G.I. Joe Predictive Programming Collection
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Serious Analysis of Cultural Trends and Geo-politics
July 31, 2012 Leave a comment
December 23, 2011 4 Comments
By: Jay
Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol is one of J.J. Abrams’ best productions so far, a close second to Star Trek (directed by Brad Bird). It’s also a stunning revelation of real-world cloak and dagger geo-politics if ever there was one (on film). Not only is the plot centered around agents engaged in transnational plots, the fourth installment’s story centers around real British eugenics operations. Eugenics is the science of racial health, and dates back to ancient Greece and Plato’s Republic, and culminates in the time of Sir Francis Galton and Thomas Malthus and others, whose works on population control and race would come to the fore as one of the central pivots upon which the modern world turns: that of DNA and genetics.
However, in MI4, the antagonist is a Swedish-born, British-accented mathematical genius, Kurt Hendricks, who seeks to initiate the next stage in human evolution through nuclear war. This is consonant with the Nordic, Aryan trend that comes to the fore in Mein Kampf. This is the actual type of war gaming that has occurred in places like the Rand Corporation, of which Dr. Strangelove is a parody. The love of the bomb almighty is a cult that has won admirers in reality: you think rightly of the Planet of the Apes sequel. That chaos and apocalypticism can be initiated to speed up “evolution” is itself the revolutionary philosophy at base. It it based on the mistaken notion that chaos and disorder are actual, substantial entities. In MI4, Hendricks stages a bombing of the Kremlin that is blamed on the IMF team and America. Russia is then implicated in second false flag terror attack perpetrated by Hendricks through a satellite in Mumbai, India, when he launches a nuclear missile from a Russian sub, aimed at the U.S.
The IMF team successfully rescues the world from staged nuclear disaster, but this brings up an interesting element I’ve noticed of late: several films portray, not just false flag terrorism, but secretive transnational groups using staged terror to provoke a war between the U.S. and Russia. In The Sum of All Fears, that is what happens, and it is post-war Nazis that have organized it, as well as in the recent X-Men: First Class, where Kevin Bacon was an S.S. officer who wanted to provoke a nuclear war to wipe away the humans so the mutants could continue on to the next stage of ”evolution.” Also shown in X-Men on a map is Denver as a possible nuclear attack area. The CIA began in the mid-2000s to move its operations there. Read more of this post
October 22, 2011 2 Comments
By: Jay
Casino Royale (1953) is the first of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels, and since I’ve decided to write my master’s thesis on this classic series of espionage novels, blogging about the series would be a help to my own writing process. I’ll be dealing with the semiotic and propaganda effects of real events being fictionalized, and then the resulting impact and purpose of the fiction as it passes into mass media consumption. As Fleming himself noted, “everything I write has precedent in truth.”
This is crucial to keep in mind as one works through the novels and films, as it becomes clearer and clearer that Fleming, himself a top British intelligence agent, gradually reveals the means and methods of control and manipulation by the top of the pyramid. Bond himself is a cog in this machine, situated as the symbol of the loyal, western, capitalist hemisphere, battling what he discovers to be the evil Soviet anti-spy agency, SMERSH. SMERSH is a kind of Soviet “Secret Team” that proclaims “death to all spies.”
In the beginning, however, Bond is not after SMERSH, but a wealthy, disfigured rogue who stuck out on his own and created a “fifth column” from SMERSH, named LeChiffre. LeChiffre translates as “the cypher,” letting us know more is at work here. LeChiffre, according to Bond writer Ian MacIntyre, was based on British Satanist/occultist Aleister Crowley.
In fact, Ian Fleming, it has recently been claimed by researcher Anthony Masters, was responsible for crafting the plot to lure Rudolph Hess to Scotland based on a bogus astrological chart that tickled Hess’ fancy, created by Crowley. The plot worked, apparently, and Hess parachuted into Scotland and was captured. LeChiffre, “the cypher,” has curious features, and like many Bond villains a strange sexual appetite and fixation, in the same vein as Crowley.
Soon into the novel, Bond meets his first “Bond girl,” Vesper Lynd, who will double-cross him and be exposed as a SMERSH agent working under duress. What’s interesting is that a team of Bulgarian communists attempts to assassinate Bond with an explosive device soon after Bond arrives in the fictional Royale-Les-Eaux in Northern France. The explosion fails in its design, however, and a cover story is created, blaming in on leftist, communistic terror. Read more of this post
October 20, 2011 Leave a comment
Since many readers of this blog are highly fluent in this area, any recommendations that are missing that are relevant are welcomed (aside from Fleming’s Bond novels themselves). My thesis is on Fleming, Bond and the relation between semiotics and propaganda in espionage fiction and film. -Jay
Most Relevant Books:
The Politics of James Bond: From Fleming’s Novels to the Big Screen by: Jeremy Black
For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond by: Ben MacIntyre
The Bond Code: The Dark World of Ian Fleming and James Bond by: Philip Gardiner
Ian Fleming and James Bond: The Cultural Politics of 007 Ed.: Edward Comentale
James Bond and Philosophy Eds. South and Held Read more of this post