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The interconnected epidemics of anxiety, chronic illness and substance abuse are, according to Dr Gabor Maté, normal. But not in the way you might think.
One in five Americans are diagnosed with mental illness in any given year [1]. Suicide is the second most common cause of death in the US for youth aged 15-24 [2], and kills over 700,000 people a year globally [3] and 48,300 in the USA [4]. Drug overdose kills 81,000 in the USA annually [5]. The autoimmunity epidemic affects 24 million people in the USA [6]. What is going on?
“So much of what we call abnormality in this culture is actually normal responses to an abnormal culture. The abnormality does not reside in the pathology of individuals, but in the very culture that drives people into suffering and dysfunction.”
— Gabor Maté
In The Wisdom of Trauma, we travel alongside physician, bestselling author and Order of Canada recipient Dr. Gabor Maté to explore why our western society is facing such epidemics. This is a journey with a man who has dedicated his life to understanding the connection between illness, addiction, trauma and society.
“Trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you, as a result of what happens to you.”
— Gabor Maté
Trauma is the invisible force that shapes our lives. It shapes the way we live, the way we love and the way we make sense of the world. It is the root of our deepest wounds. Dr. Maté gives us a new vision: a trauma-informed society in which parents, teachers, physicians, policy-makers and legal personnel are not concerned with fixing behaviors, making diagnoses, suppressing symptoms and judging, but seek instead to understand the sources from which troubling behaviors and diseases spring in the wounded human soul.
Environmental advocates have long protested the role that oil companies play in exacerbating the climate change crisis. Their voices have rattled some of the world's most influential leaders, inspired meaningful reforms, and galvanized a desire for more clean energy solutions. This has led many to believe that the age of Big Oil is on its way out. But according to the feature-length documentary Why Big Oil Conquered the World, its reign has only just begun. The film theorizes that the industry is actually based entirely on the principle of exerting power over the people. Up until this point in history, oil has served as a means to that end.
This thesis begins with eugenics, a Darwin-inspired movement that supported genetic manipulation, and the breeding of new generations that would possess only the most desirable human characteristics. Many members of the elite threw their support behind the study and implementation of eugenics, including John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and their goals soon took on an even more sinister tone. They proposed the isolation, containment and complete control of "subnormal" populations, such as the disfigured, uneducated and impoverished. They lobbied for the power to decide who lived or died.
Their approach might have changed over the intervening years - and their harsh rhetoric softened - but their ultimate goals have remained unchanged. They've simply adopted a more polished public relations image. Meanwhile, the masses are oblivious to their nefarious ulterior motives. The oil oligarchies even worked to hijack the environmental movement, and perverted the message of conservation by suggesting population control as a means of reducing our carbon footprint. In recent years, their vocal support of the Paris Climate Accord has proven equally suspect. Can the culprits behind our current environmental catastrophes really be trusted to free us from them?
At times, the film plays like a science fiction based horror movie, but it provides substantial footage and extensive research in support of even its most outlandish claims. Direct quotes and on-camera sound bytes prove especially damning to the powerful figures at the center of these schemes.
Whether you embrace the film's premise wholeheartedly, or remain skeptical of many of its accusations, Why Big Oil Conquered the World provides a wealth of eye-opening revelations that are worthy of consideration.
Oil. From farm to pharmaceutical, diesel truck to dinner plate, pipeline to plastic product, it is impossible to think of an area of our modern-day lives that is not affected by the petrochemical industry. The story of oil is the story of the modern world.
Parts of that story are well-known: Rockefeller and Standard Oil; the internal combustion engine and the transformation of global transport; the House of Saud and the oil wars in the Middle East.
Other parts are more obscure: the quest for oil and the outbreak of World War I; the petrochemical interests behind modern medicine; the Big Oil money behind the “Green Revolution” and the “Gene Revolution.”
But that story, properly told, begins somewhere unexpected. Not in Pennsylvania with the first commercial drilling operation and the first oil boom, but in the rural backwoods of early 19th century New York State. And it doesn't start with crude oil or its derivatives, but a different product altogether: snake oil.
“Dr. Bill Livingston, Celebrated Cancer Specialist” was the very image of the traveling snake oil salesman. He was neither a doctor nor a cancer specialist; his real name was not even Livingston. More to the point, the “Rock Oil” tonic he pawned was a useless mixture of laxative and petroleum and had no effect whatsoever on the cancer of the poor townsfolk he conned into buying it.
