Marilynne Robinson’s ‘The Givenness of Things’ - The New York Times

Marilynne Robinson’s ‘The Givenness of Things’ - The New York Times

The Givenness of Things: Essays Hardcover – October 27, 2015

by Marilynne Robinson (Author)



Product Details

Hardcover: 304 pages

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (October 27, 2015)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

One of Time's Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2015



"A sense of wonder pervades the powerful essays in The Givenness of Things . . . Robinson's heroic lamentation is magnificent . . . Robinson's insistence, throughout these essays, that we recognize the limitations of our knowledge is timely and important." ―Karen Armstrong, The New York Times Book Review



“These are beautiful essays . . . beautiful in thought and beautiful in expression.” ―Bill Marvel, Dallas Morning News



“The Givenness of Things is so rich that I'm tempted to quote it to death.” ―Michael Robbins, The Chicago Tribune



“Over the course of 17 provocative essays, Robinson, a ‘self-declared Calvinist from northern Idaho,’ brings both her formidable intellect and powers of plain speaking to deliver a clarion call against the culture of fear that she believes is eating away at American society.” ―Yvonne Zipp, The Christian Science Monitor



“Marilynne Robinson displays the same passionate concern with matters of faith that suffuses her majestic trilogy of linked novels.” ―Wendy Smith, The Boston Globe



"Robinson’s handiwork is capacious and serious, but also mysterious and wondrous; like the night sky, it deserves our attention." ―Casey N. Cep, The New Republic



"A new book of essays by Robinson is a major American literary event." ―Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News



“Robinson's genius is for making indistinguishable the highest ends of faith and fiction . . . The beauty of Robinson's prose suggests an author continually threading with spun platinum the world's finest needle.” ―Michelle Orange, Bookforum



“These bravely and brilliantly argued, gorgeously composed, slyly witty, profoundly caring essays lead us into the richest dimensions of consciousness and conscience, theology and mystery, responsibility and reverence.” ―Donna Seaman, Booklist



“The prose is as finely wrought as in any of Robinson’s novels . . . any reader not tone-deaf will be enchanted by her grave, urgent music.” ―George Scialabba, Bookforum



"Eloquent, persuasive, and rigorously clear, this collection reveals one of America's finest minds working at peak form, capturing essential ideas with all 'the authority beautiful language and beautiful thought can give them." ―Publishers Weekly



About the Author

Marilynne Robinson is the author of the novels Lila, Home, Gilead (winner of the Pulitzer Prize), and Housekeeping, and four books of nonfiction: When I Was a Child I Read Books, Mother Country, The Death of Adam, and Absence of Mind. She teaches at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

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Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsBrilliant and Heartwarming

By Wilson on October 30, 2015

Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

In full disclosure I was already a huge Robinson fan. I read her first novel, Housekeeping, six times and would have read it twenty had Gilead and Lila not intervened. I've given the paperback editions as sort of shibboleths to prospective friends and I traveled a hundred miles in a Michigan winter to hear her lecture. I also share the author's keen interests in Cosmology and Theology, along with her respect for the Transcendentalists, especially Thoreau. But Robinson is not writing only for her fans. Anyone who has ever sensed "another reality ...beyond the grasp of our comprehension yet wholly immanent in all of being, powerful in every sense of the word, invisible to our sight, silent to our hearing, foolish to our wisdom, yet somehow steadfast, allowing us our days and years" will find much to ponder in these essays.

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5.0 out of 5 stars

a unique book

By Mark bennett on October 27, 2015

Format: Hardcover

This is a really unique book. Marilynne Robinson is a contender for the last American intellectual. She manages in this book to produce 17 interesting, well thought out and occasionally provocative essays. She speaks against the growing American polarization, the "fear" culture and for the place of the humanities and religion in life. She also manages the extremely difficult matter of being critical but positive. As well, she tries to reconcile science into her worldview and offers analysis as far afield as the American Civil War and Marx. Being all over the map is part of what makes it all so interesting.



Its far from the case that I agree with her on every point she makes. But the points she makes are always interesting and somewhat original. To an extent, its not even what she says. Its how she thinks and how she manages to break through a great deal of intellectual stagnation in the modern United States. This book will not be for everyone. Especially for those who don't like to read things they might disagree with.

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5.0 out of 5 stars

Deep dive

By robert johnston on November 20, 2015

Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase

Robinson has delivered her share of superb, attention grabbing philosophical works engaging man and mind and soul. Her topical range, grasp and elucidation of post-modernist, deconstructionism's stunning technical success.



