Taxi to the Dark Side

Taxi to the Dark Side is a good documentary which details the American policy on torture, specifically focusing on Afghanistan and Iraq. The US shows utter contempt for the Geneva Convention. The technique administration officials use to evade prosecution after they leave office is to "redefine" torture. Redefining a term is just a weasel way of escaping all responsibility for their heinous crimes.

The other laughable claim made by the administration is that the torture/sadism is limited to certain "rogue officers" and that there is no high-level policy condoning torture. Right ...

I forget if the "ticking time-bomb" justification is mentioned in the documentary. This justification is that "a terrorist knows the whereabouts of a bomb that's going to go off in an hour or so and thousands of people may die, so it's OK to torture". The problem with this justification is that such a scenario has NEVER occurred ever except on stupid TV shows and Hollywood. Additionally, once torture is condoned for this dubious reason, it's only a matter of time before it becomes a routine tactic under a variety of other circumstances. Moreover, it is highly unlikely that torture will produce information of any value.

Also shocking is how the social sciences are used (abused) to futher military and political ends. Completely despicable and total lack of respect for humanity.

In more recent developments:

Here is some of the wording from the Executive Order signed by Barack Obama on Jan 22, 2009 for ensuring lawful interrogations:

“…an individual in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government, or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States, in any armed conflict…”

This article by Allan Nairn points out two MAJOR problems with this wording:

• Majority of the torture is done indirectly through US proxies, hence not covered under this executive order
• A lot of torture also happens when there is no armed conflict therefore also not covered under this order

The article also discusses other disturbing facts.

Objectified

Objectified is a fairly interesting documentary about the design of objects in our daily lives and the designers who make them. The film features interviews with a variety of influential designers discussing their thoughts about the meaning of design, the objects that get produced, and the relationship between objects, humans, and the environment.

Sustainability gets some brief treatment which can be summarized by Alice Rawsthorn's comment that sustainability is not driven by the designers, rather it's consumer driven -- and that supposedly Walmart has embraced sustainability. If she's using Walmart as a prime example of sustainability, it's quite worrisome. Also, according to Rawsthorn, "design tends to be the indulgent medium of the developed economy and a mature culture." Apparently, other "developing countries" aren't as mature.

Jonathan Ive talks about how incredibly hard design is. Mark Newson heavily criticizes children's products, and can't wait to get rid of his child's high chair. Paolo Antonelli has collected 172 definitions of design. Andrew Blauvelt defines design as anything that is touched by man, transformed by man. Chris Bangle goes on and on and on about the design of the BMW X6.

Dieter Rams makes an interesting statement: "If I had to do something in this world again, I would not want to be a designer anymore, because I believe, in the future, it will be less important to have many things, but more important to exercise care about where and how we live. And to think carefully how we can preserve nature."

Rob walker talks (critically) about how "good design" is considered to be a mark of progress, and how if you can recognize good design, it distinguishes you from all the naive and corny bourgeois of the past -- the past being everything up to that minute. Corporations don't necessarily design what people need, but rather their goal is to simply produce more stuff.

Some objects are downright fetishized such as a BMW X6, a valentine typewriter, and an Alessi spoon that will supposedly stimulate four out of the five senses. There are some interesting discussions on how an object should go beyond its functional aspect and establish a meaningful emotional relationship with the human being. Unfortunately, I think this is just wishful thinking. The novelty of objects dies fast, and any supposedly meaningful relationship with an object is always fleeting and unsatisfactory. In fact, a designer in the film admits that most of the products he's designed will end up in a landfill pretty soon.

The documentary ends with the following quote: "The value, and especially the legitimization of design will be in the future measured in terms of how it can enable us to survive."

Overall, I think the film presents a decent coverage of the various points of view on design, but unfortunately, it also reflects an obsession with materialism, a perceived sense of superiority, and a state of affairs that has a long way to go before it can reach any level of sustainability.

Don't forget to watch the special features on the DVD which includes a whole bunch of interesting interviews.

Office of Ruminant Procurement

Recently watched the movie 'The Pentagon Wars' which describes the problematic development of the M2 Bradley fighting vehicle which the movie describes as "a troop carrier that can't carry troops, a reconnaissance vehicle that's too conspicuous to perform reconnaissance, and a quasi-tank with less armor than a snow blower but has enough firepower to take out half of downtown Washington." In Senate hearings described in the movie, the US Army spent $14 billion over 17 years developing the Bradley.