He lived the life of a vagabond, always on the run from the last group of people he had fooled, engaged in ever-more-outrageous deceptions to make sure that the past wouldn't catch up with him. He abandoned his first wife and their six children to start a bigamous marriage in Canada at the same time as he fathered two more children by a third woman. He adopted the name “Livingston” after he was indicted for raping a girl in Cayuga in 1849.
When he wasn't running away from them or disappearing for years at a time, he would teach his children the tricks of his treacherous trade. He once bragged of his parenting technique: “I cheat my boys every chance I get. I want to make ’em sharp.”
A towering man of over six feet and with natural good looks that he used to his advantage, he went by “Big Bill.” Others, less generously, called him “Devil Bill.” But his real name was William Avery Rockefeller, and it was his son, John D. Rockefeller, who would go on to found the Standard Oil monopoly and become the world's first billionaire.
The world we live in today is the world created in "Devil" Bill's image. It's a world founded on treachery, deceit, and the naïveté of a public that has never wised up to the parlor tricks that the Rockefellers and their ilk have been using to shape the world for the past century and a half.
JFK to 911 is already a global phenomenon, having began as a Youtube video which achieved over a billion hits by becoming the first documentary in human history to untangle all the establishment lies and reveal the entire truth about the Kennedy Assassination and 911.
These disclosures so frightened the powers-that-be that President Trump and the Queen of England took the joint decision to ban it altogether, so that if you read this book, you will be learning the most cardinal secrets which your government would much rather you did not know.
Nearly all intelligent people these days are wary of what we are being told by the mainstream media, but fewer are aware that the very notion of 'fake news' began with the words on these pages, and that all government policy in recent times has been an ongoing effort to hold back the increasing enlightenment these words have inspired.
Legions of people have taken the trouble to go online so that they could tell the world about how learning that absolutely everything is a rich man's trick--the justice system, the education system, the economic system, and most importantly, the media.
Francis Richard Conolly is extremely hopeful that the people who have made a movie which he originally gave them for free such a central part of their existence will now buy this book in order to build the revenues which he needs to make the sequel which everyone wants to see.
REVIEW RESOURCE: https://www.catch.com.au/produ....ct/jfk-to-911-everyt
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Oliver Stone has not left the assassination of John F. Kennedy behind. One of his best films, 1991’s “JFK” became a major event in the analysis of the death of one of the most popular world leaders in history, adding fuel to the fires already burning around The Warren Commission Report that, bluntly, a lot of people don’t believe. Three decades after that narrative feature that's as much about obsession as it is assassination, Stone has returned with a documentary that basically reiterates many of the details of the case with a heavy focus on what’s been learned via declassified reports, books by witnesses, and other analysis in the last 30 years.
Playing in theaters today and on Showtime's streaming app, and airing on Showtime on the anniversary of the assassination on November 22rd, “JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass” is an exhaustive and sometimes exhausting documentary, a film that can sometimes feel like it’s so packed with information and detail that Stone has lost the path through this dense forest of conspiracy theories.
At its best, it reminds one how tightly Stone can assemble a film like this one as he makes a convincing case that some things about the assassination of JFK don’t add up. At its worst, it can be like a drunken conversation, moving wildly from point to point in a way that gives you no time to stop and ask some pertinent questions. One thing is true in both cases—it’s never boring. And our true crime-obsessed era seems primed to revisit one of the most famous crimes of all time.
Stone was smart to basically divide “JFK Revisited” into two hour-long chapters—it leads one to wonder if he wasn’t considering making this into a docuseries instead of a film. The first half, narrated by Stone and Whoopi Goldberg, focuses heavily on the evidence of that day in 1963—ballistics, exit wounds, reports from people who saw Kennedy’s body. Was the bullet entry wound in the back, as the Warren Commission asserted, or in the front, as several witnesses claimed after seeing the body?
Why are the memories of the state of Kennedy's brain different than the photographs? And how does one possibly explain the retrieved bullet that reportedly went through Kennedy and hit John Connally looking practically pristine when it was recovered? Stone’s approach is to layer inconsistency on inconsistency. Some don’t add up to much—a witness is not going to be able to remember exactly how long it took her to descend the book depository stairs on a good day much less a historic one—but there is an unsettling sense that, at the very least, mistakes were made in the investigation. (Just the chain of custody of some of the evidence was clearly messed up.)
The second half of “JFK Revisited,” narrated by Donald Sutherland (who had a pivotal role in “JFK”), isn’t as strong because it feels more rushed and leans into some of the wilder ideas with less focus. In this half, Stone sets out to provide motives for an assassination and cover-up, basically pointing the finger at the CIA. He flies down the rabbit hole of history, compiling stories about Castro, Vietnam, and the Military-Industrial Complex in a manner that sometimes feels haphazard, and then he ends far too abruptly, suggesting that conspiracy and assassination destroys the fabric of society without really digging into what that means in 2021.
