
While rare for a group like the CIA to actually create content, a great many movies have been influenced. The US military supports many productions, from StarTrek to Battleship, reducing costs and increasing accuracy. But when asked they have failed to support others, notably Independence Day. Influence and persuasion has always been there in hollywood. Zero-Dark is just that much closer to the line between legitimate art and propaganda.
ok, TopGun was pure propaganda, but USN wasn't actually writing the scripts.
> ok, TopGun was pure propaganda, but USN wasn't actually writing the scripts.
That's a big assumption. How many recruits were attracted to naval service by that movie?
Tom Clancy was another example of likely propaganda from that era. How likely is it for a random insurance agent who likes to play Harpoon to write dramatization of war plans, and then get the type of access that Clancy had?
>How likely is it for a random insurance agent who likes to play Harpoon to write dramatization of war plans, and then get the type of access that Clancy had?
Tom Clancy was from and hung out around the Baltimore-Washington metro area, home of the CIA (VA), NSA (MD), DoD (VA), FBI (DC), NGA (VA), NRO (VA), State Department (DC), DIA (DC), and a whole host of military bases and installations.
His native Baltimore is relatively close to the NSA HQ at Ft. Meade, the naval academy in Annapolis, and the Aberdeen proving grounds. Just sticking to Baltimore and its environs it's likely he would have met many military personnel and folks in the intelligence world.
Having lived in the DC metro area for a few years, I certainly find it within the realm of possibility that someone such as Clancy would have met these kinds of people. It's hard to miss them here given the insane number of driveways with armed guards and no signs. Get a few sailors and intelligence officers drunk, take notes, and piece things together over the years. There's a whole bunch of resources to research military equipment and procedures, and a lot of this stuff was in print back in ye olden days too, so one could ask intelligent questions.
It wouldn't surprise me if, after his financial success, the Feds did provide some sort of assistance considering his support of the military and intelligence agencies. It would also not surprise me if said agencies didn't like him for revealing certain things; he was after all talked to by the FBI.
As something of a Clancy fan: he reported in interviews that he developed a strong working relationship with members of the intelligence community, circulated drafts, and was occasionally asked "WTF Tom who gave you that one?!" about things he had created for fictional convenience.
A similar thing happened with Vince Flynn and George Bush:
>"His fans included George W. Bush, who called Flynn "a little too accurate" because Flynn's books >are often so true to CIA actions around the world. Once, while catching a ride in Bush's limo from
>Andrews Air Force Base, Flynn was grilled by the then-president on where he gets his information.
Live and work in Baltimore. I don't have a clearance, but I can confirm those types of people are a dime a dozen here. Just like ibanking in nyc or googlers in the valley.
I get that explanation for books like Red Storm Rising.
At some point it flipped. Probably around the "Sum of All Fears" era. Around then he started publishing non-fictiony books "Submarine", "Armored Cavalry", "Fighter Wing" that were basically guided tours.
Top Gun, combined with an improbable series of events, is the reason my older brother was never a fighter pilot.
After some time in the Marines followed by a number of years of commercial aviation, my brother decided to become a fighter pilot. As he had never gone to college, he went to a state school to meet the minimum requirements for acceptance -- which at the time was an Associate degree with a certain minimum grade point average.
As he was doing this later in life, he had just enough time to finish his degree and submit his paperwork for the program before a birthday would disqualify him. That May, Top Gun came out. The effect on interest in the program was so strong that they raised the grade point requirement to get in.
My brother wasn't always the best student but he had worked very hard on his degree and had the required grade point with room to spare. Now here's where it gets stupid -- after finals at the end of the year he found out that one professor had given him a failing grade, which under the new grade point requirements would disqualify him.
A phone call revealed that there was a mix up with a student with a similar name -- but at that point the professor was traveling abroad and wouldn't be able to fix the issue until after the holidays, and, unfortunately, after my brother's birthday.
