Did the Chinese Military Use Top Gun Footage? 226
heidaro writes "'As part of its ongoing expansion, has the People's Liberation Army signed up Goose and Maverick? Chinese bloggers are accusing state broadcaster CCTV of using re-purposed footage from the 1986 film Top Gun for a story on a recent air force drill.' Is it just me or are communist nations very skilled at embarrassing themselves?"
Now you've done it (Score:3)
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Well let's be honest. This is for domestic consumption and it isn't like any news services in china will pick this up.
A few people in China will find it because it is so badly done. Those that bother to say anything will simply say that they used some stock footage.
It is at best amusing to us but will not matter a bit to the Chinese.
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You all have it backwards.
Top Gun used secret military spy film of their jet planes, stolen from China.
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While a funny also impossible since the plane shown being blown up was a Northrup F-5.
To make it work you would have to include how China stole US made F-5s and used them in their weapons tests. To make it even better the F-5s would be piloted by MIAs from the Viet Nam.
Make some effort after all.
What does communist have to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What does communist have to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference being that most capitalist nations are democracies, and everybody rather expects that impermanent governments are going to bugger things up. I'd say fuck-ups are the life blood of democracy.
In states like China, where the government asserts that it knows best, these sorts of stupid stunts have somewhat more dramatic connotations. Particularly in this case, it not only raises the question as to what kind of people it has in its military and PR that think it's a bright idea to rip off footage from a Hollywood film, it also raises the more important question as to why they would even need to.
Re:What does communist have to do with it? (Score:4, Insightful)
In states like China, where the government asserts that it knows best
The US and UK governments assert that they no best through a never ending flood of requirements on educational practices, telling Doctors how to practice, how to manage land, what drugs and herbal remedies are legal and illegal, how local authorities may spend their money. There's no end to it really. In the US, it even decides who may or may not vote! All of which are direct assertions that they know best.
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Democracies are designed to replace the people and the laws that make up the government.
Monarchies/dictatorships, not so much. The only option is overthrow of the entire thing.
you *can* overthrow a democracy, but its built to be able to do the same thing while still playing by the rules.
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Our system fully allows the replacing of the gov't within the rules. ie. the Constitutional Amendment process, regular and orderly elections.
over throwing a monarchy or dictatorship is playing by the rules.
Certainly not the monarch's or dictator's rules...which is the rules of the gov't in question. So this is patently false.
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The primary problem with representative democracy is that often a majority of the people ultimately in charge (the voters) do not understand the issues at hand. Instead, they vote by 'gut feeling' which is easily manipulated by parties with sufficient resources.
Nonetheless, in the end the failures of a democracy are the fault of the people, and those failures seem to me to be somewhat less awful than the failures of autocratic systems.
Also, the success of propaganda lies not in managing to fool the percept
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Re:What does communist have to do with it? (Score:5, Interesting)
The difference is, in the US or the UK, if you feel that you have a better idea than the government you can run for office and try to change things.
Do you really believe that ? I mean really, give it a try. Without money, without support from "big business", nobody will ever hear about you. And even if people hear about you, you won't be one of their favorites, mostly because they don't know you. Running for office involves much more than just the will to do it.
And the kind of people that have the will, the money and the support are in the game for power, for their own benefit, not for ours.
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Maybe that's true in the US, I can't comment. It's not true in the UK where it's entirely possible to get 'involved in government' with nothing more than drive and local support. Whether one MP can achieve anything in the House of Commons is another question entirely, and whether being an MP let's you influence much other than your own expenses claim is beside the point.
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But you can't claim that the ability to run for office in US/UK is in any sense comparable to China or other undemocratic govt's.
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We have numerous political parties here of which two are decidedly dominant. That does not preclude someone from outside them getting elected. The Tea Party was a pretty significant phenomena that showed other ideas than those of the two parties can be made into a movement. (not trying to start a 'what is the Tea Party' discussion). Ross Perot showed that independent(ly wealthy) candidates can successfully cha
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People think they can't affect change because they can't just throw their hats in the ring for POTUS or US Senator, but it's relatively easy to get involved in local and state government. On the up side, these are the places that tend to set policy that affects the lives of people directly, but on the down side, you're unlikely to get your face on national TV unless you're embezzling money or somebody dumps 5 million barrels of oil on your coast. But if you're in it to make a difference and not to become
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Pointing out one exceptional, contrary case isn't really the best way to "prove" someone is wrong.
--Jeremy
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If the argument is a "for all" or "there exists no" case a single contradicting example is all you need to prove them wrong.
He said "nobody". Since Obama exists the "nobody" fails.
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He got noticed early on by corporate supporters?
Seriously, look at his record. He's done nothing at all that would hurt his corporate support base.
