The CBC's Fifth Estate investigates the misinformation campaign by climate change "skeptics" in this engrossing documentary. Depressing viewing, but if you have friends or relatives who've been confused by the "debate," try to persuade them to watch this; it will hopefully show them what the 'denial machine' is really all about...
You can watch the whole film, thanks to CBC's enlightened approach to webcasting, here.
And there's an interesting article from Newsweek about climate change denial here.
Well, I recently finished watching the Alan Partridge saga - one series of Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge! and two series of I'm Alan Partridge - and it's surged to the top rank of my all-time favourite TV shows. Of course, if you can't stand British "cringe comedy," then Alan Partridge is probably not for you; but for my money, this really is a work of genius - especially the last two series. Partridge is an unforgettably loathsome, pathetic character - but, as in all great cringe comedy, it's not hard to recognise a little of oneself in his desperate attempts to 'get the last laugh.'
Weirdly, this last week I happened to catch some of TVNZ's Breakfast show (morning TV is not usually on my radar), and was stunned by how much host Paul Henry reminded me of Partridge. At one point, immediately following a long vitriolic rant about violent crime or police impotence or something or other, Henry - without changing gears - launched into an embarrassing monologue on the flawed manufacture of Griffins cameo cream biscuits. He then complained that this was the second time he'd attacked cameo creams on air - and yet the manufacturers had failed to respond, or even to send him any free biscuits. The following day, he repeated his cameo cream outrage, and again urged Griffins to front up and appear on the show to defend their product - and to make sure they brought some biscuits along! The whole thing was so utterly reminiscient of Alan Partridge I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. In the end, of course, I just shuddered...
Now, I'd never paid any attention to Paul Henry before, but now I find he's something of a minor celebrity among those who follow bizarre TV personalities. Here are a few clips of him in action:
As long as reading is for us the instigator whose magic keys have opened the door to those dwelling-places deep within us that we would not have known how to enter, its role in our lives is salutary. It becomes dangerous, on the other hand, when, instead of awakening us to the personal life of the mind, reading tends to take its place.
Marcel Proust, quoted in Chris Hedges, War is a Force that Gives us Meaning.
Well, it's taken me years, but I finally got round to watching Apocalypse Now (the Redux cut - I still haven't seen the original). I'm glad I read Heart of Darkness recently - and watched the 'making of' doco of (almost) the same name - because both added layers of meaning and resonance to the film.
And it's chock full of powerful visceral images and moments: the Playboy bunnies fleeing by helicopter from a riot of lust-crazed GIs (echoing the final American evacuation from the roof of the embassy in Saigon); burning helicopters stuck (along with bodies) in the branches of trees, like some crazy modern Goya etching; Lance's gradual descent into madness; men firing into the jungle - at the jungle, at Vietnam, at otherness, shadows, nature itself; and finally Kurtz - a bloated, brooding, slow-moving Marlon Brando, submerged in darkness, reading aloud from T S Eliot one moment and Time magazine the next. Blood and severed heads, half-naked bodies, LSD and madness, madness, madness. It was the closest thing to Michael Herr's Dispatches I've seen on film (Herr, as it happens, wrote Willard's narration).
What a strange film this is! Superbly acted and directed, enormously entertaining, but oddly thin and bloodless. Ostensibly this is the "true" story of congressman Charlie Wilson's role in the 1980s Afghan War - but don't expect a realistic piece of historiography. At times this feels like little more than a cheerful romp, portraying Wilson (Hanks) as a lovable rogue with a heart of gold. The truth, of course, is rather creepier.
I kept waiting for the shadows and darkness of this story to come to the foreground and flood its champagne-fizz brightness. But they never did. There are a few hints at possible future "unforeseen consequences" (elegantly expressed by CIA man Gust Avrakotos (Hoffman)'s Zen story about a boy with a horse). And if you watch the film with such issues in mind, there are other subtle references too. But frankly, these feel awfully muted and restrained, as though the film-makers were going to great lengths to avoid controversy and keep things fun.