She writes that we live in the best time to be alive in human history but can't quite understand why an unease and unhappiness still lingers in ourselves. There is a reasoned 'more' at the core of these Robinson essays



As for my reading experience, I'm happier for having explored an intellectual elucidation from among our words and speculations just beyond linguistic expression.



This is a chapter at a sitting read. Robinson's economy of words delivers profoundly more mind fodder to be consumed. Each chapter essay demands a break for introspection before plunging forward. That's a 5-star read.

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5.0 out of 5 starsEssays of passion, precision, and life-changing insight.

By Len Vander Zee on November 6, 2015

Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

If you are waiting for someone to profoundly define life today in North America from a Christian perspective, get this book right now. Robinson writes with amazing theological depth, rich historical knowledge, and passionate intelligence on many of the perplexities of our age: scientific reductionism, gun-toting fear, the vagaries of the contemporary church, and the miracle of the human soul; and threaded through it all, the grace of God. And she knows and loves Calvin better than any neo-Calvinist I can think of. Read it and you will be enlightened.

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4.0 out of 5 starsProvides stimulating insight into the themes of Robinson's fiction

By Amazon Customer on December 8, 2015

Format: Hardcover

The New York Review of Books recently published parts one and two of an extended conversation in September 2015 in Iowa between President Obama and Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award for GILEAD. Readers of that fascinating exchange whose familiarity with Robinson doesn't extend beyond a relatively small body of fiction --- which includes that novel and others like HOME and LILA --- learned that she's a close observer of America's culture and politics and someone whose life and writing are informed by a deep engagement with Christianity.



Those aspects of Robinson's thinking are explored in the 17 essays that compose THE GIVENNESS OF THINGS. This searching, at times daunting, collection exposes a great and restless mind grappling mightily (but with humility) with some of the most challenging aspects of human existence.



In its best moments, Robinson's book offers a passionate defense of her liberal Christian, humanistic worldview against both scientific materialism and capitalism's worship of the market. As to the former, Robinson is especially dismissive of the increasing dominance of neuroscience for the way it "greatly overreaches the implications of its evidence and is tendentious" (a favorite Robinson adjective). At the same time, she's no science denier. On the contrary, she's eager to give the theories of modern physics and cosmology their due in an effort to describe (if not explain) a complicated universe.



A "self-declared Calvinist from northern Idaho," Robinson leaves no doubt of her place on the political spectrum. In the essay "Awakening" (like all but one of the pieces, its one-word title is not especially informative of its content), she decries the brand of Christianity that "has brought a harshness, a bitterness, a crudeness and a high-handedness into the public sphere that are only to be compared to the politics, or the collapse of politics, in the period before the Civil War." She offers a withering condemnation of the way that opposition to gun control or support for privatizing prisons have somehow been defined as "Christian" points of view:



"I never feel more Christian," she writes, "than I do when I hear of some new scheme for depriving and humiliating the poor, and feel the shock of religious dread at these blatant contraventions of what I, as a Christian, take to be the will of God. And yes, I can quote chapter and verse."



That disdain is matched only by her critique of an economic system that disparages the liberal arts in service of the single-minded goal of "making our children into maximally efficient workers." Instead, she argues, with no little vehemence, that "If we are to be competent citizens of a powerful democracy, we must encourage the study of the aptly named humanities."



Especially noteworthy in the current climate of free-floating dread engendered by events like the attacks in Paris is Robinson's resounding condemnation, in the appropriately titled essay "Fear," of the "marked and oddly general fearfulness of our culture at present," something she describes as "not a Christian habit of mind." With persistent rumors of terrorist plots and enhanced security measures at public gatherings, it's easy enough to identify with what she calls the "so entrenched habit with us to live in a state of alarmed anticipation, gearing up for things that do not happen."



This collection is less political, less personal and, regrettably, frequently less accessible than Robinson's 2012 book of essays, WHEN I WAS A CHILD I READ BOOKS. As she reveals in her Acknowledgements, these pieces originally were delivered as lectures at institutions that included the First Presbyterian Church of New York City and the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. That provenance perhaps explains the opacity of essays that focus on the identity of Jesus ("Son of Adam, Son of Man") or the Gospel of Mark ("Limitation"), and whose arguments will prove elusive, if not impenetrable, to readers not already steeped in Christian theology or without a deep interest in the topic.