I voted for Obama. I'll end up voting for him again. But it's not because there aren't better choices out there, it's because while the Democrats spend most of their effort kissing up to their corporate masters, the Republicans are pure fascist/corporatists, who would reduce our people to the level of the Chinese people in a heartbeat, purely for profit.
And un
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6Jbnq5V_1s [youtube.com]
Fuck that, and fuck you. OP is correct. Feel free to show otherwise. One single example would not even suffice if it DID show what you seem to think it shows (which it doesn't, Obama was a triumph of the PR industry, "the first black
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One word: Chicago.
Those fuckers can get anyone elected to anything, even the dead ones. Sometimes especially the dead ones.
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"It's all about knowing the right people and having the right qualities (being electable)."
Well, you could run for the public office in China over exactly that same standards.
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Would you say that any law at all is an assertion that "they" know best? Or would you not say that?
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Your terrible grammar nullifies any argument you may have had.
I wrote 'no' instead of 'know' the first time I used it. That's not an error of grammar, it's just typing too quickly. It really has no bearing on any argument's legitimacy and I doubt you'd "nullify" an argument that you agreed with on those grounds.
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Well, maybe, for some and in some debates, it really is a way to throw some insult before doing the equivalent of slamming the door behind them. Still doesn't exactly say "the great thinker", but ok.
I'm hard pressed to see that in cases where some spelling troll swoops in on someone's first and (at the time) only message in a thread, and with it being not very deep at all in a particular discussion. A talk where the 4th message in the chain is already the spelling-troll post is hardly the kind of discussion
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Oh! OK is supposed to be capitalized! That's it!
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Sorry, but there are few things more retarded than typo Nazis.
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Do you really thing that a government body is THAT stupid? Its probably misinformation to look stupid - a very common political tactic, especially if you cross it with the current spotlight on whether or not they created a space plane. Just look at it this way: how does this make you perceive them, as a gut reaction - I know my first reaction was "well if they doctored footage with Top Gun as a basis for avionics propaganda, surely they couldn't have a space plane"
My tin foil hat has multiple layers - for
Re:What does communist have to do with it? (Score:4, Informative)
The difference being that most capitalist nations are democracies,
You're making a false distinction here. China is ruled by a nominally communist party and doesn't have open elections, but the actual form of the economy is quite capitalist. There's huge factories with workers getting paid $10/day to work 16 hours in horrible conditions with no union. The factory is owned not by the state or the workers, but by a billionaire living in Shanghai. For the peasant farmers living in the country, they have little access to electricity, running water, medicine, or education. The state provides them with nothing and sometimes even takes their land to hand directly to real estate developers.
Nothing communist about it.
Also, the various dictatorships of the Middle East and South America from the past and present century were/are nearly all capitalist. What's the king of Saudi Arabia? A communist? Franco? Pinochet? Qaddafi? The kleptocrat nepotist Mohammad Karzai? Just a democratic facade. I don't have time to prove you wrong about the majority of capitalist economies existing in democracies, but it's a huge and highly suspect assumption.
Sounds More Like Fascism to Me (Score:2)
It looks to me like the PROC has converted the economy directly from communism to fascism while retaining the "Communist" brand name. That rumble you hear is Mao rolling in his grave at 100,000 rpm.
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The dumbasses at CCTV that show Top Gun and call it the Chinese Army are pretty similar to the dumbasses at CNN that show Nepalese police and call them Chinese soldiers.
The point is that most Chinese won't recognize the Top Gun footage, much like most Americans can't see the difference between Nepalese and Chinese uniforms.
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Is it just me or are communist nations very skilled an embarrassing themselves?
It's that extra little trolling that gives those extra few more page views and that make me that extra little bit more reluctant to waste my extremely limited time on slashdot.
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provided feedback on what he likes / dislikes about Slashdot
GP said "make me that extra little bit more reluctant to waste my extremely limited time on slashdot", which is evidently a lie, since he uses his "extremely limited time" to post on Slashdot.
I think "fuck off" is a pretty reasonable answer to such a blatant lie.
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First of all, I think you meant to cast the Author into a Troll, not the return value of Feed into a Troll.
((Troll*)(&comment.GetAuthor()))->Feed( false );
Second of all, that is an unnecessarily complicated way to cast it by dereferencing the item, and then using pointers. It probably would have made more sense if GetAuthor() returned a pointer (then it could possibly be null sometimes), but that is not the case. The easiest syntax, then, would be as follows:
((Troll)comment.GetAuthor()).Feed(false)
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And this is why we have code reviews ;)
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You mean like the entire presidency of George Doubleya Bush?
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At least he can read. The teleprompter, mostly.
It seems to me, Obama's biggest advantage is that after 2xBush, we got pretty easy to please. We don't expect any big advances or good administration, we're already happy if the fuckups are small enough to just flinch instead of cringe.
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Yeah but communists are inherently retarded, so it's extra funny. Have you seen their baseball?