My father, who had been a naval aviator himself, took my brother to D.C. to visit some old friends to try to rectify the situation. He was told that enrollment had spiked to the point where even they couldn't help.
Being a fighter pilot in the US is strange. In most countries it is seen as a long-term commitment, a career. But since TopGun, US fighter jocks just don't stay that long. Five years or so, then retirement into civilian life. Being a fighter pilot seems more of a career stepping stone. (Same goes for seals.) I keep running into ex pilots at security events, at committee meetings, or as politicians. So I can understand the demand. Your brother was up against not just those wanting to be pilots, but also those wanting the badge on the resume.
The flip side is that while well trained, US pilots have a bit of a reputation. They seem like they are trying to fit the TopGun stereotype. I once read somewhere that the Naval program on which the movie is based was losing more pilots to motorcycle accidents than flying. That's probably an aberration as these are small numbers, but the concept that pilots would even ride motorcycles off duty is odd. You'd never see an astronaut taking such risks.
...and then there's the part about Vice being yet another component of that same CIA apparatus, although not specifically related to the GWoT.
If that's not absurdly obvious to anyone by now, keeping lapping up your Vice articles with all the same subversive glee of a purported guilty pleasure, as ever, and remain blissfully deluded.
Ignoring the "wake up sheeple" part of your post, let's say VICE are paid for and editorially controlled by the US government. To what end? VICE certainly has a US bias, but I'm not sure it's always "pro" US foreign policy. The VICE TV show has certainly shown me parts of the world and people I wouldn't have seen without them. If that's the CIA's doing then thanks!
Here is a token retort to add some milquetoast flak to your argument and provide a seemingly plausible, if contrived, degree contrarian spirit to whatever argument may or may not be currently transpiring in public view.
Odd that piece didn't actually mention more of the scholarship around this, especially since they reference the "wurlizter" line. The book by Hugh Wilford on exactly that topic was excellent and the bibliography in the back was a gold mine on art, intellectuals, labor fronts, etc.
www.amazon.com/The-Mighty-Wurlitzer-Played-America/dp/067403256X/
The Cultural Cold War by Saunders is, as far as I know, the best main stream scholarship on specifically the art scene.
EDIT: ....and I'm an idiot. Saunders is the author of that article. Jesus. Nice find OP.
Similarly, The Paris Review was founded by CIA agent (and novelist and National Book Award winner) Peter Matthiessen[1] as a form of "cultural propaganda"[2].
If you watch almost any superhero show, even the ones that are explicitly for children, you'll see that a huge amount of "investigation" into crimes is done by threatening to kill criminals and often by torturing them. Look at Batman.
The idea that torture works is bedrock in the entertainment world, partially because it's a narrative shortcut and shows how far the "hero" is willing to go.
Even worse is the message towards the end of Dark Knight, where Robin throws his badge in the water, claiming that the system and law enforcement don't work, and the only option is their secretive extra-legal vigilantism. Sounds like an excuse for all the extralegal methods various agencies have been using in the supposed fight against terrorism.
> sounds like an excuse for all the extralegal methods various agencies have been using
...and even for complete extremism, like pure terrorism.
Still, it's also true that the premise "the system and law enforcement don't work" is really the basis of all superhero narratives. That's how the need for the superheros is justified.
S/he was saying that the agencies and the fictional superheroes are using the same rationalization: that legal methods don't work, and a bunch of "good guys" need to use extralegal measures. And, to take that to its extreme, any method is acceptable as long as it's a "good guy" using it against a "bad guy".
Unfortunately, in real life, "good" and "bad" aren't possible to define, nor are they absolute characteristics.
GP was just drawing the parallel, not implying a real connection.
Check out the documentary 0.Casino Jack and the United Stats of Money read up on jack Abramoff. It certainly appears that he was living in a fantasy world created from pulp cold war fiction novels and he was not alone.
