Topic: Video
By Bill Larson | April 14, 2007 | 
 Good magazine put together a short video documentary showing how the Federal government allocates our tax dollars. It helps to highlight just how badly our national priorities are screwed up. We need to work together as a nation to refocus our government on its people, rather than the military industrial complex and the beneficiary corporations. If we can do that, this world will be a much better place.
The video is by Max Joseph, Erin Bosworth, and Ariel Shulman, with music by Tom Van Buskirk. «Read the rest of this article»
Sections: Business, Issues, Politics | No Comments
By Terry McMoore | March 31, 2007 |
 It took a bitterly fought lawsuit brought by the New York Times to get the Fire Department of New York to release some of its dispatch tapes from 9/11. The NYT requested the tapes in early 2002, got denied, and went to court. When the FDNY lost the fight three and a half years later, on 12 August 2005 it made available 23 CDs, almost all containing audio of radio dispatches, plus transcripts of oral histories and some other text. The NYT posted about one-quarter to one-third of the audio. The Memory Hole also received the discs due to its freedom of information request, and we’re posting all of them.
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). «Read the rest of this article»
Sections: Politics | No Comments
By Bill Larson | February 26, 2007 |
 Von Heidecke’s Chicago Festival Ballet performs its wonderful production of the Prokofiev ballet, “Cinderella,” with choreography by company director, Kenneth Von Heidecke, in this full-length video from a 2005 performance.
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.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5386289460357026223
«Read the rest of this article»
Sections: Arts and Leisure | No Comments
By Bill Larson | February 20, 2007 |
 An overview on the “Bill of Media Rights” as promoted and advanced by a large coalition of organizations and activists working towards a more democratic media system.
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.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2416049167498839637
«Read the rest of this article»
Sections: Politics | No Comments
By Terry McMoore | February 19, 2007 |
The memory hole, as in the phrase “Going down the memory hole,” refers to a mechanism for censorship in George Orwell’s novel, 1984.
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. «Read the rest of this article»
Sections: Politics | No Comments
By Bill Larson | February 16, 2007 |
 Orwell rolls in his grave is the consummate critical examination of the Fourth Estate, once the bastion of American democracy by Director Robert Kane Pappas. Asking whether America has entered an Orwellian world of doublespeak where outright lies can pass for the truth, Pappas explores what the media doesn’t like to talk about: itself.
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.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2664529389359423152
«Read the rest of this article»
Sections: Arts and Leisure, Issues | No Comments
By Bill Larson | February 6, 2007 |
 The Root of All Evil? is a two-part documentary written and presented by Dr. Richard Dawkins, Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, Oxford University, and author of The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow, The Ancestor’s Tale, and The God Delusion.
The Root of All Evil?, by the Oxford University evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, is his controversial documentary that complements his bestselling book The God Delusion. Dawkins presents his view of religion as a cultural virus that, like a computer virus, once downloaded into the software of society corrupts many of the programs it encounters. It isn’t hard to find examples to fit this view; one has only to read the dailies coming out of the Middle East to see its nefarious effects.
This documentary is available on DVD for $29.95 [ Click here to order] or click read more to find out more and watch a preview of this video for free online «Read the rest of this article»
Sections: Spirituality | No Comments
By Bill Larson | November 25, 2006 |
 Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? What is the real reason we are in Iraq. Has the military become too important in American life? Jarecki’s shrewd and intelligent polemic would seem to give an affirmative answer to each of these questions
The American Documentary Grand Jury Prize was given to WHY WE FIGHT, written and directed by Eugene Jarecki. http://festival.sundance.org/2005/docs/05Awards.pdf
What are the forces that shape and propel American militarism? This award-winning film provides an inside look at the anatomy of the American war machine.
This is the next movie on my personal must purchase list! «Read the rest of this article»
Sections: Arts and Leisure | No Comments
|
Full
