After hearing their show about moments of death, filmmaker Will Hoffman went out in search of moments of life. What follows is what he found.The film is a celebration of life that was inspired by David Eagleman’s book, Sum.

Click here to view the embedded video.

About Radiolab

Radiolab believes your ears are a portal to another world. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience. Big questions are investigated, tinkered with, and encouraged to grow. Bring your curiosity, and we’ll feed it with possibility.

Radiolab is heard around the country on over 200 stations. Check your local station for airtimes.

The mouth of Dunbar Cave providing 58 degree natural air-conditioning. Picture taken in 1890 and hand colored for postcard.

“I remember when Dizzy Dean, the famous pitcher turned sportscaster, and Joe Namath, came to a huge golf tournament at Roy Acuff’s newly built golf course,” (now Swan Lake Golf Course). “They gave out baseballs with Dizzy Dean’s autograph on them. I think I still have mine somewhere. That was when Joe Namath had just gone pro,” says Jerry Clark in a recent filmed interview at Dunbar Cave State Natural Area.

Jerry was one of 21 people who came to Dunbar Cave recently to be filmed as part of the oral history recordings for Dunbar Cave. Though most people arrived separately to be interviewed, I compiled tiny bits of their stories.

Dunbar Cave was owned as a resort from the early 1900’s until the 1960’s. The cave entrance provided 58 degree natural air-conditioning and “women came in the day time to play bridge while maids tended the children. Fathers would join them for picnic dinners,” says Hazel Edwards Goodlett. She remembers when Dunbar was a place for the well-to-do.

In 1915 the Idaho Springs hotel was built almost a mile south of Dunbar Cave. The hotel was built and managed by the Tate family and besides the nearby cave it offered three mineral wells located in close proximity. In a day when refrigeration was done with ice delivered from the iceman, this hotel had screens on the windows, which made it a really posh place for its time, says Marguerite Rubel. Marguerite was born in the 1920’s and her first memories of Dunbar Cave include riding in a wagon pulled by mules to get sulfur water from one of the three wells at the Idaho Springs hotel. The sulfur water was thought of as a “cure all” for whatever ailed you. “It smelled really bad” but people drank it to prevent malaria and other things. Considering that Marguerite is in her 80’s, works full time, is a member of various clubs, is always on the go, and is as sweet as can be, I get the feeling that the mineral waters worked for her. Knowing that Marguerite used to play piano and sing at all the local clubs makes her my favorite swinger. She says that she loved everything she’s ever done.

Rachel Tate brought in a beautiful original copy of the Idaho Springs Hotel brochure printed in 1915. Rates were $10.00 a week and up. The brochure says, Things We Do Not Have: We have no mosquitos. We have no malaria.

The stream leaving the cave was dammed to make a lake and around 1931  a pool was built inside of the lake. It had wooden and tin sides. “The floor was slimy. Frogs were in it” says Hazel Edwards Goodlett. Swans were brought into the lake and thus the name, Swan Lake. Paddle boats were put on the lake. “Work yourself to death and it cost about 50 cents which was a lot, so we didn’t do that much”, says Becky Hunter Orgain.

The paddleboat dock, remnants can still be seen at Dunbar Cave.

In 1933, the big pool was built up a hill from the lake. The big pool had three diving boards and a spacious pool house (now the Visitor Center). The west side of the pool house was the girl’s locker room and the east side was the boy’s locker room.

“We always parked our towels by the east side of the pool near the boy’s locker room; I don’t know why, do you?” asks Peggy Clouser of her sister Amy Schmittou. “It had the best sun there” they both respond with giggles. Everyone used suntan oil made of baby oil and iodine. Cruelly, they laughed at boys who had “cowboy” tans where the sleeves of their shirts cut off their tan. They tried to catch the eye of the cute lifeguards on duty, wanted the most fashionable swim suits, and rolled down the middle of their two piece suits, “which went up too high!” Music played from the jukebox,  as visitors  played pool games like the one Jerry Clark started. Jerry put a small boat in the pool. One person would get in it and try to go under the diving boards as everyone else was diving in trying to dunk him.

Upper right: Girls sunning near the Boy’s locker room entrance to the pool.

“The pool opened at 10 a.m.; we were waiting to go in at 9:30 a.m. The park closed at 6 p.m., we left at 6:15 p.m.” This is how the neighborhood kids lived each day all summer. Diane Hunter Albright said, “Momma would ring this cow bell over at our house. That meant it was time for us to go home. One of us kids would climb up on the high dive and yell, “I’m comin” and mother could hear that.” Sisters, Becky Hunter Orgain and Diane talk about the jobs they had and how they had a crush on every lifeguard who worked there, among them Jerry Clark and Zoot Parker.

