Tag: pentagon

How the Pentagon Dictates Hollywood Storylines. “War Propaganda Passed off as Entertainment”

According to Theaters of War, the US Department of Defense does not just subtly influence Hollywood’s depiction of US wars to present them in a more favourable light. The Pentagon actively demands script oversight and dictates storylines. In practice, it has been waging a full-spectrum propaganda war against western audiences to soften them up to support aggressive, global US militarism.

The documentary, based on data uncovered by recent Freedom of Information requests from UK investigative journalist Tom Secker and academic Matthew Alford, reveals the astonishing fact that the Pentagon has been the secret, guiding hand behind thousands of films and TV shows in recent decades.

Many more movies never reach the screen because the Defense Department’s entertainment liaison office refuses to cooperate, believing the wrong messages are being promoted.

Pentagon objections – usually the kiss of death – relate to any suggestion of military incompetence or war crimes, loss of control over nuclear weapons, influence by oil companies, illegal arms sales or drug trafficking, use of chemical or biological weapons, US promotion of coups overseas, or involvement in assassinations or torture. In fact, precisely the things the US military is known to have been doing.

How does the Defense Department exert so much control on film productions?

Because expensive blockbusters are far more likely to recoup their budget and turn a profit if they feature the shiniest new weapons. Only the Pentagon can supply aircraft carriers, helicopters, fighter jets, pilots, submarines, armoured personnel carriers, military extras and advisers. But it does so only if it is happy with the dramatic messaging.

As one academic observes in Theaters of War, propaganda works most effectively when it can be passed off as entertainment: “You’re more open to incorporation of those ideas because your defences are down.”

How many viewers would take seriously a film if it was preceded by a sponsorship logo from the Defense Department or the CIA? And for that reason, Pentagon contracts usually specify that its role in a film be veiled.

This is why few know that the Defense Department and the CIA have had a controlling hand in such varied projects as Apollo 13, the Jurassic Park and James Bond franchises, the Marvel movies, Godzilla, Transformers, Meet the Parents andI Am Legend. Or how the military regularly gets involved in baking and quiz shows.

The reality, Theaters of War argues, is that many Hollywood movies are little more than advertisements for US war industries.

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Pentagon announces additional $1B in lethal aid to Ukraine

The United States has greenlighted the largest military assistance package to Ukraine thus far, preparing to send $1 billion in ammunition for advanced rocket systems, vehicles and explosives to help the country beat back the Russian invasion.    

The new assistance package will include ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), as well as 75,000 rounds of 155 mm artillery ammunition and 50 armored medical treatment vehicles, according to a Pentagon statement released Monday.  

“It is the largest single drawdown of U.S. arms and equipment utilizing this authority, and this package provides a significant amount of additional ammunition, weapons, and equipment — the types of which the Ukrainian people are using so effectively to defend their country,” according to the statement 

The U.S. government has now approved nearly $10 billion in security assistance for Ukraine over the course of 18 packages since August 2021. 

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DOD ‘Wiped’ Phones of Senior Trump Officials—Jan. 6 Communications No Longer Accessible

Some senior Trump administration officials had their phones “wiped” by the Department of Defense (DOD) and the U.S. Army after the former president left office, meaning messages that were sent around the time of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach are no longer accessible, court filings show.

The DOD acknowledged that the phones belonging to former Pentagon officials had been wiped as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by American Oversight, a non-profit watchdog organization.

American Oversight had sought the communications that those officials had with Trump, former Vice President Pence, Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, or anyone communicating on their behalf on Jan. 6.

The watchdog group submitted the FOIA requests pertaining to the records on Jan. 12, 2021, six days after the breach of the Capitol building.

Specifically, FOIA requests sought communications from former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, former chief of staff Kash Patel, and former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, Paul Ney, the Defense Department’s general counsel; and James E. McPherson, the Army’s general counsel.

However, in a court filing roughly a year after the request, the Army stated that “when an employee separates from DOD or Army he or she turns in the government issued phone, and the phone is wiped” and that “for those custodians no longer with the agency, the text messages were not preserved and therefore could not be searched.”

The court filing noted, however, that “it is possible that particular text messages could have been saved into other records systems such as email.”

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Pentagon Widens Scope of UFO Hunting Program

It’s not just the US government but many governments around the world who have been publicly dismissive when it comes to reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). But in recent years, several governments as well as the Pentagon have opened up about it quite a bit. It has many people asking “why now?”

Now, the Pentagon is expanding its UFO tracking unit and its mission to include objects that move underwater or across multiple mediums.

The US Department of Defense (DOD) has also just renamed the unit to Airborne Object Identification and Management Group to reflect its broader mission: the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). The move was announced on last Wednesday and reflects a directive from Congress to broaden the military’s investigation of unidentified moving objects that could pose security threats.

Many experts in the field have warned against the idea of perceiving any of these commonly seen objects, especially by military personnel, as a threat.

Renowned UFO researcher, scientist, mathematician, and astrophysicist Dr. Jacques Vallée made an appearance on the Joe Rogan show in late 2020 to discuss the UFO phenomenon. On the show he stated that “we have to stop reacting to intrusions by UFOs as a threat.”

The phenomenon does indeed pose some air safety concerns, primarily because it is a misunderstood phenomenon and there is an assumption that ‘intelligence’ may not flying the object. That being said, their behaviour seems to be predominantly evasive.

