Information access is ostensibly a right that each of us has, and yet every year the mass media sweep important world news under the carpet in favor of sordid gossipy headlines and shady propaganda. Each year, however, Project Censored attempts to redress the balance. Photo credit: Pep So while mainstream news media focus their attention on the latest exploits of Paris Hilton and friends, Project Censored is busy noting and reporting on the important stories that never made it to prime time. And there are a lot of them. Project Censored is a Sonoma University-based initiative currently in its thirty-first year. Each year, twenty-five stories are selected from hundreds of possible candidates, and these stories are gathered and published by …

The mass-media have a long history of creating and reinforcing stereotypes, whether they be founded in gender, race, class or culture. And now, in the so-called \’war on terror\’ years, this caricaturing of cultures is helping to create a monumental clash of civilizations. In politics, as on TV, fear sells. And the easiest way to create fear in a population is to create a nefarious, shadowy \’Other\’, an Other so far removed from our beliefs, ethics and way of life as to seem all but inhuman. The Nazis, pioneers of mass-media propaganda, managed to convince a nation that it was being bled dry by the Jews, communists, gypsies, and anyone else that they could scapegoat. With relentless repetition and indoctrination …

Chemtrails are long and line-shaped cloud formations artificially created by flying aircrafts which are NOT formed by condensation of water vapor in the aircraft\’s exhausts. While in fact the typical white trails left by traditional airplanes flying at high altitude last only a few minutes and are formed by condensation of water vapor in the aircraft\’s exhausts (contrails), chemtrails are supposedly filled with chemical substances employed specifically for supposed atmospheric and weather modification, biological testing or other classified purposes. Chemtrails are therefore an unproven theory as well as a movement of independent investigative researchers trying to understand whether unusual cloud-like trail formations being documented across world skies are indeed a systematic, high-altitude dumping of unknown substances for some classified missions …

Publishing and viewing online video is an incredibly simple prospect these days, and the hardest part of it is choosing which of the many video sharing services to use. However, if you are hoping to use free software - free as in freedom, in the GNU, Richard Stallman sense of the word - it isn\’t always quite so simple. A great many of the online video sharing websites use proprietary formats, with Adobe\’s Flash video being the most popular. So what can you do if you want to publish and watch online video without betraying your commitment to the free software cause? Photo credit: Aurelio A. Heckert and Tina Rencelj If you\’re willing to dig around there are a surprising …

TV-Detox is a unique curated selection of the best and most interesting counter-information movies banned from commercial television networks.

I have decided to put together this special feature as a mini-guide dedicated to collect, over-time, all of the great and rare to find movie titles that are in one way or another very much part of the “Robin Good” attitude: be smart (ask questions), be independent, be good.

Photo credit: Kiyoshi Takahase Segundo

As a strong advocate against the use of traditional mass media like television, commercial cinema and newspapers, I invite anyone who wants to seriously change her ability to “see” and understand the reality around her to trash her TV set and to stop reading traditional dailies. You may initially feel a little less certainty about what is really happening around you, but that is indeed the very symptom of a much improved mental health condition.

The Internet offers such a large swath of truly inspiring, insightful and revealing movies and videos that you need not search too far and wide to find something valuable that can replace your old kick.

The only problem is in finding, that unique content.

So here, as my gift to you, is a growing hand-picked selection of th best counter-information, wake-up to-this!-films and videos that you will not be able to see by staring at your standard TV screen.

For now, my curated selection is grouped into “longer feature-length” and “semi-feature length films” and “shorter online videos“. The recurring theme between them is that each tackles themes no longer welcome on the public commercial TV networks in most any country around the world.

Questions are raised, allegations made, common sense is turned upside down, and most of all - the viewer is challenged into viewing or considering things with a new eye.

Once again, here’s the mantra for all change agents out there: Switch off your TV, trash your daily papers and start asking some real questions.

(Of course you will badly need a fast, broadband Internet connection - a good ADSL at minimum - to watch any of these. For those who want to also download the clips please check out Hey!Watch ) .

Now let the TV-detox begin.

Feature-length and semi-feature length videos

We Interrupt This Empire

What’s it all about?

This collaboratively created film documents the direct action that shut down the financial district of San Francisco in the weeks following the United States’ invasion of Iraq.

Watch it here

Watch it there

Watch it at Google Video

Learn more

You can learn more about the film at it’s official website

The Yes Men

What’s it all about?