Which makes this article in on AlterNet very interesting indeed, with its allegations that the screenplay was toned down (and made less accurate) because
This piece on Joanne Herring in the Observer adds to this picture of a neutered film:...Tom Hanks "just can't deal with this 9/11 thing"; and because Wilson and Joanne Herring (played by Julia Roberts in the movie) threatened legal action after reading an earlier, more honest, draft of the screenplay....
Not only was [Herring] instrumental in convincing Mr. Wilson to arm the Afghani soldiers against the Russians, she was able to force Hollywood to edit certain scenes from the film.
The real story behind this film is extremely dark indeed. As you would expect, considering the real-life Wilson's other claims to fame include being a firm supporter of the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua and a paid lobbyist for both Israeli gun makers and the military regime in Pakistan. A lovable rogue indeed...?Most significantly, to her thinking, she had any scenes where her character used a four-letter word removed. “I’m a Christian and that’s very important to me,” she said. “So I had them taken out.” Ms. Herring declined to discuss which of Ms. Roberts’ lines in particular were edited. “Let’s don’t talk about them,” she said Well, maybe just a little: “There was one where I passed the Charlie’s Angels and said, ‘Sluts.’ I was good friends with the Charlie’s Angels. I would never call them sluts because they weren’t.”
According to a Dec. 12 report in The Daily News, Ms. Herring and Congressman Wilson—and a gang of high-powered attorneys—were also successfully able to eradicate any suggestion that their little war was somehow responsible for 9/11.
You can watch the whole documentary (streamed) here:
The Human Behaviour Experiments part 1
The Human Behaviour Experiments part 2
OK, so I finally gave in and watched a bunch of "9/11 Truth Movement" (aka "9/11 conspiracy theory") documentaries. Some of these are very well made, a testament to the way digital technology has put high quality professional film-making within reach of almost anyone (see also Jonathan Caouette's Tarnation, for a very different example), which is very exciting indeed.
The films I watched are: Loose Change:Final Cut (2007) by Korey Rowe, The Great Conspiracy: The 9/11 News Special You Never Saw (2004) by Barrie Zwicker and Zeitgeist - the Movie (2007) by Peter Joseph.
However, I also felt obligated to watch a counter-documentary, the History Channel's 9/11 Conspiracies: True or False?
So my conclusion? It's a work in progress, but for now I have to say I'm thoroughly unconvinced by the Truth Movement's arguments. It seems to me they're right that the US government is corrupt and wicked and lies through its teeth and has certainly carried out false flag terrorism in the past; and even that the US government is to some degree morally responsible for what happened that day. But did they actually carry it out? No.
Very interesting article here, though, from the Seattle Stranger, which looks at the place of the 9/11 Truth Movement in the broader political landscape. Particularly chuckled over this opening line:
Ahem - he could be describing me...!The eight of them huddled around a table at a coffee shop could easily be confused for a comic-book fan society, or a Dungeons & Dragons kaffeeklatsch.
As to why I'm so interested in the topic (considering my lack of interest in actually using any legal or illegal drugs)? It's because the so-called "War on Drugs" is to American domestic policy what the "War on Terror" is to its foreign policy. I keep saying this - but imho, it can never be said too often. Until a few years ago (when I read Smoke and Mirrors: the War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure
by Dan Baum), I had naively assumed it was a minor issue and I had no strong opinions on the legality or otherwise of drugs. Of course, I was willing to be persuaded that maybe marijuana should be decriminalised, but cocaine? Heroin? No way! But the more I look into the whole issue, the clearer it becomes that current policy is terribly harmful - and to a large extent politically (rather than medically) motivated. Add to this the indisputable involvement of the US government (especially the CIA) in the production and distribution of illegal drugs, and - well, it stinks.Anyway, here's a trailer for American Drug War:
