LOL! Watch the secret CIA video made for Reagan showing how the Soviets saw America

[kpete]

&t=205


This Secret CIA Video Showed Ronald Reagan How the Soviets Viewed America
Featuring Michael Jackson, Rambo, and a brainwashed "oligarchy controlled by big capitalists."

When President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, he became the first president to receive Central Intelligence Agency briefings in video format. The CIA produced more than 40 short informational videos for Reagan, ranging from evening-newsy looks at topics like the Chernobyl nuclear accident (below) to profiles of foreign leaders.


Not an '80s sitcom. CIA
Bob Woodward and others have maintained that Reagan preferred these videos since he was not keen on heavy reading. Not so, says CIA historian Nick Dujmovic. "This myth is supported by Reagan's purported preference as a former career actor in films and television and by the old perspective of Reagan's simple-mindedness," he asserts in an agency report on the Great Communicator's consumption of top-secret intelligence. While Reagan found the videos helpful and asked for more, the original idea for the televised briefings was the CIA's. The president still received regular written and in-person briefings, Dujmovic writes.

The CIA declassified and released several of the videos in 2013, including this look at how the Soviet media portrayed the United States. It's worth a watch as an '80s-tastic Cold War relic, featuring cameos by Michael Jackson and Rambo. There are also references to the Russian translation of oral historian Studs Terkel's Working and the state-run newspaper Pravda's interest in Native American activist/prisoner Leonard Peltier. The agency refrained from criticizing the Russian media for translating the title of Jackson's Thriller as Film of Horrors.

"The Soviet media," the CIA narrator explains, "portrays the US political system as an oligarchy ruled by big capitalists who control the impoverished masses. Moscow radio said recently that the American public has been lulled by the demagoguery of politicos whose services have been bought by capital."







MORE:
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/03/ronald-reagan-cia-video-soviets

[WhoIsNumberNone]

1. I always figured Ronnie Raygun learned all he knew about the Russians from watching Red Nightmare

And drugs from Reefer Madness

[leveymg]

2. "Me Get 'em honey, ants love honey. "

Last edited Sat Mar 21, 2015, 01:22 AM - Edit history (1)

How we ever survived that era of zombie rayguns and Jack Webb giant ants . . .

[panfluteman]

3. It Seems Lke, Since That Video Was Made,

We have become a lot more like the country that was portrayed in Soviet media. And this, I feel, is primarily due to bad policies that were initiated during the Reagan years.

[Still Sensible]

4. I think one could make the case

that the portrayal was somewhat truthful even then... and that now they we are in the age of Faux/Limbaugh the repub oligarchy doesn't give a shit if everybody knows it!

[tclambert]

5. Wow, the Soviet "propaganda" looks just like today's America.

Were they right at the time? Or did they predict the future? Or did our leaders see the Soviet view of America and say, "Hey, yeah, let's do that!"?

(I swear somebody could take the narration and match it up with recent images of the Koch Brothers, drones, military actions in Iraq, Fox News, headlines of bank failures, unemployment, etc. and pass it off as a documentary.)