The film - which is sometimes shocking, sometimes hilarious - follows the actions of two anti-corporate pranksters who impersonate World Trade Organization spokesmen at business conferences around the world. To their shock, every time they push the envelope with tasteless suggestions, they find their efforts applauded by their audiences.

Watch it here

Watch it there

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5433754769822969476&q=the+yes+men”>Watch it at Google Video

Learn more

There is plenty of information on both the movie and the ongoing project behind it at the yesmen.org website.

Terror Storm

What’s it all about?

This deftly-edited documentary by Alex Jones accuses the 9/11 and 7/7 bombings of being self-inflicted attacks designed to further erode our rights and civil liberties.

Watch it here

Watch it there

Watch it at Google video

Learn more

You can learn more about the film via Infowars, the filmmakers website.

Outlawed

What’s it all about?

Outlawed pulls back the veil enshrouding the systematic torture and human rights abuses carried out by agents of the US government upon suspects in their shady ‘war on terror’.

Watch it here

Watch it there

Watch it at Google video

Learn more

In addition to my own previous coverage of the film, you can learn more about it at the Outlawed official webpage

America - From Freedom To Fascism

What’s it all about?

In this film the often taken for granted federal income tax is outed as being an illegal fraud, and connected to the steady erosion of civil liberties in America since its inception in the earlier part of the last century.

Watch it here

Watch it there

Watch it at Google video

Learn more

You can learn more about the film at it’s official website

9/11 Mysteries

What’s it all about?

This documentary feature film asks key questions about the 9/11 attacks, focusing primarily on the scientific evidence of detonation charges at the site of the World Trade Center, eye witness accounts of key players and the questions that this evidence raises.

Watch it here

Watch it there

Watch it at Google video

Learn more

For more information on the film, which is in the public domain, you can visit the 911 We Know website.

An Inconvenient Truth

What’s it all about?

This documentary feature details Al Gore’s campaign to make global warming a problem that both individuals and governments address and deal with, before it is too late.

Watch it here

This is a trailer for the film:

Watch it there

At the time of writing, you can watch the full feature at Google video. Get there before it gets pulled.

Learn more

You can learn more about the film at it’s official website

Breakdown

What’s it all about?

Breakdown is a feature length documentary that intelligently tackles the issue of the USA’s aggressive foreign policy, and its implications for both the present and future.

Watch it here

Part one:

Part two:

Watch it there

View part one and part two of the movie at Google video.

Learn more

You can find out more about Breakdown at the film’s official website and also in my earlier coverage of it.

The Corporation

What’s it all about?

The Corporation takes an insightful look into the history and working practices of the global corporate culture, casting a critical eye over the rise to dominance of huge corporations in the last century.

Watch it here

Part one:

Part two:

Watch it there

View part one and part two of the movie at Google video.

Learn more

You can find out more about the film by visiting it’s official website.

Loose Change

What’s it all about?

The central contention of this internet documentary is that the 9/11 disaster was orchestrated by the US government to justify its aggressive foreign policy decisions

Watch it here

Watch it there

Watch it at Google video

Learn more

You can find out more about the film at it’s official website

Iraq For Sale - The War Profiteers

What’s it all about?

The film explores the connections between the private corporations making a huge profit in Iraq, and the decision makers that enable them to do so.

Watch it here

Watch it there

Watch it at Google video

Learn more

To find out more, visit the film’s official website

Steal This Film

What’s it all about?

Steal This Film details the US-government instigated raid of the popular Swedish file sharing website ‘The Pirate Bay‘, and explores the politics of file sharing and piracy.

Watch it here

Watch it there

Watch it at Google video

Learn more

To find out more about the film, you can visit it’s official website

Shorter online videos

Big Bucks, Big Pharma

What’s it all about?

This short video yanks back the curtain on the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry and exposes the ways that illness is used, manipulated, and in some instances created by them in the interests of lining their pockets.

Watch it here

Watch it there

Watch it at Google video

Learn more

You can find out more about the video at it’s official website

Behind the Screens

What’s it all about?

Behind the Screens takes a look at the rampant product placement that has consumer Hollywood entertainment. It was recently featured in my article on Hollywood hypercommercialism

Watch it here

Watch it there

Watch it at YouTube

Learn more

To find out more about the video, you can visit it’s official website

The Evolution of Beauty

What’s it all about?

