Documentary - Battle For Haiti

Caught this interesting documentary from PBS Frontline which looks at Haiti a year after the Earthquake. View here. Corruption is so endemic that I am not sure if elections will have much of an impact. Time will tell. But I have always questioned the aid strategy there. The focus should be on empowering Haitians to build their own economy, to work for themselves, etc...as opposed to relying so heavily on NGO's and the UN.

Also amazed (suppose I shouldn't be surprised) at how fast the World lost interest.

Gasland - Disturbing Documentary on U.S. Gas Industry

Learn how the gas industry is polluting drinking water (and lying about it) and how the the U.S. Government, via the EPA, has dropped the ball. (Hear an interview with filmmaker Josh Fox.) This industry could be coming to a city near you...and there wouldn't be much of anything that you could do to stop them. It's amazing how this kind of corporatocracy has been allowed to take over the Country. Certain things just shouldn't happen in America considering the individual rights we supposedly have...rights that are supposed to be sacrosanct. But I have come to learn over the years that individual rights are only truly granted to those who can afford the money to take advantage of them. Rights concerning safety, health, and freedom don't apply equally to all in the real world. Much is determined by socio-economic status. The poor don't have the same rights as the well-to-do.... not in real terms. In other words, if you can't afford an expensive attorney to advocate for you, then you're screwed. If you can't acquire a legal dream team to challenge corporate lawyers, then you are at the mercy of big business. Government agencies aren't going to help you... they are either too bureaucratic and ineffective, or they are in the pockets of the corporations.

Corporatocracy rules America... It is why the British and the Canadians laugh at us when you explain our for-profit Health Care system to them. The U.S. sees the health and well being of people in a fundamentally different way than many other modern free Countries do. Here, the profits of corporations always seem to be placed above the well being of people. We see that story told time and time again. And in this anti-government, anti-regulation climate we live in - a climate that Republicans/Conservatives are shoving down our throats - this problem is only going to get worse. They swear by the idea that the private sector should somehow police itself and will fix everything (complete nonsense).

Trailer

Film will premiere nationwide on HBO on June 21st.

See interview from PBS.

See review from Indiewire

Websites for film

Gaslandmovie.com and the Gasland movie blog.

The Wounded Platoon - New Documentary on Mental Casualties of War

PBS Documentary on the often forgotten and often hidden casualties of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.



On November 30, 2007, 24-year-old Kevin Shields went out drinking with three Army buddies from Fort Carson, Colo., a base on the outskirts of Colorado Springs. A few hours later, he was dead -- shot twice in the head at close range and left by the side of the road by his fellow soldiers. Shields' murder punctuated a string of violent attacks committed by the three, who are now serving time in prison for this and other crimes, and it contributed to a startling statistic: Since the Iraq war began, a total of 17 soldiers from Fort Carson have been charged with or convicted of murder, manslaughter or attempted murder committed at home in the United States, and 36 have committed suicide.

Read more

PBS Documentary: Digital Nation

Watch the PBS Frontline Documentary "Digital Nation". Frontline always makes great documentaries. Watch Here.

Also check out "The Warning" about the financial crisis. See a behind the scenes view of government corruption at its worst. And it doesn't seem as if Obama gets it. Those (like myself) who were against insiders like Geithner, Summers and others getting cushy jobs in the Obama Administration might get a headache from watching this one. Video shows lapses by both Republicans and Democrats... or the Republicrats as I like to call them on occasion. One thing that they have shown they can do in a bipartisan way is screw the Country. Watch here.

Movie Review: What's the Matter with Kansas

Background and Context

I am a big fan of Thomas Frank’s book, What’s the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America which I reviewed in 2007. The book was an exploration of why many working class Americans seem to vote against their economic interests and consistently and reliably vote Republican. Frank’s answer, in a nutshell, is that the Democratic Party since the 1990s has abandoned its populist roots to become the other party of corporate interests and Big Business. With both major parties in collusion with Wall Street and big business and no significant difference between Democrats and Republicans on economic issues, working-class voters really have no choice or platform to vote for or against in a two-party system except so-called “values” issues such as gay marriage, abortion, gun ownership, prayer in schools, etc. And in this arena, Republicans have the Democrats beat as they have honed their appeal to social conservatives.

Frank’s book became very influential the past decade and was hotly debated in political circles on the liberal end of the political spectrum. It became a lightning rod for discussion on the policy thrust and direction of the Democratic Party and where it is going to go in terms of its appeal to working class voters in the future.