The movie is in a semi-documentary style and is insanely hilarious (in a very black comedy way) and is similar to movies such as Dr.Strangelove and Catch-22. The more hilarious the movie gets, the more strongly it makes its point about the ludicrousness of the weapons development process. We see the US Army performing tests that are guaranteed to succeed (missile defense, anyone ?) and career-minded, egotistic, deranged bureaucrats at the Pentagon who put their careers before peoples lives. Some scenes such as the 'Office of Ruminant Procurement' and the use of sheep for "vaporific" testing are just hilarious. The movie is brilliant political satire very skillfully executed.

The movie is based on the book "The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard" by James Burton (chronicling his real life case). I suspect that if we dig just a little deeper into the dense, seemingly impenetrable web of defense programs and weapons procurement, it's down the rabbit hole.

Documentary Update

Here is a list of documentaries on various topics I've watched in the last 3 months or so.

(war and profiteering)
The War Tapes
Iraq In Fragments
Iraq for Sale
The demolition of Iraq in full swing.

(debt)
In Debt We Trust
Maxed Out
Usury at its most despicable. Watch elected representatives nauseously submit to credit card company executives. It'll make you vomit all over yourself (oh, that's right, can't lose those campaign contributions)

(food)
The Future of Food
(don't miss the special features which are incredibly tedious yet required listening)

(political process)
An Unreasonable Man
Nader is cool. And no, he did not cost the Democratic "Impeachment is off the Table" Party the 2000 elections. Although, the clowns/morons at The Nation will dumbly insist ad nauseum.

The Big Buy
Ah, the despicable Hammer finally gets nailed! I derived some perverse pleasure out of this one.

(big picture)
Imperial Grand Strategy
The Grand Plan. We're fucked.

(environment/art)
Manufactured Landscapes
Brutal Beauty. Grotesque yet fascinating.

(finally ....just plain cool )
Planet Earth - Complete BBC Series. Good complement to 'Manufactured Landscapes' above.
2 words .. Snow Leopard !
Check out the preview on Amazon

(on my list)
Paradise Now

The Oil Factor

Just finished watching the documentary The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror (by Free-Will Productions - Gerard Ungerman and Audrey Brohy), so figured I'd write a review with my thoughts before they vanished into some inaccessible recess.

The first thing you should watch on the DVD is not the movie but the special features, namely a Pentagon 'informational' video on depleted uranium use. The video will leave you with absolutely no doubt that lunatics are in charge.

The documentary is a great summary of most of the critical events that have occurred since 9-11. While I was for most part familiar each individual incident described in the documentary, a very coherent picture seemed to emerge from all the individual bits and pieces.

1. Iraq and Afghanistan have been subjected to the an incredibly vicious brand of violence, aggression, assault, indifference and arrogance whose full impact can never possibly be understood by anyone looking in from the outside.
2. An armed struggle against the US occupiers is the only viable option for most Iraqis
3. Majority of the world population detests the US
4. Except to see continuing violence across the globe indefinitely (mainly over control of oil rich locations)
5. Fighting "terrorism" is clearly not the objective. The real objective is to maintain global hegemony and consequently total energy security. Any resistance to this brutal juggernaut will be construed as terrorism.
6. Things are going to get way worse before they get better (just kidding about the better part)

The documentary follows somewhat of a non-linear timeline first going into Iraq and then tackling Afghanistan later and lightly touching on Iran.

PNAC

Of course, any documentary regarding the Middle East is almost certainly going to mention PNAC (Project for the New American Century) and we have an interview with PNAC spokesperson, Gary Schmitt. Schmitt makes the following comments:

1) We (i.e. you and me) are foolish to think that money is better spent on American domestic programs than in Iraq (yes, he definitely called that foolish, claiming the Medicare & education get enough already). (he also equates American citizens with pennies and Iraqi oil with pounds)
2) Schmitt says that there was no push for oil when the US invaded Iraq and that the US has enough oil. This is just semantic sleight of hand. While he's correct that the US has enough oil currently (domestic and imported supplies) and doesn't necessarily need Iraqi oil as of this minute, what he conveniently avoids saying is that the US invasion of Iraq is initially for "control", not direct, immediate profits from oil. The goal of the US in Iraq is to prevent any other foreign country from establishing a presence there in direct opposition to US dominance.
3) Without a hint of irony, he talks about how the war on terror involves states who produce/intend to use WMD (hmmm... lets see which country comes to mind first .... ) and states that harbor terrorists (Florida, School of the Americas .. anyone?)

