Films about war on terror
55:54Why have a real election when you can just buy the result? In Bush Family Fortunes, Greg Palast examines various aspects of the Presidency of George W. Bush, including the very controversial 2000 US Presidential ‘election’ and of course, the invasion of Iraq. What are the Bush family connections?
3:40:02In Imperial Grand Strategy renowned linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky focuses on the issue of the invasion of Iraq, and cuts through the ideological fog that surrounds the invasion and occupation, laying waste to the US government’s justifications for them. In the process, Chomsky uncovers the real motivations behind US military aggression: a global imperial plan put in place long before Iraq and that will extend far into the future, unless we do something about it.
45:05The 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. Good Cop, Bad Cop reveals how the Haneef case is a symptom of the deep cultural problems that beset the AFP…
1:50:34On 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 Tūhoe 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?
42:15The legacy of the Bush administration and the so-called “War on Terror” includes a new logic that stretches well beyond the realm of overzealous security agencies, airport security and international relations, and into suppressing public protest; expanded surveillance aimed at entire populations, but especially activists; and mobilising fear for social control. Special police techniques have even been developed and applied in order to specifically suppress dissent and manage protests, especially in the wake of the rising anti-globalisation movements towards the turn of the millennium. Preempting Dissent provides a quick overview of how some of this logic developed, as well as a glimpse of how political protest in the West has been shaped and controlled in the “post-9/11″ years, up to and including the so-called Occupy movement. By provoking a reflection of the implications of the logic of the “War on Terror” and how its applied to stifle political protest, Preempting Dissent aims to lay some of the groundwork to develop more effective resistance tactics.
49:56The 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?
1:03:49We
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…
1:15:57In 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’.
1:08:32Unconstitutional investigates the ways in which the civil liberties of citizens and immigrants have been rolled back in the United States since September 11, 2001; and the PATRIOT Act. The film details some stories behind those affected—from law-abiding store clerks to United States Olympians unable to travel.
58:37In 1978, Australia was shocked by the explosion of a massive bomb placed in a rubbish bin outside the Sydney Hilton Hotel in NSW. The perpetrators were never found. However, evidence that the Australian security and intelligence forces may have been responsible resulted in the NSW State Parliament unanimously calling for an inquiry in 1991 and then again in 1995. The Federal Government vetoed any inquiry. No investigation was held. The government then set-up the Australian Federal Police and increased support for “anti-terrorist measures”…
Crazy Rulers of the World is a series that investigates what happens when chiefs of the United States intelligence agencies and the army began believing in very strange things. With first-hand access to the leading characters in the story, filmmaker Jon Ronson examines the extraordinary and bizarre national secrets at the core of the war on terror.
39:03The belief that good triumphs over evil resonates deeply through the religious and political discourses of dominant culture. It is also a common theme in the entertainment media where the struggle between good and evil is frequently resolved through violence. The negative impacts of media violence on children has long been a public concern, but it is even more troubling when military violence, both in the news and in entertainment, is often glorified as heroic and noble. Beyond Good & Evil: Children, Media & Violent Times is a look at how mass communication distorts and manipulates language and visual imagery. It shows viewers how the media’s overriding objective of satisfying an audience converts real issues surrounding race, war, and violence into nothing more than spectacle.
43:02They brought us war in Iraq, the promotion of “American global leadership,” pre-emptive strikes; the “spreading of Democracy.” This is the Project for the New American Century. But what do the hawks in Washington have in store for the world now? The War Party investigates this group of beurocrats responsible for the Project for the New American Century, called the neo-conservatives. This interconnected, dispersed group are running the White House in concert of the Bush years and family dynasty. Is it surprising how little has changed?
24:26Over 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 and precision elsewhere for the United States war machine. With lethal drone strikes being carried out in secret by the CIA and occurring outside of officially declared war zones such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the secret use of robots and drones in this way evokes serious questions about the operations of the United States and what this means for the rest of the world as more and more autonomy is developed for these technologies.
48:15Initially, 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…
2:47:55The United States of Secrets chronologically accounts the Bush administration’s embrace of illegal and widespread dragnet surveillance and eavesdropping programmes, along with the Obama administration’s decision to not only continue them, but to dramatically expand them—despite denials and promises to the contrary. By weaving narratives by those who sought to blow the whistle on these programmes over the decades—culminating with Edward Snowden’s unprecedented dump of insider documents in 2013—we see how and why those inside the NSA and other government agencies came to act; what actions were effective, and what role the mainstream media had and continues to have in keeping such secret projects alive and untouchable in the name of ‘national security.’
51:57The discrepancies between the “War on Terror” and the facts on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq are many. In 2001, as the bombs began to drop, George W. Bush promised Afghanistan, “the generosity of America and its allies.” Now, the familiar old warlords are retaining their power, religious fundamentalism is expanding its grip and military ‘skirmishes’ continue routinely. In “liberated” Afghanistan, America has its military base and pipeline access, while the people have the warlords who are, as one woman says in the film, “in many ways worse than the Taliban.”
1:17:29The 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…
1:11:57Do Not Resist documents, from the perspective of the police, their view of the social unrest following the shooting and killing of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, 2014, against a backdrop of the routine and escalating use of military tactics and high-powered weaponry by local police forces throughout the United States in the past two decades. Military equipment deployed throughout the Middle East returns home to be used against the citizenry. Local police recruitment and training is awash in military commandments backed by views of escalating ‘righteous’ violence and sadism. Meanwhile curfews are imposed, along with frivolous drug raids and incessant racial profiling. The voices of concerned citizens ignored. What is the cultural and technological trajectory here?
1:34:22The untold history of The Project for the New American Century is no more. This film exposes how every major war in US history was based on a complete fraud with video of insiders themselves admitting it. This documentary shows how the first film theatres in the US were used over a hundred years ago to broadcast propaganda to rile the American people into the Spanish-American War; the white papers of the oil company Unocal which called for the creation of a pipeline through Afghanistan and how their exact needs were fulfilled through the US invasion of Afghanistan; how Halliburton under their “cost plus” exclusive contract with the US Government went on a mad dash spending spree akin to something out of the movie Brewster’s Millions…
1:13:36Rebel Without A Pause follows renowned linguist and activist, Noam Chomsky through discussions and talks on various world events such as the invasion of Iraq, the September 11th attacks and the War on Terror. Chomsky also weaves in accounts of media manipulation, social control, and discusses the workings of the politics of fear. The film combines footage from large forums to small interactive discussions on these topics, as well as reflections from others…
39:28Outsourcing Torture documents the account of Mamdouh Habib, an Australian Muslim arrested in Afghanistan during a “general round up” where he was sent to Egypt to be tortured. Three years after his arrest, Mahdouh Habib is still imprisoned in Guantanamo, still not having been charged with any crime…
1:39:41This film provides some insights into the plight of Omar Ahmed Khadr, a Canadian citizen, who was fifteen years old when he was taken by United States forces in Afghanistan in 2002 to be interrogated, tortured, and sent to Guantánamo Bay. Based on seven hours of CCTV footage recently conceded and declassified by Canadian courts, You Don’t Like The Truth offers a dark, yet officially-sanctioned view into the sadistic world of today’s intelligence agencies and the secret operations in the War-of-Terror.
13:08Welcome 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…
47:49The 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 of course 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…
1:18:40Drone
In the wake of the September 11th attacks, amongst the ravaging of war, the United States has been secretly deploying drones to carry out assassinations throughout the Middle East. The drones are increasingly piloted by the likes of young computer gamers groomed by screen culture and computer games of war, where in many cases, the Pentagon is directly involved in the creation of such games as recruitment tools, actively working to lure young people proficient with technology into the new era of the military-industrial-complex. Drone unravels this complex phenomenon while travelling to places such as Waziristan, where innocent civilians, including children and rescue workers are routinely secretly killed, where families and communities ravaged by the drone strikes search for understanding, accountability and adjustment to the daily horrors. The film also takes a look at the young people sitting behind the screens of the new war machines, half a world away, that actually pull the trigger, asking what kind of world is being built in the rise of seemingly endless and lucrative war driven by technological escalation.
1:18:08Taxi To The Dark Side examines America’s policy on torture and interrogation in general, specifically the CIA’s use of torture and their research into sensory deprivation. There is description of the opposition to the use of torture from its political and military opponents, as well as the defence of such methods; the attempts by Congress to uphold the standards of the Geneva Convention forbidding torture; and the popularisation of the use of torture techniques in American television shows…
Counter-Intelligence is a 5 part series that explores in-depth, the vast, sprawling and secret National Security State that operates throughout the United States—and indeed the world. The series examines the foundations of the Military-Industrial-Intelligence Complex, charting through to the myriad consequences in today’s world where secret intelligence organisations continue to hijack governments, manipulate elections and commit heinous crimes against humanity—all under the cloak of “National Security”. In the wake of the continued revelations of the NSA PRISM program, this series is now more important than ever to provide a solid historical context to the workings of the rapacious and ever-expanding National Security State…
1:36:46The 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?