This short video shows in time-lapse animation the process of an ordinary woman being transformed into an other-worldly beauty for the purposes of advertising.

Watch it here

Watch it there

Watch it at YouTube

Learn more

You can learn more about the campaign for real beauty, for which this video was made, by visiting it’s official website

Additional resources

If you’re looking to find more videos you won’t find on TV, you could do worse than look at some of the following websites:

• StumbleVideo, which was recently reviewed by Robin Good, is a great way to stumble upon all sorts of great video content

Skeleton Project’s movies the US government would prefer people not to watch

COA news gather interesting alternative news video on a regular basis

The MEF (Media Education Foundation) have some interesting counter-media videos in their collection

Undercurrents.org is devoted to gathering “the news you don’t see on the news”

Alternet’s latest alternative video news items

N.B.: This is a growing, dynamic mini-guide. I will be adding new clips and movies as you help me find more great ones. Please do add via the comments section below your video recommendations and rare film gems that I have yet not listed in this growing Robin Good’s mini-guide.
TV Detox - A Robin Good’s Mini-Guide

America is one of the first ports of call for those seeking asylum from oppressive regimes in which human rights violations make life unbearable. It is ironic, then, that in the post-9/11 landscape America has been responsible for hundreds - if not thousands - of breaches of basic human rights.

Photo credit: Anonymous, Public Domain

The horrific images of Guantánamo Bay detainment camp leaked out into the public are just the tip of the iceberg. Over time news has emerged of the systematic kidnapping, extradordinary rendition, torture, and secret detention of innocent people under the supervision of the United States government.

Two such cases are the subject of the groundbreaking documentary Outlawed: Extraordinary Rendition, Torture and Disappearances in the ‘War on Terror’. This powerful documentary, funded by the human rights organization Witness, details the stories of two innocent men who had years of their lives stolen.

Khaled El-Masri and Binyam Mohamed tell of their grueling ordeals at the hands of US agencies, and the agents of other countries doing their bidding. Both men were abducted, flown off to far-flung locations, detained for an unthinkable length of time and repeatedly physically and mentally tortured.

The so-called ‘War on Terror’ gives the terrifying right of Extraordinary Rendition to agents of the US government. Wikipedia describes this process as:

”… an American extra-judicial procedure which involves the sending of untried criminal suspects, suspected terrorists or alleged supporters of groups which the US Government considers to be terrorist organizations, to countries other than the United States for imprisonment and interrogation.

Critics have accused the CIA of rendering suspects to other countries in order to avoid US laws prescribing due process and prohibiting torture, even though many of those countries have, like the US, signed or ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Critics have called this practice “torture by proxy” or “torture flights”.

”

In these selected video highlights from the Outlaw documentary, I have tried to capture the essence of these two men’s harrowing, truly eye-opening tales.

Rendition

In this first clip we hear about the Rendition process from Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner For Human Rights, and the thinking behind it from Michael Scheuer, the Chief Architect of the CIA rendition program.

He claims that:

”The goals of the Rendition Program were only two at the beginning:

To get individuals off the street, who we knew were senior in Al Qaeda or its allies, and who posed a threat to the United States

The second goal of the Rendition Program was very simply at the time of the capture of any individual at the time a cell was disrupted, to seize whatever documents were available. Interrogation was never a central goal

”

Nevertheless, the two men featured in Outlawed were subject to long and brutal interrogations that cost them months and years of their lives.

Khaled El-Masri’s abduction

Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen, was kidnapped, detained in Afghanistan, tortured and then - after several months - released without charges. In this first of two clips he tells of his initial abduction by US security agents.

The Wikipedia entry on El-Masri’s ordeal notes that:

”El-Masri wrote in the Los Angeles Times that, while held in Afghanistan, he was beaten and repeatedly interrogated. He has also claimed that he was raped. He was kept in a bare, squalid cell, given only meager rations to eat and putrid water to drink.

In February, CIA officers in Kabul began to suspect his passport was genuine. The passport was sent to the CIA headquarters in Langley where in March the CIA’s Office of Technical Services concluded it was indeed genuine. Discussion over what to do with El-Masri included secretly transporting him back to Macedonia, without informing German authorities, dumping him, and denying any claims he made.

In the end they did inform the German government, without apologizing, and were able to persuade the Germans to remain silent.

