Topic war on terror
The Secret Robot War
1.93K views
Over the past decade, the United States military has shifted the way it fights its wars, deploying more technological systems in the battlefield than human forces. Today there are more than 7,000 drones and 12,000 ground robots in use by all branches of the military. These systems mean less deaths for US troops, but increased killings with less political risk for the United States. With lethal drone strikes being carried out in secret by the CIA and occurring outside of declared war zones such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the use of robots and drones evokes serious questions about the operations of the United States and what this means as more and more autonomy is developed for these technologies...
We
2.36K views
We is a visual essay exploring the politics of empire, war, corporate globalisation, imperialism and history; using the words of Indian author and political activist Arundhati Roy, from her speech Come September given in Santa Fe, New Mexico one year after the September 11th attacks--not long after the invasion of Afghanistan. The result is a mix of archive footage illustrating specific historical events throughout South America, the Middle East and elsewhere, in context with the September 11th attacks; placed alongside the themes of empire, global economics and a short history of neo-collonialism...
Rise of The Machines
877 views
Just as mobile phones and wireless capability dramatically changed the way technology interacts with modern society, drones--or 'Unmanned Aerial Vehicles'--are set to become the next major influence in technocratic life, directly impacting and seriously expanding the already extensive capabilities of surveillance. Rise Of The Machines takes a look at already developed drone technology and how governments, military and even civilians are rushing to adopt the gadgets which can be purchased off the shelf for just a few hundred dollars and controlled by already existing smart phones. So what will a world of drones look like? And what of the many, serious, unexplored implications on how society will function in a world of drones?
Lifting The Veil
731 views
Lifting The Veil explores the historical role of political parties in the United States as the graveyard of social movements, the massive influence of corporate financing in elections, the absurd disparities of wealth, the continuity and escalation of neoconservative policies with the Obama administration, the insufficiency of mere voting as a path to reform, and differing conceptions of democracy itself. Lifting The Veil exposes the vast hypocrisy of the United States government, with a sense of urgency to bring about real systemic social and political change...
Robot Wars
402 views
Robot Wars visits companies in the United States that are producing robots for the military to disarm bombs, fly unmanned aircraft (drones), withstand repeated attacks and even choose targets and fire without any human intervention. The rapid development of autonomous robots and the use of them right now is surging ahead at a crazy rate, all with little regard to ethical and psychological questions, concerns about technological privilege and other obvious impacts. With military robots currently being operated using video game controllers, is the line being blurred between fantasy and reality?
Attack of The Drones
487 views
The latest in the string of controversies as part of the United States' ongoing "war on terror", is the military's growing reliance on "Unmanned Aerial Vehicles" otherwise known as 'drones', evidenced by the international reaction to recent drone missile attacks along the border in Pakistan. The military is also deploying other technological advancements alongside, such as robots in the battlefield and drones that work in swarms. Is this just a big computer game? A new tech-driven arms race? It doesn't end there though -- drones are now creeping into use by police and the intelligence services as a surveillance tool, and even into commercial and civilian use...
The Fourth World War
606 views
From the front-lines of conflicts in Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, Palestine, Korea, and the North; from Seattle to Genova and the "War on Terror" in New York, Afghanistan, and Iraq, The Fourth World War documents the stories of women and men all around the world who resist being annihilated in this war. Centred around economics and systems such as NAFTA, GATT, the G20, APEC and others, this is a war which plays along with the spread of rapacious globalisation, a feat that has pervasive consequences in the real world...
Operation 8
828 views
On October 15th 2007, a series of intense police raids occurred around the small village of Ruatoki in New Zealand. Operation 8, as it was called, was the result of 18 months of invasive surveillance of Maori sovereignty and peace activists accused of attending 'terrorist training camps' in the Urewera ranges -- the homeland of the indigenous Tuhoe people. This film examines why and how the raids took place -- did the War on Terror become a global witch-hunt of political dissenters reaching even to the South Pacific?