But Robinson, who wrote her doctoral thesis on Shakespeare, can be a delightful and informative historian and critic when dealing with challenging literary material. In the essay "Grace," she explores that concept in the dramas of “Hamlet” and “Antony and Cleopatra,” noting along the way that "the Puritans were not puritanical. Nor were they anti-intellectual or obscurantist." "Servanthood" reveals the somewhat surprising interplay between theology and art in Shakespeare's time, noting that "much of the literature and poetry of the English Renaissance was the work of people who were Puritans and Calvinists."



Among contemporary authors who have achieved significant levels of both commercial success and critical recognition, Marilynne Robinson stands alone in her unabashed religiosity and the depth of her scholarly engagement. THE GIVENNESS OF THINGS provides stimulating insight into the persistent themes of her fiction and shines a light on what it means to her to be a devout Christian in the modern world.



Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg

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Marilynne Robinson’s ‘The Givenness of Things’

By KAREN ARMSTRONG

NYT, DEC. 7, 2015

A sense of wonder pervades the powerful essays in “The Givenness of Things,” Marilynne Robinson’s new collection. “Existence is remarkable, actually incredible,” Robinson exclaims; even materiality is “profoundly amazing, uncanny.” Yet unlike physics, which has a strong sense of the “givenness” Robinson refers to in her title, neo-Darwinian positivism rejects anything — the self, the soul or God — that cannot be explained empirically. Robinson defines the “given” as something “that presents itself, reveals itself, always partially and circumstantially, accessible to only tentative apprehension, which means that it is always newly meaningful.” Calvin insisted that divine wisdom was one such “given,” perceived only “within radical limits.” Robinson does not say so, but here Calvin was deeply in tune with the great sages of the past, who all maintained that the transcendence we call God, Brahman, Nirvana or Dao must always ultimately elude us.

Calvin has had so profound an influence on Robinson’s religious heritage that when she reads him it seems “like the awakening of submerged memory.” Perhaps one reason for this is that the Protestant Reformation gave sacred sanction to ideals that were becoming essential to the new commercial economy in 16th-century Europe: independence, a strong work ethic, innovation and the enfranchisement of the lower classes. It had never been possible to implement these fully in premodern agrarian civilization, but their value would become self-evident in the modern West.

Yet Calvinism has declined in America, Robinson argues, and seems to have lost all sense of the “given.” A falsely confident omniscience has instead become widespread in the Age of Information, and not only in the United States. Once we forget that our knowledge of anything can only be partial, we can, like the positivists, become arrogantly disdainful of anyone who does not share our views. In American religion, Robinson believes, moral rigor has become an obligation “to turn and judge that great sinful world the redeemed have left behind,” and self-righteous Christians can be “outrageously forgiving of one another and themselves, and very cruel in their denunciation of anyone else.” Christianity has become a mere marker of identity, even a sign of electoral eligibility, and Calvin’s cosmic Christ has degenerated into an “imaginary friend” in a faith that focuses solely on “personal salvation” and “accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior.”

Christianity in her view has thus become the opposite of itself, and Christians seem preoccupied with “sins” Jesus never mentioned. For the prophets the great sin was always social injustice, but too many American Christians seem comfortable in a world in which 1 percent of the population controls 40 percent of the wealth, and are not perturbed to hear the Gospels cited to legitimize for-profit prisons or to sanctify the use of guns. Jesus said, “Blessed are you who are poor,” but we now hear talk of the “unworthy poor” and of schemes that will humiliate and dispossess them.

Robinson’s heroic lamentation is magnificent. Yet for me something crucial was missing: There is no sustained discussion of America’s relationship with other nations. Robinson admits that the United States often seems like “a blundering giant, invading countries of which we know nothing,” but there is no particular meditation on foreign policy or the Iraq war and its tragic aftermath. Robinson recalls Lincoln telling Americans during the Civil War that they must love their enemies because God loves them, but she does not wonder what that great president would have said about Guantánamo Bay or Abu Ghraib. Similarly, she mentions Martin Luther King and notes with sorrow that America unfairly privileges the values of those who are white, but we hear nothing specific about the current plight of ¬African-Americans.



In Britain, we still see ourselves as Shakespeare’s “sceptred isle,” but in the interdependent global economy no nation is an island. Like Robinson, I am in my early 70s, and in this last phase of my life I too find myself reflecting painfully on the failings of my country, especially on its colonial behavior, which has contributed to so many of our current problems. Actions always have consequences. Every night on the news we see traumatized migrants from the Middle East and Africa literally dying to get into Europe. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Europeans invaded and exploited these regions for their own benefit; now, in a karmic reversal, their peoples are invading us. Yet we talk only of how to keep them out.

