is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66

is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66

If I’d said the words ‘Morgan Freeman’ to you earlier this week, and asked what they meant to you, I’m sure you’d have replied along the lines of: ‘Kind and friendly looking elderly actor with a rich speaking voice who specializes in playing benign roles- including God.

I’m sure you would not have said: ‘Idiotic front man for a hard-right neocon operation backed by Bush-era warmongers and a former Director of National Intelligence to demonize Russia and make the new Cold War even colder.’

Sadly, that’s what The Morg has become.

The 80-year old Hollywood actor has recorded a two minute video for the newly-formed ‘Committee to Investigate Russia'. Imagine the most foaming-at-the-mouth Russophobia you’ve ever witnessed and multiply it by ten, and you’ve got Freeman’s message. The man from Memphis who earned plaudits for his performances in movies such as The Shawshank Redemption, has morphed into an octogenarian version of Anne Applebaum on steroids.

"We have been attacked", Freeman declares at the start of the video. "We are at war". Well, this much is true. The US has been at war with lots of countries for some time now. War is what America does. But Freeman isn’t talking about the illegal invasion of Iraq, the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia, the dropping of the ‘Mother of All Bombs’ on Afghanistan, or the destruction of Libya. He’s talking about a non-existent attack on the country which does all the attacking.

He then goes into full Hollywood fantasy mode, asking us to imagine a “script” in which “a former KGB spy, angry at the collapse of his Motherland, plots a course for revenge”. He is referring to Vladimir Putin, the man who was so hell-bent on “revenge” against the US, that he was the first world leader to pick up the phone after 9/11 to offer his condolences to George Bush.

Not only that, but the ‘former KGB spy’ has called repeatedly for Russia and ‘his sworn enemy’ to work together on solving global issues such as terrorism. The truth is that the ‘former KGB spy’ has bent over backwards to be friendly to the US, while the US has repaid him by sanctioning his country and portraying him as the ‘New Hitler’. If we must talk about ‘revenge' then it’s the vindictive neocon war lobby who are plotting a course for it, against Russia, for thwarting their plans for a violent regime change against the secular government in Syria.

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But Freeman won’t mention that, because he is the public face of a new neocon operation against Russia.

The old actor then accuses the evil ‘former KGB spy’ (boo and hiss in the front row, please) of “secretly using cyber warfare to attack democracies around the world” - and using social media to “spread propaganda and false information,” to convince people in “democratic societies” to “distrust their media, their political processes, even their neighbours.”

How utterly disgusting! Well it would be if it were true. But of course it isn’t. Neocon propaganda never is. Remember those Iraqi WMDs, the ‘genocide’ in Kosovo and the claims that Iran was developing nukes? All hogwash, just like ‘Russiagate’.

No credible evidence has been produced that Russia has been "using cyber-warfare to attack democracies around the world". It’s a conspiracy theory put around by people who write books and articles about conspiracy theories. And it’s not been any Russian use of ‘social media’ which has caused people in the US to distrust their newspapers and television networks - but the way such media has been caught out spreading blatantly fake news - like the claim that Saddam possessed WMDs.

Americans can see for themselves what a rotten charade their own political process is by simply observing that whoever they elect, Wall Street and the military-industrial complex remains firmly in charge. As for Putin getting people to distrust their neighbors; this surely has to be the barmiest claim from the Russophobes yet. If Mort and Walt have a fight over the height of a garden fence in Milwaukee, then only a total nut job could blame the Kremlin. Or perhaps the ‘former KGB spy’ sent ‘thought messages’ across to Mort making him suspicious of neighbor Walt’s plan to erect a gazebo…

Freeman boldly declares “the free world is counting on us for our leadership.” Really, old boy? The last time I checked the calendar it was 2017, not 1947. The world - whether the State Department classes it as ‘free’ or ‘non-free’ - has seen what the death and destruction the US and its closest allies have caused across the world in recent decades. The assault on Iraq led directly to the rise of ISIS. The attack on Libya transformed the country with the highest Human Development Index in Africa into a jihadists’ playground on the shores of the Mediterranean. The obsession with toppling a government friendly to Russia in Afghanistan, gave us Al-Qaeda.