Stone can get a little too confident for his own good—“Conspiracy theories are now conspiracy facts,” he says in one such moment—but when one has devoted as much of his life to the death of Kennedy as the Oscar-winning director has then hesitancy isn’t an option. I was concerned going into the film that Stone’s obsession would lead to a documentary that only he could understand—conspiracy theorists have a habit of foregoing accessibility to those who haven’t read dozens of books on the subject—but I was reminded how expertly Stone can orchestrate a film like this one, even as the second half was spinning theory after theory. Most of all, I was left thinking that this isn’t so much Stone's final word on the subject as it is a hope to restart the conversation.
RESOURCE: https://www.rogerebert.com/rev....iews/jfk-revisited-t
The Light Bulb Conspiracy uncovers how planned obsolescence has shaped our lives and economy since the 1920’s, when manufacturers deliberately started shortening the life of consumer products to increase demand. The film also profiles a new generation of consumers, designers and business people who have started challenging planned obsolescence as an unsustainable economic driver.
The documentary begins by visiting the longest running light bulb in the world, which has burned continuously for over 110 years in Livermore, California. Initially, light bulbs were built to last. But the film finds historical evidence revealing how a cartel in the 1920’s decided to produce bulbs limited to a maximum life of 1000 hours, making the humble light bulb one of the first examples of planned obsolescence and a model for increasing profits on other products.
Shot over three years in Europe, the U.S. and Ghana, The Light Bulb Conspiracy investigates the evolution and impact of planned obsolescence through interviews with historians, economists, designers and manufacturers, along with archival footage and internal company documents. The film profiles several well-known historical advocates -- Bernard London, who famously proposed ending the Great Depression by mandating planned obsolescence, and Brook Stevens, whose post-war ideas became the gospel of the 1950’s and helped shape the throwaway consumer society of today.
The Light Bulb Conspiracy also looks at modern examples of planned obsolescence, including computer printers and the controversy over the inability to replace iPod batteries. Environmental consequences are seen most dramatically in the massive amounts of electronic waste that end up in uncontrolled dump sites in Third World countries such as Ghana. The film concludes with examples of consumers and businesses moving towards more sustainable practices and products, including Warner Philips, great grandson of the founder of Philips Electronics, who is producing an LED bulb designed to last 25 years.
REVIEW RESOURCE: https://www.videoproject.org/L....ight-Bulb-Conspiracy
‘THE END OF MEDICINE’ INVESTIGATES LINK BETWEEN DISEASE AND ANIMAL CONSUMPTION
While Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara have starred in many movies together, they’ve now teamed up to make a movie. The duo–who are as equally respected by Hollywood as they are by the animal rights community–lend their influence to a new feature-length investigative documentary called The End of Medicine. As executive producers, Phoenix and Mara team up with BAFTA-winning director Alex Lockwood (73 Cows) and producer Keegan Kuhn (Cowspiracy, What The Health) to expose a disturbing, dirty little secret that the food industry has been trying to conceal for decades.
In a swift 73 minutes, The End of Medicine draws attention to the underreported link between global disease–pandemics and antibiotic resistance included–and our (mis)use of animals. The film gets its momentum from whistleblower Dr. Alice Brough, a young vet who first grew intolerant toward the industry’s “acceptable” practices of animal agriculture. As we see, Dr. Brough risks her professional career and livelihood to denounce the corruption within the industry by sharing insider information about the reality of factory farming and animal disease. Through her tears, we can clearly see how distressed she is as she talks directly to the camera, remorseful for her contributions to the industry in the past.
Where to watch: ‘The End of Medicine’ is available on VOD May 10th.
While Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara have starred in many movies together, they’ve now teamed up to make a movie. The duo–who are as equally respected by Hollywood as they are by the animal rights community–lend their influence to a new feature-length investigative documentary called The End of Medicine. As executive producers, Phoenix and Mara team up with BAFTA-winning director Alex Lockwood (73 Cows) and producer Keegan Kuhn (Cowspiracy, What The Health) to expose a disturbing, dirty little secret that the food industry has been trying to conceal for decades.