I think you forgot that Cuba is communist. They play great baseball.
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Well sure, but take a look at their polo club and you'll be hard pressed to stifle a condescending little chortle.
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Communist nations? (Score:2)
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Well actually that was footage from the movie Independence Day, but the real laser would be a lot like that. Yeah. scary.
"Commies skilled an(sic) embarrassing themselves"? (Score:2, Interesting)
Secondly, apparently it was used as a demonstration of effects of their new missile - using a footage of exploding F-5 is even somewhat fitting, might even be not simply a case of lazy TV crew... (even if not lazy, capturing real hits would be extremely hard for little effect, they aren't particularly "cinema impressive")
And generally
Re:"Commies skilled an(sic) embarrassing themselve (Score:4, Insightful)
First, this seems to be the work of a TV broadcaster, not a nation (certainly not a communist one...) ... does anyone here really think "non-commie" media are any better?
The difference is that in China, that TV broadcaster IS the government, or at least highly controlled by them. The American media are stupid all by themselves.
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Yes. Big difference. Here the media owns the state and not the other way around.
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The American media are stupid all by themselves.
If you assume that the people in control of the US media got where they are by being stupid, you're very wrong. And if you think there aren't endless close ties between the mainstream media and the government, you're even more wrong.
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As a friend of mine remarked, the difference between media and government in dictatorships and democracies isn't that big. Governments lie and the media lie. That's the same, no matter whether dictatorship or democracy.
The hallmark of a democracy is just that they tell different lies. So watch out when they start telling the same lies.
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True for now, but I have a feeling FOX News will be back in power eventually.
Re:"Commies skilled an(sic) embarrassing themselve (Score:5, Informative)
You post appears to be propaganda masquerading as sarcasm. So just in case, I'd like to make the following points:
CCTV stands for China Central Television which is a state run television network. It is communist.
CCTV is the main outlet of propaganda for the government. Western broadcasters may at times use film scenes or in-house produced animations to illustrate a story, but they disclose it as a animation or for illustration purposes only. They are a third-party entity reporting an event, not part of the government trying to fabricate the event.
Your example of Powell's UN presentation doesn't seem applicable, since Powell wasn't the media and that the slide was produced by analysts and not a scene from a movie.
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Okay, I'll bite. How so?
Everyone seems to have forgotten that the days leading up to the Iraq war were filled with Saddam Hussein making grandiose claims of being close to producing nuclear weapons. They also seem to have forgotten that Hussein used chemical weapons against the Kurds (google "yellow rain iraq'). Unfortunately the US intelligence community was so
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Everyone seems to have forgotten that the days leading up to the Iraq war were filled with Saddam Hussein making grandiose claims of being close to producing nuclear weapons.
This fiction, how you manage to "remember" it, ironically only shows how nicely the propaganda machine at your place works. Sometimes / for certain people, at least.
Follow-ups many months or sometimes years later don't change how the views of enough people become shaped in a desired way by the "big scary issue". Look how significant part of the public (or even worse - of military forces in Iraq) still thinks that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.
You remind me of jokes in People's Republic of Poland,
Re:"Commies skilled an(sic) embarrassing themselve (Score:5, Interesting)
PS. BTW, regarding such movies - Les Chevaliers du ciel (aka Sky Fighters), while obviously also with completely redundant plot, is much more enjoyable all-flash-no-substance kind of deal - it has much more spectacular cinematography, nvm lots more minutes of actual flying. Unlike Top Gun (where most flight sequences filming was done from the ground) - in Les Chevaliers du ciel the majority of filming was done from the air, largely via cameras hidden in modified fuel tanks of fighters, to great effect.
Anyone who like technology, fighters, sonic boom at ground level, real footage from fighters, post-combustion by night, ... in widescreen should see this awesome movie.
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PS. BTW, regarding such movies - Les Chevaliers du ciel (aka Sky Fighters), while obviously also with completely redundant plot, is much more enjoyable all-flash-no-substance kind of deal - it has much more spectacular cinematography, nvm lots more minutes of actual flying. Unlike Top Gun (where most flight sequences filming was done from the ground) - in Les Chevaliers du ciel the majority of filming was done from the air, largely via cameras hidden in modified fuel tanks of fighters, to great effect.
Anyone who like technology, fighters, sonic boom at ground level, real footage from fighters, post-combustion by night, ... in widescreen should see this awesome movie.
The problem is Top Gun was a chick flick where the leading man happened to be a pilot. I think your "sky fighters" sounds more like an action flick.
Chick flick - boy meets girl, boy looses his emotional crutch (his RIO copilot died) and questions if he's right or wrong. In the end, boy and girl live happily ever after. They fly around and stuff but its just to give him something manly to do between romantic moments.