Robinson’s insistence, throughout these essays, that we recognize the limitations of our knowledge is timely and important. She is acutely aware that the “us and them” mentality, so prevalent in modern political discourse, is dangerous, false and unsustainable, and that it is essential that we cultivate “a respectful awareness of lives lived otherwise.” Yet sometimes she herself pulls back from the “given,” as when she wonders, with some trepidation, if those who do not know Christ can enjoy the ultimate good promised to the Christian. She concludes, tentatively, that because they participate in God’s world, they must somehow be included in God’s providence. This solution may have been acceptable in Calvin’s time. But after studying the profundity and richness of world religions for over 20 years, I can no longer believe that any one faith has a monopoly on truth or wisdom.

Robinson rarely mentions other religious traditions specifically; when she does, however, she is seldom complimentary. She seems to have inherited from Calvin an anti-Catholic bias — her discussion of the Huguenot tragedy, for example, is one-¬sided and fails to take into account the recent scholarship clarifying that in this complex struggle there was bigotry on both sides and that it is impossible to divide 16th-¬century France into neat communities of Catholics and Protestants. She is extremely (and in my view inappropriately) scathing about ancient Near Eastern mythology. Yet she approvingly cites William James’s warning that “we should never assume that our knowledge of anything is more than partial.” This must — surely? — mean that no tradition can have the last word on the ineffable. Protestant Christianity had admirable, indeed indispensable insights, but like any ideology, its vision too was partial. John Locke, who, after Calvin, is Robinson’s favorite theologian, suggested that the liberal state could tolerate neither Catholics nor Muslims, claimed that Native Americans had no property rights to their land, and showed some robust support for the institution of slavery.



In the West, we often speak of “the Reformation” as if it were a unique event. Robinson is not only convinced of this but seems to regard the Protestant Reformation as God’s last word to humanity, something that cannot be bettered. Yet almost every single one of what we now call the “great world religions” began as a reformation of existing spirituality during a period of social, political or economic transformation, when old pieties no longer sufficed. This is true of the myriad religions of the Indian subcontinent (including Buddhism and Jainism), the Chinese traditions, Rabbinic Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Over the centuries, all of these faiths continued to re-form themselves during times of disturbance and change. Perhaps in the global village that we have created, it is time for another reformation that will help us to achieve and to act upon the apparently difficult recognition that we share the planet with equals.

THE GIVENNESS OF THINGS

Essays

By Marilynne Robinson

292 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26.

Karen Armstrong’s “Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence” has recently been published in paperback.

A version of this review appears in print on December 13, 2015, on page BR20 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: The Spirit of Our Times.