In a swift 73 minutes, The End of Medicine draws attention to the underreported link between global disease–pandemics and antibiotic resistance included–and our (mis)use of animals. The film gets its momentum from whistleblower Dr. Alice Brough, a young vet who first grew intolerant toward the industry’s “acceptable” practices of animal agriculture. As we see, Dr. Brough risks her professional career and livelihood to denounce the corruption within the industry by sharing insider information about the reality of factory farming and animal disease. Through her tears, we can clearly see how distressed she is as she talks directly to the camera, remorseful for her contributions to the industry in the past.
In typical call-to-action-type documentaries, The End of Medicine provides an overwhelming number of facts that are meant to shock the viewer into making immediate lifestyle changes. Industry insiders, government advisors, politicians, scientists, and leading doctors share unnerving statistics that at times, feel more hopeless than optimistic.
One claim that caused me to sit up a little straighter was hearing that 3 out of 4 emerging infectious diseases come from an animal source. This tends to happen because an animal’s immune system is lowered when they’re stressed, and they’re stressed because they’re so densely packed in cages in unsanitary conditions. It’s easy for the animal, then, to catch an infection and spread it to the rest of their cage-mates and eventually, the humans who consume them. Not surprisingly, COVID was used as an example: We socially distance ourselves from other sick humans but are doing the exact opposite to animals. This film asks, “Why?”
The End of Medicine has one goal in mind, and that is to get its audience to think twice about consuming animal products. Ideally, Phoenix and Mara would be able to convince all of us to go completely vegan (but it may take a few more documentaries for that to happen). While the note the film ends on isn’t the most optimistic in tone, aside from the standard “transform yourself to transform the world”, its intentions are pure and worthwhile. Films like these are important, and if The End of Medicine causes you to pause before ordering the burger–even for a moment–then it’s done its job.
REVIEW RESOURCE: https://cinemacy.com/the-end-of-medicine-review/
Resonance: Beings of Frequency is the first full documentary to investigate the actual mechanisms by which mobile phone technology can cause harm to someone’s well-being.cancer. Filmmakers take a deep dive into how humanity is coping with the emergence of mobile devices.
Billions of years ago, life first appeared on planet earth and bathed in a natural electromagnetic frequency. As life slowly evolved from simple to complex organisms, it was surrounded by this natural frequency, forming a harmonic relationship. This harmony is something science is beginning to understand, and special interest groups are trying to hide.
The balance built over time could be in jeopardy. Over the last two or three decades, this harmony has been disturbed, and dramatically so by technology. Mankind has saturated itself in an ocean of artificial frequencies, overwhelming the earth’s natural resonance. To the naked eye, our world appears the same. But at the cellular level, the health of living organisms is being affected. Yet, we are only starting to scratch the surface.
REVIEW RESOURCE: https://www.gaia.com/video/res....onance-beings-freque
A documentary film about the origins, development and expansion of one of the most elitist and secret organizations in today's world. Once a year, the most powerful people allegedly meet behind closed doors to discuss their secret agenda.
The Bilderberg Group is believed to be made up of European prime ministers, North American presidents, and the most affluent CEOs on the planet. Together they come together and discuss the economic interests and political future of humanity. Journalists have never been allowed to attend, nor have statements ever been released on the meetings, which have incredible implications on the citizens of the world.
Featuring: Daniel Estulin, Pilar Urbano, Nigel Farage, Mario Borghezio, Jeffrey Steinberg, Lyndon Larouche, Dennis Small, Helga Zepp-Larouche, Michael Billington, Gerard Aalders, Denis Healey
Director’s Note
How and when was it created? Who are they? What do they do, how they do it, and why do they do what they do? Is there anything we can do about it? These were some of the basic questions that came to mind when I accepted Daniel Estulin’s offer to make this documentary film. My greatest fear: that the density of the subject itself would end up distracting the viewer’s attention. My only goal: simplify; make it straightforward; present facts, evidence, cross-checked information. And the big challenge: the film had to maintain a pace, be visually entertaining, beautiful and dynamic, on the one hand; and deeply informative, on the other.
To explain through visual images the existence of an almost ethereal entity, its headquarters – a 20m2, second floor walk up on a quiet street in Leiden, the Netherlands manned only by an answering machine; its members – faceless and nameless to the rest of the world refuse to grant public interviews, was not an easy task. The same organization, its outward secrecy and the shadow of accusations of conspiracy leveled against those who have dared to broach the subject, are also circumstances that made this process much more complex for me, as a filmmaker.
How do you explain to someone who demands freedom, that all he has to do is walk through the open door in front of him? How can I show through images, that the truth that almost everyone considers as such, is a lie? How do I show that this truth, which is not reality, is based on lies which, after repeating them and believing them, end up becoming real? What is the truth? What is reality?
