Zapatista!

From Big Noise Films, via the Fanonite, this documentary presents the EZLN, an indigenous revolt against the neoliberalisation of Mexico, and their revolutionary struggle.

The Great African Scandal

Academic Robert Beckford visits Ghana to investigate the hidden costs of rice, chocolate and gold and why, 50 years after independence, a country so rich in natural resources is one of the poorest in the world. He discovers child labourers farming cocoa instead of attending school and asks if the activities of multinationals, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have actually made the country’s problems worse.

Burp! Pepsi Versus Coke

John Pilger’s first collaboration with fellow Australian director Alan Lowery, looks at the worldwide struggle for soft drink supremacy by the Coca Cola company, and illuminates the power of multinational corporations.

(Watch the whole film)

The True Cost Of War

People say that there are two issues in this year’s elections: the war and the economy. But in many ways, that’s just one issue – Joseph Stiglitz talking at the London School of Economics last month(paraphrased from memory).

Wars are always expensive affairs, but the occupation of Iraq has taken that to new levels.  Private armies of “civilian contractors” and cost-plus “reconstruction firms” have notoriously pushed up the price, but caring for wounded veterans also takes its toll on the economy, as does the increase in the price of oil.

However, few of these costs made themselves felt in the first four and a half years of war.  The Federal Reserve has created a bubble of debt, allowing half a trillion to be spent on the military (never mind all the hidden costs) without any associated tax increase.  That bubble is now bursting – or so argues the Nobel Prize-winning economist and notorious World Bank whistleblower Joseph Stiglitz in this address to Colombia University.

Click here to watch the video of the addres, as well as an introduction, Q&A and response.  Click here for a paper (pdf) in which Stiglitz and his collaborator Linda Bilmes explain their thesis.

Killer Coke

Give Coca-Cola’s empire a good shake, and it’s not just the odd Nazi that comes tumbling out.

(click here to watch all the whole programme)

Mark Thomas investigates the practises and history of the Coca Cola company, uncovering among other things its support for the Nazis, involvement in the murder of Colombian trade unionists, and environmental damage in Kerala and El Salvador – as well as the all-pervasive advertising by which it gets away with it all.

Commanding Heights

The Battle for the World Economy

Here is an excellent three part series from PBS that presents a rather celebratory but interesting account of globalization.

1. The Battle of Ideas

A global economy, energized by technological change and unprecedented flows of people and money, collapses in the wake of a terrorist attack …. The year is 1914.

Worldwide war results, exhausting the resources of the great powers and convincing many that the economic system itself is to blame. From the ashes of the catastrophe, an intellectual and political struggle ignites between the powers of government and the forces of the marketplace, each determined to reinvent the world’s economic order.

Sicko

Oh yeah, it’s online. Don’t think it’s not online. A shocking and occasionally hilarious exposé of the history, politics, and consequences of privatised healthcare, for my money this is Moore’s best film yet.

(Go to Google Video)

If there’s anything wrong with Sicko, it’s the rose-tinted lens used in the British segments. Our beloved NHS, as many will already know, is already under fierce attack from the private sector (see John Pilger, or my blog, for an introduction, and there’s a wealth of info at Keep Our NHS Public) – including from some of the worst villians in the film’s American segments.

Hawaii’s Last Queen

A series of coup d’etats cemented the grip of American businessmen on the nation of Hawaii around the turn of the last century, swiftly leading to its formal annexation by the U.S.

(go to Google Video)

While its narrative is less that of the Hawaiian people than that of their monarchs, this 50 minute documentary is a valuable insight into early American imperialism.

The Century of the Self

Adam Curtis’ acclaimed series examines the rise of the all-consuming self against the backdrop of the Freud dynasty.

Episode 1 – Happiness Machines

Episode 2 – The Engineering Of Consent

Episode 3 – There Is A Policeman Inside All Our Heads, He Must Be Destroyed

Episode 4 – Eight People Sipping Wine In Kettering

To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

The Freud dynasty is at the heart of this compelling social history.

Guns, Germs and Steel

Jared Diamond on how the West was won. (Thanks Dave)

1. Out of Eden

2. Conquest

3. Into the Tropics