Two Films worth seeing:

[Mitch Cronin]

Both of these are worth the time it takes to see them!

The first is a documentary called "Why We Fight" which looks at the great "military industrial complex" and it's role in staging and sustaining warfare...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9219858826421983682#

This second one, called War Made Easy, looks at the media's role in war, and how it's used by those who want to wage war...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8...84962209910782#

[Don Hudson]

...and the film that the line, "You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!!", comes from... Thanks for the links - watching.

[BoomerPete]

...and the film that the line, "You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!!", comes from... Thanks for the links - watching.

Dr. Strangelove?

[Innuendo]

Dr. Strangelove?

Of course, Peter Sellers as President Merkin Muffley, not to mention Strangelove himself and Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, RAF. Great cast in that movie.

[MURRAY]

Slim Pickens and the nuke stole the movie.

[Mitch Cronin]

Don,

Oddly enough, (or maybe it isn't, but it struck me as odd).... you were the one person I thought of, after posting the above, who might not consider them worth watching, since it's probably all old news to you. No doubt there are others here for whom they would also be old news, but I think everyone should have at least a sideways look at the notions put forth therein....

My dear old man brought me up with a healthy mistrust for anything you see hear or read from the media.... He was once editor in chief for a newspaper, and was with the Globe, I think before (or perhaps during?) their merge with the Daily Mail. (I'm not sure, I'm just now trying to remember if he'd told me about that merge at the same time I learned that he'd worked there, or what...doesn't matter.)... eventually finding his way to becoming a "freelance writer"... Anyway, he always told me to "believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see".

Those two films, if watched in the same day, as I did, leave a foul taste in the mouth. It''s a truly F'd up world, in many respects. ....and the sort of thing that drives that thought home is contained in one of those films, where a dear lady (Iraqi, or Afghan?) is asking why would the Americans (or GWB in particular, I think) want to bomb them? ...."We're humans, just like them!" she says...

10% of "casualties" - those killed - in WW1 were civilian

50%, in WW2

90%, in the current "war on terror" in Iraq and Afghanistan (if I remember that correctly from the film?)

......and Raytheon, et al, are just-a-swimmin' in profit.

[mrlupin]

Evening Mitch,

After giving some time for your head to rest and think of other things (too many of these videos in too short a time has a tendency to depress the viewer), you should watch the Canadian made video "The Corporation" by Mark Achbar, an enlightening video.

Éric

[Mitch Cronin]

Ummmm.... Yer not gonna believe this, but I honestly, only now just read that other thread where dhc2eater says his father told him the same thing! Honest to goodness, I'd been avoiding that thread because the subject matter ties my gut in knots (I'm working on fixing that)... WTF eh? Maybe all our dad's told us that?

Thanks for the link Eric. Well done, that! Too short though.... it left me wanting more depth.

[mrlupin]

The entire film should be about 1.5 hours. The link was for part 1 of 23.

Éric

[LongTimer V]

Thanks Mitch for the links,it confirms what my dad always said

War is hell on earth

He was on the beaches in Normandy 2 days after the invasion and it wasn't pretty

start showing the body bags arriving in the states,and bring back the draft in the states

see how fast public opinion changes when the rich and powerful have to send their kids to war

[Mitch Cronin]

... ..... Ohhh Donald?

ahhh coud swar ah dun seen a hole bunch a wraitin' hea th'utha day? .... ....an ah wuz gonna trai t'anser yoo.

Anyway, yessir, ...it's interesting to see Chomsky so frequently included in so many interviews or talks/lectures on youtube video's of all sorts. The man seems to have a very level head, and a very fine ability to paint clear pictures.

I suppose it may be only a matter of time before a large enough portion of the populace figures all this stuff out, and manages to wake up enough of the rest, to put an end to it... The question may be, Will we survive that long? .... sadly, many won't.

...then again, another question might be, how long will it take before some nation, or some dictator or another, figures out that the biggest trouble with this planet is overpopulation, and then decides to do something about that?

Thanks Eric, I hadn't realized there were 23 of them when I posted that.... somehow after seeing that fella "Mark Ackbar (why do I think of NEO here?) peering up at me over his glasses while asking for donations, I thought I'd seen the end... I've seen them all now. Very well done, and absolutely, everyone should watch that!

I think your dad was right LTV.

