@Amanda Matthews The military recruited gamers (with monetary bonuses) to become drone pilots.

Democracy Now! also did a segment on this featuring a former drone pilot.

#3 #3
‘operators’ were gamers.

I have NO idea if that was/is true or not.

Anybody know?

EDIT: ?/.

@Ellen North Far too many fast food places are attempting to "Gamify" their working experience to be more like the games that people play anyway.

Sorry, I see video games as a tool and am horrified to see them turned to such appalling ends. I had a great deal of hope in my early 20s that the genre would continue to innovate and be a medium for greater understanding. (As a roleplaying gamer, I was spoiled in the 90s, and I admit it.)

Of course, I'm also the guy who thinks the Military is a tool that has been turned to evil ends. So, grain of salt on my opinions, because I admit my biases.

#4 #4

as that used by all sorts of violent criminal gangs.

A 'normalization' process, in this case by initially taking the edge off of, and ultimately, the shock, itself, through habituation in a 'safe' setting, incrementally edging more people closer to acceptance of, or at least reducing the horror of, RL occurrences, even though putting themselves in the killer's shoes may not give most people an urge to emulate them by killing real people, as it will for some.

Like other propaganda, the effects of a successful effort will vary among different people, but will, nonetheless, overall affect the overall exposed groups/society to at least some effect.

And that's been the aim of the fascists all along, using everything from terrorism to propaganda, to incrementally shift societies around the globe toward what's being termed a 'right-wing' demand for repressive measures to be imposed by 'their betters', to encourage people to accept and even demand that their rights must be taken away in the name of a false 'security', with the aid of perception management.

Why not incorporate the usual propaganda into all forms of entertainment,including videogames - not just for violence but perhaps for games where children play that they're waitressing as fast as they can in a hectic environment? There was a rash of these 'menial job' games appearing on the intertubz some time back - and guess what's available for employment in RL?

In case anyone wants to review a little known history, while it's still accessible:

https://www.salon.com/2013/02/28/is_hollywood_secretly_in_bed_with_the_c...

When the CIA infiltrated Hollywood
A new book exposes the incestuous relationship between the two and the extent to which they both feed us propaganda

Tom Hayden
February 28, 2013 10:22pm (UTC)

... Argo and Zero Dark Thirty are only the latest film productions the CIA has influenced in the 15 years since the Agency opened its official liaison office to Hollywood. Tricia Jenkins examines the history of this version of “Hollywood confidential” in The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television. Short and dry, her book raises serious ethical and legal questions about the relationship between the CIA and Hollywood, and the extent to which we consume propaganda from one through the other. ...

...Think about that: it’s not that Hollywood is in bed with the CIA in some repugnant way, but that the Agency is looking to plant positive images about itself (in other words, propaganda) through our most popular forms of entertainment. So natural has the CIA–entertainment connection become that few question its legal or moral ramifications. This is a government agency like no other; the truth of its operations is not subject to public examination. When the CIA’s hidden persuaders influence a Hollywood movie, it is using a popular medium to spin as favorable an image of itself as possible, or at least, prevent an unfavorable one from taking hold. If incestuous enough, Jenkins argues, these relationships violate the spirit or letter of government laws. ...

... We are not told explicitly that the Agency precipitated the long chain of events that finally led to the hostage rescue now being so beautifully recreated on screen. As the film ends, a blurb reads that the CIA has not approved, authorized, or endorsed the production, conveying the impression of independence. Then the voice of Jimmy Carter, unidentified, is heard suggesting that history might have turned out differently if it wasn’t necessary to keep the CIA’s role secret for so long. (In the film and the real story, the Canadians provided cover for the US operation.) ...