Adventures in Listening by Herb Walters

Adventures in Listening by Herb Walters

Quaker Universalist Fellowship  Adventures in Listening by Herb Walters ADVENTURES IN LISTENING I want to speak just briefly on the whole idea of universalism, since that’s what has brought us all together and I’d like to share a little bit about my own background. I was raised Catholic, and I’m now a Quaker – a member of the Celo Friends Meeting, which is part of Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting. I am also a practicing Buddhist, and I have had some experience in Native American religious tradition. This past summer, I had the pleasure of experiencing Hinduism in Indonesia. So when someone says, “What religion are you?” I give a different answer each time. The fact is, it really doesn’t matter what you call yourself. What I have found is that words are easy to come by, and I’ve heard many things said in the name of religion. What really matters is what people do with their lives. How they live out their faith and what they do with what they believe and what impact they have on the world and on their neighbors. That is the essence, I think, of religion. That is what we’re going to be talking about this evening, too, in the area of listening. I think listening is one of the most powerful forms of living our religion that I know of, and I’ve been fortunate to explore it in many ways. I grew up in a military family. I think that’s one of the reasons I do the work I do and one of the reasons I started the Listening Project. My father was a veteran of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. He was in Vietnam at a time I was protesting the war. He just died a year ago from cancer. A doctor told us that my Dad’s cancer could have been caused by the Agent Orange he was exposed to in Vietnam. My father and I went through quite a reconciliation process before he died. Even before that, I had realized that he was probably one of the main inspirations for my involvement in peace work. His life was a life of service and my life has been devoted to service. I understand how my father felt – that by serving in the military he was serving humanity and the cause of peace. That’s difficult for some people to see, but I think that’s the essence of what the Listening Project is about. Many times in social change movements, activists help polarize the situation. We create enemy images, just as anyone else does. They are the bad guys, we are the good guys. Or they are the people who don’t understand, and we are the people who do understand. So when we approach people in this way, they feel defensive and the potential for change actually decreases. We don’t really listen to people who disagree with us – listen to their fears and concerns – so they become even more polarized against us. Too many peace groups are largely isolated and seen as “outsiders” or fringe groups in their own communities. That was one of my primary reasons for starting the Listening Projects. I saw people in the peace movement going out to preach, to convert, to change people and tell them what was the right way, but very little true communication was happening. As you know, the minute you’re preached to, you become defensive, because the people preaching to you seem not to really care about who you are or what you believe. All they care about is changing you. So the Listening Project was an attempt to break through the isolation and barriers that separate people into the good vs. the bad; liberal vs. conservative; hawks vs. doves. The Listening Project is an attempt, through deep listening and non-violence, to get down to the basic human values that really connect us all. These are the same values that connected my father and myself. Deep down in us all there is a desire for peace, for goodness and for justice. For each person those feelings come out in different ways and in some cases they get covered up, distorted or hidden by painful human experiences, by fear, insecurity or lack of knowledge. As children, we’ve all learned ideas from adults that we later found to be negative or problematic. My father grew up as a poor farm boy. He had no other opportunity to change his life than to join the military. The military became his way of understanding world issues. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with him that made him go into the military and want to use those kinds of solutions. It could have been me. Any of us could have ended up in the military instead of at a Quaker gathering about peace. Our first Listening Project actually related to this issue of peace activists and people in the military. It was in 1986 in St. Mary’s, which is a small town in south Georgia. Someone asked me if I would speak about working down South. I am a Southerner. Yes it is difficult to work for social change in the South. Southern people are very friendly, good people, but people are less open to progressive, new ideas in the South. The Moral Majority, the Religious Right, the Klan – they’re still alive in the South. St. Mary’s is a small town where the Navy base has been expanded to be the East Coast home port for the Trident nuclear submarines. One Trident submarine has four times the firepower used in World War II. Activists from outside of St. Mary’s had been coming into the community to do prayer vigils, protest walks, civil disobedience, and all the rest. It was the traditional Vietnam era approach to dealing with peace issues. The result was that the protesters were pretty much seen as outside agitators, or they were just ignored. They had virtually no support from the people in the St. Mary’s community. So when we got involved, we asked Trident activists to go to the homes of people in the community and not preach to them but listen to them and hear what they had to say. The Listening Project involves listening at a very deep level so that one builds a relationship of trust and respect between oneself and the person doing the speaking. We try to be non-judgmental and not react to things the other person may say. The other person must be allowed to start from where she or he needs to start. As this trust is built, people open up and begin to reconnect with their basic yearning for goodness and peace. What normally prevents that opening up from happening is a polarization process. People aren’t able to overcome their fears. When we tell them that what they think is all wrong, they feel that they have to defend themselves. So while we’re sitting there telling them what all the right answers are, they’re figuring out a way to say, “Yeah, but this is what I believe.” They defend their viewpoint. At St. Mary’s we listened, and we asked questions that got people to begin really thinking about what it meant to be living in a community where the Trident submarine was. We asked questions related to how they felt about the base, and ultimately asked questions about how they felt about the risk their children were experiencing living in a world dominated by nuclear weapons. We asked them questions that got them to go deeper into their feelings. What we found is that indeed people really did care. Now, these are Southern people whom most people would call rednecks. Many people would write them off, saying they're never going to be of any help. But many of them are really vulnerable, caring people who have been disempowered, so that their own values and feelings have been covered over by fear and defensiveness. Some may outwardly support nuclear weapons and the arms race, but through this process of listening to them, we gave them the opportunity to really go deeply into their feelings, their