The Empire 29

Het is bekend dat in de praktijk van alledag vrijheid in een parlementaire democratie het recht betekent van enkele grote concerns om het leven te beheersen van miljarden mensen. De macht ligt niet in handen van volksvertegenwoordigers, maar in de handen van degenen die nationaal en internationaal het kapitaal bezitten om een beleid te bepalen, waarbij de meerderheid de belangen van een schatrijke minderheid dienen. Dit systeem leidt, zo bewijst de geschiedenis, altijd tot oorlog.

The Guardian bericht:

'Iraq for Sale: As Not Seen on TV.

Not coming soon to a TV near you, especially if you live in the US ... Iraq for Sale.
Iraq for Sale, the latest documentary from Robert Greenwald, tells a depressingly familiar tale of corporate corruption and war-profiteering in Iraq. Focusing on companies like Halliburton, CACI International and Blackwater Security Consulting, it recites a litany of rapacity and exploitation that ought to have American citizens swarming Congress, demanding heads on pikes.
It's all here: Halliburton charging $45 for a six-pack of sodas; undertrained and poorly safeguarded mercenaries earning megabuck salaries that dwarf the pittances awarded to regular troops; gigantic corporate profit margins netted by shafting the recipient at both ends of the process (lousy and dangerous services for mindbendingly exorbitant fees); and an unsupervised, no-bid, payment-guaranteed contracting system that utterly contradicts any defensible notion of free-market capitalism.
Like the bibliophobic Ronald Reagan, these days we apparently can't understand anything until we see it on TV. Greenwald has answered that need for us, and Iraq for Sale proves two things: first, that the gung-ho, warmongering capitalism of Joseph Heller's Milo Minderbinder is alive and well in the war zone; and second, that it is easier for the chairmen of Blackwell and Exxon/Mobil to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a serious and necessary dissident documentary to be seen by the broad American public.
Greenwald has earned praise for establishing an alternative distribution system for his movies, which have so far covered the entire spectrum of what is wrong with 21st-century America, including Fox News, Wal-Mart, the 2000 election, Enron, and the Tom DeLay-corrupted House of Representatives. Although most of his films achieve a nominal basic release, Greenwald also pioneered "watch-and-discuss" parties that allow citizens to download the film for free and discuss it in large groups in their homes. This is an excellent way to raise consciousness and build networks of dissent, but it also falls prey to the accusation that it is preaching to the converted. I think Greenwald is a hero, but his work should be seen by the widest possible audience. It's not as if his films deal with minor social and political nuances; they address the central realities of our age.
Well, fat chance of seeing his work on US television. The world of canned news is a total shut-out for anything to the left of John McCain. The best that most left-liberal documentaries can hope for (if not made by Michael Moore) is a limited release and a showing on cable. Take James Longley's remarkable documentary about life in Iraq since April 2003, Iraq in Fragments. It won awards at Sundance but has no US distributor. Michael Winterbottom's The Road to Guantánamo had its poster censored by the MPAA and ran for about a week. Winterbottom himself was treated like a pariah on US cable news shows, with mendacious Pentagon spokesmen trotted out to defame his movie - and not face-to-face. Corporate lobbyists and spokes-hacks even show up at film festivals to denounce movies such as Fast Food America and An Inconvenient Truth. And good luck seeing The Power of Nightmares in the United States, the one country that most needs to see it.'
Lees en zie verder:
http://film.guardian.co.uk/patterson/story/0,,1888238,00.html En:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101306O.shtml