The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menaces of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side. Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn't act on those crimes -- but when some of the...
Activists protesting the war at last week’s Democratic National Convention have come and gone. Banners were unfurled. Protesters marched and chanted. Puppets of Bush and company provided comic relief. But looking back at the conference, there is no clear sign that any of these efforts have gotten us any closer to ending the war.
The American-armed and trained Georgian army swarmed into South Ossetia last Thursday, killing an estimated 2,000 civilians, sending 40,000 South Ossetians fleeing over the Russian border, and destroying much of the capital, Tskhinvali. The attack was unprovoked and took place a full 24 hours before even ONE Russian soldier set foot in South Ossetia. Nevertheless, the vast majority of Americans...
The New York Times has exposed a secret Pentagon campaign to infiltrate the media with pro-war propaganda.The scheme reaches all the way to the Bush White House, where top officials recruited dozens of "military analysts" to spread favorable views of the war via the news. Many of these propaganda pundits didn't reveal that they were working from Pentagon scripts or lobbying for companies seeking...
While the Iraqi government continued its large-scale military assault in Basra, the NPR reporter’s voice from Iraq was unequivocal on the morning of March 27: “There is no doubt that this operation needed to happen.”Such flat-out statements, uttered with journalistic tones and without attribution, are routine for the U.S. media establishment. In the War Made Easy documentary film, I put it this...
For your weekly dose of independent perspective, here's a presentation by Norman Solomon covering, in greater depth, the ideas presented in the documentary film "War Made Easy". If you've already seen the film, it adds some great thought to simmer on.
To everyone who came to the screening on such a nice day, thank you for making the first show of 2008 a great event! We also want to thank Kansas Mutual Aid for hosting a rousing anti-war march down to South Park after the film. After a few months sabbatical, it was great to see you all again. Your support is always greatly appreciated. We've got some big projects in the works for 2008, and the...
What's the connection between a failing media system and a country continually at war? War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official...
Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The Center for Public Integrity has done an in-depth study of the number of untrue statements by the Bush administration between October of 2001 and September of 2003.
While I was adding some of our old press articles to the About FFA section I came across this old gem - a great interview Gavon Laessig did with Schechter last year, about a week before our screening of Schechter's film, Weapons of Mass Deception. The podcast covers the issues in greater detail. Definitely worth a read or a listen if you missed it the first time. - Tim