Beating The Bomb
1.44K views
By charting the history of the anti-war movement against the political backdrop of the atomic age, Beating The Bomb examines the current state of 'nuclear deterrence' brought about by the nuclear age stemming from the end of World War II, when the United States nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Specifically, the anti-nuclear movement and the founding of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958 amongst others, fight for and end to the British Nuclear Weapons program, which from its inception, was closely tied to The Manhattan Project and still is to this day...
The Shock Doctrine
2.18K views
By comparing the confluence of ideas about modifying behaviour using shock therapy and other sensory deprivation alongside the "shock treatment" of modifying national economics using the teachings of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economics, The Shock Doctrine presents the workings of global capitalism and details how the US, along with other western countries, has exploited natural and man-made disasters in developing countries to push through free market reforms from which they stand to benefit...
The War You Don’t See
3.49K views
The War You Don't See traces the history of 'embedded' and independent reporting from the carnage of World War One to the destruction of Hiroshima, and from the invasion of Vietnam to the current war in Afghanistan and disaster in Iraq. As weapons and propaganda become even more sophisticated, the nature of war is developing into an 'electronic battlefield' in which journalists play a key role, and civilians are the victims. But who is the real enemy?
Iraq’s Secret War Files
1.29K views
Initially, the Americans claimed that they were not recording casualty figures. George Bush stated that America would do its "utmost to avoid civilian casualties". But now, details of the US Military themselves recording over 109,000 deaths have been released by Wikileaks -- over 66,000 civilian deaths; 176,000 civilians and others wounded. Iraq's Secret War Files reveals the true scale of civilian casualties, and examines evidence that after the "scandal" of Abu Ghraib, American soldiers continued to torture prisoners; and that US forces did not intervene in the torture and murder of detainees by Iraqi security services...
Gitmo — The New Rules of War
154 views
In the wake of the attacks of September 11th 2001, the United States opened a prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The hundreds of prisoners detained there are not afforded prisoners of war status according to the Geneva Convention, they are labelled "unlawful combatants" and are held indefinitely and tortured with no right to a lawyer or a trial. Gitmo -- The New Rules Of War cuts through the official political rhetoric surrounding Guantánamo to expose what really goes on at the United States central gulag in the 'war on terror'.
Obama and Empire
2.22K views
Since 1945, by deed and by example, the US has overthrown 50 governments, including democracies, crushed some 30 liberation movements and supported tyrannies from Egypt to Guatemala. Bombing and war is as American as apple pie. Obama, having stacked his government with warmongers, Wall Street cronies and polluters from the Bush and Clinton eras, the 45th president is merely upholding tradition...
Power, Propaganda and the Silence of Writers
1.39K views
"These days, a one-dimensional political 'culture' ensures that few writers write, or speak out, as they did in the last century. They are talented, yet safe. In the media, the more people watch, the less people know. Beneath the smokescreen of objectivity and impartiality, media establishments too often ventriloquise the official line, falling silent at the sight of unpleasant truths." Renowned independent journalist John Pilger speaks about complicity and compliance, censorship and citizen journalism as well as issues such as the holocaust in Iraq and Rudd's shrewd political apology to the Indigenous peoples of Australia...
Control Room
614 views
Control Room presents a rare window into the US invasion of Iraq from the perspective of Al Jazeera, the Arab world's most popular news outlet. Widely criticized and condemned by military figureheads, government officials and the mainstream media in the west for reporting with a "pro-Iraqi bias", airing civilian causalities, as well as showing footage of American POWs, Control Room reveals the situation in Iraq that the US government does not want you to see...
The Trap
21.42K views
If one steps back and looks at what freedom actually means for us today, it's a strange and limited kind of freedom. The West apparently fought the Cold War for "individual freedom", yet it is still something our leaders continually promise to give us. Abroad, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the attempt to force "freedom" on to other people has led to bloody mayhem. This, in turn, has helped inspire terrorist attacks in Britain. In response, the government has dismantled long-standing laws that were designed to protect individual freedom...