Iraq Sanctions:

There is brief mention of the sanctions that have been imposed on Iraq since Gulf War I and the constant bombing of Iraq between the first & second Gulf war and the devastating effects it has had on the Iraqi people. Additionally, the reasons why the sanctions were not lifted (until Gulf War II) , was because foreign countries would have secured all the oil contracts from Saddam, and once foreign countries had a presence in Iraq, it would have been difficult for the US to launch an invasion (at least the assumption is that the US doesn't plan on killing Western Europeans)

Other topics covered regarding Iraq include the "constitutional fiction" managed by Paul Bremer, continuing deterioration of infrastructure, privatization of Iraqi resources, war funds, Cheney's Energy Task Force and so on.

Depleted Uranium

Depleted uranium weapons were used in Gulf War I & Kosovo as well. And they were used again in Gulf War II. The difference being that this time, the depleted uranium weapons were targeted against civilian areas. The Pentagon instructional video is pretty clear about the hazards posed by the depleted (U 238) weapons. The fact that these weapons were used simply defies all common sense and humanity.

We also have cameo appearances by Noam Chomsky, David Mulholland (of Jane's Defense Weekly), former Pentagon analyst Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (who jokingly mentions that Turkey is nowadays a problem because they're a democracy), Michael Ruppert, Zbigniew Brzezinski and more.


Back to Afghanistan:

• The only reason US has bases in Afghanistan is not to fight "terrorism" but to prevent other foreign countries from intervening.
• The countryside is littered with cluster bombs & land mines. We then see several Afghanis who have lost their limbs from accidental detonation of land mines and cluster bombs.
• Heroin production is in full swing and controlled by the warlords and the revenue from drug trafficking is used to procure weapons to retain territorial control.

Col Rod Davis, Spokesperson, Coalition Force in Afghanistan keeps repeating the same mindless mantra: "Our mission is to kill, capture and deny sanctuary to anti-coalition forces in Afghanistan. We aggressively seek anti-coalition forces. We're looking for them 24x7 and will stay here till the job is done". Well, I have news for the Col. --- All the anti-coalition forces have all moved elsewhere, so your job is to look for something that doesn't exist. I'm afraid you are going to be there for a very long time. And by the way try not to kill any civilians, I know that's hard.

Finally:

The 2 statements that sum up the conflicting US & Iraqi perspectives are from:

1) Gary Schmitt of the PNAC: "The future security of the US depends on the President's program for transforming the Middle East and Iraq is the first step in doing so."
2) Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim - Iraqi Governing Council : "The responsibility of changing Iraq is on the Iraqi people"


The defense contractors appear to be involved in a bloody, vicious cycle of destroy, rebuild, destroy, rebuild ad nauseum. Clearly, the same corporations that are responsible for manufacturing the weapons to destroy all existing infrastructure then come in after the destruction, salivating like rabid dogs at the prospect of huge no-bid contracts paid for by the American taxpayer.

Some minor quibbles:

1) While the subject of the number of Iraqis dead as a result of the invasion is touched upon, no mention is made of the Iraqi death toll figures from 2 very important reports (Johns Hopkins & Lancet)
2) Ed Asner (narrator) has a drab voice :-) (OK, that's not really a valid criticism)
3) That somehow, Russia was responsible in large part for America's "defeat" in Vietnam (conveniently ignoring the fact that it was an independent nationalist movement in Vietnam that forced the Americans out).

Kudos to Free-Will productions for making a very instructive documentary.

The Money Masters

The Money Masters is a documentary produced by produced by Patrick S. J. Carmack. This film discusses in detail the history of central banking, monetary policy and fractional reserve banking and even proposes a monetary reform act.

The entire film is 3.5 hours long and is divided into the following segments:

1. The Problem
2. The Money Changers
3. Roman Empire
4. The Goldsmiths of Medieval England
5. Tally Sticks
6. The Bank of England
7. The Rise of the Rothschilds
8. The American Revolution
9. The Bank of North America
10. The Constitutional Convention
11. First Bank of the U.S.
12. Napoleon's Rise to Power
13. Death of the First Bank of the U.S. / War of 1812
14. Waterloo; Second Bank of the U.S.; Andrew Jackson
15. Abe Lincoln and the Civil War
16. The Return of the Gold Standard
17. Free Silver; J.P. Morgan / 1907 Crash
18. Jekyll Island; Fed Act of 1913
19. J.P. Morgan / WWI
20. Roaring 20s / Great Depression
21. FDR /WWII / Fort Knox
22. World Central Bank
23. Conclusions.

The film is also available on google video in 2 parts totaling 3.5 hours.
Part 1
Part Deux

The official website is at Money Masters