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The Power of Nightmares: Baby It's Cold Outside
Should we be worried about the threat from organised terrorism or is it simply a phantom menace being used to stop society from falling apart?
In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.
The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.
In a new series, the Power of Nightmares explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion.
It is a myth that has spread unquestioned through politics, the security services and the international media.
"Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful Together they created today's nightmare vision of an organised terror network."
A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.
The rise of the politics of fear begins in 1949 with two men whose radical ideas would inspire the attack of 9/11 and influence the neo-conservative movement that dominates Washington.
Both these men believed that modern liberal freedoms were eroding the bonds that held society together.
The two movements they inspired set out, in their different ways, to rescue their societies from this decay. But in an age of growing disillusion with politics, the neo-conservatives turned to fear in order to pursue their vision.
They would create a hidden network of evil run by the Soviet Union that only they could see.
The Islamists were faced by the refusal of the masses to follow their dream and began to turn to terror to force the people to "see the truth"'.
The Power of Nightmares will be broadcast over three nights from Tuesday 18 to Thursday, 20 January, 2005 at 2320 GMT on BBC Two. The final part has been updated in the wake of the Law Lords ruling in December that detaining foreign terrorist suspects without trial was illegal.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/3755686.stm
IRAQ FOR SALE
The story of what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war. Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed, and Uncovered) takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing in Iraq and the decision makers who allow them to do so.
War Profiteers, Profits Over Patriotism in Iraq
The tales sound like tortures from the Arabian Nights. Drivers sent to their deaths in empty convoys dispatched because the contractor is paid by the trip; men stripped naked in prison and attacked by dogs; troops in the desert drinking contaminated water, waiting for meals that never come.
But the stories are not fiction. They come from the American occupation in Iraq, a military operation that has privatized war to an unprecedented degree, using private, commercial companies for everything from feeding the troops to patrolling the streets.
This report explores the unprecedented use of private contractors during the Iraq war and occupation. It shows how the catastrophic failures in Iraqi reconstruction derive directly from the conservative ideology and policies of those who drove this war of choice.
http://home.ourfuture.org/reports/report-war-profiteers.pdf
THE GROUND TRUTH
. . . stunned filmgoers at the 2006 Sundance and Nantucket Film Festivals.
Hailed as "powerful" and "quietly unflinching," Patricia Foulkrod's searing documentary feature includes exclusive footage that will stir audiences. The filmmaker's subjects are patriotic young Americans - ordinary men and women who heeded the call for military service in Iraq - as they experience recruitment and training, combat, homecoming, and the struggle to reintegrate with families and communities. The terrible conflict in Iraq, depicted with ferocious honesty in the film, is a prelude for the even more challenging battles fought by the soldiers returning home – with personal demons, an uncomprehending public, and an indifferent government. As these battles take shape, each soldier becomes a new kind of hero, bearing witness and giving support to other veterans, and learning to fearlessly wield the most powerful weapon of all - the truth.
'The Ground Truth' hurts, but it's necessary
September 15, 2006 There are two moments in ``The Ground Truth" when the film's unforgiving spotlight suddenly shines out at the audience sitting in the dark. One is when former US Army specialist Robert Acosta, maimed in the leg and minus a hand, tells of conversations with civilians since his return to the States.
``How'd you lose your hand?" someone will ask. ``The war." ``What war?" ``Iraq." Pause. ``That still going on?"
The other sound bite is less damning, more of a personal challenge, and it comes when ex- US Army Reserve specialist Aidan Delgado simply says, ``Americans want to honor vets with yellow stickers rather than listening to them."
``The Ground Truth" listens. Directed by Patricia Foulkrod but really written by the men and women whose tours of duty it describes, this short, sharp documentary is not about George Bush or left/right politics or 9/11. It's not even really about the war in Iraq. It's about the US soldiers who are fighting that war: why they went, what they saw, how they feel when they come back.
http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2006/09/15/the_ground_truth_hurts_but_its_necessary/
