BBC reporter Jon Snow’s “Iraq: The Hidden War” focuses on the impossibility of accurate media coverage, or even of much media coverage at all in Iraq’s “Red Zone,” the unsheltered area of extreme violence outside of the heavily fortified U. S. military compound known as the “Green Zone” in Baghdad. The U. S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has resulted in a deadly destabilization of the country, where electricity is often available only a few hours per day and the cost of fuel has skyrocketed, where it can be purchased at all. In Iraq, much of the journalism by Westerners must be done from within the Green Zone and consists of the editing of footage shot by hired locals paid to capture what they can where it is safe to get a story. Reporters then attempt to apply what context is available to them to weave a narrative for the viewer. The kidnapping of journalists in Iraq is widespread and cameramen must be extraordinarily careful when in the field. These difficulties have resulted in a war of which the reality, the overwhelming day-to-day violence, has yet to be fully appreciated by the Western nations whose governments have commissioned the fight. [END] Permalink: Iraq: The Hidden War
Here, the CBC walks us through some of the many flaws in the casus belli that led to the U. S. military and the private mercenary firms that they contracted to aid them, and to share in the loot, both foreign and domestic, entering Iraq with the intention of overthrowing Saddam Hussein in 2003. While some attention is given here to reporter Seymour Hirsch’s take on the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a “neoconservative” think-tank who have been credited as the authors of the plans for the war, as a group of utopian idealists, it ought to be considered that the PNAC plans revolve around the astoundingly violent concept of “full spectrum dominance” by the U. S. worldwide which includes even the will to deny other nations the use of outer space. Theirs is literally a proposal of world conquest. “Former” CIA operative Robert Baer also adds what should be the already obvious fact that there is “no evidence” that Saddam Hussein had any links to the 9/11 attacks, perhaps to imply the “Afghanistan-war-good, Iraq-war-bad” line of argument which has been taken up by many members of the Democratic Party. However, there is also questionable evidence at best that “Al Qaeda,” however that term may be defined, was linked in any way to the 9/11 attacks, itself, as FBI publicity chief Rex Tomb has told reporters that there is, quote, “no hard evidence” even that Osama bin Laden, when it gets right down to it, was responsible for 9/11. The current state of the Afghanistan war, ostensibly being fought against these same “Al Qaeda” terrorists, now nine years on with no end in sight and almost no “progress” of any kind by any definition having been made, except, perhaps, in the financial sense for those “in the club,” ought to speak to the intentions of those who originated these claims in the first place. [END] Permalink: Lies of the Iraq War
While Bush’s Brain may overstate the relative importance of Bush advisor Karl Rove in terms of who was ultimately responsible for the agenda advanced by the Bush II administration, this film makes a strong argument that Rove, the Lee Sarason of the Bush White House, was a or perhaps the critical player in the operational policy machine that enabled the Neocons to grasp and maintain U. S. Presidential power the way that they did. [END] Permalink: Bush’s Brain
“The Corporation” is one of the best criticial overviews of the modern industrial corporation to date. Businesses fashioned in the model of a corporation have been granted legal personhood in the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment and all of the Constitutional rights which go along with that. Multinational corporations, operating across borders in what this film argues is a pathological manner, has had intense impacts on global ecology and society. From efforts to privatize Bolivia’s rainwater to sweatshop labor in China, “The Corporation” takes a look at the many consequences of the corporate directive to earn maximum profit with no inherent regard for anything else. [END] Permalink: The Corporation
Hugo Chávez was a Venezuelan military officer who led a failed coup attempt against the Venezuelan government in 1992 and was imprisoned for it. Several years later, he ran for President and won. The above video, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Chavez – Inside the Coup),” documents the brief 2002 coup attempt against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez after he had been in power for several years. The coup succeeded for a day or two and then Chávez returned to power. A reply video titled “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Lies” has been produced. However, most of its arguments deal with relatively superficial to nearly irrelevant details of the situation. One of its more serious claims is that the general strikes immediately preceding the coup attempt which had been intended to bring down the government were headed by both the business union (FEDECAMERAS) and the labor union leaders (CTV) but it does not mention that CTV, which had made major concessions to neoliberal interests in the prior decade, suffered debilitating losses of support as a result of this alliance. (See Ellner’s “The Venezuelan Labor Movement Under Chávez” for more on Venezuelan labor movement history.)
This second and much shorter video, “Venezuela – Uncle Sam’s Coup,” features the work of Eva Gollinger, a dual U. S.-Venezuelan citizen who has dug up U. S. government documents related to the coup attempt. As her efforts uncovered, a CIA brief contained detailed information about the coup weeks in advance of its occurrence. The money trail behind the plot led these investigators straight to Washington, where records showed hundreds of thousands of American dollars being funneled into Venezuelan opposition groups in the year prior to the coup attempt. [END] Permalink: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and Uncle Sam’s Coup