Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

In reading the full text of Osama Bin Laden’s recent statement, I have mixed feelings of hope and guilt. The hope is in that he is offering insights and peaceful solutions, perhaps an end to a great divide filled with corpses of war. The guilt is with the tone in the USA, that good Americans aren’t supposed to agree with Bin Laden. There are many average Joe Americans whose knee-jerk reaction will be to curse and dismiss Bin Laden’s statements.

Authors of post Sept. 11 books listed here earlier, Education In Terrorism, foresaw the statesman role Bin Laden seeks to play. They made many of the same observations as Bin Laden, such as warning the US against depleting itself in Iraq and Aghanistan in the same way that the former USSR did in Aghanistan in the 1980’s.

Bin Laden recommends reading the book, Rogue State and accurately quotes many current events. The book’s publisher is Common Courage Press. The author, William Blum’s web site is killinghope.org.
I would be pleased to provide a link to recommended reading by President Bush, but as far as I know he hasn’t come up with anything lately. Perhaps he defers to Oprah’s Book Club List?

Learn how to reduce our dependence on oil here.

More about the film, Syriana and Participant Productions.

After reading both of Robert Baer’s books, I’ll be interested in seeing a cinematic montage of the many details. As is often the case, the books provide more stories and information than a 2 hour movie can incorporate.

See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism by Robert Baer, former CIA officer.

Sleeping With The Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude by Robert Baer, former CIA officer.

The men and women of World War II have been dubbed The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw’s book. Frank Capra’s World War II war documentaries, Why We Fight on DVD captures the history and urgency of the times. It was a different era before political correctness (the Japanese enemies were referred to as “Japs”), civil rights advances, and there is a spirit of post Depression, can-do American unity. The country was recovering from the Great Depression, and building up its role as a global manufacturing giant. This was before the divisive paranoia introduced by Senator Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare of Communism that dominated U.S. foreign policy for decades. In fact “The Battle of Russia” heaps great praise upon the Russians for beating back the Nazi advance and handing Hitler some of his first defeats.

The 8 films on 4 DVDs are a long hard slog, as good old Rummie our present Secretary of Defense would say. 450 minutes of badly transferred grainy black and white film with rough, tinny soundtracks distracts from a totally absorbing appreciation of the historic experience. All the same, these are valuable recordings of World War II history and our country’s mood.

Crisply narrated by Walter Huston, there is classic footage of Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Nazi, Japanese and Allied armies. Why We Fight World War II – The Complete Series. American Propaganda Films of WWII, original release 1942-1944, 4 DVD Series, 2005, 450 minutes

• Disc 1: “Prelude to War”, “The Nazis Strike”
• Disc 2: “Divide & Conquer”, “Battle of Britain”
• Disc 3: “Battle of Russia”, “Battle of China”
• Disc 4: “War Comes to America”, “The Negro Soldier”

The Battle of China historically recounts the Japanese attacks and agressions upon China, showing some of the first ever aerial bombings of cities, and the rape of Nanking Massacre.

The War Comes to America includes an idealized corny section narrated by Humphrey Bogart covering the breadth of the American landscape and human melting pot. The sequence begins showing a group of children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, in its form of that time, without the 1954 “under God” insertion.

Viewing the war propaganda films of the 1940’s, we see an America that is carefully neutral, at peace, hesitant and humble about entering the world stage of war. These films are crafted to rally isolationist USA into battle, clarifying the moral imperitive to defeat a globe conquering Hitler. Upbeat, cheery anthems such as “This is the Army Mr. Jones”, introducing the Selective Service draft call, practically dance our men and boys off to war.

The Negro Soldier opens with a montage of American churches, enters a large cathedral and a somber chorale, not joyful gospel music. The church minister delivers the sermon and narrates the entire hour of film.

The Germans developed a huge arsenal of tanks and cannons, an air force with advanced aeronautical capabilities and were fully loaded to strike. Many of the aircraft and rocketry plans captured by the British, Russians and Americans were applied in 1950’s and 60’s fighter aircraft and space race technologies. One obvious point is: Saddam’s Iraq was not even close to 10% of Hitler’s Nazi Germany. It was a different time and place, and by today’s standards, it is surprising it took the USA as long as it did to enter WWII.

All images from Why We Fight World War II – The Complete Series.

Congratulations to Participant Productions on reviving the spirit of conscience and meaning in filmmaking with two recent releases: Good Night, And Good Luck and North Country. Thanks to the wall of right wing noise, the past few years have seen a mighty counter surge of intelligent, truth seeking documentaries and fact-based motion pictures, such as The Corporation, The Fog of War, and of course the work of Michael Moore.

Good Night, and Good Luck covers Edward R. Murrow’s confrontations with Senator Joseph McCarthy and his Government sponsored investigations and accusations of Communist activities, a Red scare witch hunt that inspired Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible. Incredibly, to those of us who truly believed the American psyche had evolved above and beyond those dark days, we now have the likes of Ann Coulter and right wing robot mouths reviving the glories of McCarthy’s delusional deeds. Has she no shame?

Participant Productions was founded in 2004 by eBay philanthropist Jeff Skoll. It is heartening to see capital success put to good use this way. Don’t let the bastards get you down. Keep on fighting the good fight.

P.S. You should definitely support these films by going out and seeing them!

Karl Rove, aka Humpty Dumpty, has fallen off the wall, landed on Lewis Libby. Dick Cheney and the Republican Party can’t put the mess back together again. This is The Great Unraveling. This is Worse Than Watergate, and has only been a matter of time for the Democrats to decide they’ve had enough stalling, secrecy, cronyism, diversion, and avoidance of the truth… and so too it seems more and more American people are seriously up in arms.

An article at The Nation compares the White House pre-war intelligence fraud to the Enron investor fraud.

Happy Halloween! This Tom Delay guy really is scary! Hot Tub Tom!

With the indictment of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the unraveling of the tangled web is happening fast. Those of us who smelled a rat a long time ago are having fun with the inevitable implosion of the Right Wing Nuthouse, so I thought I’d join in.

If you are catching up on how we got into this war in Iraq, expect to see a lot more attention on it.

Here at Media Spin we are compulsive collectors of media. Digital archiving started over 20 years ago, and recently we uncovered a huge stash of rare old gems. There are many unusual finds, such as the above cover of an early girly mag test run by a struggling Hugh Hefner.

Here’s a good one. How cool would it be to have a job making up good intelligence, news stories and “strategic communications” for the U.S. Government to feed the unwary public? That’s what The Rendon Group does, and you can too! They’ve helped sell us rubes on the last couple of Gulf Wars and that’s only the beginning.

Hers’ a stunning find… Martha Stewart’s lesser known sister, Celeste. Her dedication to office work kept her out of the kitchen and out of Martha’s way. There are many more of these that still are being sorted out. Sorry, still no early Oprah photos.