Control Room
Review by DeAnander
I do not watch Corporate Amurkan TV so I have not been exposed to much of the US wartime wurlitzer, except in airports where I try to sit as far as possible from Dear Leader’s propaganda loudspeakers. So when I watched Control Room for the first time this week, I was exposed not only to Al Jazeera as a new media experience, but to American wartime TV as well.
I reproduce here an email sent on the following day which recaptures my immediate response to the film.
watched Control Room last night and almost couldn’t stand sitting through the STUPID blather from the CENTCOM droids. I mean, it’s not just that it’s a load of old cobblers, as my granddad would have said — it’s that it’s so bloody obviously a load of old cobblers, so downright dumb-as-paint S*T*U*P*I*D that you wonder how the mouthpieces can recite it without coming to a sputtering halt and laughing their asses off. and watching the tame US press eat it all up obediently with their little clipboards and notepads… gawdamighty, Ed Murrow must be spinning fast enough in his grave to be used as a bore drill.
maybe they selected their screen personalities carefully, but the overall impression one is left with is that the Al Jazeera crowd — some likable and some not so likable [their managing director struck me as a real organisational snake] — are intelligent . . . wearily, bemusedly, ironically intelligent. and the Americans are, to the last one, so stupid they make your teeth hurt. the newscasters, the reporters, the military mouthpieces, the soldiers — dumb dumb dumb and dumber. I had not seen before the footage of the hapless maintenance corps personnel who were taken captive, being asked “Who are you, how old are you, where do you come from, why have you come from _____ to Iraq?” — the terror on their faces, in their eyes darting from one captor to another, was almost unbearable to watch — and their ignorance, their total cluelessness about what the hell they were doing there, other than “bringing democracy to the Iraqi people”.
and yet I had to notice that the insurgents who captured them did them the courtesy of asking the questions in English, whereas the grunts breaking doors down are yelling “Get the F+++ On The Ground” in US English at terrified, disoriented Iraqi civilians, some of whom clearly do not understand what’s being said and can’t figure out what the heavily armed thugs want them to do. and that whole business of making Muslim-culture men lay their heads down in the dust of the street, ripping their turbans or head scarves off — just incredible. how to win hearts and minds all right… for the insurgency.
anyway, a pretty good documentary, tragic and ironic and in its own way deeply, vindictively sarcastic — the last refuge of the intelligent weakling in the face of moronic bullying…
watching Rumsfeld on the podium is like being stuck in a rerun of Night of the Living Dead… except way scarier. if the man were in a Salvation Army breadline he’d be just another glib delusional nutter, but when I force myself to realise who and what he is, structurally, politically, it makes me almost too scared to watch. but I think what haunts me is that propagandababble, the doublespeak out of CENTCOM’s uniformed droids. it’s almost physically sickening to listen to.
you have to wonder — I do anyway — what goes on behind the flat, apparently bored eyes of these young men as they recite palpable, risible nonsense — stuff worthy of Stalin’s less inspired agitprop factories — to the zombified press corps. which is more alarming? the idea that they are stupid, historically illiterate and prosodically tone-deaf enough to find this drivel convincing? that they [gawdelpus] actually believe what they are reciting? or that they are cynically reading their lines like any professional actor, knowing the whole time that they are frontmen for mafia bosses engaged in a nation-state hit, just earning their pay? or that they have bought the Straussian line and are inwardly gloating over their position as superior insiders, enjoying every moment of spoonfeeding this synthetic pap to the obedient press corps, sniggering in the canteen afterwards like the boys who have paid a pole dancer to do something particularly humiliating on stage?
frame any lie no matter how shameful, how demeaning, how absurd,
and there is someone who would leap at the opportunity to tell it –
who would love the lie for its own sake, climb any rooftop to yell it,
to sell it, tickled to death with their own clever twisting of words,
fabrication of evidence, murder of witnesses — you can almost smell it,
the sweat of the buzz they get, goosing the credulous herd.
– ‘recruitment office’ D. A. Clarke 2006
Stan:
I was worried that this was going to put an equal sign between Bush and bin Laden (a favored self-legitimating copout tactic of libruls that drives me nuts), but now I have to pick this up. I love vindictive sarcasm when it is well-aimed.
Speaking of Night of the LIving Dead, how about that Chertoff?
18 August 2006, 10:10 pmfrank:
I’m not a huge fan of any organized religion, so I shuddered when I saw the CS Monitor labeled applied to this story a friend sent me:
http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/carroll/index.html
but I found the perspective interesting, since I haven’t been to Iraq.
