How far will the department of homeland security go to construct the narrative that evil brown-skinned folk are itching to kill Americans? In at least one case, this has included promoting a false biography:
It's a message Shoebat is selling based on his own background as a Palestinian-American convert to conservative Christianity. Born in the West Bank, the son of an American mother, he says he was a Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorist in his youth who helped firebomb an Israeli bank in Bethlehem and spent time in an Israeli jail.
That billing helps him land speaking engagements like a May event in Rapid City -- a forum put on by the state Office of Homeland Security, which paid Shoebat $5,000 for the appearance. He's a darling on the church and university lecture circuit, with his speeches, books and video sales bringing in $500,000-plus in 2009, according to tax records.
"Being an ex-terrorist myself is to understand the mindset of a terrorist," Shoebat told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360."
But CNN reporters in the United States, Israel and the Palestinian territories found no evidence that would support that biography. Neither Shoebat nor his business partner provided any proof of Shoebat's involvement in terrorism, despite repeated requests.
To what extent has the military-security-industrial complex been conditioning the public to accept self-serving narratives such as the “war on terror”, a global inter-religious struggle which promises to provide an endless array of Muslim bogeyman to justify the Pentagon's ridiculous expenditures?
Propaganda has long been infused into Hollywood films through intelligence outfits such as the CIA's Entertainment Liasion Office:
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."
An analysis of Hollywood films found that Arabs were overwhelmingly portrayed in a negative light:
Shaheen's book, "Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People," is an exhaustive survey of more than 900 movies, most of them American made, that contain portrayals of Arabs, from the briefest cameo appearances to relatively major roles (though you'll have a tough time finding an Arab or Arab-American character as hero or heroine). Of these, Shaheen says only a dozen portray Arabs positively, with about 50 more offering a measure of balance.
The rise of television in the latter half of the 20th century mirrors the film industry's record, Shaheen says, and though his book "The TV Arab" is now nearly 20 years old, he sees no reason to celebrate TV as being any more evolved than film.
As he says in "Reel Bad Arabs," the people who control the entertainment industry are slow to change when they recognize a profitable opportunity. "Seen through Hollywood's distorted lenses," Shaheen writes, "Arabs look different and threatening. Projected along racial and religious lines, the stereotypes are deeply ingrained in American cinema. From 1896 until today, filmmakers have collectively indicted all Arabs as Public Enemy No. 1 -- brutal, heartless, uncivilized religious fanatics and money-mad cultural 'others' bent on terrorizing civilized Westerners, especially Christians and Jews."