I'm guessing the action flick is just endless chase scenes and explosions like any other a
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BTW, regarding such movies - Les Chevaliers du ciel (aka Sky Fighters), while obviously also with completely redundant plot, is much more enjoyable all-flash-no-substance kind of deal - it has much more spectacular cinematography, nvm lots more minutes of actual flying.
A movie made 20 years after Top Gun has better effects? Shocking!
Unfortunately, I'm no longer 10 years old, so I doubt I'll enjoy it as much.
Re:"Commies skilled an(sic) embarrassing themselve (Score:5, Insightful)
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so where's the RIAA now? (Score:5, Insightful)
this ought to be good... I want to see the suits show up at a door, knock, and open it to see a tank barrel in their face. (sort of like in the Simpsons episode)
oh wait I forgot, the RIAA doesn't pick on anyone that can defend themselves.
In Communist China... (Score:5, Funny)
...Maverick Gooses You
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Re:In Capitalist USA... (Score:2)
Maverick Gooses You during a 2008 presidential bid.
(Maybe that's why McCain chose her as his running mate)
WSJ report and comparison video (Score:5, Informative)
The Wall Street Journal has a report including a comparison video [wsj.com].
Damn! (Score:5, Funny)
I was looking forward to a video of a Chinese pilot lip-syncing You've Lost That Loving Feeling.
Re:Damn! (Score:5, Funny)
"You've rost... dat ruvvving feering... whoah dat ruvving feering...."
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-1 Twoll
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If the Chinese government is spun around and around, does it become disoriented?
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Mmmm.... English has a "short e" sound and a "short i" sound, but that doesn't mean you can tell if someone with a Texas accent dropped her pin or his pen.
Having an "L" sound is not the same as pronouncing an "L" sound. This effect does, in fact, occur for some Chinese, as do various other peculiarities of pronunciation that are effects not of the language or dialect, but of accent/regional pronunciation.
Many people do not speak their languages the way they are explained in a textbook. This is as true in Ch
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Just be happy they didn't use the volleyball scene from Top Gun.
Two words (Score:2)
Volleyball Scene.
Riceman? (Score:5, Funny)
You haven't experienced (Score:2, Funny)
Top Gun unless you've watched it in the original Klingon.
Re:You haven't experienced (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have written:
You haven't fully experienced Top Gun unless you've watched it in the original Chinese.
With the above you allude to the original joke without hitting us over the head with it. Thus giving all of us who "get it" a chance to look down our collective noses at those of less depth in Sci-Fi pop culture.
This was a deliberate message from China. (Score:2)
It's macabre but commendable (Score:2, Funny)
New meme! (Score:2)
In Communist China, state owns media!
Chinese Innovation (Score:2)
Re:Chinese Innovation (Score:4, Funny)
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If only.. (Score:2)
Who is the target audience? (Score:2)
It only matters whether their own people believe the video.
If some do not, what are the chances that news of their blunder spreads? And if this really blows up in their face, what are the chances that the government won't push the blame onto someone else?
The bottom line is that this kind of stuff can be effective propaganda: How would the Chinese people feel about going to war if this video were presented as proof of a foreign invader or spy being shot down by valiant Chinese defenders? Manufacture a few mo
"Found" Footage (Score:2)
Let's hope for all our sakes that when China visually documents research into new surgical techniques, they haven't got hold of "Human Centipede".
Learn from Baudelaire... (Score:2)
Or, as Keyser Söze would put it: "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist."
It is classic misdirection- act vaugely bumbling and inept in insignificant matters to distract people from putting serious scrutiny on you.
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It is classic misdirection- act vaugely bumbling and inept in insignificant matters to distract people from putting serious scrutiny on you.
The Inspector Gadget Strategy?
If you don't believe in Intellectual Property.... (Score:2)
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Well... its about more than IP. The major, military rival of the chineese is the US (whether any war scenarios are actually realistic is besides the point. Military might is generally mostly symbolic anyway).
So they were caught, using footage of a movie that was intended to... be a story of a number of US pilots, and what bad asses they are.
Having been caught using movie footage, much less of a movie intended to make their rivals look like badassess, could be pretty embarrassing, "IP Rights" aside.
hehe (Score:2)
You are also very skilled at embarrassing your (Score:2)
You are also very skilled at embarrassing yourself.
Why no Iron Eagle? (Score:2)
Re:Embaras? You dont get it.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I beg to differ. China has made all sorts of bellowing noises against things they felt would embarrass them on the international stage. I'm thinking here of the film about the Uighur leader that China demanded an Australian film festival not show, and the film festival's website was suddenly the victim of cyberattacks pretty obviously coming from China.
China is extremely sensitive of its reputation.
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Give 'em a break. All the over educated elite are still upset that the USSR lost the cold war. They're rooting for china to succeed and win out over those evil capitalists.
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What's the big deal? Everyone I know prefers Country over Western.
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Isn't a habbit that funny looking hat thing that hobbit nuns wear?