As for the media, I GIVE UP ALREADY! I’d like to take this opportunity to remind any web-surfer out there, if you’re tuning into this blog and others like it, you probably know already that Fox news, or cnn, or abc, cbs, etc, etc are SO twisted and wag-the-dogged out, that the info they present is pure propaganda. And for those diehard Hannity & whatever his name is fans, forget it. Get out on the street in somplace you’ve never been and…have a conversation with a stranger. You might learn a thing or two
Watch baseball instead. Or like the bumper sticker says, “Kill Your TV”
18 August 2006, 11:28 pmskol:
Chertoff? The Walking, Talking Skull? The Washington Crone? Or just “The Brow”.
I’m reminded of Gollum (my preciou$$$). Soon, his cartilage will flee his body and he’ll become Crypt-Keeper Chertoff.
Everyone in the administration looks evil, but that man has tried.
18 August 2006, 11:40 pmDeAnander:
it’s been a few days since I saw the film, but I don’t remember bin Laden featuring largely in it. it’s really about al Jazeera. kind of amusing watching them take flak from all sides — the cleric-ocracy in Iran berating them for being pro-American, corrupt liberalised tools of the West, while the American neothugs berate them for being corrupt benighted tools of the “islamofascists”… I guess if you’re ticking off everyone in sight, maybe you’re doing real investigative journalism?
19 August 2006, 2:08 amChris:
Here’s a link to John Pilger’s scathing indictment of the current state of Journalism from his address at Columbia University in New York titled ‘War by Media’.
http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=267
19 August 2006, 12:51 pmMichael:
I will have to get to my local video store and check this out now.
As for Chertoff I heard on the Mike Malloy show that Chertoff is supposed to literally mean “of the devil” in Russian or something close to it. Can anyone confirm that?
20 August 2006, 8:07 pmeric:
As entertainment, this film was excellent. Very well made and edited.
It was, however, disinformative, as it aimed at portraying Al Jazeera as an embattled, little-guy truth teller, taking flak from both sides.
The film does not point out that, in its attacks on Al Jazeera, the government of Iran does not accuse Al Jazeera of being biased or pro-American. It accuses Al Jazeera of being an American intelligence front.
And, of course, it is. Al Jazeera has never made a dime, and in fact loses millions of dollars a year. Where does it get the money to operate? From the government of a city-state, Qatar, which founded AL Jazeera. Qatar, as an ‘independant” nation, was itself originally created by British intelligence. Qatar is home not only to Al Jazeera, but also to the largest American foreign military base in the world. Qatar’s security forces are trained and equiped by British and American intelligence. The government that created Al Jazeera is itself a creation of the British and American governments. And, as the movie Control Room points out, AlJazeera’s management comes straight from the BBC, the media arm of the British goverment.
None of the above facts are secret. Al Jazeera’s status as a creation of Western intelligence is so obvious, and yet so hard to see for so many people.
We must come to understand and recognize the psychological operations technique referred to by those in the biz as getting a hostile territory “all taped up.” You ‘tape up” a territory by creating fake opposition groups, which, although they appear radical and inflammatory, are ultimately contolled by you, the occupying power.
21 August 2006, 12:20 americ:
Oh, and if it wasn’t clear enough already, the American military spokesman featured so prominently in Control Room went to work for Al Jazeera shortly after the film was released.
21 August 2006, 12:21 amskol:
Err…aside: Anyone know what to make of Bush’s classifying missile data again? Or a link to a news site/blog that would cover that accurately?
21 August 2006, 1:58 pmDeAnander:
eric can you provide urls for reference?
it wouldn’t be the first time cia had burned their own local agents (I mean the shooting of aj journos, bombing of their offices). but what would be the benefit?
I am skeptical about ascribing everything in the world to a cia plot… I mean, this blog comes out of the US, and the internet grew out of DARPAnet, so does that mean that Feral Scholar is a Company front? states as well as ideologies contain internal tensions, contradictions, and dissenting actors…
21 August 2006, 5:43 pmeric:
Al Jazeera is paid for by the government of Qatar and managed by people from the BBC (for example, the chain smoking director of Al JAzeera, ex-BBC, who features prominently in the movie Control Room). The comparison of Al Jazeera with the Feral Scholar blog would only be apt if this blog were supported with millions of dollars of government money and run by people from Voice of America.
“Everything in the world” is not a CIA plot. Many media projects, however, are CIA plots. The CIA is our country’s propaganda arm. The CIA exists to conduct covert opertations. A covert operation is not an operation no one knows about. It is an operation, as defined in National Security Action memoranda, in which the sponsoring role of the American government is concealed.