[Don Hudson]

Mitch;

I read my post and thought it was "cranky" even though I mean every word of it so removed it - it read "negatively" even though I would never mean such a thing. I think criticism should always be firm but I felt it should be more positive. What they hey, I'm 62...reposted below, warts and all with some additions.

You're right though, I had heard of these issues of course and spent many hours writing about them.

I first heard Noam Chomsky speak on CBC when he did the 1988 Massey Lecture called "Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies" I last heard him when he spoke in Vancouver about 3 years ago. Long before then, after reading Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death", we got rid of television during the child-raising years and reintroduced it during the teen years. My wife occasionally subscribed to the newspaper but, except for riding on airplanes, I never read the newspaper, or magazines.

"News" isn't news, it is consumable entertainment and as such has to be manufactured just like any other consumable. The appetite of the industry is profoundly, fathomlessly voracious and wholly indiscriminate as to what is and is not entertainment, aka "news".

The likes of Rupert Murdoch for example,represent all that is repugnant about corporate media empire and society's driving force which most gravitate to, "entertainment-as-news". No one ever questions it or asks what a world without media would be like. Not simpler of course, but certainly more human - media de-humanizes us to our core - it robs us of our self-awareness, our judgement and our ability to relate to the world. We look at the world through video eyes, the latest iteration of which is the DVD entertainment systems put in vehicles to "occupy the kids".

I can't believe a parent would bypass his and her responsibilities and permit themselves to substitute parental involvement, talk and play with their children with such "entertainment" (baby-sitting) devices - If it's standard equipment, it should be an option to order a vehicle without such a system with the cash credit - video is extremely insidious in that its agenda is masked by the enterainment factor - color, snappy motion, snappier music and absolutely no plot whatsoever and no challenge to the mind. It is a choice which steals the time between people, most crucially between parent and child.

Most of what people know is wrong. Media however, makes it somehow "right" just because it can be quoted or pointed to, which is the worst aspect of the internet.

Busters like Snopes, Mythbusters etc realize this and have themselves made a market of pointing this out. The best remedy is reading, thinking, talking and limiting veg' time before the television and the games. The mind shuts down when in front of the tube - "watch" is a non-active verb. We have virtualized experience so intensely that we dont' know our physical world, or how it works, and are therefore trashing it as never before.

It doesn't mean that these institutions are wholly destructive, not entirely anyway. It just means one must know them well for what they are and proceed accordingly, raising one's children with the same healthy disregard for tinsel and glitz and with, instead, great reservation regarding corporatism, marketing and thought control in democratic societies as Chomsky's title goes.

All this of course, unless one seeks what they offer - cheap entertainment at the expense of those in, or who seek, the limelight.

Convents and Monasteries are withdrawals from the world and to me are not the answer to how one "humans", (becomes human/is human) because we are a gregarious, social creature, but one gaze upon the garish, tinsel world is enough to convince one of the barren, emptiness of the media's world. "Manipulative" barely describes it. The Tiger Woods Circus can't compare with the media's complicity before and during the invasion of Iraq and the thousands of other actions carried out in the name of "democracy" and "national security" or just plain profit, (Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey...).

I highly recommend viewing "The Corporation" - I bought the DVD to show to the kids as well, but they already "know". Again, one must know "business" for what it is and approach/handle/deal with it accordingly - not inherently bad unless it takes one over through greed. That said, our manufacturing base and the moral authority from which such base arose after WWII, has been outsourced to China, Indonesia, Mexico and India in favour of the "financialization" of our economy, which I call the Speculator's Economy, or a Casino Economy.

The topic, (the change from a stable manufacturing economy after about 1900 to a casino-like economy with wild swings in boom-bust cycles which destroy lives but wring spectacular profits for the few), has been treated quite thoroughly in these books: Capital and Language: From the New Economy to the War Economy, Christian Marazzi, Semiotexte, and The Speculation Economy, Lawrence Mitchell, BK Publishers. Both are available at Amazon.ca - I don't read cover to cover but skim and take in some sections more thoroughly than others.

We simply have to take back what is ours and which has been stolen from us in the name of profit - our humanity and our perspective, and that takes work and energy - almost as much energy and work as it takes to ignore what media has done and continues to do.

Mitch, re your comment, "I'd been avoiding that thread because the subject matter ties my gut in knots..." Yup. Know about that, and not sleeping, either.

[Hadji Ramjet]

Slim Pickens and the nuke stole the movie.

Maybe, but if you studied LeMay you can't help but love Buck Turgidson.