Films

Robert Fisk – Lies, Misreporting And Catastrophe In The Middle East

Interviewed By Hatem Bazian.
A talk and conversation on the role of the journalist in the misreporting on the Middle East. Fisk begins with a linguistic analysis and says that our language has become not just a debased ally but a full verbal partner in the language of governments, armies, generals and weapons makers. Journalists become participants in the unfolding catastrophe, particularly in Palestine, where peace has become almost impossible.
England’s most famous reporter for the Middle East, Robert Fisk, made his annual trip to Berkeley, CA, to speak at a benefit for MECA, the
Middle East Childrens Alliance. He is an acclaimed author and Middle East correspondent for the London Independent. This time he had asked to be interviewed on stage by [ . . . ]

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Richard Heinberg – Peak Everything

Richard Heinberg has influenced the work of those who are searching for a way out of today’s interlocking crisis of climate, finance and resource depletion. I visited him in Sept. 2010 at a crucial moment. He had just written the new preface for his 2007 book Peak Everything, Waking Up to the Century of Declines. Analyzing the events of the past three years Heinberg writes in his update that the question of when we will reach the peak of the resources that we made ourselves dependent on has finally been answered – and the time is NOW. The economic crisis, he says, is not a dip from which we will recover. Humanity has achieved an unsustainable pinnacle of population size [ . . . ]

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Julia Whitty – For Love and Protection of the Deep Ocean and thoughts on the impact of the BP oil spill

Julia Whitty is a diver, former nature documentary filmmaker, author and investigative journalist. As environmental correspondent for Mother Jones she had just returned from the Gulf Coast. She wrote: “BP and its partners reckless quest has endangered and perhaps condemned not just the Gulf Coast, but the largest, richest, most pristine, most biologically important, and last completely unprotected ecosystem left on Earth: the deep ocean.”
Julia Whitty explains why the deep ocean is the foundation of life for the upper layer of the sunlit sea. Many whales, dolphins, seals, sea turtles, sharks, manta rays, and smaller predatory fish are nocturnal hunters, dependent on the movements of a vast community of organisms that live in the deep ocean. That community is known [ . . . ]

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Family Of Secrets – An Interview With The Author, Russ Baker

Gore Vidal called Baker’s book about the Bush Dynasty and America’s invisible government one of the most important books of the past ten years. In Family of Secrets Baker asks the obvious, but unanswered question, how can “such a clan occupy the presidency or vice presidency of the US for 20 of the past 28 years” with yet another Bush, Jeb Bush waiting in the wings. Family of Secrets reads and was conceived as a detective story, based on more than 500 interviews and thousands of documents, backed up by more than a 1000 footnotes. And even though the book uncovers a secret political life for all Bushes it is much more than a family expose. In this interview Russ [ . . . ]

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Frances Moore Lappé – Getting A Grip

Barbara Kingsolver says of Frances Moore Lappé’s most recent book: Getting a Grip, “This is not an ordinary book; it’s more like a new pair of glasses, allowing you to see everything around you with greater clarity. Suddenly the world is more comprehensible, even more beautiful.” Frances Moore Lappé is the author of 18 books including the three-million copy Diet for a Small Planet. Diet for a Small Planet was the first book to expose the enormous waste built into U.S. grain-fed meat production. For Frances that was a powerful symbol of a global food system that is creating hunger out of plenty. Eating a planet-centered diet, she argued, means choosing what is best for the earth and our bodies—a [ . . . ]

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Silvia Ribeiro – Weather Modification

Geo-engineers are proposing large scale global projects to reduce solar radiation. They want to force the oceans into absorbing more CO2 through “fertilization”, and they work on carbon sequestration and weather modification.   While most climate scientist left the Copenhagen Summit feeling gloomy about the lack of action to halt climate change, a small group felt emboldened. They are the geo-engineers who are proposing large scale global projects to reduce solar radiation by spreading sulphate aerosols into the atmosphere, placing sunshades into space or by whitening the clouds. They also want to force the oceans into absorbing more of the excess CO2 through “fertilization” by spreading urea, iron or phosphorous. And they work on carbon sequestration and weather modification. What seemed [ . . . ]

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Helen Caldicott – Stop Nuclear Power Plants

Helen Caldicott‘s Appeal to President Obama
This is a medical lecture on the health effects of uranium mining, processing, radiation damage to cells and genes and the routine releases of radioactive materials such as Tritium from nuclear power plants during “normal” operations.
When Obama in his 2010 State of the Union address strongly endorsed nuclear power as one of the solutions to global warming – and said: “That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country” the anti nuclear campaigner Helen Caldicott responded in the Huffington Post. Throughout her almost 40 year long international campaign and her writings in seven books she has always made the connection between nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and environmental destruction. She [ . . . ]

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Helen Caldicott – If You Love This Planet