It's even more insidious than that. Some people in positions of power are compelled to imitate socially-acceptable behavior as defined by popular media to the point where it requires active resistance to oppose the act of torture. See for example "Normative Social Influence"[1] and "Moral Conviction and Resistance to Social Influence" [2].
>"People [in Guantanamo] had already seen the first series, it was hugely popular." Others who were at Guantánamo at the time confirmed her account. Some described to me how the series contributed directly to an environment encouraging those in the interrogation facility to see themselves as being on the front line, and to go further than they otherwise might have
So torturers at Guantanamo had to get lessons on torture from a TV series which, prior to Season 4, was basically torture-free and pro-Muslim?
From Season 4, 24 was fascistic, pro-torture garbage, but it was taking its cue from real life US policy, not directing it.
I don't think this was always true. Torture used to be taboo in entertainment. I think that changed after September 11 - you started to see it used extensively by supposed 'good guys'. I remember noting this when the show 24 was coming through - it broke that rule and polite society seemed to have been disarmed to it. And now it's everywhere and we're the poorer for it.
I guess I was talking about torture in a broader sense.
Yes, in 24 and Zero Dark Thirty it's realistic -- a state military or intelligence agency using torture in a prescribed way. They would actually have received training about effective techniques for torturing people, which is pretty chilling in and of itself.
But you can also watch the 90s Batman cartoon, where Batman holds criminals off of roofs to get them to talk, or the X-men cartoon where Wolverine puts his claws up to someone's chin. It's not strictly "torture", but using fear (of death) to make someone talk is similar to using pain. The person will do whatever is required to end it, whether that involves being truthful or not.
Even worse, you have scenes where James Bond (or some hero) is tortured and doesn't talk. It creates the idea that someone who talks when being tortured is a traitor or is somehow weak. In reality, it's really rare to be able to withstand torture, and the US Dept of Defense doesn't even consider soldiers to have failed their country if they talk.
That torture works is a reflexive movie/TV trope that goes back long before the recent CIA programs. More generally, the attitude in Hollywood is that prisoners rights, procedural protections, etc, are just technical impediments that get in the way of law enforcement doing their jobs and saving lives.
When Dirty Harry came out, Roger Ebert called it a fascist film: the rogue cop out violating people's rights and murdering members of the public was the hero and the courts, defense lawyers, etc were villains trying to stop him from "getting the bad guy."
But Dirty Harry became an archetype in American film. Now there are hundreds of films with the protagonist being a "tough guy cop" who "doesn't play by the book." It's no wonder how our society has become what it is.
My wife and I like to watch shows like Blacklist and White Collar. There are casual 4th amendment violations several times per episode. It's infuriating.
So glad to hear this. I often wonder how much people with training pick up on things like this, and if they do what their response is. My parents watch Blacklist, I usually watch it with them, rationalizing it as "but James Spader...".
And to be fair, the what, three dozen, federal-leo/police procedurals are even worse on things like 4th amendment violations and just general ethical compromises.
I mean, I also think television writers are misogynist and so over-sexed they can't depict normal relationships between men and women on TV. But somehow I manage to watch HIMYM or Friends without raging.
yeah, I don't know how you do it. In that same situation, I'm actively contemplating the dead people in the laugh track to distract myself from the insulting of my intelligence.
You should consider that skill to suffer fools a superpower.
And yet, Dirty Harry has the DA rejecting some evidence he collected on the basis is wasn't lawfully acquired.
Have yet to see that in a modern procedural.
Dirty Harry's influence indentifiably extends beyond film, too. Castle doctrine laws (allowing the use of lethal force against home invaders) in some states used to be colloquially known as "make my day" laws, after an iconic line in one of the sequels. In context, the line heavily implies that Harry is motivated not by a desire to protect people from criminals, but by a desire to kill criminals.
That's actually a great point. Thinking back to all of the TV shows and movies about crime, it is a very common theme to have a character get off on a technicality or have the police complain "we know this guys guilty, but we just can't get the evidence".
