Many of the CIA et al. suspects whose activities are examined on this blog are pursuing pseudo-careers in the entertainment industrial complex disseminating pseudo-culture. Adelstein is one such individual, and it seems that his network has been attempting to build up false publicity around a movie that doesn’t seem to exist in an attempt to weave Daniel Radcliffe into the cloth of the strategic cloak behind which they aim to conceal themselves and conduct further covert operations.
As it is one aim of this blog to remedy the ills of Western civilization by denying the so-called intelligence agencies of the ludicrous tools they have adopted to undermine civil society in countries around the world, starting with their own. To this end, I take up another analytical frame of reference introduced by Boorstin and apply it to this context. That frame of reference relates to the use of the “interview” as a mechanism for producing pseudo-events. With respect to the falsely projected movie project, CIA et al.-controlled media outlets and intelligence operatives have disseminated a series of interviews aiming to ensnare Radcliffe in a web of prefabricated publicity, perhaps aiming to ensure him that the film would be a success in advance so that he might consider making it.
The relationship between Hollywood and the CIA has come under substantial criticism in recent years due to the collusion of film makers with the CIA in disseminating pseudo-event and promotional propaganda. This specific topic has been broached in the news media:
- http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/07/operation-tinseltown-how-the-cia-manipulates-hollywood/491138/
- https://www.theguardian.com/film/2008/nov/14/thriller-ridley-scott
And in scholarly publications:
http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/jencia- Recently reissued in a revised, updated edition: https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/jenkins-cia-in-hollywood
Boorstin
says the following about interviews:
Very
early the institution acquired a reputation for being contrived. "The
'interview,' " The Nation complained (January 28, 1869),
"as at present managed, is generally the joint product of some humbug of a
hack politician and another humbug of a reporter." A few years later
another magazine editor called the interview "the most perfect contrivance
yet devised to make journalism an offence, a thing of ill savor in all decent
nostrils." Many objected to the practice as an invasion of privacy. []
Nowadays
a successful reporter must be the midwife-or more often the conceiver-'of his
news. By the interview technique he incites a public figure to make statements
which will sound like news. During the twentieth century this technique has
grown into a devious apparatus which, in skillful hands, can shape national
policy.
The
pressure of time, and the need to produce a uniform news stream to fill the
issuing media, induce Washington correspondents and others to use the interview
and other techniques for making pseudo-events in novel, ever more ingenious and
aggressive ways.
[]
For
example, a background off-the- record press conference, if it is actually a
mere trial balloon or a diplomatic device (as it sometimes was for Secretary of
State John Foster Dulles), becomes the bas is of official "denials"
and "dis a vowals," of speculation and interpretation by columnists
and commentators, and of special interviews on and off television with
Senators, Representatives, and other public officials.
Any
statement or non-statement by anyone in the public eye can become the basis of
counter-statements or refusals to comment by others. All these compound the
ambiguity of the occasion which first brought them into being. [emphasis
added]
Nowadays
the test of a Washington reporter is seldom his skill at precise dramatic
reporting, but more often his adeptness at dark intimation. If he wishes to
keep his news channels open he must accumulate a vocabulary and develop a style
to conceal his sources and obscure the relation of a supposed event or
statement to the underlying facts of life, at the same time seeming to offer
hard facts. Much of his stock in trade is his own and other people's
speculation about the reality of what he reports. He lives in a penumbra
between fact and fantasy. He helps create that very obscurity without which the
supposed illumination of his reports would be unnecessary.
I’ve
already linked to the Japan Times article quoting an interview with Adelstein regarding
the purported film. This is an interview of Adelstein by a suspected Australian
intelligence officer, Kwenton Bellette (https://www.facebook.com/kwenton) that I found on a Radcliffe fansite: http://simplydanielradcliffe.com/articles/exclusive-author-jake-adelstein-dishes-some-dirt-on-tokyo-vice-movie.
That page wouldn’t archive due to server time-out, so I archived another
version found here: http://screenanarchy.com/2013/05/interview-author-jake-adelstein-dishes-some-dirt-on-tokyo-vice.html.
I’m not even going to quote any of the specious tripe, as that would simply add
substance to the phantasmic pseudo-event. This specious post (http://www.cinemablend.com/new/How-Far-Daniel-Radcliffe-Willing-Go-Role-67219.html)
on an entertainment industrial complex gossip-like website has a byline date of
“1 year ago” with a comment by
a “Guest” dating from “2 years ago”.
Go figga… The author represents herself as having interviewed Radcliffe from which she cites quotes for the “unexpected
update” on the film. One article that does merit quoting in light of its
interview content is this piece by suspected MI6 officer Julian Ryall for the
Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10032533/Daniel-Radcliffe-to-play-US-journalist-investigating-Japanese-underworld-in-Tokyo-Vice.html).