According to the Pentagon, the AARO will coordinate efforts across the federal government to “detect, identify, and attribute objects of interest” that appear around military installations and other sensitive areas. In addition, the unit will “mitigate and defeat” security threats as needed. This includes unidentified space, airborne, submerged, and transmedium objects that are anomalous.

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DoD Announces the Establishment of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office

On July 15, 2022, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, in coordination with the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), amended her original direction to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security by renaming and expanding the scope of the Airborne Object Identification and Management Group (AOIMSG) to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), due to the enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2022, which included a provision to establish an office, in coordination with DNI, with responsibilities that were broader than those originally assigned to the AOIMSG. 

Today, USD(I&S) Hon. Ronald S. Moultrie informed the department of the establishment of AARO within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, and named Dr. Sean M. Kirkpatrick, most recently the chief scientist at the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Missile and Space Intelligence Center, as the director of AARO.

The mission of the AARO will be to synchronize efforts across the Department of Defense, and with other U.S. federal departments and agencies, to detect, identify and attribute objects of interest in, on or near military installations, operating areas, training areas, special use airspace and other areas of interest, and, as necessary, to mitigate any associated threats to safety of operations and national security. This includes anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects.

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Congress Grants Pentagon $58 Billion More Than Requested: DOD Report

US lawmakers granted the Department of Defense (DOD) more money than the Pentagon requested for in the fiscal 2022 defense budget, a recent Pentagon report shows.

In total, Congress sanctioned $58.55 billion in additional funds, according to the report. This includes $25.70 billion for operations and maintenance, $17.67 billion for procurement, $9.89 billion for research, development, test, and evaluation, $4.32 billion for military construction, and $947 million for military personnel.

The DOD initially had a base budget appropriation of $742.3 billion for fiscal 2022. As such, the extra $58.55 billion represents an almost 8 percent increase from the base budget. The Pentagon did not put in a request for any of the programs funded with the extra $58.55 billion.

These programs are not even in the so-called unfunded priorities lists—made up of items not included in the budget but considered critical—that departments and officers send to Congress annually.

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HOW THE PENTAGON USES A SECRETIVE PROGRAM TO WAGE PROXY WARS

SMALL TEAMS OF U.S. Special Operations forces are involved in a low-profile proxy war program on a far greater scale than previously known, according to exclusive documents and interviews with more than a dozen current and former government officials.

While The Intercept and other outlets have previously reported on the Pentagon’s use of the secretive 127e authority in multiple African countries, a new document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act offers the first official confirmation that at least 14 127e programs were also active in the greater Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region as recently as 2020. In total, between 2017 and 2020, U.S. commandos conducted at least 23 separate 127e programs across the world.

Separately, Joseph Votel, a retired four-star Army general who headed both Special Operations Command and Central Command, which oversees U.S. military efforts in the Middle East, confirmed the existence of previously unrevealed 127e “counterterrorism” efforts in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.

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I was the Pentagon’s top UFO scientist – I’ve seen more mystery objects than I can count & we don’t know what they are

ONE of the Pentagon’s chief UFO experts has revealed his identity for the first time – and claims he has seen countless mystery craft.

After writing a book on how the US government should prepare for alien contact, Dr Travis Taylor was offered the job of chief scientist for the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) Task Force, the organisation created by Congress to track UFO sightings.

Hiding in plain sight, Dr Taylor has long been known as a top investigator of UFOs and the paranormal at Skinwalker Ranch as well as on other History Channel programs.

However, unbeknownst to all but a handful of people, he was living a double life as the chief scientist for the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force.

A science genius, after leaving university, Alabama-born Dr Taylor wrote a book about how the US government should prepare for alien contact.

‘An Introduction to Planetary Defence’ caught the attention of a high-ranking intelligence official Jay Stratton, who offered him a job.

“Jay Stratton, the director of the UAP Task Force asked me if I would be interested in being the chief scientist,” Taylor told 8 News Now‘s George Knapp.

“And I was like, yeah, absolutely. Of course I would.”

The task force’s main job was to write a report for Congress summing up all the known evidence for UFOs.

They had already created a classified briefing of the most mysterious military encounters, starting with the 2004 Tic Tac incident.

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Pentagon Releases Statement Proving ‘Conspiracy Theories’ Were TRUE — Admits To Operating 46 Biolabs In Ukraine

According to a Pentagon statement released on Thursday, the US government has maintained 46 biolabs in Ukraine since the early 2000s as part of a US initiative to rid the globe of “weapons of mass destruction.”

This is the first time the US Department of Defense (DoD) has divulged the exact number of facilities its government has supported in Ukraine, and it vindicates so-called “conspiracy theorists” who have been chastised by the mainstream media and fact-checkers for exposing the presence of US biolabs in Ukraine.

In a document titled ‘Fact Sheet on WMD Threat Reduction Efforts,’ the Pentagon admitted to running the Ukrainian biolabs. The US military, on the other hand, refuted reports that the biolabs are involved in bio-warfare. Russia and China, according to the Pentagon, are “spreading disinformation and creating doubt” about the biolabs and US attempts to eliminate weapons of mass destruction.

As the Pentagon explains it, the US has “worked collaboratively to improve Ukraine’s biological safety, security, and disease surveillance for both human and animal health,” by providing support to “46 peaceful Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and disease diagnostic sites over the last two decades.” These programs have focused on “improving public health and agricultural safety measures at the nexus of nonproliferation.”

The work of these US biolabs was “often” conducted in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) and was “consistent with international best practices and norms in publishing research results, partnering with international colleagues and multilateral organizations, and widely distributing their research and public health findings,” the Pentagon insisted.

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