...For example, the producers of Argo chose not to explore why, precisely 20 minutes after Ronald Reagan’s 1980 inaugural address, Iran released all remaining American 66 hostages after a 444-day ordeal. It smelled like a secret deal, though its exact nature was buried in controversy. (Prominent in the arrangement with Iran was William Casey, the Reagan confidant who went on to become CIA director immediately after the hostage release.) The basic point, not mentioned in Argo, is that parties in the Reagan camp were pushing Iran to delay the hostage release until after Carter lost the election. If proven, that would be treasonous. In any event, the relationships evolved to be known as Iran–Contra, which would have muddled Argo’s happy message. By minimizing or ignoring the bookends of the 1953 coup and the 1980 hostage release, Argo could stand alone as a heroic feel-good tale. The rest of us still live with the real-world consequences. ...

...Some anti-torture groups, as well as actors like David Clennon and Ed Asner, are protesting that Zero Dark Thirty portrays torture in a favorable light. (Clennon, incidentally, once played a CIA agent in The Agency, whose tagline was, “Now, more than ever, we need the CIA.”) Dick Cheney and many neoconservatives share that analysis and were therefore thrilled. ...

...It should be obvious to us that torture is immoral and does not work. Other interrogation techniques are more reliable. An FBI official like Ali Soufan knew about bin Laden’s courier, Abu Ahmed, in 2002 through informants, detective work, tailing, and surveillance techniques used with Guantanamo detainees. Then “the gloves came off” and Cheney’s “dark side” of torture and humiliation became the dominant US policy.

Bigelow leaves no doubt about her admiration of the intelligence agents “who fought bravely even as they sometimes crossed moral lines […] who gave all of themselves in both victory and defeat, in life and in death, for the defense of this nation.” Like The Hurt Locker, her film is a tribute to those who were motivated to defend America even when they crossed moral lines. That’s surely an appeal to understand torture even if it’s wrong, a position that crosses the line from filmmaker to storytelling advocacy. ...

Why do so many Americans believe that torture works and that cops need to be brutal on the mean streets, as portrayed in the movies and on TV? Perception shaping.

If certain types of people with certain tendencies or outlooks repeatedly identify with, and enact the actions of, people who slaughter other people, might that not help enable them to take that last step, whether in the military or civil forces or outside of these?

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/nov/14/thriller-ridley-scott

An offer they couldn't refuse
The CIA is often credited with 'advice' on Hollywood films, but no one is truly sure about the extent of its shadowy involvement. Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham investigate

Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham

Fri 14 Nov 2008 00.01 GMT
First published on Fri 14 Nov 2008 00.01 GMT

... No matter how seemingly craven Hollywood's behaviour towards the US armed forces has seemed, it has at least happened within the public domain. That cannot be said for the CIA's dealings with the movie business. Not until 1996 did the CIA announce, with little fanfare, that it had established an Entertainment Liaison Office, which would collaborate in a strictly advisory capacity with film-makers. Heading up the office was Chase Brandon, who had served for 25 years in the agency's elite clandestine services division, as an undercover operations officer. A PR man he isn't, though he does have Hollywood connections: he's a cousin of Tommy Lee Jones.

But the past 12 years of semi-acknowledged collaboration were preceded by decades in which the CIA maintained a deep-rooted but invisible influence of Hollywood. How could it be otherwise? As the former CIA man Bob Baer - whose books on his time with the agency were the basis for Syriana - told us: "All these people that run studios - they go to Washington, they hang around with senators, they hang around with CIA directors, and everybody's on board."

There is documentary evidence for his claims. Luigi Luraschi was the head of foreign and domestic censorship for Paramount in the early 1950s. And, it was recently discovered, he was also working for the CIA, sending in reports about how film censorship was being employed to boost the image of the US in movies that would be seen abroad. Luraschi's reports also revealed that he had persuaded several film-makers to plant "negroes" who were "well-dressed" in their movies, to counter Soviet propaganda about poor race relations in the States. The Soviet version was rather nearer the truth.

Luraschi's activities were merely the tip of the iceberg. ...