This goes far beyond what the CIA is influencing. It's just a common theme in crime dramas.
What's the last major motion picture where the focus was on the importance of the rights of people accused of crimes? I can't think of many and the ones I can think of are the documentaries about actual cases of abuse.
I can't stand 24, the script is so transparently cheap. It's just one little plot device looped over and over and over each episode. I couldn't stomach more than two seasons.
I think clearly might be a little strong. It's not a very hard stretch of the imagination to believe that two separate groups of writers and/or producers think torture is effective.
I do agree that they essentially endorsed torture but to me ZDT was just boring period. Ironically, the most entertaining/interesting part of the movie were the first 30 minutes when they dealt with torture, it's downhill from there. American Sniper is more entertaining, at least.
Seriously though, the disgusting narrative over the last 16 years has left me completely numb and disenfranchised from the idea of justice in the US.
There is just a mountain of evidence that we are living in the police-state side of an Empircal Oligarchy in the US.
The Oligarchs experience unfettered financial, political and legal freedom -- whilst their position is protected and enforced by the police-state-complex that punishes the poor or the questioning.
Yeah, but the proles don't believe it yet because they've been propagandized since birth that the US can do no wrong. The propaganda is starting to seem a bit hollow for a few too many people, though.
I didn't downvote them, but I find both comments lacking in substance. We live in a police state? There's an Empircal(sic?) Oligarchy? Americans are indoctrinated from birth? These statements seem completely disconnected from reality. If they were backed-up with some evidence or arguments, I'd be less dismissive.
Real mature, Sam. And since the personality of the commenter matters all of a sudden, then tell me, have you ever lived outside of the U.S.? Because you must be incredibly sheltered and never really encountered the things you accuse the U.S. of, if you think that the country is an oligarchy or a police state.
Apologies if you think me asking for world-view-context via the GPs age was immature...
Their personality is of no matter - I asked their age just to see where they were coming from, its a fair question.
While I have not lived outside the US, I have followed the intelligence apparatus for many years; My brother, a general in the Air force, who was personal doctor the the joint chiefs of staff as their flight surgeon, as well as me who was personal IT handler for the head of DHS... and a long time person in IT in SV... I dont fuck around with my credibility
This country is fucked. The whole system is fucked.
Do I really need to spell it out for you? If you want to say it is NOT fucked -- then please enlighten me!!! PLEASE
I need some hope - but other than what I see what is going on -- THERE IS NONE
U.S. has the 10th biggest GDP per capita in the world. People express their opinion and don't get shot, stabbed, or poisoned for it. There is no war. Your politicians may be corrupt, but not to the point where they shit in gold plated toilets[1] or have their own palaces[2].
Your main problems are income and social inequality. And your tax code.
There are people literally risking their lives so that their children could have a life comparable to yours.
Sadly this is a very common message in popular culture. In a race to be "gritty and realistic" there are so many cop and military shows where torture is used by the "good guys" in service to the plot, with positive results. It's a shame how willingly and unthinkingly hollywood puts forth this torture propaganda, most of the time of their own volition.
I am pretty sure that is due to the medium and the target audience. We, in the west, have had a Manichean view of the world for quite a long time. No wonder Hollywood is reusing this common and almost confortable view of the world.
It's more than that. There's a deep-seated idea of the virtue of retributive violence. There is the idea of not just the value of vengeance but the rightness and necessity of it, and this is thoroughly involved in popular culture and the entire criminal justice system. This is the reason why people believe in the value of torture and why people laugh about the idea of sexual assault in prisons (because "bad guys" deserve to be hurt, even brutalized). It's the reason why we're ok with medieval conditions in our prison system even as those individuals end up back in society (because in so far as prison is hellish that makes it an even more effective punishment for wrong-doing). And so on. It's an incredibly barbaric value system which seems to be changing incredibly slowly.