Reality is just that — the truth. A lie, on the other hand, has to have a meaning to be first promulgated and then accepted by the masses. The hardest thing for us, based on how we have been taught to think, is to learn how to detect a lie. The objective of this film is to find the cause whose effect is the lies that are continuously sold to us, as well as to deeply and precisely understand the magnitude of this reality, and its palpable consequences in our lives.
Joan Cutrina
The official version of human history is a construct of lies. We are in a state of collective amnesia. Let's free ourselves from the artificial matrix that has been imposed on us. This part covers the World's Fairs and the time in which they took place.
Written by: dreamtime & Mosaic, https://stolenhistory.net
Narrated by: Sovereine & David Glenney
Post-production: Bart van der Zwaan https://youtube.com/bartingman
WATCH FULL SIERIES:
Part 1: Nothing is as it seems => https://vajratube.com/v/MBtVx6
Part 2: The Destruction of the Old World => https://vajratube.com/v/4Kya4M
Part 3: The Mystery of the World's Fairs => https://vajratube.com/v/lmqIAN
The official version of human history is a construct of lies. We are in a state of collective amnesia. Let's free ourselves from the artificial matrix that has been imposed on us. This part covers the World's Fairs and the time in which they took place.
Written by: dreamtime & Mosaic, https://stolenhistory.net
Narrated by: Sovereine & David Glenney
Post-production: Bart van der Zwaan https://youtube.com/bartingman
WATCH FULL SIERIES:
Part 1: Nothing is as it seems => https://vajratube.com/v/MBtVx6
Part 2: The Destruction of the Old World => https://vajratube.com/v/4Kya4M
Part 3: The Mystery of the World's Fairs => https://vajratube.com/v/lmqIAN
The official version of human history is a construct of lies. We are in a state of collective amnesia. Let's free ourselves from the artificial matrix that has been imposed on us. This part covers the World's Fairs and the time in which they took place.
Written by: dreamtime & Mosaic, https://stolenhistory.net
Narrated by: Sovereine & David Glenney
Post-production: Bart van der Zwaan https://youtube.com/bartingman
WATCH FULL SIERIES:
Part 1: Nothing is as it seems => https://vajratube.com/v/MBtVx6
Part 2: The Destruction of the Old World => https://vajratube.com/v/4Kya4M
Part 3: The Mystery of the World's Fairs => https://vajratube.com/v/lmqIAN
The Pyramid Code is a made-for-television documentary series of 5 episodes that explores the pyramid fields and ancient temples in Egypt, as well as ancient megalithic sites around the world, looking for clues to matriarchal consciousness, ancient knowledge and sophisticated technology in a golden age.
The ancients knew about an Earth grid of powerful energies and believed they coalesced in designated patterns. Learn how such knowledge translated into an extraordinary mathematical precision, as revealed in monuments including the great pyramids of Egypt, Stonehenge, Teotihuacán and many others.
The series is based on the extensive research done in 25 trips to Egypt and 51 other countries around the world by Dr. Carmen Boulter. The Pyramid Code features interviews with more than a dozen prominent scholars and authors in multidisciplinary fields.
Episode 2
44 mins
High Level Technology
High Level Technology shows evidence that the ancient Egyptians used sophisticated engineering and high science to construct pyramids and temples.
Near-Death Experience, Awareness, Mental stability, psychology, mind games, documentary, Interview
Jeffery Olsen explains how he had a near-death experience, and why it has changed his vision of life and death.
An interview by Anthony Chene
RESOURCE : http://www.anthonychene.com
Director Mark Levinson's documentary focuses on the most elaborate and costly science experiment ever conducted.
A particularly timely work given the Nobel Prizes for Physics just announced for two of its central figures, Particle Fever succeeds on every level, but none more important than in making the normally intimidating and arcane world of genius-level physics at least conceptually comprehensible and even friendly to the lay viewer. This unexpected look at the long run-up to and successful completion of the most elaborate and costly science experiment ever conducted — the use of the Large Hadron Collider to attempt to find the Higgs boson — is not only fascinating, but also humanizes the field in a way that will inspire practitioners and provoke the curiosity of non-specialists. Set for theatrical release next March, this top-notch account of a major moment in the advance of human knowledge will have a long, full life in all documentary-friendly arenas worldwide.
It’s crucial for starters that the subject is second nature to the filmmakers: director Mark Levinson earned a doctoral degree in particle physics from Berkeley before veering into film, and producer David Kaplan, a professor of theoretical particle physics at Johns Hopkins, has also been active on History Channel and National Geographic science programs. They’re able to simplify and synthesize without dumbing down the material and put non-science-oriented viewers at ease by drawing a smart parallel between science and art: Both endeavors ultimately represent attempts to explain our existence and our place in the universe.