...In June 1997, the screenwriter Gary DeVore was working on the screenplay for his directorial debut. It was to be an action movie set against the backdrop of the US invasion of Panama in 1989, which led to the overthrow of dictator Manuel Noriega. According to his wife, Wendy, DeVore had been talking to an old friend - the CIA's Chase Brandon - about Noriega's regime and US counternarcotic programmes in Latin America. Wendy told CNN: "He had been very disturbed over some of the things that he had been finding in his research. He was researching the United States invasion of Panama, because he was setting the actual story that he was writing against this; and the overthrow of Noriega and the enormous amounts of money laundering in the Panamanian banks, also our own government's money laundering."

At the end of that month, DeVore had been in Santa Fe, New Mexico, working on another project. He was travelling back to California when, at 1.15am on June 28, he called Wendy, a call she says has been excised from phone records. She told CNN she was "terribly alarmed" because he was speaking as though he were under duress. She was sure "someone was in the car with him". That was the last time Wendy DeVore heard from her husband.

A year passed, but the case refused to die and speculation mounted. Even the Los Angeles Times began contemplating CIA involvement. DeVore was presumed dead, but there was no body, and no end to the questions. Lo and behold, just nine days after the LA Times reported the case, DeVore's body was found, decomposing in his Ford Explorer, in 12 feet of water in the California Aqueduct below the Antelope Valley Freeway, south of Palmdale - a city located in "aerospace valley", so dubbed by locals for its reputation as a US military-industrial-complex stronghold - fuel to the fire for conspiracy theorists.

The coroner went on to declare the cause and manner of DeVore's death to be "unknown", but police eventually reached the tentative conclusion that the screenwriter's death was an accident: he had fallen asleep at the wheel, they said, before careening off the highway and into the water, where he drowned. But loose ends remain: DeVore's laptop computer containing his unfinished script was missing from his vehicle, as was the gun he customarily carried on long trips; after his disappearance, a CIA representative allegedly showed up at DeVore's house to request access to his computer; Hollywood private investigator Don Crutchfield noted that previous drafts of DeVore's script were inexplicably wiped from said computer during the same timeframe; police claimed that DeVore's vehicle careened off the highway, yet DeVore's widow was troubled by the absence of visible damage to the guardrail at the scene of the alleged accident; and how come no one noticed an SUV sitting in the water beneath a busy highway for a whole year? Perhaps the whole incident is too like a conspiracy movie to be a real conspiracy - but many remain troubled by De Vore's death. ...

We've long known what they are; we know some of what they do. Suspicious is a good place to be - it inhibits the effect of continuous propaganda.

Edit to add that we might want to wonder why a society so heavily propagandized:

toward (overall) reverence for a globally invading military, one killing 'bad guys'/taking out 'evil governments' all over the world, by personalizing this into respectful words for the individuals among the cannon-fodder, so often deprived of promised benefits, with many homeless and in desperate need of healing because of the horrors they've engaged in for increased corporate/billionaire profiteering;

into a frantic emphasis on 'gun rights' (while others are taken) unlike anything else in the entire world, where people generally just have their personal guns without making a NRA-generated fuss about 'gun rights';

into a 'school shooter' issue also unlike anywhere else in the world (just beginning to appear in others now);

into acceptance of a militarized police killing appalling numbers of citizens with impunity;

et endless cetera,

produces and sells so many violent video games, where people may happily play the role of violent criminals, seemingly often presented as some sort as some sort of a cool 'Black culture' thing - while real Black people are routinely murdered by militarized police for Breathing/Walking/Reaching For A Requested Drivers License While Black, or games where they can practice shooting the inhabitants of other, invaded countries.

While people in other countries may have and play violent video games, cultures differ, and up until now, no other country or people have suffered the level of propaganda that Americans have been subjected to.

It says volumes for the human spirit that so many have not been entirely pathologized, but far too many have fallen prey to this in at least some areas - and the censorship tightens as the fascist claws tear through the tattered gloves.

