By Evan Long, on December 20th, 2010% There’s not much to be said about Metanoia’s “ Psywar” except that it bears watching. A history of the public relations industry, this outstanding documentary explores the highly deleterious impact of organized and well-funded propaganda efforts on a would-be democratic society. [END] Permalink: Psywar
By Evan Long, on September 13th, 2010% Author Peter Dale Scott here delivers a speech before the Coalition on Political Assassinations comparing suspicious elements in the JFK assassination and 9/11 attacks. Both Lee Harvey Oswald and most of the alleged 9/11 hijackers, for instance, were identified by the FBI under questionable circumstances within minutes of the crimes being committed. Scott’s long research into what he’s termed “Deep Politics” comes into handy use in describing the nightmare world unleashed by these traumatic events. [END] Permalink: Insights Gained from September 11
By Evan Long, on July 30th, 2010% “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
By Evan Long, on July 21st, 2010%  Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here, is simply a must-read. While more widely known and certainly important social and human commentaries such as Orwell’s 1984 or Huxley’s Brave New World have received the lion’s share of attention among dystopian literature enthusiasts for their surreal, almost fantastic depictions of totalitarian super-states, It Can’t Happen Here, out of print for years but republished in 1993 and now available for free on-line, paints a starkly realistic portrait of a political seizure of the United States by fascists. Several European governments had come under fascist regimes at the time of the novel’s writing and Lewis, with his keen grasp of American politics, was able in It Can’t Happen Here to create a convincing narrative of such a series of events taking place in the U. S. Indeed, the reactionary incrementalism which has made itself felt since about the time of Nixon and especially during the George W. Bush presidency has borne more than a passing resemblance to Lewis’ detailed and accurate vision. In 2010, the worst may be behind us or it may still lie ahead. In any case, this brilliantly prescient work can serve for us as a potent aid to reflection and also to action on the political, economic and social crises we are facing. As Lewis’ thoughtful protagonist, fictional Vermonter Doremus Jessup, notes from his flea-ridden bunk in a “Corpo” (corporatist) concentration camp, It Can’t Happen Here‘s fascists were able to have their way mainly because those who believed in American democracy did not do enough to halt its destruction. [END] Permalink: It Can’t Happen Here
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