The US Department of War – previously the Department of Defense – are a bunch of lazy, haptic, rumble in the jungle goon squad death merchants. That much is obvious to anyone paying attention. They are also criminal overlords of a dysfunctional militaristic global system that does little to help anyone while doing as much as possible to destroy parts of the planet and large numbers of people. Again, obvious.

What is, perhaps, not so obvious is that their lame-brained, Chinese plastic methods of trying to cover up what they are doing while glamourising themselves through Hollywood propaganda are going into overdrive. Excessive classification. Refusal to respond to FOIA requests. Abusing the FOIA process. Perverting the course of information. Someone should sue these bastards over and over and over and over and over and over (I won’t bore you to tears by repeating ‘and over’ again and again and again and again…).

In July 2017 I submitted a FOIA request for Pentagon documents including communications with film and TV producers for the following productions:  Termite, Rampage, Horse Soldiers, The Long Road Home, Rockbound, Fast and Furious 8, Tunnels of Cu Chi, Transformers 5, The Fighting Season, Too Fat to Fight, Cake Boss, Jackie, Masterchef, Top Gear, Bakers vs Fakers and the documentary Transmilitary.

They responded with over 1000 pages of documents, which were entirely redacted except for one page.  That’s right ladies and gentleman, one fucking page.  ONE.  FUCKING.  PAGE.

Naturally, I filed an appeal citing the Argus Leader ruling in the Supreme Court that said the commercial confidentiality exemption of the FOIA only applies in very specific circumstances, and that documents produced by the US government (rather than submitted to them by private entities) do not and should not be hidden behind this exemption.  The DOD lawyers found in my favour, sent the request back to the DOD’s FOIA office for reprocessing, they sat on their hands for around five years and then responded to my FOIA request again.

This time, all 1034 pages of documents were redacted save for three pages.  Two scenarios are possible here:

1. Some poor schmuck had to go through, line by line, and try to figure out where the exemption still applies and where it doesn’t.
2. They just released a couple more pages and maintained the redactions on all the others.

My guess is that scenario 2 is what happened.  This hapless, plastic hat-wearing bootstrap fishbait organisation just lie.  They lie about almost everything.  No one, in the world, should believe anything they say.  They continue to violate US federal law even when their own lawyers are telling them they are violating it.

The Decline of the US Military in Hollywood

However, it isn’t all bad news.  I recently acquired an email listing all of the Production Assistance Agreements that the Dept of War (DOD) signed in 2025, and it is only a few dozen productions in total.  One of the biggest is the new Jack Ryan movie Ghost War alongside Diving Dogs Challenge, Christine the History Queen, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders USO Tour, some crappy video by a social media influencer who went through Marine Corps training, some Mr Beast piece of absolute shite, a NORAD Tracks Santa project and an upcoming biopic about Jimmy Stewart.

Gone, it seems, are the days of Hollywood’s biggest, brightest and dumbest producers lining up around the block to work with the entertainment liaison offices.  I cannot be certain whether this is because an internet anarchist decided to name and shame everyone he could for their role in making US military propaganda, but I’m guessing that has something to do with it.  Nothing from Marvel, DC, the Transformers franchise, Fast and Furious, Harry Potter, Jurassic World, Star Wars or any other major blockbuster franchise.  They are so desperate for collaborations that they’ve turned to tired, tedious, worn out franchises like Jack Ryan and attention-seeking floozy bastard social media harlots/wannabe starlets.  They want eyes on their prizes, but they aren’t getting many of them any more.

Indeed, Ghost War is a generic, over the shoulder, overly shadowy, borderline racist heap of garbage.  It opens with a by-the-books hack attack that turns into a shoot-em-up sequence for no reason at all, before cutting to John Krasinski going for a jog wearing wireless bluetooth headphones listening to no music.  You get the idea.  Films have gotten worse in this decade, and the ELOs are suffering.  Their pandering and manipulation is no longer working especially well when it comes to Hollywood.  Jack is back, he’s working for Wall Street (shocker, I know) and gets drawn back into CIA operations for no reason whatsoever.  Product placement abounds in various directions, the villains are poorly defined and reviewers and audiences aren’t impressed.

But the DOD has no choice.  They have to keep doing this because otherwise they would be forced to admit that they are losing popularity and relevance in a multi-polar world where their impotence and flatulence is becoming more widely recognised.  It’s a downward spiral – the loss of faith in pseudo-democracies has pushed the system to crisis point, the ELOs are crisis management consultants trying to re-establish the reputations of these institutions and normalise their actions.  The upshot is mostly a contribution to the ongoing upsurge in cynicism and apathy while doing little to counteract it.

The empire is a busted flush.  Over expansion has stretched the US economy to near breaking point, geopolitical return on energy invested is descending rapidly and the propaganda machine is starting to fail.  A shift has taken place in the entertainment business which makes it more difficult for military-Hollywood offices to run the show.  This is a good thing, undoubtedly, a time to be cheerful and to look forward to what happens next.  It pisses me off like an elephant taking a leak against a tree that they continue to withhold so much information about their propaganda activities, but it’s also a cause of pride and amusement.

Life is complicated, propaganda mostly isn’t.  So, feel free to download the 1000+ pages of almost entirely redacted documents and stare at them with baffled bemusement for a few minutes.  Proof of a crime?  Most certainly.  Violations of information laws are almost omnipresent in so-called democracies.  The state hoards information like it is a vital national and natural resource but has little idea what to do with it now that we all have access to more information than we can possibly comprehend, review, analyse, interpret or consolidate.

This FOIA release is a sign of the times and a sign of decline, but it’s the decline of a rotten to the core system run by absolute cunts who have nothing left to offer humanity.  Except occasionally working with tired old filmmakers making tired old films that hardly anyone wants to watch.  A metaphor for how the society of the spectacle has turned into the society of the specious and spurious.

Documents

US Department of War (DOD) list of all Production Assistance Agreements Signed in 2025

US Department of War (DOD) Production Assistance Agreement for Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning

US Department of War (DOD) Over 1000 Pages of Redacted Documents