Maintaining awareness becomes more imperative than ever, in my opinion.

@Ellen North

It says volumes for the human spirit that so many have not been entirely pathologized, but far too many have fallen prey to this in at least some areas - and the censorship tightens as the fascist claws tear through the tattered gloves.

Zero-Dark-Thgirty was as we come to learn a piece of bravura bullshit about how clever the CIA was in capturing killing Bin Laden in Abbottabad. Abbottabad is 1.5 miles from Pakistan's West Point. It is a certainty that the clever, resourceful CIA did not track down Bin Laden but paid off the ISI to reveal his location and clear the airways for his "capture".

Great comment!

#4 #4

as that used by all sorts of violent criminal gangs.

A 'normalization' process, in this case by initially taking the edge off of, and ultimately, the shock, itself, through habituation in a 'safe' setting, incrementally edging more people closer to acceptance of, or at least reducing the horror of, RL occurrences, even though putting themselves in the killer's shoes may not give most people an urge to emulate them by killing real people, as it will for some.

Like other propaganda, the effects of a successful effort will vary among different people, but will, nonetheless, overall affect the overall exposed groups/society to at least some effect.

And that's been the aim of the fascists all along, using everything from terrorism to propaganda, to incrementally shift societies around the globe toward what's being termed a 'right-wing' demand for repressive measures to be imposed by 'their betters', to encourage people to accept and even demand that their rights must be taken away in the name of a false 'security', with the aid of perception management.

Why not incorporate the usual propaganda into all forms of entertainment,including videogames - not just for violence but perhaps for games where children play that they're waitressing as fast as they can in a hectic environment? There was a rash of these 'menial job' games appearing on the intertubz some time back - and guess what's available for employment in RL?

In case anyone wants to review a little known history, while it's still accessible:

https://www.salon.com/2013/02/28/is_hollywood_secretly_in_bed_with_the_c...

When the CIA infiltrated Hollywood
A new book exposes the incestuous relationship between the two and the extent to which they both feed us propaganda

Tom Hayden
February 28, 2013 10:22pm (UTC)

... Argo and Zero Dark Thirty are only the latest film productions the CIA has influenced in the 15 years since the Agency opened its official liaison office to Hollywood. Tricia Jenkins examines the history of this version of “Hollywood confidential” in The CIA in Hollywood: How the Agency Shapes Film and Television. Short and dry, her book raises serious ethical and legal questions about the relationship between the CIA and Hollywood, and the extent to which we consume propaganda from one through the other. ...

...Think about that: it’s not that Hollywood is in bed with the CIA in some repugnant way, but that the Agency is looking to plant positive images about itself (in other words, propaganda) through our most popular forms of entertainment. So natural has the CIA–entertainment connection become that few question its legal or moral ramifications. This is a government agency like no other; the truth of its operations is not subject to public examination. When the CIA’s hidden persuaders influence a Hollywood movie, it is using a popular medium to spin as favorable an image of itself as possible, or at least, prevent an unfavorable one from taking hold. If incestuous enough, Jenkins argues, these relationships violate the spirit or letter of government laws. ...

... We are not told explicitly that the Agency precipitated the long chain of events that finally led to the hostage rescue now being so beautifully recreated on screen. As the film ends, a blurb reads that the CIA has not approved, authorized, or endorsed the production, conveying the impression of independence. Then the voice of Jimmy Carter, unidentified, is heard suggesting that history might have turned out differently if it wasn’t necessary to keep the CIA’s role secret for so long. (In the film and the real story, the Canadians provided cover for the US operation.) ...