Zoot Parker said, “It seems like yesterday” when kids who knew he couldn’t swim threw him into the deep end of the pool. One year later he was a lifeguard. Zoot Parker noticed the bathing beauties who hung out at the pool. “Hollywood had nothing on us”. His biggest love was dancing to the Big Band music of Tommie Dorsy, Glen Miller, Duke Ellington and Fats Domino. “Louie Armstrong, wow, did he blow us away”. Big Bands stopped in Clarksville on their way to other places. They would also play at the army base nearby so you could hear them two nights in a row.

Big Band Era of music at Dunbar Cave

County Historian, Eleanor Williams, shared a time that she made it go right to buy her dress ($10) and dance with all her heart throbs.

Ronnie Hunter said, “While I was at the pool lifeguarding, they’d announce over a loud speaker when cave tours were starting and I must have heard that announcement over 1,000 times.”

Brothers Bobby and Wayne Long ran cave tours. Besides pointing out pieces of the moonshine still, they would say that Jesse James made a little mark in the cave when the law was chasing him after a Russellville bank robbery. Don’t get excited, they made it up. The Indian art that we just recently verified as genuine was something guides would point to and say, “that was made by Indians”.

One of thousands of cave tours

Jimmy Dunn’s father and crew installed the lights that were in the cave. Jimmy would have had to be born on the cave door to be any closer to being part of the operations there. Along with other jobs, Jimmy managed the cave for awhile.

Most remember the 4th of July parties with fireworks going off by the cave. During the day, parachuters would fall from the sky trying to land in the lake. “I watched out our house window hoping one would land in our neighborhood. When they did, I’d run down to watch them get untangled,” says the youngest Hunter sister.

Admission, 20 cents

Mary McDaniel’s mother met her father at Dunbar. Sister, Betty Coghill was born in a cabin that was up the hill from the paddleboat dock, very close to the cave. Their dad took tickets at the gate, parked cars or ran the paddleboat dock. There was a bowling alley on the property along with Bingo, food booths and music, always music. Zoot Parker said that someone who worked there kept sneaking the latest music into the jukebox and somehow they got away with it. The kids loved it so much the owners let them keep it.

Rachel Tate stayed in the cave one full night as a civil defense test done when they were in fear of nuclear attack. Locked inside, she was so glad to get out of that cave in the morning.

Roy Acuff bought the cave in 1948. Several people interviewed did not like country music and refused to come see it. While Roy had square-dancing on Friday nights and the Grand Ole’ Opry on Sundays, he hosted popular music on Saturday nights and the bee bop eventually evolved into rock and roll.

Dancing in the cool temperatures provided by the cave.

Billyfrank Morrison, historian, started collecting post cards of Dunbar Cave in 1976. Through his collections, one sees history recorded. He has printed several books using post card history. The picture in the oldest postcard that we have on file was taken in 1890 says Billyfrank Morrison. He talked about the Idaho Springs Hotel and how it is said that one of Roy Acuff’s managers, “was in the grip of the grape” and somehow he burned down the hotel.

Historian, Randy Rubel, who helped Dunbar get ready to do interviews, has an uncle, Frank “Chigger” Rubel who is married to Jacquie Miles. Standing on the high dive and waving on the Roy Acuff brochure, one of the star bathing beauties Jacquie, says, “I know I was (a beauty)!” She came down from the Fort Campbell area as a teen to try and “catch” a Chigger Rubel. One time when Chigger was in the cave by himself, the lights were turned off. His box of matches was spent before he found his way back out.

All who were interviewed spoke about the place as if it was a dream come true. Stuck in a small town far away from the rest of the world, Dunbar Cave brought the world to them. They all say it made them, it was paradise, and it was the best time to be alive.

Part of a dream come true, the State Park remodeled their video room and purchased a video camera in the summer of 2007. Borrowing lights from the Roxy Regional Theatre and using Dunbar Cave’s new video camera, Friends of Dunbar Cave members Ronnie Hunter and David Boen jumped at the opportunity to take part in filming people to preserve their experience of history. “We’re not done!” says Ronnie Hunter. There are still a lot of interesting stories out there to capture. Though we recently filmed 21 people, only four or fiveof those will go into the short introductory film for Dunbar. The rest will be preserving history on file until we can put them into another film. Call Dunbar Cave State Natural Area if you have a story to tell. (931) 648-5526.