I am speechless. Same on you Morgan Freeman. You are a sell-out. Or an idiot. Either way—disappointing. https://t.co/jrYJvlcEiD — Jack (@JackTwit) September 20, 2017

No one elected the US to be the world’s policeman. In fact, polls consistently show that the US is regarded by citizens of the world as the greatest threat to peace.

Clearly Morgan Freeman hasn’t heard about this. He really needs to get out more.

At 1 minute, 41 seconds into his speech, Freeman then makes arguably his most outrageous and big-headed statement of all. “For 241 years our democracy has been a shining example to the world of what we can all aspire to.”

He’s speaking about a country where slavery was only abolished in 1865, and enforced racial segregation on buses only ended in the 1950s. For all its razzmatazz, ‘democracy’ in the US boils down to the choice of two almost identical ‘Pepsi or Coke’, pro-war big business parties. Whoever wins, the policies on the things that really matter, stay the same.

Not only that, the US has destroyed genuine democracy in many countries around the world, illegally toppling governments which don’t meet with the State Department’s approval- and meddling in foreign elections in order to get the ‘desired‘ result.

Yet Freeman has the nerve to accuse Russia of doing what US does on a regular basis- including to Russia in the 1996 Presidential election.

As Freeman’s video nears its end there are the inevitable shots of American servicemen in action during World War Two. "We owe it to the brave people who have fought and died to protect this great nation and save democracy- and we owe it to our future generations - to continue the fight."

US soldiers were brave in World War Two, no one disputes that, but there’s no mention that in the fight against the Nazis, in which the US lost around 418,000 people, the Russians and Soviets lost 27m. That wouldn’t quite fit the narrative of ‘The Exceptional Nation’ and the ‘Exceptional Nation’ alone saving the ‘free world’, would it?

Freeman’s video ends with a call to arms: "Join the Committee to Investigate Russia - because the world depends on it!"

The neocons who want to investigate Russia at @InvestigateRU don't know who the current Russian ambassador to the US is. pic.twitter.com/jONPEm0gvQ — Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) September 20, 2017

In fact, the only Committee genuine democrats should be joining is one to investigate the Committee to Investigate Russia. The job wouldn’t take too long, as you don‘t need to be Lieutenant Colombo to work out ‘whodunit?’ and what their motive is. The launch of the group was announced on Tuesday by the Hollywood film director and staunch Hillary Clinton fan boy Rob Reiner, and David Frum, the hardcore neocon and former Bush speechwriter who coined the notorious phrase ‘Axis of Evil’.

"I don’t know that the public understands the gravity of what the Russians were able to do and and continue to do here in the United States. They’ve attacked us. They’re trying to undermine our democracy," Reiner told CNN.

The plot of his 1987 fairy tale adventure, The Princess Bride, which involves the rescue of the lovely Princess Buttercup from the hideous Prince Humperdinck, is more plausible than the Reds under the beds narrative he is currently spinning.

The members of the CIR’s ‘Advisory Board’ are neocon blogger and CFR fellow Max Boot, Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the neocon think tank, the AEI, James Clapper, former DNI director, and Charles Sykes, a right-wing chat show host. Yet, we’re supposed to believe that it’s all a ‘progressive’ cause in support of ‘democracy’, because the man who makes the video once played God and Nelson Mandela.

The CIR shows us the strong links between ‘liberal’ Hollywood, the deep state and the neocon aristocracy. In fact,it comes just a fortnight after the Independent newspaper in Britain revealed that "the relationship between US national security and Hollywood is much deeper and more political than anyone has ever acknowledged."

Files the paper obtained showed that between 1911 and 2017 over 800 feature films received financial support from the US Department of Defense. Over 900 television titles had received Pentagon backing since 2005. The CIA has had an entertainment liaison office in Hollywood since 1996. Hollywood stars were wheeled out to blast Trump, but now the emphasis has changed. It‘s Russia that’s in the line of fire. Morgan Freeman has been chosen by the hawks as the new ‘superhero’ to save America from a threat that doesn’t exist.

It’s by far and away the worst role he‘s ever played.

Follow Neil Clark @NeilClark66