...For example, the producers of Argo chose not to explore why, precisely 20 minutes after Ronald Reagan’s 1980 inaugural address, Iran released all remaining American 66 hostages after a 444-day ordeal. It smelled like a secret deal, though its exact nature was buried in controversy. (Prominent in the arrangement with Iran was William Casey, the Reagan confidant who went on to become CIA director immediately after the hostage release.) The basic point, not mentioned in Argo, is that parties in the Reagan camp were pushing Iran to delay the hostage release until after Carter lost the election. If proven, that would be treasonous. In any event, the relationships evolved to be known as Iran–Contra, which would have muddled Argo’s happy message. By minimizing or ignoring the bookends of the 1953 coup and the 1980 hostage release, Argo could stand alone as a heroic feel-good tale. The rest of us still live with the real-world consequences. ...

...Some anti-torture groups, as well as actors like David Clennon and Ed Asner, are protesting that Zero Dark Thirty portrays torture in a favorable light. (Clennon, incidentally, once played a CIA agent in The Agency, whose tagline was, “Now, more than ever, we need the CIA.”) Dick Cheney and many neoconservatives share that analysis and were therefore thrilled. ...

...It should be obvious to us that torture is immoral and does not work. Other interrogation techniques are more reliable. An FBI official like Ali Soufan knew about bin Laden’s courier, Abu Ahmed, in 2002 through informants, detective work, tailing, and surveillance techniques used with Guantanamo detainees. Then “the gloves came off” and Cheney’s “dark side” of torture and humiliation became the dominant US policy.

Bigelow leaves no doubt about her admiration of the intelligence agents “who fought bravely even as they sometimes crossed moral lines […] who gave all of themselves in both victory and defeat, in life and in death, for the defense of this nation.” Like The Hurt Locker, her film is a tribute to those who were motivated to defend America even when they crossed moral lines. That’s surely an appeal to understand torture even if it’s wrong, a position that crosses the line from filmmaker to storytelling advocacy. ...

Why do so many Americans believe that torture works and that cops need to be brutal on the mean streets, as portrayed in the movies and on TV? Perception shaping.

If certain types of people with certain tendencies or outlooks repeatedly identify with, and enact the actions of, people who slaughter other people, might that not help enable them to take that last step, whether in the military or civil forces or outside of these?

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/nov/14/thriller-ridley-scott

An offer they couldn't refuse
The CIA is often credited with 'advice' on Hollywood films, but no one is truly sure about the extent of its shadowy involvement. Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham investigate

Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham

Fri 14 Nov 2008 00.01 GMT
First published on Fri 14 Nov 2008 00.01 GMT

... No matter how seemingly craven Hollywood's behaviour towards the US armed forces has seemed, it has at least happened within the public domain. That cannot be said for the CIA's dealings with the movie business. Not until 1996 did the CIA announce, with little fanfare, that it had established an Entertainment Liaison Office, which would collaborate in a strictly advisory capacity with film-makers. Heading up the office was Chase Brandon, who had served for 25 years in the agency's elite clandestine services division, as an undercover operations officer. A PR man he isn't, though he does have Hollywood connections: he's a cousin of Tommy Lee Jones.

But the past 12 years of semi-acknowledged collaboration were preceded by decades in which the CIA maintained a deep-rooted but invisible influence of Hollywood. How could it be otherwise? As the former CIA man Bob Baer - whose books on his time with the agency were the basis for Syriana - told us: "All these people that run studios - they go to Washington, they hang around with senators, they hang around with CIA directors, and everybody's on board."

There is documentary evidence for his claims. Luigi Luraschi was the head of foreign and domestic censorship for Paramount in the early 1950s. And, it was recently discovered, he was also working for the CIA, sending in reports about how film censorship was being employed to boost the image of the US in movies that would be seen abroad. Luraschi's reports also revealed that he had persuaded several film-makers to plant "negroes" who were "well-dressed" in their movies, to counter Soviet propaganda about poor race relations in the States. The Soviet version was rather nearer the truth.

Luraschi's activities were merely the tip of the iceberg. ...