It also doesn’t hurt that both the metaphysical and the (literally) physical backdrop for the film is enormous. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the biggest machine ever built. Buried underground in Switzerland, it resembles but dwarfs any set ever built for a James Bond film, measuring seven stories tall and consisting of a 17-mile ring through which protons, powered by seven-ton super-conducting magnetos, will be sent to collide with each other at a speed aimed to reproduce conditions such as those just after the Big Bang.
The Atlas Experiment, which was initiated in the 1980s, involves 10,000 people from 100 countries and the use of 100,000 computers to deal with all the data. An even bigger such machine was started in the United States but was canceled by Congress after a few years because there were no specific military or commercial applications for the experiment. Trying to convey the magnitude of the project, participants compare it to the building of the pyramids or the moon landings, only bigger.
And what is its raison d’être? This is described in many ways: To try to understand the basic laws of nature, to discover the key particle that holds everything together (which is what the Higgs boson describes), to identify particles scientists know are out there but haven’t been seen and, in the simplest terms, to learn which group of theorists is correct — those who believe in the “super-symmetry” of one universe or the adherents of an ever-expanding “multi-verse” based on randomness and chaos.
The LHC will be the vehicle to take physicists to and, they hope, beyond the outer edge of the scientific frontier as currently acknowledged; everyone in the field is keyed up by the certainty that a new threshold is about to be breached. “It’s going to change everything,” Kaplan predicts.
With foresight, Kaplan and Levinson began production in 2008 and, while the center of action remains the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, the net is cast wide to encompass the perspectives of scientists as they gather there, as well as those following events with computer links elsewhere. The project leader is an Italian woman, Fabiola Gianotti; an American woman, Monica Dunford, provides an emotionally excitable take; a veteran Greek physicist, Savas Dimopoulos, is concerned that he’s too old to be able to take part in what he’s sure will be the exciting next phase of research; while Nima Arkani-Hamed, whose family escaped from revolutionary Iran after 1979, has a great deal riding on the experiment, about which he says, “The hype is approximately accurate.”
Official Website: http://particlefever.com
REVIEW RESOURCE: https://www.hollywoodreporter.....com/movies/movie-rev
Award-winning journalist John Pilger investigates the discrepancies between American and British claims for the 'war on terror' and the facts on the ground as he finds them in Afghanistan and Washington, DC.
In 2001, as the bombs began to drop, George W. Bush promised Afghanistan "the generosity of America and its allies". Now, the familiar old warlords are regaining power, religious fundamentalism is renewing its grip and military skirmishes continue routinely. In "liberated" Afghanistan, America has its military base and pipeline access, while the people have the warlords who are, says one woman, "in many ways worse than the Taliban".
In Washington, Pilger conducts a series of remarkable interviews with William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, and leading Administration officials such as Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.
These people, and the other architects of the Project for the New American Century, were dismissed as 'the crazies' by the first Bush Administration in the early 90s when they first presented their ideas for pre-emptive strikes and world domination.
Pilger also interviews presidential candidate General Wesley Clark, and former intelligence officers, all the while raising searching questions about the real motives for the 'war on terror'.
While President Bush refers to the US attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq as two 'great victories', Pilger asks the question - victories over whom, and for what purpose? Pilger describes Afghanistan as a country "more devastated than anything I have seen since Pol Pot's Cambodia". He finds that Al-Qaida has not been defeated and that the Taliban is re-emerging. And of the "victory" in Iraq, he asks: "Is this Bush's Vietnam?"
REVIEW RESOURCE: http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/break.html
Anthony Summers, the author of the book Goddess (1985), explains he began researching Marilyn Monroe after he learned that the Los Angeles County District Attorney was reopening the case of her death. Summers subsequently spent three years collecting 650 tape-recorded interviews with people who either knew Monroe in her lifetime or had knowledge concerning her death. The audio of the interviews is original, but actors perform lip-synced reenactments.
As Monroe began acting, she had affairs with multiple powerful men who helped advance her career. Fellow actor Jane Russell notes Monroe had a particularly strong work ethic. However, Monroe suffered from poor mental health stemming from a troubled childhood.
Monroe's third husband, writer Arthur Miller, was affiliated with communism. Both he and Monroe were observed by the FBI, and the couple was known to socialize with communist American ex-pats while abroad. As their marriage deteriorated, Monroe abused prescription drugs and she became increasingly difficult to work with. In 1961, she and Miller divorced.