A Pakistani intelligence guy tipped the US off for the reward. Neither torture nor diligent work by NSA or CIA was responsible for locating Bin Laden. That wouldn't make a very good movie though.
From Wikipedia:
In August 2010, a former Pakistani intelligence officer approached the U.S. embassy station chief in Islamabad and offered to provide Bin Laden's location, in return for the $25 million reward, according to a retired senior U.S. intelligence official.[17] This story was corroborated by two U.S. intelligence officials speaking to NBC news, and had been previously reported by intelligence analyst Raelynn Hillhouse.[18][19] The Pakistani official informed U.S. intelligence that Bin Laden had been located by Pakistani ISI in 2006, and held under house arrest near Pakistani intelligence and military centers ever since. The official passed polygraph tests, after which the U.S. began local and satellite surveillance of Bin Laden's Abbottabad residence.[17]
The US also set up a vaccination centre that collected and analyzed DNA of people they vaccinationed in order to confirm that Bin Laden's family (and hence Bin Laden himself) were in there.
The downside of this is clear, "Foreign vaccination centres are really CIA spying stations!" is now no longer a conspiracy theory, but something that actually happened.
When people say “torture doesn't work” it's usually meant to counter the way the U.S. used it in an attempt to get valuable secrets, almost always in a time sensitive context. It's pretty widely agreed that, given time and monstrous creativity, torture works for things like getting false confessions because we have examples of the public false confessions the North Vietnamese, USSR, etc. forced people to make or the many false stories the CIA tortured out of people like bin Laden's driver.
What's contentious is the idea that you can get someone dedicated to reveal a secret before their friends notice their absence and change the secrets. The classic movie plot is something like a bomb disarm code but that's a [fortunately] rare situation and likely futile when e.g. a dedicated extremist who knows they only have to hold out for a short period of time.
OK, what is the implication here? That a cabal of government officials would deliberately start a war under false pretenses, costing trillions of dollars and thousands of their own countrymen's lives... for what? Profit? They could rake in far more by tacking a couple riders on popular bills.
It's unwise to caricature your opponents as evil or stupid. Not only is it an impediment to understanding them, but it makes any sort of dialogue impossible.
What if it's not for "profit", but for the perceived long-term national security interest of the US? The kind of "national security" which doesn't directly protect us from attack, but rather prevents us from having to fight future wars when the nation is energy-starved.
Consider this video featuring Retired General Wesley Clark talking about plans in the Pentagon (circa 2001) to regime change 7 Middle Eastern countries in 5 years.
Assuming there is any truth to this claim (and I'm suspicious because we can't independently verify the claims), the implication is that the US military investigated and drew up plans to free the countries and make their oil available to western nations in order to fuel future economic growth (I'm taking liberties and drawing inference from previous US intervention in Middle Eastern foreign policy). It's not "profit", but it's the long term "security" (which can be extremely subjective) of the US.
So given that torture is objectively not reliable for obtaining truthful evidence, what is a good non evil non stupid explanation?
I consider torture itself evil under all but the most extreme and rare ticking time bomb scenarios. Little to none of the enhanced interrogation stuff I've read about fits into that category. So that leaves the question of whether the motives are also evil or just stupid.
Doing something that you know doesn't work on the theory it will intimidate is stupid, especially with an enemy that comes from an honor culture that relishes conflict and values martyrdom. Failing to evaluate your techniques for actual success rate is stupid. And so on...
> That a cabal of government officials would deliberately start a war under false pretenses, costing trillions of dollars and thousands of their own countrymen's lives... for what? Profit?