...In June 1997, the screenwriter Gary DeVore was working on the screenplay for his directorial debut. It was to be an action movie set against the backdrop of the US invasion of Panama in 1989, which led to the overthrow of dictator Manuel Noriega. According to his wife, Wendy, DeVore had been talking to an old friend - the CIA's Chase Brandon - about Noriega's regime and US counternarcotic programmes in Latin America. Wendy told CNN: "He had been very disturbed over some of the things that he had been finding in his research. He was researching the United States invasion of Panama, because he was setting the actual story that he was writing against this; and the overthrow of Noriega and the enormous amounts of money laundering in the Panamanian banks, also our own government's money laundering."

At the end of that month, DeVore had been in Santa Fe, New Mexico, working on another project. He was travelling back to California when, at 1.15am on June 28, he called Wendy, a call she says has been excised from phone records. She told CNN she was "terribly alarmed" because he was speaking as though he were under duress. She was sure "someone was in the car with him". That was the last time Wendy DeVore heard from her husband.

A year passed, but the case refused to die and speculation mounted. Even the Los Angeles Times began contemplating CIA involvement. DeVore was presumed dead, but there was no body, and no end to the questions. Lo and behold, just nine days after the LA Times reported the case, DeVore's body was found, decomposing in his Ford Explorer, in 12 feet of water in the California Aqueduct below the Antelope Valley Freeway, south of Palmdale - a city located in "aerospace valley", so dubbed by locals for its reputation as a US military-industrial-complex stronghold - fuel to the fire for conspiracy theorists.

The coroner went on to declare the cause and manner of DeVore's death to be "unknown", but police eventually reached the tentative conclusion that the screenwriter's death was an accident: he had fallen asleep at the wheel, they said, before careening off the highway and into the water, where he drowned. But loose ends remain: DeVore's laptop computer containing his unfinished script was missing from his vehicle, as was the gun he customarily carried on long trips; after his disappearance, a CIA representative allegedly showed up at DeVore's house to request access to his computer; Hollywood private investigator Don Crutchfield noted that previous drafts of DeVore's script were inexplicably wiped from said computer during the same timeframe; police claimed that DeVore's vehicle careened off the highway, yet DeVore's widow was troubled by the absence of visible damage to the guardrail at the scene of the alleged accident; and how come no one noticed an SUV sitting in the water beneath a busy highway for a whole year? Perhaps the whole incident is too like a conspiracy movie to be a real conspiracy - but many remain troubled by De Vore's death. ...

We've long known what they are; we know some of what they do. Suspicious is a good place to be - it inhibits the effect of continuous propaganda.

Edit to add that we might want to wonder why a society so heavily propagandized:

toward (overall) reverence for a globally invading military, one killing 'bad guys'/taking out 'evil governments' all over the world, by personalizing this into respectful words for the individuals among the cannon-fodder, so often deprived of promised benefits, with many homeless and in desperate need of healing because of the horrors they've engaged in for increased corporate/billionaire profiteering;

into a frantic emphasis on 'gun rights' (while others are taken) unlike anything else in the entire world, where people generally just have their personal guns without making a NRA-generated fuss about 'gun rights';

into a 'school shooter' issue also unlike anywhere else in the world (just beginning to appear in others now);

into acceptance of a militarized police killing appalling numbers of citizens with impunity;

et endless cetera,

produces and sells so many violent video games, where people may happily play the role of violent criminals, seemingly often presented as some sort as some sort of a cool 'Black culture' thing - while real Black people are routinely murdered by militarized police for Breathing/Walking/Reaching For A Requested Drivers License While Black, or games where they can practice shooting the inhabitants of other, invaded countries.

While people in other countries may have and play violent video games, cultures differ, and up until now, no other country or people have suffered the level of propaganda that Americans have been subjected to.

It says volumes for the human spirit that so many have not been entirely pathologized, but far too many have fallen prey to this in at least some areas - and the censorship tightens as the fascist claws tear through the tattered gloves.

Maintaining awareness becomes more imperative than ever, in my opinion.