The Friends of Dunbar Cave’s web site is: http://www.dunbarcave.org/index.htm

In a complex, exhaustive and highly entertaining documentary, The Corporation, Mark Achbar, co-director of the influential and inventive Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, teams up with co-director Jennifer Abbott and writer Joel Bakan to examine the far-reaching repercussions of the corporation’s increasing preeminence.

Based on Bakan’s book, The Corporation: The pathological pursuit of profit and power, the film is a timely, critical inquiry that invites CEOs, whistle-blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns and pundits on a graphic and engaging quest to reveal the corporation’s inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures. Featuring illuminating interviews with Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Howard Zinn and many others, The Corporation charts the spectacular rise of an institution aimed at achieving specific economic goals as it also recounts victories against this apparently invincible force.

Among the 40 interview subjects are CEOs and top-level executives from a range of industries: oil, pharmaceutical, computer, tire, manufacturing, public relations, branding, advertising and undercover marketing. In addition, a Nobel-prize winning economist, the first management guru, a corporate spy, and a range of academics, critics, historians and thinkers are also interviewed.

A legal “Person”

In the mid-1800s the corporation emerged as a legal “person.” Imbued with a “personality” of pure self-interest, the next 100 years saw the corporation’s rise to dominance. The corporation created unprecedented wealth but at what cost? The remorseless rationale of “externalities” (as Milton Friedman explains, the unintended consequences of a transaction between two parties on a third) is responsible for countless cases of illness, death, poverty, pollution, exploitation and lies.

The pathology of commerce: Case histories

To assess the “personality” of the corporate “person,” a checklist is employed, using diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social “personality”: it is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism. Four case studies, drawn from a universe of corporate activity, clearly demonstrate harm to workers, human health, animals and the biosphere. Concluding this point-by-point analysis, a disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a “psychopath.”

Mindset

But what is the ethical mindset of corporate players? Should the institution or the individuals within it be held responsible? The people who work for corporations may be good people, upstanding citizens in their communities, but none of that matters when they enter the corporation’s world. As Sam Gibara, Former CEO and Chairman of Goodyear Tire, explains, “If you really had a free hand, if you really did what you wanted to do that suited your personal thoughts and your personal priorities, you’d act differently.”

Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, the world’s largest commercial carpet manufacturer, had an environmental epiphany and re-organized his $1.4 billion company on sustainable principles. His company may be a beacon of corporate hope, but is it an exception to the rule?

Monstrous obligations

A case in point: Sir Mark Moody-Stuart recounts an exchange between himself (at the time Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell), his wife, and a motley crew of Earth First activists who arrived on the doorstep of their country home. The protesters chanted and stretched a banner over their roof that read, “Murderers.” The response of the surprised couple was not to call the police, but to engage their uninvited guests in a civil dialogue, share concerns about human rights and the environment and eventually serve them tea on their front lawn. Yet, as the Moody-Stuarts apologize for not being able to provide soy milk for their vegan critics’ tea, Shell Nigeria is flaring unrivaled amounts of gas, making it one of the world’s single worst sources of pollution. And all the professed concerns about the environment do not spare Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other activists from being hanged for opposing Shell’s environmental practices in the Niger Delta.

The Corporation exists to create wealth, and even world disasters can be profit centers. Carlton Brown, a commodities trader, recounts with unabashed honesty the mindset of gold traders while the twin towers crushed their occupants. The first thing that came to their minds, he tells us, was: “How much is gold up?”

Planet Inc.

You’d think that things like disasters, or the purity of childhood, or even milk, let alone water or air, would be sacred. But no. Corporations have no built-in limits on what, who, or how much they can exploit for profit. In the fifteenth century, the enclosure movement began to put fences around public grazing lands so that they might be privately owned and exploited. Today, every molecule on the planet is up for grabs. In a bid to own it all, corporations are patenting animals, plants, even your DNA.

Around things too precious, vulnerable, sacred or important to the public interest, governments have, in the past, drawn protective boundaries against corporate exploitation. Today, governments are inviting corporations into domains from which they were previously barred.

Perception management

The Initiative Corporation spends $22 billion worldwide placing its clients’ advertising in every imaginable – and some unimaginable – media. One new medium: very young children. Their “Nag Factor” study dropped jaws in the world of child psychiatry. It was designed not to help parents cope with their children’s nagging, but to help corporations formulate their ads and promotions so that children would nag for their products more effectively. Initiative Vice President Lucy Hughes elaborates: “You can manipulate consumers into wanting, and therefore buying your products. It’s a game.”

Today people can become brands (Martha Stewart). And brands can build cities (Celebration, Florida). And university students can pay for their educations by shilling on national television for a credit card company (Chris and Luke). And a corporation even owns the rights to the popular song “Happy Birthday” (a division of AOL-Time-Warner). Do you ever get the feeling it’s all a bit much?

Corporations have invested billions to shape public and political opinion. When they own everything, who will stand for the public good?

The price of whistleblowing

It turns out that standing for the public good is an expensive proposition. Ask Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, two investigative reporters fired by Fox News after they refused to water down a story on rBGH, a controversial synthetic hormone widely used in the United States (but banned in Europe and Canada) to rev up cows’ metabolism and boost their milk production. Because of the increased production, the cows suffer from mastitis, a painful infection of the udders. Antibiotics must then be injected, which find their way into the milk, and ultimately reduce people’s resistance to disease.

Fox demanded that they rewrite the story, and ultimately fired Akre and Wilson. Akre and Wilson subsequently sued Fox under Florida’s whistle-blower statute. They proved to a jury that the version of the story Fox would have had them put on the air was false, distorted or slanted. Akre was awarded $425,000. Then Fox appealed, the verdict was overturned on a technicality, and Akre lost her award. [For an update on the case see Disc 2 where we learn that at one point, Jane and Steve became liable for Fox's $1.8 million court costs, later to be reduced to $200,000.]

Democracy LTD.

Democracy is a value that the corporation just doesn’t understand. In fact, corporations have often tried to undo democracy if it is an obstacle to their single-minded drive for profit. From a 1934 business-backed plot to install a military dictator in the White House (undone by the integrity of one U.S. Marine Corps General, Smedley Darlington Butler) to present-day law-drafting, corporations have bought military might, political muscle and public opinion.

And corporations do not hesitate to take advantage of democracy’s absence either. One of the most shocking stories of the twentieth century is Edwin Black’s recounting IBM’s strategic alliance with Nazi Germany-one that began in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continued well into World War II.

Fissures

The corporation may be trying to render governments impotent, but since the landmark WTO protest in Seattle, a rising wave of networked individuals and groups have decided to make their voices heard. Movements to challenge the very foundations of the corporation are afoot: The corporate charter revocation movement tried to bring down oil giant Unocal; a groundbreaking ballot initiative in Arcata, California, put the corporate agenda in the public spotlight in a series of town hall meetings; in Bolivia, the population fought and won a battle against a huge transnational corporation brought in by their government to privatize the water system; in India nearly 99% of the basmati patent of RiceTek was overturned; and W. R. Grace and the U.S. government’s patent on Neem was revoked.

As global individuals take back local power, a growing re-invigoration of the concept of citizenship is taking root. It has the power to not only strip the corporation of its seeming omnipotence, but to create a feeling and an ideology of democracy that is much more than its mere institutional version.

Who’s Who in The Corporation

• Jane Akre – Investigative reporter, fired by Fox News
• Ray Anderson – CEO, Interface, world’s largest commercial carpet manufacturer
• Joe Badaracco - Prof. of Business Ethics, Harvard Business School
• Maude Barlow – Chairperson, Council of Canadians
• Mark Barry – Competitive intelligence professional
• Elaine Bernard – Director, Harvard Business School Labor Program
• Edwin Black – Author, IBM and the holocaust
• Carlton Brown – Commodities broker
• Noam Chomsky – Professor, M.I.T.
• Chris Barrett & Luke McCabe – “Corporately-sponsored“ students
• Peter Drucker – Management guru
• Dr. Samuel Epstein – Emeritus Professor of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, U. of Illinois
• Andrea Finger – Spokesperson, Disney-built town of Celebration
• Milton Friedman – Nobel Prize-winning economist
• Sam Gibara – Chairman and former CEO, Goodyear Tire
• Richard Grossman – Co-founder, Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy
• Dr. Robert Hare, Ph.D. – Psychologist and FBI psychopath consultant
• Lucy Hughes - Vice President, Initiative Media
• Ira Jackson – Director, Center for Business & Government, Kennedy School, Harvard
• Charles Kernaghan – Director, National Labor Committee
• Robert Keyes – President and CEO, Canadian Council for International Business
• Mark Kingwell – Philosopher, cultural critic, author
• Naomi Klein – Author, No logo
• Tom Kline – Vice President, Pfizer Inc., world’s largest pharmaceutical corporation
• Chris Komisarjevsky – CEO, Burson Marsteller Worldwide
• Dr. Susan Linn – Prof. of Psychiatry, Baker Children’s Center, Harvard
• Robert Monks – Corporate governance advisor and shareholder activist
• Sir Mark Moody-Stuart – Former Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell
• Michael Moore – Author, filmmaker
• Oscar Olivera – Leader, Coalition in Defense of Water and Life
• Jonathon Ressler – CEO, Big Fat Inc., undercover marketing specialist
• Jeremy Rifkin – President, Foundation on Economic Trends
• Dr. Vandana Shiva – Physicist, ecologist, feminist and seed activist
• Clay Timon – CEO, Landor and Associates, global branding specialists
• Michael Walker – Executive Director, Fraser Institute
• Robert Weissman – Editor, Multinational monitor
• Steve Wilson – Investigative reporter, fired by Fox News
• Irving Wladawsky-Berger – Vice President, Technology and Strategy, IBM Servers
• Mary Zepernick – Coordinator, Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy
• Howard Zinn – Historian and Author, A people’s history of the united states

The Filmmakers

Mark Achbar Producer, Director

Working for almost 30 years on films, videos and books, Mark Achbar endeavors, through media, to challenge apathy around issues of nuclear lunacy, poverty, media control, East Timor, human rights, the religious right, U.S. hegemony and corporate power.

Achbar is best known for Manufacturing consent: Noam Chomsky and the media, which he co-directed and co-produced with Peter Wintonick. The film was honored with 22 awards and distinctions, screened theatrically in 300 cities and aired on 30 national TV networks. The two-hour, 45-minute epic is the top-grossing feature documentary in Canadian history.

Achbar received a Gemini nomination for Best Writer on The Canadian conspiracy, a cultural/political satire for CBC and HBO’s Comedy Experiments. It won a Gemini for Best Entertainment Special and was nominated for an International Emmy. In 1999 Achbar worked with editor Jennifer Abbott to direct and produce Two brides and a scalpel: Diary of a lesbian marriage, the comi-tragic story of Canada’s first legally married same-sex couple. The film has played worldwide in festivals and has aired in Canada on Pride Vision TV and Knowledge Network.

Jennifer Abbott Director, Editor

Jennifer Abbott is a documentary maker, cultural activist and editor with a particular interest in producing media that shifts perspectives on problematic social norms and practices. In addition to co-directing and editing The Corporation, she produced, directed and edited A cow at my table, a feature documentary about meat, culture and animals, which won eight international awards.

Her other past works include the experimental short film and video installation about interracial relationships, Skinned, which toured North America and Europe including New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Abbott has also edited numerous documentaries, installations and performance works including Two brides and a scalpel: Diary of a lesbian marriage, produced by Mark Achbar. She is the editor and a contributing writer for the book Making video “In”: The contested ground of alternative video on the west coast. She lives on Galiano Island.

Joel Bakan Writer/ Co-Creator

Author of The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power A lawyer, professor and writer, Joel Bakan has degrees from Oxford, Dalhousie and Harvard, and has received several honors and awards including a Rhodes Scholarship and a Governor General’s medal. His work critically examines the social, economic, and political dimensions of law, and he has published in leading academic journals as well as the popular press. Bakan’s book, Just words: Constitutional rights and social wrongs, was characterized as “cutting edge commentary by one of Canada’s rising intellectuals.”

Bakan’s most recent book The Corporation: The pathological pursuit of profit and power will be released by Penguin Canada in March 2004, and in the U.S. by Simon & Schuster. Co-creator (with Mark Achbar) of The Corporation, Bakan’s book was written during the making of the documentary and formed the basis of the research and writing for the film.

Watch The Corporation Online

The film makers offers an official download via streaming DIVX from Stage6. This requires that you have the free DIVX web player installed on your computer in order to play either of the two videos below.

Part 1

[Stage6 is no more, so this Stage6-hosted video cannot be displayed.]

Part 2

[Stage6 is no more, so this Stage6-hosted video cannot be displayed.]

Please consider buying the DVD or contributing to the filmmaker!

Learn more at http://www.thecorporation.com/

* Much of the content of this article was taken from the press materials provided by Zeitgeist films.

That first meeting was called in response to a City Council voted that placed two square miles, and 1800 homes and business under a “blighted property” designation to facilitate a Downtown Redevelopment Plan. It is the largest “blanket blighting” in the country and has raised the ire of virtually all the homeowners and many of the businesspeople who reside in or own property in that area. In addition to the start of a postcard and petition drive, the Coalition called for a repeal of the new ordinance, which many property owners say “blindsided” them, signs have also been popping up as a show of protest. The City Council is planning a forum to respond to citizen concerns but have not yet announced a date, time, place, or list of speakers.

Today we present a second tape, this one of the Dec. 17 Clarksville Property Rights Coalition meeting held at the historic L&N Train Station in the heart of what is quickly becoming referred to as “Blightsville” USA.

Click here to view the embedded video.

More faces of the concerned

Editor’s Note: Train station forum Photography by Bill Larson, Merry Christmas from Blightsville Photograph by Christine Piesyk,  Video shot by Mark Haynes

The Republican controlled US Commission on Civil Rights has completely watered downed or eliminated much of the information we read or download from their website.
The current commissioners, who have very little experience or past dealings in the civil rights arena but were appointed by the current presidential administration, have shown that they intend to rubber stamp out anything that does not support the party’s agenda and ideology of valid civil rights information to disseminate to the public.

The following items were removed from their website, but the Memory Hole, a freedom of information clearing house, has requested, received and reposted the following items of interest:

* Briefing on Boundaries of Justice: Immigration Policies Post –September 11 (October 2001)

* Briefing on Civil Rights Issues Facing Muslims and Arab Americans in Ohio Post –September 11 (November 2001)

* Briefing on Civil Rights Issues Facing Muslims and Arab Americans in Minnesota Post –September 11 (February 2002)

* Briefing on Civil Rights Issues Facing Muslims and Arab Americans in Wisconsin Post –September 11 (April 2002)

* Briefing on Civil Rights Issues Facing Muslims and Arab Americans in Indiana Post –September 11 (May 2002)

* Briefing on the Consequences of Government Race Data Collection Bans on Civil Rights (May 2002)

* Briefing on Civil Rights Issues Facing Muslims and Arab Americans in North Dakota Post –September 11 (May 2002)

* Haitian Asylum Seekers and U.S. Immigration Policy (June 2002)

* Voting Rights in Florida 2002: Briefing Summary (August 2002)

* Briefing on Tragedy Along the Arizona-Mexico Border: Undocumented Immigrants Face Death in the Desert (August 2002)

* Beyond Percentage Plans: The Challenge of Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (November 2002)

* Crossing Borders: The Administration of Justice and Civil Rights Protections in the Immigration and Asylum Context (January 2003)

* Education Accountability and High-Stakes Testing in the Carolinas (February 2003)

* The Supreme Court Revisits Affirmative Action: Will Grutter and Gratz Mean the End of Bakke? (April 2003)

* The U.S. Department of Education’s Race-Neutral Alternatives in Postsecondary Education: Innovative Approaches to Diversity-Are They Viable Substitutes for Affirmative Action? (May 2003)

* Anniversary Update on Commission Activities Related to September 11 (September 2003)

* Native American Health Care Disparities Briefing Summary (February 2004)

* Is America Ready to Vote? Election Readiness Briefing Paper (July 2004)

* Closing the Achievement Gap: The Impact of Standards Based Education Reform (July 2004)

* Redefining Rights in America: The Civil Rights Record of the George W. Bush Administration (September 2004)

Click Here (To view all reports)

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Hope” is a unique and powerful film with a message of peace for the future. Combining animation, archival footage and live action, in a multi-layered non-linear story, the film brings the viewer on a fascinating journey through human existence. ‘Hope’ is shaped around the knowledge and ideas of Willy Whitefeather, a man in his sixties of Cherokee ancestry, a storyteller, healer, survivalist and an individual of wisdom and heart.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We are seeing wars, genocide, diseases, climate change such as global warming, and potential earth changes which have been foretold by many seers and indigenous peoples. This is that story in animated visuals and soundtrack that will shake you to your roots. We must shift to this path, without hesitation.

Using traditions and stories from Native American and world cultures, Whitefeather combines dreams, images and reminiscences from our collective memory to send a message of hope for the future. Now is the time to reconnect with Spirit, to recognize the effects of our actions, to evaluate the underlying causes of suffering and to reshape our life and our world into a more harmonious one.

The animated scenes are in styles reminiscent of Pueblo pottery design, Sioux painted hides, Petroglyph drawings and Hopi mural paintings. The sound track is similarly layered with the sounds of a beating heart, breathing, wooden flutes, drums, rattles, a traditional Cherokee lullaby and original music. “Hope” urges us to change course and follow a path of wisdom, responsibility, beauty, simplicity and gentleness, so that one day we too can know Hope.

This film was created by Willy Whitefeather, directed by Catherine Margerin, and produced by Mary Mathaisell & Luna Media.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you like this film you can visit the filmmakers web site, buy a copy of the DVD, or just make a donation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Powers of Ten explores the relative size of things from the microscopic to the cosmic. The 1977 film travels from an aerial view of a man in a Chicago park to the outer limits of the universe directly above him and back down into the microscopic world contained in the man’s hand. Powers of Ten illustrates the universe as an arena of both continuity and change, of everyday picnics and cosmic mystery. The film also demonstrates the Eameses’ ability to make science both fascinating and accessible.

You can purchase this video and other products at their online store. For more information visit the Powers of Ten page at the Library of Congress.

* Information in this page is from various sources linked to in the article

Click here to view the embedded video.

The video is by Max Joseph, Erin Bosworth, and Ariel Shulman, with music by Tom Van Buskirk.

About Good Magazine

We see a growing number of people tied together not by age, career, background, or circumstance, but by a shared interest. This revolves around a passion for potential mixed with fierce pragmatism and creative engagement. We sum all this up as the sensibility of giving a damn. But to shorten it, let’s call it GOOD. We’re here to push this movement and cover its realization.

While so much of today’s media is taking up our space, dumbing us down, and impeding our productivity, GOOD exists to add value. Through a print magazine, feature and documentary films, original multimedia content and local events, GOOD is providing a platform for the ideas, people, and businesses that are driving change in the world.

Twenty-one of the CDs are audio CDs. The Memory Hole has ripped the audio into MP3 files and posted them at the Internet Archive. Each one lasts 44 to 47 minutes. The link below will open each MP3 (64 Kbps). Or you can go to the main Internet Archive page for the recordings where you’ll find each audio file also available as a high-quality MP3 (128Kbps) and in an open-source format called Ogg Vorbis. You can also download all the files at once as a humongous zip file or listen to all the files as a continuous stream.

Disc 23 contains PDF files of 503 oral histories.

Disc 21 contains an audio transcript and an EMS logbook.

Click Here for Complete Contents of All 23 CDs

Click Here for Audio Versions and Formats
 

In addition to touring “Cinderella” and other ballets throughout the Midwest, the company presents the holiday classic, Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker,” in annual performances at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois; at the Rialto Theatre in Joliet, Illinois, and at Harris Theatre for Music and Dance in Chicago.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Artistic director Kenneth von Heidecke, since 1986 choreographer and ballet master for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, draws his dancers from such professional companies as Joffrey Ballet, Ballet Chicago, and the Chicago Lyric Opera Ballet and from the ranks of his own studios in Naperville, Illinois. Prima Ballerina assoluta, Maria Tallchief, director of Chicago Lyric Opera Ballet, serves the Chicago Festival Ballet as honorary artistic advisor.

Mr. von Heidecke, who has performed with Ms. Tallchief’s Chicago City Ballet, the Lyric Opera Ballet, BalletMet, and Carla Fracci’s company in Verona, Italy, has choreographed for the Opera Company of the Los Angeles Music Center, the Dallas Opera, the San Diego Opera, and the Washington Opera at the Kennedy Center, among many others. In addition to working with the renowned Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, he has presented a full evening of his work at the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, Germany.

The program includes a point-by-point description of the principles inherent in it and required for a media system that is truly reflective of and responsive to the needs and interests of the public.

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Amongst these discussed are the inherent rights to free expression, and for access to the platforms for being able to receive that expression, particularly those whose accessibility is provide through “net neutrality” and well-funded local public access.

The program also features a brief history and overview as to the importance of media to the functioning of, if not the very existence of, a truly democratic society (including segments from the documentary film “Manufacturing Consent”).

Premiered on USTV on November 26th, 2006, Post picture was modified specifically for this posting.

In the novel, the memory hole is a slot into which government officials deposit politically inconvenient documents and records to be destroyed. 1984’s protagonist Winston Smith, who works in the Ministry of Truth, is routinely assigned the task of revising old newspaper articles in order to serve the propaganda interests of the government.

For example, if the government had pledged that the chocolate ration would not fall below the current 30 grams per week, but in fact the ration is reduced to 20 grams per week, the historical record (e.g. an article from a back issue of the Times newspaper) is revised to contain an announcement that a reduction to 20 grams might soon prove necessary, or that the ration has in fact gone up to 20 grams from some lower number, in a deliberate example of doublethink. The original copies of the historical record are deposited into the memory hole.

A document placed in the memory hole is supposedly transported to an incinerator from which “not even the ash remains”.

The term now generally refers to the alteration or outright disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts, or other records, such as from a web site or other archive. The term is the name of one website (The Memory Hole) which is notable for preserving web-publishable materials, which would be typically destroyed, altered, or simply forgotten if left to the discretion of official publishing.

Topics include government files, corporate memos, court documents, police reports and eyewitness statements, Congressional testimony, reports from various sources, maps, patents, web pages, photographs, video, sound recordings, news articles, and books.

Here is a submission from a series of select articles I like to call “Tales From The Memory Hole”

5 States Sue Vatican Over Money-Laundering and Insurance Fraud

California Law Offices of Tom Easton & Jonathan Levy
for immediate release

Vatican Lawsuit Liability exceeds $1 billion in USA Courts

The Vatican, which has long claimed immunity to lawsuits, is now facing claimants seeking more than $1 billion.

Insurance commissioners from Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Okalahoma, and Arkansas have joined Holocaust victims and victims of pedophile priests in filing lawsuits against the Vatican and Vatican Bank. The Insurance commissioners are seeking over $600 million in a RICO (Anti Racketeering) lawsuit that has named several top Cardinals including two former Papal Nuncios to the United States and the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Sodano, as co-conspirators with convicted financier Martin Frankel in an unsuccessful attempt to launder an incredible $150 billion in insurance assets.

Frankel who has plead guilty to 20 counts of wire fraud and one count each of securities fraud, racketeering, racketeering conspiracy and a forfeiture charge has been cooperating with the government in retrieving $200 million in missing insurance assets. Frankel faces 150 years in prison and will be sentenced next year.

Vatican officials allegedly received pay offs from Frankel and his associates in exchange for use of a Vatican operated charity as money laundering conduit. A Vatican monsignor, Colagiavanni, who also is facing racketeering charges, assisted Frankel in taking over unsuspecting insurance companies. Cardinal Laghi, former Vatican Nuncio to the USA, received $100,000 from Frankel. The Vatican Bank, which is controlled by Cardinal Sodano, issued a key letter of credit that Frankel used in his insurance schemes.

The Vatican’s legal problems in the US first arose in November 1999 when California attorneys Tom Easton and Jonathan Levy filed a class action lawsuit seeking return of gold and funds looted from Yugoslavia during WWII and laundered by the Vatican bank post war. The wartime treasure is valued at several hundreds of millions. Earlier this year sexual abuse victims in the US sued the Vatican and now the insurance commissioners are seeking restitution and penalties of over $600 million. All the lawsuits are pending.

According to co-counsel in the WWII case, Jonathan Levy, all the cases have an excellent chance of beating Vatican immunity defenses: “The Vatican used up its goodwill long ago, it has violated too many international laws and laundered too much money for anyone to believe its wholesale denials anymore. They stand to lose more than a billion dollars due to a lifestyle of crime and corruption by their top officials.”

Click here for lawsuit pdf.

Meticulously tracing the process by which media has distorted and often dismissed actual news events, Pappas presents a riveting and eloquent mix of media professionals and leading intellectual voices on the media.

Among the cast of characters in Orwell rolls in his grave are Charles Lewis, director of the Center for Public Integrity, Vincent Bugliosi, former L.A. prosecutor and legal scholar, film director and author Michael Moore, Rep. Bernie Sanders, Danny Schecter, author and former producer for ABC and CNN, and Tony Benn, former member of the British Parliament.

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Orwell rolls in his grave provides a vital forum for ideas that will never be heard in mainstream media. From Globalvision’s Danny Schecter: “We falsely think of our country as a democracy when it has evolved into a mediacracy – where a media that is supposed to check political abuse is part of the political abuse.” New York University media professor Mark Crispin Miller says, “These commercial entities now vie with the government for control over our lives. They are not a healthy counterweight to government. Goebbels said that what you want in a media system – he meant the Nazi media system – is to present the ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity.”

From the very size of the media monopolies and how they got that way to who decides what gets on the air and what doesn’t, Orwell rolls in his grave moves through a troubling list of questions and news stories that go unanswered and unreported in the mainstream media. Are Americans being given the information a democracy needs to survive or have they been electronically lobotomized? Has the frenzy for media consolidation led to a dangerous irony where in an era of more news sources the majority of the population has actually become less informed?

Orwell rolls in his grave reminds us that 1984 is no longer a date in the future.

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* All text on this page taken from the page for the movie.