I haven't seen the movie and I don't know what's depicted in it, but I'm pretty sure torture can be morally justified in some cases. Consider a real-life example of torture described in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.[1] At a gas station, a woman briefly leaves her car to pay for fuel. In the minute she's gone, a man hops in and drives away. Unbeknownst to the car thief, the woman's infant is sleeping in the back seat. The thief soon discovers this and ditches the car. Police quickly catch him at a nearby train station. He's carrying valuables from the car. There is video of him stealing the car. Despite his denials, there is no question this man is the car thief. It's over 100ºF out. The police need to find the car before the baby dies of heat stroke. A police officer describes the incident:
> In the police truck on the way to the police station: “Where did you leave the Hyundai?” Denial instead of dissimulation: “It wasn't me.” It was—property stolen from the car was found in his pockets. In the detectives' office: “It's been twenty minutes since you took the car—little tin box like that car—It will heat up like an oven under this sun. Another twenty minutes and the child's dead or brain damaged. Where did you dump the car?” Again: “It wasn't me.”
> Appeals to decency, to reason, to self-interest: “It's not too late; tell us where you left the car and you will only be charged with Take-and-Use. That's just a six month extension of your recognizance.” Threats: “If the child dies I will charge you with Manslaughter!” Sneering, defiant and belligerent; he made no secret of his contempt for the police. Part-way through his umpteenth, “It wasn't me”, a questioner clipped him across the ear as if he were a child, an insult calculated to bring the Islander to his feet to fight, there a body-punch elicited a roar of pain, but he fought back until he lapsed into semi-consciousness under a rain of blows. He quite enjoyed handing out a bit of biffo, but now, kneeling on hands and knees in his own urine, in pain he had never known, he finally realised the beating would go on until he told the police where he had abandoned the child and the car.
> The police officers' statements in the prosecution brief made no mention of the beating; the location of the stolen vehicle and the infant inside it was portrayed as having been volunteered by the defendant. The defendant's counsel availed himself of this falsehood in his plea in mitigation. When found, the stolen child was dehydrated, too weak to cry; there were ice packs and dehydration in the casualty ward but no long-time prognosis on brain damage.
I think the actions of the police are unimpeachable. Had they not tortured the thief, an innocent child would be dead. Now, does that mean I think torture should be legal? Of course not. Do I think the CIA has committed atrocities and violated human rights? Yes! But that doesn't mean torture doesn't work.
I haven't seen the movie and I don't know what's depicted in it, but I'm pretty sure torture can be morally justified in some cases.
It can be, as long as the perpetrator of the torture is willing to be held accountable for it. In the stereotypical '24' scenario, what happens if you torture somebody and don't find out where the bomb that's about to destroy the city is hidden?
In a just world, if you save the city, the governor or the President will likely pardon your crime, so it's all good. If you don't, you should go to prison for a very long time. But it never seems to work out that way, does it? It's all upside for the torturer, no downside. That's about as close to the definition of "evil" as you can get in my book.
We see it in action every time we read about police who step over the line (as in your anecdote) or a berserk prosecutor who seems bent on setting an example or furthering his own career rather than seeking justice. When it comes to violating peoples' rights in the name of Truth, Justice, and the American Way, there are almost never any consequences for failure.
Cases like these are so extremely uncommon that trying to twist the law to accommodate them would do more harm than good. In fact, the harm from authority figures committing torture is so extreme that I'd say even in this case the officers should face some disciplinary consequences. The leniency and understanding of prosecutors, judges and jury should be enough of a safety net if their actions are truly justified.
c) They got the attribution wrong and tortured an innocent man?
All aside, I don't agree that hiding what they did could be morally right.
In Germany we had a case where during a kidnapping a very high-ranking police official threatened the suspect with torture, which actually got the location of the child (that had already been killed). He put a note what he did in the protocol and handed that to the DA.
He later was sentenced for it (very mildly), and the courts made clear that even this doesn't fly and cannot be excused. And of course we got a big public debate about it during the trial.
You misuse (legally speaking) your position of power to be morally right, at least face the consequences for it. Don't decide for yourself that you deserve to get away with it.
