Synopsis:
This full-length drama depicts the reality of managers getting fired and the emergence of a new industry specialized in handling executive terminations. The film was made with the cooperation of the business community, which helped script some of the scenes and provided authentic locations. The central figure, D.R. “Biff” Wilson, 44, is a composite figure based on extensive conversations with fired executives.
Feb 122012
Feb 122012
Sunshine and Eclipse (1927-1934)
Feb 092012
Jan 282012
Vid description:
Award-winning journalist John Pilger investigates the discrepancies between American and British claims for the ‘war on terror’ and the facts on the ground as he finds them in Afghanistan and Washington, DC. 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 regaining power, religious fundamentalism is renewing 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, says one woman, “in many ways worse than the Taliban”. In Washington, Pilger conducts a series of remarkable interviews with William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, and leading Administration officials such as Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. These people, and the other architects of the Project for the New American Century, were dismissed as ‘the crazies’ by the first Bush Administration in the early 90s when they first presented their ideas for pre-emptive strikes and world domination. Pilger also interviews presidential candidate General Wesley Clark, and former intelligence officers, all the while raising searching questions about the real motives for the ‘war on terror’. While President Bush refers to the US attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq as two ‘great victories’, Pilger asks the question – victories over whom, and for what purpose? Pilger describes Afghanistan as a country “more devastated than anything I have seen since Pol Pot’s Cambodia”. He finds that Al-Qaida has not been defeated and that the Taliban is re-emerging. And of the “victory” in Iraq, he asks: “Is this Bush’s Vietnam?
Jan 282012
ANIMA (2011) from Dominoes Falling Productions, is a feature length documentary using a collaboration of various material. The film examines our relationships with ourselves, others and the environment around us. Other themes include our creativity and our power as individuals and as a collective to manifest our own reality.
an·i·ma [an´ĭ-mә]
The Latin translation of the Greek word ‘psyche’.
1. The inner self of an individual (soul); a relationship with ‘that which is greater than self.’
2. Expressions of the unconscious or true inner self of an individual (Carl Jung’s school of analytical psychology).
Don’t let someone who gave up on their dreams talk you out of going after yours
Jan 232012
During her term as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher broke Britain’s unions and ‘off-shored’ basic industries under the guise of laissez-faire economic policy. While this video is specific to the British coal mining industry, the story has been repeating throughout the western world over the past 30 years – domestic industries and jobs are moved overseas without regard for those left behind. The remaining economy becomes one based on finance and consumption, rather than production, and wealth disparity, rather than equality.
While the owners of capital benefit from cheaper foreign labor, can hollowing out a country’s core industries and destroying the domestic middle and working classes really lead to greater prosperity? For 30 years the middle and working classes (i.e. labor) around the Western world maintained a semblance of wealth by using credit to fill the gaps created by declining real incomes and shrinking savings. But in 2008, 30 years of twisted laissez-faire policies supplemented by debt finally blew up, culminating the labor class crisis.
Since then, millions of American families have walked away from their homes to live in conditions unthinkable five years ago. Over 46 million Americans are currently using food stamps – a 170% increase over the past decade. 2011 alone saw the Arab Spring, Occupy Everything and UK riots – rebellions sparked by relatively innocuous events but fanned by decades of rising inequality and hopelessness. In flauntingly stark contrast, 2010 Wall Street pay packages hit a new record of $135 billion (Source: WSJ).
Like the mining families in the video, anger is growing as people worldwide begin to realize they are getting screwed. Yet, the destruction of the Western world’s middle class is not complete.
Worse than Thatcherism in totality is Thatcherism in partiality. The deregulation of the banking industry, which started in the late 1970s, was simply a facade for a ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ system. Bank deregulation was highly profitable for the banking industry, with the unfortunate side-effect of increased systemic risk. Since crises of systemic proportions are extremely painful, the banking industry has repeatedly been bailed out over the past three decades, only to increase the moral hazard in the system. So much for laissez-faire.
Bank deregulation contributed to, if not created, the 2008 economic near-collapse. Alas, in 2008/2009 the banking system again had its losses socialized. Unfortunately, this crisis was of epic scale and the money required to keep the system afloat was unimaginably large. Now it is time to pay the bill, and most of the world’s leaders are on the austerity trail. As benefits are cut and taxes raised, it will ultimately be the average laborer that again pays for the perverted laissez-faire policies of the past.
(Video no longer available.)
Jan 192012
The National Archives Southeast Region presents stories from survivors of the Great Depression overlaid with powerful pictures from era.
Jan 162012
