The linked clip is an adaptation from Zinn’s book on American Empire and is worth eight and a half minutes of your day.
Zinn died a week ago and in a recent interview said he’d like to be remembered for “getting more people to realize that the power which rests so far in the hands of people with wealth and guns, that the power ultimately rests in people themselves and that they can use it.”
Watched Fahrenheit 9/11 again the other day. I must say I find Moore’s documentaries pretty one-sided and a bit too emotive (though he does a good job of providing fact back-up here), but it was a timely reminder of the fuck up that has been the Bush administration. A brief clip below to stir the memory of Bush’s inauguration in 2001 – might be interesting to compare it to Obama’s next week.
Where documentaries such as Undercover Mosque are concerned that is a damned good thing. There is enough fear between Muslims and non-Muslims in the UK already without adding to that with shoddy reporting. I’m certainly not inferring there was shoddiness in this case – we’ll have to wait and see what the result of the Ofcom investigation says – but if it was there it will be important to root it out.
The US Military – via the DoD – is currently investigating the potential use of moths as the frontline in stealth surveillance. The idea is to plant "micro-mechanical systems inside the insects during the early stages of metamorphisis" so that they become, essentially, remote-controlled. Recording devices would then be implanted and some lucky chap in a darkened room somewhere secret in the festy bowels of the US military would fly the poor bugger into…I dunno…caves in Afghanistan I guess…
Now I know Jesus wasn’t all peachy – after all, he was the guy who promised eternal damnation to anyone who didn’t accept his teachings (and eternity is a really fucking long time) – but he was, generally, a pretty stand-up guy. Which is why whenever someone preaches prejudice, intolerance or hate at you all you gotta do is say, "C’mon man, what would Jesus do?"