In 1954, Arthur James, who knew Monroe from Charles Chaplin Jr. in the late 1940s, saw Kennedy with Monroe, walking on the shore, near the Malibu pier, and drinking at the hangout, Malibu Cottage. Monroe met the Kennedy family in the early 1950s, through Hollywood connections that likely evolved from the founding role of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. at RKO Pictures during the 1920s. In the early 1960s, actor Peter Lawford and his wife, Patricia Kennedy Lawford, had a beach house in Malibu, California, where they hosted many social gatherings. Monroe had affairs with both President John F. Kennedy and United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, often meeting them at the beach house.
Summers pieces together that Monroe was in a risky political position, as the Kennedy brothers would discuss with her current events including nuclear weapons testing. This was in 1962, during the height of the Cold War. Because of Monroe's leftist politics, the FBI worried she could pass along or make public anything the Kennedys told her. As a result, the Kennedy brothers eventually attempted to cut off all contact with her.
Monroe died on August 4, 1962, and it was ruled a probable suicide. The official timeline reports Monroe's housekeeper, Eunice Murray, checked on Monroe around 3am and found the bedroom door locked. Murray called Monroe's psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, who arrived around 3:30am, broke in through a window, and discovered Monroe was dead. Paramedics and police arrived at 4:25am. Her death was ruled a probable suicide due to a drug overdose.
Summers discounts this timeline, as multiple interview subjects corroborate a rough sequence of events, although there are discrepancies. In this version, Monroe's medical emergency began earlier that night. Her public relations manager, Arthur Jacobs, arrived at Monroe's residence as early as 11pm. An ambulance was called, and Dr. Greenson rode with a comatose Monroe as she was transported to a hospital. She either died at the hospital or on the way. Her body was returned to her house, where she was placed in her bed and "discovered" in the early morning hours. Private investigator Fred Otash and surveillance expert Reed Wilson claim they were hired by Peter Lawford to clear Monroe's home of any evidence that connected her to the Kennedy family before police and reporters arrived.
Despite Summers having accumulated information that was previously unknown about Monroe's death, he doesn't believe she was murdered. Rather, he maintains Monroe died by suicide or an accidental drug overdose. He suspects any type of cover-up was due to her connection with the Kennedy brothers. In 1982, the Los Angeles district attorney ended its review of the case and upheld the original recorded cause of death.
Billionaire activist George Soros is one of the most influential and controversial figures of our time. Famous for betting against the Bank of England in 1992 and making a billion dollars in one day, he is maligned by ideologues on both the left and the right for daring to tackle the world’s problems and putting his money behind his fight – from free elections and freedom of the press to civil rights for minorities. With unprecedented access to the man and his inner circle, American director Jesse Dylan follows Soros across the globe and pulls back the curtain on his personal history, private wealth, and public activism. Soros reveals a complicated genius whose experience as a Jew during the Holocaust gave rise to a lifelong crusade against authoritarianism and hate.
George Soros, a demon to many right-wing blabbermouths, must be one of the most misunderstood men on the contemporary scene. At least that is the premise of Jesse Dylan’s documentary, Soros, which contains extensive interviews with the billionaire, along with testimonials from some of his admirers and scathing evaluations from his detractors. The film is sometimes clumsily executed, but it does have timeliness in its favor.
The movie opens with blasts from people like Stephen Bannon and Fox News host Tucker Carlson. While they are foaming at the mouth, these angry reactionaries never quite clarify why they so detest Soros. And that is the film’s fatal flaw; it doesn’t fully explain why Soros has aroused more antipathy than other progressive philanthropists. The film does recall how Soros made part of his fortune by betting against the Bank of England during a period of financial instability, so perhaps that partially explains the antipathy of people who view him as an opportunist.
REVIEW RESOURCE: https://www.hollywoodreporter.....com/movies/movie-rev
Werner Herzog, Documentary, Timothy Treadwell, Alaska, Tragedy, Tragicomedy, Home Video, Nature
Tragicomedy is an overworked word. Yet nothing else will do. Werner Herzog, that connoisseur of extreme figures in far-off places, has made an inspired documentary about the gonzo naturalist Timothy Treadwell, who in 2003 ended up as lunch for the bears he lived with in the remote Alaskan wilderness.
