Hollywood movies are just propaganda, not history lessons!
Argo's Oscar is like Obama's peace prize:
undeserved and grotesque.
"Argo", says Ben Affleck, is "a tribute" to the
"extraordinary, honorable people at the CIA" -- currently waging an
illegal, immoral, unregulated and expanding drone execution program.
By Nima Shirazi
Wide Asleep in America
23 February 2013
Ben Affleck triumphant at winning the Best Picture Oscar for his CIA propaganda movie Argo.
One year ago, after his breathtakingly beautiful Iranian drama, "A
Separation," won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film,
writer/director Asghar Farhadi delivered the best acceptance speech of the night.
"[A]t the time when talk of war, intimidation, and aggression is
exchanged between politicians," he said, Iran was finally being honored
for "her glorious culture, a rich and ancient culture that has been
hidden under the heavy dust of politics."
Farhadi dedicated the
Oscar "to the people of my country, a people who respect all cultures
and civilizations and despise hostility and resentment."
Such grace and eloquence will surely not be on display this Sunday,
when Ben Affleck, flanked by his co-producers George Clooney and Grant
Heslov, takes home the evening's top prize, the Best Picture Oscar, for
his critically-acclaimed and heavily decorated paean to the CIA and American innocence, "Argo."
Over the past 12 months, rarely a week - let alone month - went by without new predictions of an ever-imminent Iranian nuclear weapon and ever-looming threats of an American or Israeli military attack.
Come October 2012, into the fray marched "Argo," a decontextualized, ahistorical "true story" of Orientalist
proportion, subjecting audiences to two hours of American victimization
and bearded barbarians, culminating in popped champagne corks and
rippling stars-and-stripes celebrating our heroism and triumph and their frustration and defeat.
Salon's Andrew O'Hehir aptly described the film as "a propaganda fable," explaining as others have that essentially none of its edge-of-your-seat thrills or most memorable moments ever happened.
O'Hehir sums up:
The Americans never resisted the idea of
playing a film crew, which is the source of much agitation in the movie.
(In fact, the “house guests” chose that cover story themselves, from a
group of three options the CIA had prepared.) They were not almost
lynched by a mob of crazy Iranians in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, because
they never went there. There was no last-minute cancellation, and then
un-cancellation, of the group’s tickets by the Carter administration.
(The wife of Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor had personally gone to the
airport and purchased tickets ahead of time, for three different
outbound flights.) The group underwent no interrogation at the airport
about their imaginary movie, nor were they detained at the gate while a
member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard telephoned their phony office back
in Burbank. There was no last-second chase on the runway of Mehrabad
Airport, with wild-eyed, bearded militants with Kalashnikovs trying to
shoot out the tires of a Swissair jet.
. . .
. . .
Read the entire story here:
And some of the real history here:
Our Man in Iran:
How the CIA and MI6 Installed the Shah
By Leon Hadar
Washington's goal: to remove Mossadeq and his political allies, which included liberals, social democrats, and to place reliable pro-western politicians in power. Continue
How the CIA and MI6 Installed the Shah
By Leon Hadar
Washington's goal: to remove Mossadeq and his political allies, which included liberals, social democrats, and to place reliable pro-western politicians in power. Continue
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