The Canadian writer Naomi Klein said about Helen Caldicott: (she) “has the rare ability to combine science with passion, logic with love, and urgency with humor.” In 2009 the revised edition of Caldicott’s book: If You Love This Planet was published by Norton. In a yearlong research process she updated the information on dangerous global trends such as ozone depletion, global warming, toxic pollution, food contamination, and deforestation – and, as always, she gives a prescription for a cure and cause for hope. Helen Caldicott rallies readers to action with the contention that our fight for the planet will draw its strength from love for the Earth itself.
Helen Caldicott, has devoted the last 38 years to an international campaign to [ . . . ]

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David Ray Griffin – The Mysterious Collapse Of World Trade Center 7

The collapse of Building 7 on the afternoon of 9/11 was overshadowed by that of the Twin Towers in spite of one eerie similarity. Even though it had not been hit by a plane, the 47 story building also came down at free fall speed, collapsing into it’s footprint. FEMA admitted in their initial report in 2002 that they had no good explanation as to why the building came down and an official silence fell over the fate of the building for six more years.
Then, in November 2008, the federal technology agency NIST released the Final WTC 7 Investigation Report. 9/11 researcher David Ray Griffin scrutinized the NIST report page by page and published his findings in book form in [ . . . ]

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Cynthia Mckinney – The Free Gaza Movement

The Free Gaza Movement  began in the Fall of 2006. Seeing all land borders of Gaza controlled by Israel – and by Egypt at Rafah – severely restricting the crossing of urgently needed food, fuel, and medicine for 1.4 million Palestinians – they decided to reach Gaza by sea, and directly challenge the Israeli siege.
In response to the month-long Israeli war on Gaza that began at the end of December 2008 they sent a ship with over 3 tons of emergency medical supplies, and 3 surgeons. Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. congresswoman and Green Party presidential candidate, decided to participate in this journey. This is her story of the ramming of the first boat, and boarding of the second  Free Gaza [ . . . ]

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Dr. Patch Adams – The Real Patch Adams

In the 1998 movie Robin Williams played Patch Adams, the funny doctor with a red clown’s nose, the young man who almost committed suicide but then found joy in becoming a physician and taking care of people. That movie made Patch Adams a folk hero but it also undermined the deeper meaning of the healing project that he and his friends were and are building today.
In this program Patch Adams gives a review of the history of his project, the Gesundheit Institute, lists some of the international activities on behalf of orphans, prevention of child sexual slavery and women’s mortality in childbirth. Adams now wants to build a full hospital based on the principles of healing that he laid out [ . . . ]

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Helen Caldicott – Banning Nuclear Weapons

The anti-nuclear campaigner Dr. Helen Caldicott spoke in Berkeley at a June 2009 meeting of SuperBOLD, an organization dedicated to enforcing the Nuclear Free ordinance. They are trying to prevent the Berkeley Public library from hiring the 3M corporation to maintain the Radio Frequency checkpoint system there. 3M refuses to sign a contract that they will not do “work for nuclear weapons.”
For over 35 years Helen Caldicott has led the international efforts to educate the public about the dangers of nuclear power and weapons and has been named one of the most influential women of the 20th century by the Smithsonian Institute.
code HC003DVD: To order as 56 minute film on DVD: $14.00

Derrick Jensen: Bringing Down Civilization

Derrick Jensen Wrote In His Early Book: “Listening To The Land”: “We Are Members Of The Most Destructive Culture Ever To Exist. Our Assault On The Natural World, On Indigenous And Other Cultures, On Women, On Children, On All Of Us Through The Possibility Of Nuclear Suicide –All These Are Unprecedented In Their Magnitude And Ferocity.” And He Follows That With A Question: “Why Do We Act As We Do? What Are Sane And Effective Responses To Outrageously Destructive Behavior? My Work And Life Revolve Around These Questions. “ When I Recorded Him In The Oakland, California Warehouse Of Ak Press, Derrick Jensen Asked That Question In A Much More Pointed Way: If Civilization Is Destroying Us And The Earth [ . . . ]

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Jeremy Scahill – Blackwater

The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army
In San Francisco, at the start of his book tour, Scahill gave an eloquent and fact filled one hour overview of the main points: Blackwater is the most powerful force in privatized war fought for profit by unaccountable corporations. Don’t miss it!
Scahill’s book, Blackwater, made the New York Times bestseller list when it was first published. The updated paperback edition came out in June 2008. Scahill is correspondent for Democracy Now! and a writer for the Nation.

code A319DVD:  To order as 63 minute film on DVD: $14.00

Peter Dale Scott – America’s Afghanistan

US National Security and a Heroin-Ravaged State
The US State Department calls Afghanistan a failed state that justifies US intervention, rather than acknowledging that US intervention has caused that so-called failure. And among all the triggers to that failure from US support of the Mujahedin and Al Quaeda to the war lords one element is not recognized in it’s real importance: the role of the trade in opium.
Peter Dale Scott, author of “Drugs Oil, and War” and “Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America” is one of the most respected researchers on the use of drugs in the strategies of the CIA and in US foreign policy. He says that the unprecedented increase in Afghani opium production in [ . . . ]

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