”

Khaled El-Masri’s rendition

After being abducted while holidaying in Macedonia, El-Masri was beaten, shackled, blindfolded, drugged and put on a plane to Afghanistan, where civil rights can be effectively ignored, and the torture of innocent ’suspects’ falls within the rights of interrogators. Here he was told that he could be killed, detained indefinitely or made to disappear from the face of the earth.

Months later, he was finally released, as Wikipedia notes:

”In April 2004, CIA Director George Tenet learned that El-Masri was being wrongfully detained. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice learned of his detention shortly thereafter in early May and ordered his release.

El-Masri was released on May 28 following a second order from Dr. Rice. American authorities met with him and agreed to release him if he agreed never to tell the story of his ordeal to anyone. They flew him out of Afghanistan and released him at night on a desolate road in Albania, without apology, or funds to return home. At the time he believed his release was a ruse, and he would be executed.

”

.

Thus an innocent man lost months of his life, suffering brutal torture, detainment and daily fear for his life in the name of the ‘war on terror’. But he was not alone.

Binyam Mohamed’s abduction

Ethiopian national - and resident of the UK - Binyam Mohamed is still being detained in the now famous Guantánamo Bay prison. The diaries of his experiences at the hands of US security forces make for stomach-churning reading, and are read throughout Outlawed by Binyam Mohamed’s brother.

Denied a lawyer from the outset, when Mohamed refused to cooperate with his captors, he was flown to Morroco, where he was routinely interrogated and tortured to extract information about his suspected involvement with the Al-Quaeda network.

Binyam Mohamed’s torture

In Morroco, Binyam Mohamed was subjected to horrific torture, which is recounted in his diary in this final clip from Outlawed. He tells of eighteen months spent in the darkness, without ever once seeing sunlight, and being subjected to extreme torture, including genital mutilation, at the hands of his Morrocan captors.

Binyam Mohamed is still being detained, with no certain date of parole or being freed, under US counter terrorism regulations. His Wikipedia entry notes that:

”In December 2005 the declassification of his lawyer’s notes permitted further claims of abusive interrogation to be made public. Binyam further claims include that he was transported to a black site known as “the dark prison”, where captives were permanently chained to the wall, kept in constant darkness, and constantly bombarded by loud noises and rap & heavy metal music.

Binyam claims that, while in the dark prison, his captors purposely injected him with heroin, to get him addicted, in order to use his addiction against him.”

”

This in the name of preserving our freedom?

They are not alone

While the ordeals of the two men featured in Outlawed are horrific on a personal level, it would be short sighted to think that they are unique. The film concludes with the following harrowing message:

”It is unknown how many others like El-Masri and Mohamed have been exposed to the United States and its allies to the system of secret detention and renditions since September 11, 2001. Some estimate the number could be several hundred, or even over 1,000.”

Whatever the number, it is one too many. Democracy and freedom are not built on torture, kidnapping and the denial of basic civil rights such as the right to legal representation. To continue to accept such behaviour on the part of our governments is if not an act of complicity, an act of crushing apathy on our parts.

Take action

If these men’s stories have moved you to take action, Witness, the human rights organization that funded it urge you to do so against extraordinary rendition and torture in the world community. You can:

• Sign Amnesty International’s Petition Against Torture

Or their Action Against Extraordinary Rendition

Alternatively, you can sign the American Civil Liberties Union’s petition urging U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to abolish the use of torture as an acceptable method of interrogation

American citizens an also demand through Human Rights First that their U.S. Congressperson insists that the next CIA Director uphold the torture ban.

Additional resources

If you are interested in finding out more, you may wish to visit the following websites:

• The film’s official webpage

The Witness organization’s homepage

Wikipedia’s comprehensive article on Extraordinary Rendition

The complete 26 minute film at Google Video

A high quality DivX version of the film at DivX Stage6

Pete Boardman is a cancer patient. He has first hand experience with our system of disease treatment, having been diagnosed with cancer and gone through the routine of surgery and chemotherapy. He believes that the treatment routine of our "modern" medicine may be oriented towards profit rather than helping people and asks: "where are the alternatives?" Photo credit: fotomark Well, I cannot really disagree. Peter’s thoughtful message was posted as a comment to an article on Robin Good’s Communication Agents Initiative site. Thanks to Robin Good, who sponsors this site as part of the Communication Agents initiative, for bringing this to my attention. It really does give us a very personal take on our medical system, which most people see…