In March 2003 thousands of Australian troops and others were sent to fight a 'war' as part of a pre-emptive strike on the sovereign nation of Iraq, a country from whom there was no threat. Two years on, in the wake of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi casualties, the Australian military reports its first casualty in the conflict while the American death toll stands at nearly two thousand. This being the a result of an invasion which has all but destroyed a foreign nation and seen millions made homeless, families destroyed, hundreds of thousands of deaths, leaving a legacy of destruction and religious division instilled in its wake. How did the Australian government come to play a part in this terror?
Utopia is both an epic portrayal of the oldest continuous human culture on the planet--indigenous Australia--and an investigation into a suppressed colonial past and rapacious present. One of the world's best kept secrets is revealed against the great Australian 'mining boom,' showing how the country's racially divided past and current-day media collusion play their parts in a system that is apartheid in all but name. The film examines the exploitation of the Aboriginal population, both as a people and of the land they have lived on for centuries, and how so many institutions have profited while people continue to suffer. The injustice stretches across countless generations and stories. Utopia reveals this universal story of power and resistance, driven by old imperatives, in a media age of saturation which is profoundly silent and complicit; a call to continue resistance.
Governments all around the world are using high-tech mass surveillance tools to monitor their citizens. Western corporations, including Britain's largest weapons manufacturer, BAE, are among those which are creating and selling mass surveillance infrastructures all across the globe, but especially to particularly repressive regimes. Weapons of Mass Surveillance makes example of what is happening throughout the Middle East where journalists, human rights advocates and activists are being targeted with surveillance tools developed by western corporations with extreme real-world consequences. Political opponents to tyrannical power are targeted, jailed, and in some cases, tortured or "disappeared." This shows the power of mass surveillance tools for great harm, and how the west is culpable in perpetuating systemic repression both at home and abroad.
Why was the the electric vehicle made by General Motors destroyed in the late 1990s? Why did it receive only limited commercialisation despite being hugely popular? It was among the fastest, most efficient production cars ever built. It ran on electricity, produced no exhaust and catapulted American technology to the forefront of the automotive industry. The lucky few who drove it never wanted to give it up. So why did General Motors suddenly crush its fleet of EV-1 electric vehicles in the Arizona desert? Was it because of a lack of consumer confidence or conspiracy?
Reporters Jesper Huor and Bosse Lindquist travel to key countries where parts of the Wikileaks website operate to investigate some of the very few public faces behind the global Wikileaks network. Featuring interviews with co-founder Jullian Assange, spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson and others, WikiRebels asks: where is Wikileaks heading? Is it stronger than ever or being broken by the US or even on the inside? And who is Assange? A champion of freedom, a spy or a rapist? What are his objectives? And what are the consequences?