The Edward Snowden Movie

Fixed_Cross · May 29, 2014, 1:52pm

Ex ILP staffer Tom Secker put together an intelligence report on the forthcoming Edward Snowden Movie which I turned into a video.

Here’s the transcript.

It was recently announced that the story of former CIA and NSA contractor Edward Snowden is to be made into a Hollywood movie. The real life story, or at least the version told by Glenn Greenwald in his book No Place to Hide, will be produced by Sony Pictures and in particular by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli.

Wilson and Broccoli are best known for their involvement in the James Bond film franchise. Under their stewardship the films have becoming progressively more violent, and have increasingly involved participation from the US Department of Defense and the British intelligence services. In particular, Wilson worked closely with screenwriter and producer Richard Maibaum, who collaborated with military and intelligence services from WW2 to the end of the Cold War. Both Wilson and Broccoli were awarded OBEs in the 2008 honours list.

The most recent entry in the Bond film franchise, Skyfall, was released in late 2012 and predicted aspects of the Snowden story months before he began to leak documents and publicly identify himself. In the film Javier Bardem plays a rogue ex-MI6 agent with the ability to hack into any system he likes. So the people who are set to produce the film about Edward Snowden predicted the whole Snowden story in their last major production. This same ex-agent genius hacker character also appears in other movies, including Enemy of the State, which was produced in co-operation with the CIA.

More broadly, Sony Pictures were also responsible for the real life adaptations Captain Philips and The Social Network, both of which are hugely misleading films. Captain Philips was assisted by the US Navy, so it is no surprise that the storyline is grossly inaccurate and portrays the Navy as heroes. The Social Network tells the story of the founding of facebook, but makes no mention of the investment in facebook by James Breyer, a man with associates on the board of CIA venture capital firm In Q Tel. It also glosses over the investment of Peter Thiel, who founded a company with In Q Tel and now sits on the steering committee for the notorious Bilderberg Group.

Sony Pictures also made Zero Dark Thirty, which tells a profoundly flawed story about the manhunt for Osama Bin Laden. This film enjoyed an unprecedented amount of co-operation from the CIA, who maintained absolute editing power over the script. They clearly had no objection to the lengthy sexual-masochistic torture scenes that make up the first reel of the movie. Despite previously criticising the film, Greenwald is apparently now delighted to be working with the company that produced it, saying they ‘have a successful track record of making thoughtful and nuanced true-life stories that audiences want to see.’

Greenwald should also have no problem with the production company and producers maintaining good relationships with military and intelligence agencies. Greenwald’s new benefactor, ebay founder Pierre Omidyar has also invested in a company alongside the CIA’s In Q Tel, like Peter Thiel before him. Another investor in the same company is Booz Allen Hamilton, the former employer of Edward Snowden. The company that Thiel co-founded with In Q Tel, Palantir, helped develop the PRISM software that Snowden apparently blew the whistle on.

And what of Snowden himself? He has made no objection to Greenwald getting into bed with an ebay billionaire who has investments in the same company as the CIA. He has made no objection to Greenwald and Omidyar privatising the cache of document that he supposedly risked his life and abandoned his career and family to get out to the public. Why not?

He has told us that despite all his ‘revelations’: ‘I worked for the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency. I love my country, and I believe that spying serves a vital purpose and must continue.’ He also joked in an interview that: ‘I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.’

So what can we predict from this about the forthcoming Snowden movie?
It will tell a story that is essentially untrue.
It will have more sex and violence than reality.
It will downplay Snowden’s CIA connection, and all other CIA connections in this story.
It will portray Snowden and Greenwald as heroes.
It will either not mention Pierre Omidyar, or portray him as benevolent
Security state agencies will probably be involved in the film’s production.
It will portray the security state as ambiguous heroes, as a necessary evil.

Here’s the video
youtube.com/watch?v=ibEwCB7bGIw
dailymotion.com/video/x1xcov … mbediframe

Here’s the page on Humanarchy
humanarchy.net/the-edward-snowden-movie/

This may put the Snowden narrative in a different light.

James_S_Saint · May 29, 2014, 2:50pm

Well, congrats on finally getting around to a production (I’ve lately been tempted to tell you to just forget the philosophizing and get your filming beefed up). It is a good, quality production, although I still say that your sound mix has the voice-to-music set with the voice too low. And I’m not sure that chasing false flags is the way to go, but at this point, anything is better than nothing and there are SO many false flags, they can keep you busy for ages.

Arminius · May 29, 2014, 8:28pm

I hope so. Snowden, the CIA, the NSA, DIA, and all the others knew beforehand that I would write this!

Fixed_Cross · May 30, 2014, 12:57am

Thanks. Its a start.
I am tempted to put the music too high, as I personally like it but it’s close to drowning out the voice.

Fixed_Cross · May 30, 2014, 12:58am

So whats a good next subject?

To teach is always best.

LaughingMan · May 30, 2014, 2:44am

Wonders will never cease.

James_S_Saint · May 30, 2014, 3:07am

Well what you want to avoid is expending all of your energy on the context such that the film never gets done. You want a few practice films wherein your not really concerned with content, merely quality and ease of production. So perhaps a good context would be a film on how to segregate and bond labor in producing a small film (easy to fit into a philosophy issue later on Social Molecularisation); which tasks should be done separately, by what kind of person, and why anyone would want to do it for a small film production. Include an example - your own and perhaps in contrast, how someone else did theirs. Perhaps there are a variety of ways to make separate films about, one at a time. Don’t try to make the holy grail of film making or impressing anyone with anything other than the accomplishment of the small effort and practice.