Opposition groups are often not what they seem. A good example appeared several weeks ago when it was revealed that the 2 top leaders of California’s main anti-war war group (I don’t recall whether it was ANSWER or NION) were police officers on assignment.
We will forever be misled and deceived until we become familiar with the strategy of the false flag and are able to discern where it is at work.
22 August 2006, 1:31 amDan:
Speaking of (…what? False flags? Alternative views? Conspiracy theories?), has anyone noticed that Alterbet has done a story on “Loose Change,” (http://www.alternet.org/story/40476/), saying that it is going to be shown at Sundance and is the subject of a movie studio bidding war? This is just WEIRD!
22 August 2006, 6:57 pmMarilyn Farhat:
I saw “Control Room” about one year ago. It is a pretty accurate portrayal of what the news station went through during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Aljazeera’s beginnings were before the Qatari involvement. It was a collaborative effort between the BBC and a Saudi “pay T.V.” company from 1994 to 1996. The BBC Arab employees were trained in Great Britain. Differences in scope and manner of reporting led the BBC to back out of the deal (the Saudis did not appreciate the airing of their executions to Arab nationals). It was then that the Qatari financier stepped in and rehired all the ex-BBC reporters into what we now know as Al-Jazeera in the Gulf. He wanted to keep their spirit of reporting alive.
There are more independent political and social movements in Qatar when compared with Saudi Arabia. The censorship is not as strict. The Middle East has changed a lot in the last 30 years but, listening to our news, one would not know that.
Arab citizens in general tend to question their governments to a greater extent than we question out government here. There are, however, more adverse consequences for those who do. The point is, people still try to question their realities and they are good at critiquing both their own governments and the West.
I was in Lebanon in 2005. Al-Jazeera was the most watched 24-hour source of news in the Middle East. It has talk shows that cover topics from family issues to the death penalty to environmental concerns. CNN International also broadcasts in Lebanon. It is interesting watching how CNN coverage differs when geared towards the Arab public. It is far less inflammatory towards Arabs and has more news from around the world (no Jon Benet stuff).
All Lebanese watched the 2003 invasion of Iraq on Al-Jazeera. Without question, that station earned their trust when compared to the other privately and government-owned stations in the country. The style of reporting is obviously different.
My friends’ first question to me was “what is wrong with Bush? Why is he waging war? Does he not care about his men being killed in Iraq?” Apparently, there were many American casualties shown on that station at the beginning of the invasion. I cannot verify what people told me, but they said that “American bodies littered the tarmac of Baghdad International Airport.” Al-Jazeera is not averse to showing graphic images because their philosophy is: the public has a right to know everything from all sides.
There is another station transmitting in the Arab world, “Al-’Arabiyya.” That one is privately owned by a Saudi prince and he established it in response to Al-Jazeera aorund 2000.
The Arab reporters in the movie do raise some pertinent issues about journalism and war reporting and, if you remember, the chairman of the station (his name eludes me now) made the comment that “history is written by the victors, and the victors will write this war (Iraq War.)” That sums it up for the main theme of the movie. That same chairman also said that if he were offered a position with a US news agency (FOX, if I remember correctly), he would leave al-Jazeera and take the job (for his children’s sake). Many reporters do want to be on the side of the victors.
I think this link will shed some light on the history of the station.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/aljazeera/briefing.html
Marilyn Farhat.
1 September 2006, 1:33 amStan:
For those who may not know Marilyn, she is Lebanese-American, and a ubiquitous presence in and around San Luis Obispo on peace and social justice. She is more than once billed as a media critic. I think she is also an RN, which kind of puts her in the feral scholar category. I am very happy to have this extremely intersectional perspective aboard, and hope Marilyn has time to hang out here more. I’ve noted by googling that she is also associated with Women in Black, and has taken up the cudgel on environmental destruction and Katrina.
Please don’t be a stranger, Marilyn.
1 September 2006, 9:07 amMarilyn Farhat:
Hello Stan and Everyone,
Thank you for the introduction. I will do my best to stay active on this blog. The topics are pretty important and broad in scope and the discussions do not get too personal (a problem I have encountered on talk radio and other websites locally). It seems that politically active, non-Christian, Arab women push the wrong buttons with a few people, including people on the “liberal, left, center left, progressive, peace camp end of the spectrum).
I appreciate the effort and the courtesy put into this website. The opinions of the participants are also interesting and challenging.
Hopefully we can learn from each other and be able to participate in the process of positive change.
It is such a wilderness out here in San Luis Obispo.
Please feel free to ask anything any time. I will do the same.
Best wishes.
2 September 2006, 9:54 pm