The Crisis of Civilisation
604 views
The Crisis of Civilization draws on archive footage and essentially monologue by author Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed to detail how global problems like environmental collapse, financial crisis, peak energy, terrorism and food shortages are all symptoms of a single, failed global system...
Crazy Rulers of The World
906 views
Crazy Rulers of the World is a series that investigates what happens when chiefs of US intelligence, the army, and the government "began believing in very strange things". With first-hand access to the leading players in the story, Jon Ronson examines the extraordinary and plain bizarre national secrets at the core of the war on terror...
How The US Funds The Taliban
953 views
Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of characters with shady connections -- former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort. US military's contractors pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting -- a deadly irony...
The Iron Triangle — The Carlyle Group Exposed
1.08K views
The Carlyle Group is one of the largest investment banks in the world. Based in Washington, it has accumulated its wealth mainly by investments in defence -- a lucrative market in the continued tradition of American war, imperialism and militarism. A strange coincidence? Their list of private investors include George Soros, the Saudi Royal Family and the Bin Laden Family. How does the Carlyle Group really operate and who are the people behind it?
The Power of Nightmares
14.56K views
Is the threat of radical Islamism as a massive sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries—and particularly American Neo-Conservatives—in an attempt to 'unite and inspire' people following the failure of earlier, more utopian ideologies?
In Guantánamo
540 views
The Guantanamo detention camp, "Gitmo", covers forty five square miles of Cuba inside an area under a "permanent lease" to the United States. Since 2002, the base has become synonymous with its detainment of "suspected terrorists". Although Barack Obama has given orders for the detention camp to be closed, the facilities remain open to this day. David Miller's quiet, powerful film is the result of three days the film-maker spent touring the camps in May 2008 as part of a small group of media representatives allowed there. Although the event was presented as a chance to 'see inside' the working of Guantanamo, it was in fact a carefully staged PR exercise designed to yield predictable, stale and controlled media images...
Taking Liberties Since 1997
934 views
Teenage sisters detained for 36 hours for a peaceful protest; an RAF war veteran arrested for wearing an anti-Bush and Blair T-shirt; an innocent man shot in a police raid; and a man is held under house arrest for two years, after being found innocent in court. Ordinary law-abiding citizens being punished for exercising their rights--right to protest, right to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, right to privacy, to be detained without charge, to be innocent until proven guilty, prohibition from torture...
Suspect Nation
986 views
New surveillance technologies are penetrating every aspect of our lives and we don’t even know it. All across the world, millions of cameras are watching us. The police are able to record almost every journey and operate on ever expanding powers of search and arrest; governments collect our DNA, fingerprints and iris scans while colluding with corporations to profile us and analyse our behaviour. All of these measures, it is said by the state, is to protect our freedom...
Spying On The Home Front
645 views
September 11 has indelibly altered the world in ways that people are now starting to earnestly question: not only perpetual orange alerts, barricades and body frisks at the airport, but greater government scrutiny of people's records and electronic surveillance of their communications. The US National Security Agency (NSA) has engaged in wiretapping and the sifting of Internet communications of millions of people worldwide, including their own...
Iraq — The Women’s Story
316 views
The United States heralded many grandiose promises of freedom and equal rights as they invaded Iraq. But still years on from the invasion, the reality of everyday life for women inside Iraq is a different story. To make this film, two Iraqi women risk their lives to spend three months travelling all over the country with a camera to record the lives and experiences of women they meet. Iraq -- The Women's Story provides a compelling account of a life inside Iraq that is never seen on news bulletins...
Good Cop, Bad Cop
569 views
The Australian Federal Police -- the glamour police force that was set-up after the Sydney Hilton Hotel Bombing in 1978 -- has enjoyed consistent showers of praise by politicians and the public ever since it's inception. However, the once-lionised AFP is now being ridiculed for bungling, excessive secrecy and collusion after the "catastrophic failings" of the "terrorism case" against Dr Mohammed Haneef. But the Haneef case is just a symptom of the "deep cultural problems that beset the AFP"...