In cases like this, there is clearly a time limit, a very short time limit, where any information thus retrieved would be useful, and life saving. It is the officers' duty to use whatever means, within limits, to get the information out of the suspect. Also the evidence on scene is very strong, the suspect is in fact the perpetrator of said crime.
In case of terror suspects, quite a few have emerged innocent which is quite embarrassing in the first place, but understandable. Also, one should question the relevance of any information retrieved after long sustained periods of torture when surely facts on the ground have probably changed significantly.
Moreover this person, in the stanford thing, is a petty thief who is quite likely to fold under pressure since the crime has manageable consequences for him, and he doesn't possess training and motivation to withhold info at all costs. This trait wouldn't be present in case of some death cult, military, or even a serious gang member.
The point is, it isn't correct to make blanket statements like torture wouldn't work, ever. But the prevalence of incidences where some force might work shouldn't be used to justify comic levels torture demonstrated in the recent cases.
And finally, One might however see value in the dampening effect torture has on enemy morale. However, you can't play both sides, pretend to be a great champion of human rights and values and continue to come up with hilariously OTT torture routines. That is the problem US & Allies face regarding this whole torture debate/narrative. You have to own up to the uh assholery.
"I think the actions of the police are unimpeachable." No, they're not.
Their actions were effective but illegal. Effective in that they forced disclosure of the child's location. Illegal for excessive force, denial of due process, etc. Their illegal behavior weakened the rights all of us depend on.
More broadly, we'd probably convict more criminals if we ditched the legal presumption of innocence and other defendant protections. And of course, it can be heartbreaking and enraging when a palpably guilty defendant escapes justice because of prosecutorial error or other "technicality". Just as those cops were heartbroken and enraged at the arrestee's callous disregard of the child's life. I can imagine how they felt, and I don't know if in their place I'd have had the courage to follow the law.
My point is that the rights we've agreed any of us should have as a defendant in a state criminal action do lead to occasional awful circumstances like those cops faced. I think the more awful the circumstance, the more important it is to uphold those rights. They're fundamentally important, and they're not much use if we only enforce them when it's easy or convenient.
> Their illegal behavior weakened the rights all of us depend on.
I disagree. It's good to be wary of this sort of thing, but Australia (where this happened) doesn't seem to have a police brutality problem. Had the police done the legal thing, an innocent child would have been cooked alive. So in this case, I'm glad they broke the law.
Laws and morals don't always agree. When they disagree, that is a failing of laws, not morals. Many things are illegal, but moral. For example, it may be necessary to steal or trespass to help save a life. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, those actions are for naught, and the person dies anyway. Does that make those actions wrong? No. And in those cases, you'd be hard-pressed to find a DA willing to prosecute. I'm OK with that.
Again, I think torture should be illegal. I think programs like the CIA's extraordinary rendition are abhorrent. I think Guantanamo Bay will be rightfully condemned by future generations. I'm certain the post-9/11 institutionalization of torture has caused far more harm than good. But I also think that torture can, in some cases, be morally justified. And I think my example demonstrates that.
I'd feel better about the Stanford example you cited if the cops' use of torture had been disclosed - that is, if they had been held accountable for using illegal methods.
The law recognizes extenuating circumstances such as those in the example, and provides reasonable outcomes - the DA/Grand Jury could have declined to charge, a jury could have declined to convict, a judge could have vacated a jury's conviction, and/or the governor could have pardoned them if they were sentenced. Under the circumstances, I think the cops would not have been punished. I'd endorse that outcome, given the facts.
But instead, the cops committed crimes and covered them up. That's bad for us, because it reduces transparency of state conduct. Basically, it's bad for our society if its police use illegal force without accountability.
If the right thing, the moral thing to do in a particular situation involves breaking a law, well ok, but we all (through the law) should know about it and we should all (through the law) hold accountable those who acted illegally. That doesn't mean they'll be punished - but IMO moral conduct must include accountability.