It is poignant, it is beautiful, and it is absolutely hilarious. Herzog didn't even have much work to do, what's more, because Treadwell - gifted, untrained film-maker that he was - had done almost everything himself, leaving behind hundreds of hours of videotape that he had shot at extreme and indeed fatal risk to himself. They contain sublime, dramatic shots of the bears and footage of his own mad and posturing rants to camera, wearing combats and a bandana - part surfer-dude, part drama-queen. Poor Mr Treadwell. He loved those bears. And they loved him. Yum, yum!
Timothy Treadwell was a mixed-up kid from Long Island in the US who wanted to be an actor. He auditioned for Cheers, but the shock and disappointment of coming second to Woody Harrelson sent him over the edge into drink and drug crises. He came out the other side clean and sober, but with a new passion: the grizzly bears of Alaska. Every summer, he went camping out there with his video camera and his attitude problem, regularly breaking the US park rangers' rule not to come within 100 yards of a bear. Timothy got up close and personal, giving them cute names like "Mr Chocolate" and "Sgt Brown", patting them on the nose, and becoming obsessed with gaining the bears' respect for his courage in doing so. His opening rant to camera is a comic classic, influenced, I very much suspect, by Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now: "I am a kind warrior! I will not die at their claws and paws! I will be a master!"
Bizarrely, his macho extreme-sports persona often alternates with something screamingly camp. Treadwell yoo-hoos wildly like Robin Williams at the bears who lope up to him: "Oh hi! Hiya! Oh he's a big bear! He's a surly bear!" And Treadwell is often very funny - a reality TV natural who never got his own show. There are too many choice moments to describe here, but among the classics is his sudden zooming-in on an immobile bumble bee on a flower, which he tearfully describes: "Isn't this so sad? A bumble-bee expired while it was doing the pollen thing. It's beautiful . . . it's sad . . . it's tragic . . . it's . . . WAIT! The bee just MOVED! Is it . . . is it just SLEEPING?" Later, Treadwell films a full-on macho-bear fight between Micky and Sgt Brown over a female called Saturn, whom Treadwell describes as the "Michelle Pfeiffer of bears".
His mission was to teach the world about these animals, and this he certainly did, according to his lights, touring schools and giving illustrated talks to kids without accepting a fee. But he also angrily claimed, in some of his looniest soliloquies, that he was "protecting" the bears from poachers or even the federal authorities. The awful truth was that he did not add anything to our knowledge of bears, and that any supposed danger these animals were in, living as they did in a protected national park, existed only in Treadwell's over-heated, self-dramatising imagination.
Treadwell's over-the-top persona is in contrast to the cool, deadpan drone of Herzog himself, who pays tribute to his intuitive skills as a film-maker, but repudiates Treadwell's Disneyfied view of nature, seeing in it only colossal coldness and indifference. Herzog appears on camera just once, listening through headphones to Treadwell's final screams - and those of his luckless girlfriend - as they are both eaten. It is only audio, as Treadwell was attacked before he could remove the lens-cap; in a masterstroke of restraint, Herzog does not let us hear this sound, and sorrowfully advises Treadwell's former girlfriend, Jewel, to burn the tape. I wonder if she has.
Was Timothy Treadwell an inspired radical operating outside the academic naturalist establishment - or a pain in the neck with personal issues? A little of both, of course. He was certainly a brilliant performer and director who, by crossing the taboo line (by as it were impaling himself on the taboo line's barbed wire) vividly demonstrated the alien-ness of nature, and therefore its strange and terrible beauty, more than anything I've ever seen by David Attenborough. It is a superb documentary, because Treadwell has not been coerced or set up; he was enough of an amateur to be relaxed and unselfconscious, yet enough of a professional to generate all this outstanding footage, and quite rightly Herzog declines to patronise or make fun of him. If we didn't already know Timothy Treadwell's awful fate, it would be enough to say: a star is born.
REVIEW RESOURCE: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2006/feb/03/1
The first authorized documentary film exploring David Icke's work and life. He is the famed conspiracy theorist, known as the “mad man” who has been proved right time and time again.
David Icke has been warning the public for almost three decades about the coming global Orwellian state in which a tiny few would enslave humanity through New World Order tactics. Methods such as control of finance, government, media, and a military-police Gestapo overseeing 24/7 surveillance of a microchipped population. He has said that “physical reality is an illusion" and that the "world" really is a holographic simulation created by a non-human force to lockdown human perception in ongoing servitude.
He has been subjected to decades of ridicule and dismissal over his theories. However, now his books are read all over the globe and his speaking events are watched by thousands. Why? Because what he foretold is playing out in world events and even some mainstream scientists are concluding that reality is indeed a simulation or "Matrix."
REVIEW RESOURCE: https://www.gaia.com/video/ren....egade-life-story-dav