Ryall’s Facebook page lists both Adelstein—the subject of the article—and fellow
suspected MI6 author and Japan Times columnist Rob Goolhilly (https://www.facebook.com/julian.ryall.7/friends?pnref=lhc),
whom I’ve examined with respect to his propaganda related to Evangelical
Christian CIA officer Ken Joseph Jr. in the lawsuit, but have not gotten around
to on this blog. I’ve included the first two pages from each of two articles
(JT: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2001/07/24/travel/religious-sites-relics-indicate-christ-beat-buddha-to-japan-2/#.V9lslyiLSUk;
Counterpunch: http://web.archive.org/web/20110703114140/http://www.counterpunch.org/lipton04122003.html)
submitted as exhibits to the D.C. District Court about Goolhilly and Joseph.
The Telegraph article includes the following:
Adelstein co-wrote the
screenplay for the movie, which will be directed by Anthony Mandler, with
filming expected to get under way in Tokyo in the early part of 2014.
"Daniel read the
book last year, said that he really liked it and said he wanted to do the
project," Adelstein told The Daily Telegraph. "One of the things that
impressed me from the outset was that he said he wanted to learn Japanese to
play the part.
"Initially I was
not sure about him for the role, but once he said that, showed such an interest
in journalism and was just so enthusiastic about the whole thing, then I
thought he would be great for the role."
After reading the
book, Radcliffe said he was most impressed by the scene in which Adelstein is
going through his stacks of business cards to work out who he might have
"put in harm's way," he said.
"I want to try to
arrange for Daniel to spend a day following a Japanese reporter so he can see
how much of a grind the job can be," Adelstein said. "I hope the film
is able to portray both the good and bad of Japanese journalism.
"I would say that
the hardest thing for Daniel is going to be speaking Japanese and making it
sound like he has been doing that for a long time," he said. "But he
has done a lot of good work and I think this will be a nice change for
him."
Once
again, Adelstein’s paternalistic boorishness is evident. Ryall subsequently
published this sensationalized disinformation piece that was part of the body
of English newsprint criticized by Chris Beck: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/11840788/Japan-braces-for-outbreak-of-gang-warfare.html.
Aside
from articles heavy with interview derived content, there are a number of similar
online announcements and the like that seem to be fabricated or derived from a
previous fabrication:
several
of which are based on this:
http://deadline.com/2013/05/daniel-radcliffe-to-star-in-crime-saga-tokyo-vice-487472/.
Meanwhile, Adelstein himself appears to have created an “official” Twitter page
for the movie, with no updates for the past year or so: https://twitter.com/tokyovicemovie.
In
this January 2 article (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/01/02/national/media-national/looking-bit-light-fight-crime),
Adelstein states:
Another new year has begun but it feels like little has changed. The
yakuza still operate in the open. Goto is back in business and, by all
accounts, doing well as an esteemed guest of the Cambodian government. I’m
struggling to make a living, although I’m no longer under police protection. You
could say I’m not feeling particularly lucky. [emphasis added]
Here, you might wonder,
how does a guy who travels back and forth between the US and Japan frequently,
maintaining residences in both countries, and has sold the rights to make a
movie out of a book he published to Hollywood that is said to have signed the
star of the Harry Potter movies to play the lead justify telling his readers
that he is “struggling to make a living”? On the other hand, it’s not even
clear that there actually is a movie deal, or that the Daniel Radcliffe is
going to act in it. The Japan Times article (http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/05/03/national/harry-potter-star-to-feature-in-tokyo-vice-yakuza-thriller)
quotes Adelstein:
Adelstein
said the role will be a good change for Radcliffe, who developed
an innocent image as the hero wizard Harry Potter. “He’s mature enough to deal
with the role as a journalist,” Adelstein said, noting the British actor is now
23, about the same age he was when he started at the Yomiuri Shimbun.
Adelstein went so far as to post a comment mentioning Radcliffe again in the Disqus readers' comments to the article (posted below as an
image); now that's going the extra mile...
Meanwhile, this article,
linked to in the reddit thread, includes no mention of the purported film,
which was ridiculed as a farce by an informed commenter who opened the
discussion in the Disqus thread:
Conclusion
In light of his high
profile in the mass media, the case of Adelstein merited substantial
examination, but there are other equally important topics with pending blog
posts about the CIA et al.’s operations here in Kyoto and Japan in general that
are being neglected…
UPDATE
Within a few hours of my posting this entry, one of the articles linked to (http://www.cinemablend.com/new/How-Far-Daniel-Radcliffe-Willing-Go-Role-67219.html) was modified by the website publishing it. Accordingly, I'm adding a screenshot of the first page and comment of the version I manually archived I manually archived. I'm not going to speculate as to the cause, it could have been some computer glitch, I suppose.
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