Once you have done that sort of small film a few times, you can get into more interesting content and then back into the philosophy realm so that you’re not spending all of your mental energy on worrying about how to bring it all together in order to make “the perfect film” that expresses “the perfect philosophy” or “the most important” this, that, or the other. Keep it fun and easy. And that generally means having someone who enjoys portion A focus on portion A while someone who enjoys portion B focus on portion B. The producer of a film is really just a person who enjoys bringing the right people together. If you do your job right, everyone will enjoy the fact that they DID it and it got done (schedules are important too).

Content concerning the deceptions of governing people, in order to be real, have to deal with layers and layers and layers of deceptions covering lies that were about lies about truths that were never really true to begin with. Every even reasonable deception has at least 3 layers of deception and at minimum 2 purposes to be gained. It’s just too much of a mess to deal with until dealing with messes is fun and easy. Making it fun can be easy but making it easy might be tough to make fun (requires someone who enjoys that kind of task).

The Snowden film is itself an obvious deception concerning other deceptions. But how many layers for which purposes within all of the other lying going on? Who knows, who really cares that much. Eventually, someone in an effort to lie about what was a deception, inadvertently reveals a truth.

Sauwelios · May 30, 2014, 11:35pm

I suppose the link with Humanarchy is that Humanarchy does not consider the Security State a necessary evil?

Fixed_Cross · May 31, 2014, 4:32pm

Yes, as the security state is indeed quite antithetical to the values at the ground of Humanarchy. It is after all a mechanisn that dictates standards and thus prevents any form of profound selfvaluing. It is basically a kind of zoo, or more accurately, a farm, where humans are being kept for very selective purposes, from which expression of their most powerful/joyful nature nature is in cases of the not entirely meek but not criminal is certainly excluded.

De Snoden.

LaughingMan · May 31, 2014, 5:53pm

Nicholas Cage as Edward Snowden? :-"

Fixed_Cross · May 31, 2014, 10:45pm

I just saw Edge of Tomorrow in IMAX 3D. For the first fifteen minutes I thought it was going to be unbearably bad and eerily manipulative, but then it suddenly took the turn I had not expected because I hadnt seen the trailers. Then it turned awesome and eerily manipulative and the next moment I blinked it was finished. Weird. The first movie since I can remember that didn’t bore me.

LaughingMan · May 31, 2014, 10:51pm

I haven’t seen that movie yet. I’ll have to check it out.

Diekon · June 1, 2014, 10:41am

It reminds me of the recurring parody on conspiracytheories in ‘Man Bijt Hond’ :

youtube.com/watch?v=3kA1Ky3SeMQ

If you want to be critical of society, i think parody, satire and humour in general might be more effective.

Fixed_Cross · June 1, 2014, 11:45am

Tyler - if you can, don’t watch any trailers.

Diekon - thanks for trying to think along, but I think you kinda missed the point. This was not criticism of society, but a collection of information about a forthcoming movie. I don’t mind that you interpreted it as criticism, that must mean you found some of the info disturbing in some way, and I can respect that.

I agree that when you do criticize society, a bit of comedy is often advised.
On the other hand, to go all out with comedy on serious issues just means giving up on them.

I never watch Man Bijt Hond, I can’t stand the narrator. A guy who I used to work with makes things for them, he turned into an arrogant Hilversum snob since.

Diekon · June 1, 2014, 4:26pm

I didn’t really think the video was criticism of society, though it doesn’t paint a very nice picture of the people and organisations involved… With criticism of society, I was thinking more generally about the kind of posts you make and the Humanarchy thing. It seems to be the direction you are taking.

I agree. Comedy can be very serious, and i think it needs that serious side to really work. I used to watch a fair amount of Dutch TV, and you have a kind of shows and persona’s that’s all about rediculing everyone and everything without much content behind it. That’s not the kind of comedy i had in mind.

I don’t like the Dutch version of Man Bijt Hond either. The clip i linked to was from the Belgian show which was overall much better I think. It was a huge hit in Belgium at the time, which is why it was bought and remade for Dutch television. But it doesn’t really work… i think mainly because the show was a very Belgian thing and it doesn’t jive with Dutch culture and humour.

Fixed_Cross · June 1, 2014, 4:56pm

Belgian tv is very decent compared to dutch tv. The dutch invented concepts like big brother and abominations like this. I hate this country on a lot of levels.
Not that Belgium is such a shining example, but it has better tv.

Anyway I largely agree about comedy. Without that element I would never have gone near a camera.
Here’s another rather different bit of Humanarchy News. More to follow.
youtube.com/watch?v=z9jOtX5u11c

Diekon · June 1, 2014, 5:04pm

Yes it has some remarkable good shows, and production houses, for such a small target authience. And yes Begium isn’t such a shining example indeed, there’s a large need for sublimation… maybe that’s why we have some decent art and artists .

Sauwelios · June 1, 2014, 6:28pm

That can be taken in two ways…

Fixed_Cross · June 1, 2014, 6:39pm

How is that?

Sauwelios · June 2, 2014, 5:07am

Well, there are two sides to a camera.