I think a better view of these types of situations is to affirm that torture is never legal, nor is it moral - but it might on rare occasion be an effective tactic to achieve a better outcome. But accountability has to be part of the picture.
I think if we had held that as our standard of conduct following 9/11, we would not have Guantanamo as a national shame today. The law can help when morality drifts due to fear and panic.
Read half of it and haven't found anything newsworthy. So far they describe that (1) one of movie authors was present during the secret award ceremony without getting a proper security clearance and (2) the officer the movie was based on ordered fries in movie guy's hotel, got cheap knock-off earrings as a present and declined offers to go to a Prada show and attend private movie screening with family.
Is there anything actually worth the time in the second half?
The "behind the scenes" information is interesting, but you are right, there is nothing particularly scandalous here. This article is meant to feed into the backlash over the thematic narrative of Zero Dark Thirty (probably the reason for the FOIA lawsuit in the first place).
In fact, I can't help but feel for civil servants (in general, not just for the CIA) who apparently have to walk on tip-toes, lest the smallest details of their lives be scrutinized under a microscope every time there is a bit of attention from a controversy-hungry media. This is an issue with local reporting (at least, here in San Diego) and it is bothersome, especially when there is really nothing to report, for the sake of column inches.
Yeah, at the time people like Sy Hersh called out ZDT as being a completely fabricated propaganda piece. Of course, if you watch the movie, it's obviously fictitious, but the veneer of realism is enough to implant ZDT as the cultural "canon" story.
That's the problem. We let them define what the canon is.
Many if not most of the TV shows or movies where you see heavy army gear and equipment that wouldn't be there without the government's cooperation, will be heavily influenced by the government and in what light it shows the US government.
It's why I stopped watching shows like 24, Homeland, Person of Interest, and so on, after the first season or two. I couldn't stomach the propaganda anymore.
Homeland seems pretty critical of US policy in Season One, perhaps too much so. After Season One (which should have been the only season) it becomes laughably transparent pro-Israel/anti-Iran propaganda rather than pro-CIA.
It's even more brainless and nonsensical than 24, but unlike that show, Homeland actually seems to take itself seriously.
At no point do they claim drone-ing is wrong or immoral. It's the bad guys that tricked them. And the whole, normalizing it as just a mistake. Carrie is never punished for her crime. There is no introspection on the issue. It was purely an apologist part of the storyline.
There isn't and the entire story is premised on the government not giving a shit about normal crime, hell all of season 3 is about what happens when an entire police force is corrupted top to bottom.
I have little respect for any director or producer who produces propaganda and absolutely no respect for any director or producer who does so at the behest of the government. Also, the movie itself was terrible, even seen as the far fetched fiction it is.
I see a lot of movies like this as a sort of propaganda. what it does is shows that our heros are hard working american soldiers that defeat that worst of the worst.
It's interesting contrasting American/UK films against other western films.
I'm a big fan of the Hamilton movies, which are basically Swedish James Bond movies. In them, the PLO are actually the good guys, and the Americans are the bad guys. It's an interesting contrast.
Angry about this? Director Panetta tried to throw the book at Ishmael Jones for his 2010 CIA memoir, The Human Factor. Suitable method of protest and entertaining read would be to buy the book:
I always wondered if Kathryn Bigelow is somehow related to Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Airospace. Later has long been the center of a bunch of conspiracy theories.
You haven't wondered very much, I guess, or you would've cleared your doubts by now.
From wikipedia, after a 5 sec search:
Bigelow was born in San Carlos, California,
the only child of Gertrude Kathryn (née Larson; 1917–1994),
a librarian, and Ronald Elliot Bigelow (1915–1992),
a paint factory manager.
That two of the people most closely related to her are not Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace is not in any way evidence that she is not related to Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace.
Never heard of the conspiracy theory or Bigelow Aerospace, just about how logic works.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-w...
"For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years."
Of course modern art also is a great means to throw lots of money around, which is probably a bonus for these sorts of programs.