In late 2009 I heard that a documentary came out based on Thomas Frank’s book. I was highly excited about the film, being a huge fan of the book and having followed the discussions which centered on the question of the Democratic Party appealing to and actually representing the interests of working class and middle class voters. I was curious how the arguments that Frank made will translate to the film medium and what type of angle the film will take. I was especially curious how the film would hold up illuminating issues in the post-Obama era of American right-wing politics: the rise of conservative populism of the Tea Parties; the popularity of right-wing talk TV and radio personalities Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh; the rise of Sarah Palin and her impact among working and middle class voters, etc. I wanted to see if the film shed new insights to Thomas Frank’s basic question of why the right wing and the Republican Party are so popular among people who are being steamrolled and whose interests are being gutted by the policies of politicians who subscribe to conservative ideology and who belong to that political party. What angle does the film take, if any, in regards to this question?

The Film

The filmmakers of What’s the Matter With Kansas created a documentary that presents the characters and ordinary people who inhabit the political universe of Kansas in 2006 and 2007 largely as they are without making any judgments on their characters or their political affiliations. The filmmakers do not explicitly indicate if they intend for the economically depressed Kansas in the mid- 2000s and the Republican conservatives that have made a political stronghold in that state to serve as a microcosm of American society in general. That point is largely inferred based on the book that the film was based on. The film largely lets the characters tell their stories in their own words, without providing narration, voiceovers, and with background factual information largely absent. The viewer is largely left to see the characters as they are and to come to their own conclusions.

What’s the Matter With Kansas, thus, functions and is best understood on the level of metaphor rather than as a straight-up, political documentary in the style of Michael Moore. In fact, the movie seems to be the antithesis of the brash, in-your-face style of Moore who takes a position on an issue and runs with it, each scene designed to support his argument and rebut his critics. What’s the Matter with Kansas flows organically from vignette to vignette and character to character each narrating their view of the world, politics, Kansas, economic issues in their community, religion, abortion, homosexuality, politics, activism, etc.

Without giving too much away of the documentary, the film culminates in some conservative followers of a politically-active, evangelical pastor losing hundreds of thousands of dollars they have invested and/or donated to a local amusement park (which has been serving as the headquarters for the church after the pastor was expelled from the main church for his Republican political activism) when the owner of the park filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The well-meaning investors, all friends of the owner and devout followers of the pastor, are devastated and even raise the question of amusement park owner as a crook and a swindler.

I saw these events as a metaphor for the Republican Party (or the Democratic Party, for that matter) who, the film shows, supported and passed economic policies like NAFTA which has resulted in economic devastation in the American heartland. Could the two major parties be likened to crooks who have swindled ordinary Americans into supporting and believing in policies that, in the end, have been to their detriment?

The film also devotes a good amount of time to the history of Kansas as a hotbed of radical political activity in the 19th century. Female suffragists, Socialists, Populists and political radicals gravitated to Kansas and at one point in history, Kansas had Populist senators, governors and members in Congress. It was publishing a Socialist newspaper that rivaled the New York Times in circulation.

The book’s author, Thomas Frank makes a cameo and visits the radical cemetery where many of the figures from Kansas’ radical past are buried and a museum devoted to preserving artifacts from this era. He asks “what happened to Kansas?” to the archivist who says that in recent years, these facts and history have been largely forgotten.

What’s the Matter with Kansas Part II?

Since filming was done in 2006 and 2007, it is missing significant upheavals in American political and popular culture in recent years after Barack Obama’s election as President. The film largely focuses on the ideological battles between pro- and anti-abortion activists and the issue of homosexuality and gay marriage.

Fast forward to 2010 where conservative activism is explicitly angrier, economically populist and increasingly organized as in the rise of the Tea Party movement. I go back to my original question: does the film shed new insights to Thomas Frank’s basic question of why the right wing and the Republican Party are so popular among people who are being steamrolled and whose interests are being gutted by the policies of politicians who subscribe to conservative ideology and who belong to that political party?

I think a What’s the Matter with Kansas Part II is crying to be made in light of the events I described above. Yes, the film is relevant to presenting the values voter and the sway Republican Party and conservative ideology continues to have for a significant numbers of working and middle class Americans. In the post-Obama era in the wake of the economic collapse of Wall Street in 2007, bailouts and widespread populist anger, conservatism and the Republican Party, rather than be weakened and get marginalized to irrelevance, has experienced a resurgence with a vengeance.

These developments are counter-intuitive to me who sees conservative economic polices and the political party that largely advocated those policies as having been completely discredited by the economic collapse. Yet here we are in 2010 with Sarah Palin becoming a major player in national politics, the grassroots, anti-establishment energy of the Tea Party movement has become mainstream and co-opted by the Republican Party, right wing TV and radio as popular as ever. 2010 is about economic policy and how conservatism and the Republican Party continues to hold sway over a significant part of the population. What does this mean in terms of the American voter, the political choices that we have and the prospects of a radical uprising in the manner of the 19th century Kansas radicalism? If there ever were a time for 19th-century style Populist resurgence, it would be now. Yet the Right, inexplicably, seems to have the advantage on that end. Why?

The Liberal Arts Dude gives What’s the Matter with Kansas four out of five stars. Go see the movie when it comes to your area.