Taxi to the Dark Side

Taxi to the Dark Side is an excellent documentary charting the recent history of the US Governments use of torture. I hadn’t realised that a high level legal adviser to the President, John Yoo, went as far as publicly arguing that “there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles.” Rationality gone mad – his name has gone on my list of people whose testicles do need crushing.

As a side note, I enjoyed Stephen Kings recent comments on the debate as to whether waterboarding is torture or not “if the Bush administration didn’t think it was torture, they ought to do some personal investigation. Someone in the Bush family should actually be waterboarded so they could report on it to George. I said, I didn’t think he would do it, but I suggested Jenna be waterboarded and then she could talk about whether or not she thought it was torture.”

“This is dedicated to two people who are no longer with us, Dilawar, the young Afghan taxi driver, and my father, a navy interrogator who urged me to make this film because of his fury about what was being done to the rule of law. Let’s hope we can turn this country around, move away from the dark side and back to the light.” Alex Gibney, Director, Academy Award acceptance speech.

Breaking The Silence

This special report (52 mins) from 2004 sees John Pilger explode the War On Terror myth with revealing interviews and shocking coverage of warzones.  The segments on Afghanistan are particularly illuminating – especially if we bear in mind that, eclipsed by the disaster that is Iraq, the violence has only been escalated there since this film was made – and it’s also the source for that “pre-fascist” quote.

Rule By Disaster

Nine eleven changed everything. Didn’t it?

Some perspective here, from two remarkable women.

Shock Doctrine – Naomi Klein

In Alfonso Cuaron’s interpretation (7 mins) of her new book, Klein shows how shock and disorientation have been used to steal our world and sell it off, from the 11th September 1973 to the 11th September 2001 and beyond.

Come September – Arundhati Roy

This renowned 2002 lecture (74 mins) to the Lannan Foundation disusses nationalism, capitalism, and a century of bloody Septembers. Witty, moving and informative, it was later reinterpreted as the documentary film ‘We‘; see also the subsequent interview with Howard Zinn.

Transcript follows.

The Road To Guantanamo

In this harrowing 2006 docudrama (91 mins) by Michael Winterbottom, the ‘Tipton Three’ recount their experience of captivity and torture by American forces in Afghanistan and later in Guantanamo Bay.