1:26:16Dirty Wars follows investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill into the hidden world of the United States’ covert wars and assassination programmes—from Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia, and beyond. What begins as a relatively commonplace report on the cover-up of a murderous US night raid in a remote corner of Afghanistan, quickly turns into a global investigation of the secretive and powerful Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)—a top secret arm of the Military-Industrial-Intelligence Complex. As Scahill digs deeper into the activities of JSOC, he is compelled to report on the growing chilling underworld of covert operations carried out across the globe at the behest of the United States government: Targeted killings of American citizens; secret drone strikes; outsourcing American kill lists to warlords, private corporations and paramilitaries. The list goes on. Dirty Wars is a sobering investigation and personal journey into the most important human rights story of our time.
55:23September 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…
58:32Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! speaks about the mainstream media’s coverage of US interventions around the world and demonstrates the link between corporate media and government, and how this plays a major part in selling war at home and abroad…
1:29:20Two years before the Occupy movement sprang forth in New York, a small group of land-rights activists occupied a piece of disused land in west London to create an “alternative model of moneyless, sustainable living” which they labelled, the Eco-Village. Echoing the dynamics of hippy communes in the United States decades earlier, Grasp the Nettle follows the often bewildering and even amusing actions of this group through many moments of idyllic beauty, as they use local trees and recycled rubbish to build small homes, go dumpster diving, build a manually operated shower and compost toilet, create a local seed bank, and help distribute dumpstered sandwiches to the city’s homeless. But the Eco-Village quickly becomes something other than just an idealistic experiment in political protest. It begins to attract vulnerable people who already live on the margins of society and need help: the homeless, the unemployed, alcoholics, the mentally ill. Some of them are invited to stay, but others cause a ruckus and harm the group. Tensions spark as the community grapples to deal with the increasing chaos while trying to stave off the fast-approaching prospect of eviction, through the ideologies of withdrawal, dropping out, freemanism and spirtuality. Grasp the Nettle is hence a valuable reflection of the efficacy of this type of Wandervogel-style activism, where lack of goals and support infrastructure, a diverse array of internal conflicts and horizontal hostility can be the ultimate undoing of idealistic and much-needed political resistance movements.
40:24As the U.S. stands at the brink of invasion into Iraq, many are now warning about the potential consequences: the danger of getting ‘bogged down’ in Baghdad, the prospect of long-time allies leaving America’s side, the possibility of chaos in the Middle East, the threat of ‘renewed terrorism’. The Bush administration insiders who helped define the doctrine of pre-emption and who have argued most forcefully for invasion, are determined to set a course that will “remake America’s role in the world”…
27:12This film comprehensively documents the use of chemical weapons—particularly the use of incendiary bombs—along with hordes of other horrific indiscriminate violence against civilians and children by the United States military in the city of Fallujah during the invasion of Iraq in November 2004. The cases portrayed involve the use of white phosphorus and other substances similar to napalm, such as Mark-77, which constitute clearly defined war crimes involving chemical weapons. Interviews with ex-military personnel involved in the Fallujah offensive back up the case for the use of such weapons by the United States, while reporters stationed in Iraq discuss the government’s attempts to suppress the news by covert means.
22:40By interrogating the theory that Al Qaeda is a centrally-operated terrorist organization run by Osama Bin Laden that perpetrated the attacks of 9/11, al-Qaeda Does Not Exist looks at Al Qaeda’s roots, its ties to western intelligence agencies and the fictions that have been created to enhance its myth in the corporate-controlled media…
2:16:43Bitter Lake
Bitter Lake explores how the realpolitik of the West has converged on a mirror image of itself throughout the Middle-East over the past decades, and how the story of this has become so obfuscating and simplified that we, the public, have been left in a bewildered and confused state. The narrative traverses the United States, Britain, Russia and Saudi Arabia—but the country at the centre of reflection is Afghanistan. Because Afghanistan is the place that has confronted political figureheads across the West with the truth of their delusions—that they cannot understand what is going on any longer inside the systems they have built which do not account for the real world. Bitter Lake sets out to reveal the forces that over the past thirty years, rose up and commandeered those political systems into subservience, to which, as we see now, the highly destructive stories told by those in power, are inexorably bound to. The stories are not only half-truths, but they have monumental consequences in the real world.
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 across the globe, but particularly the American neo-conservatives, in order to unite and justify empire? This series of films charts the rise of both groups and movements, drawing comparisons between them and their origins, to provide much-needed and missing context to the War of Terror.
1:16:07From 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…
50:53How does one sell a war? This was a question that weighed heavy on the minds of those in the United States government long before the invasion even started. Operation Saddam: America’s Propaganda Battle takes a look at the marketing of war -– a cocktail of distortion, lies and forgeries -– as shown by former secret service agent Ray McGovern, American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh and best-selling author John MacArthur, presenting the individual stages of the propaganda battle, by which American, British and other governments sought to justify the second invasion of Iraq…