fears, hopes and ideas. We didn’t judge them at all and we found that many were able to actually change some of their ideas and beliefs. They were able to express their concerns and, for the first time, say that they were afraid. People told us they didn’t like what was happening, that they wanted things to change. It was powerful. Remember, this was in 1986 when fear of the Soviet Union was still very strong. Many peace activists went out fully expecting to have doors slammed in their faces, because that’s normally how they think the public relates to them. But instead, the main problem they experienced was that people didn’t want them to leave their homes. People rarely have the experience of being listened to, having someone say: “We care about what you think. We care about what you feel. What you have to say is important.” This was a wonderful experience for most of the people we interviewed in St. Mary’s and elsewhere. Most activists ended up spending about half an hour or more with each person they listened to. We used a list of ten or twelve survey questions and then listeners asked additional clarifying questions that enabled people to go deeper into exploring their thoughts and feelings. St. Mary’s was an important project because it enabled some positive relationships to happen where before there was only suspicion, apathy or mistrust. In that sense, listening is a profound social change experience. It’s also a profound spiritual experience, because when you listen in this way, what you’re willing to do is let go of who you are and not be so attached to your own ego. You open yourself fully to other people and allow their essence to come into you. Then it’s a process of empathizing with the other person. One of the things we tell listeners is that if you disagree with 90 percent of what a person says, start off by focusing on the 10 percent you can agree with or at least relate to. What are our commonalities? Those people in St. Mary’s all care about democracy; they all care about their children. Many of them start off saying, “We want to build nuclear weapons.” But the fact is, the reason they want to build more nuclear weapons is that they have families and are concerned about their safety and protecting them from the Russian menace. They have people they love – the same reason we’re working in the peace movement, but it comes out in different ways. By listening to people, we gave them the opportunity to begin to examine some of their own ideas and thoughts and look closer at them and to see how some of them weren’t really reflecting their deeper human values. We’d talk to someone and they’d say, “We need to build more nuclear weapons,” and we listened and let them get out their anger and their frustration and their fears. We’d ask them clarifying questions and they’d end up by saying, “We need to have more negotiations, we need to stop this arms race.” The listening has proven itself to be very powerful for social change. We don’t change people by clobbering them over the head. We change people through an active process of love. That’s what the Listening Project is about. A more recent Listening Project was in Keysville, Georgia, a small rural community of 400. In Keysville, we again had a situation where there was a great degree of polarization. Keysville is a poor community with a majority African-American population. At one point, some of the black population realized that they weren’t incorporated as a town, and therefore they had no tax base for meeting human needs. There were people without water, and there was no sewage system or fire department. People were without the basic services that most towns have. So a group of African-American residents decided they wanted to organize and get chartered as a town so they could elect public officials and raise money to provide clean drinking water and other services. It seemed like a simple matter. But there were white residents in the community who came out strongly opposed to developing a town government in Keysville. The opposition was so strong that it took two or three years for the African-Americans to finally succeed in getting their town incorporated so they could have an elected town government. In the process, the press came into Keysville and began to talk about how Keysville was a prime example of racism in the 1980’s. Keysville became a national issue. The story was on national networks and people were coming in and talking about Keysville. It became a very difficult situation. When a local government was finally elected, it consisted of all African-Americans. No whites would even run. Whites would not support nor be involved with this government in any way. There was a completely polarized community with an African-American government, but no support from the white community. So we organized a Listening Project. We worked closely with the city council, the mayor and the Keysville Concerned Citizens (all African-Americans) in setting up what the goals of the project were – what they wanted to achieve with the project. Together we developed a survey with questions that would open people up. We brought in white people from outside and formed bi-racial teams, so that there were both blacks and whites conducting the survey. We went door-to-door to the homes of white residents, and we listened to them. Rather than talking to them about how they’d been a problem, we asked them questions such as, “What would you do to improve things here in Keysville, if you were on the City Council?” So, rather than just assuming they were a problem, what we did was ask them questions that put them in the role of being a solution. That’s just one of the methods we use. We also asked how they felt about various projects that the city government had already undertaken. We found that they didn’t even know some of those projects were done by the city government. When they learned what had been happening, some whites began to develop more appreciation for the city government. We also found that one of the primary reasons for white opposition was a fear of taxes. Part of the problem was racism. There were people who just didn’t want black government. We also found that there was a lot of confusion, a lot of misunderstanding, a lot of hurt. Some whites had been hurt by the fact that the press had come in and called them racist, even though they hadn’t been a part of the opposition to change. It was a complex situation, and outsiders coming in and saying it was all racism had not helped. The Listening Project was able to begin a process of healing in the community. I think white residents felt positive because they were being listened to and were able to talk about their concerns. I think the African-American residents felt good about some of the positive attitudes they got from white residents. After the project was completed, several white residents came out publicly, for the first time, in support of the town government. Several of them began working for the first time with the African-American officials. A bi-racial human relations council was formed even though some people were afraid to join it. There’s still plenty of work that needs to be done in Keysville. Our project wasn’t a big thing in comparison to the tremendous struggles and victories of the Keysville Concerned Citizens, but at least we began the process of healing and reconciliation. That was important, because all the work that this local government was trying to do was simply being held back by racial divisions. Basically what the Listening Project is about, is taking the concept of listening and applying it in the area of social change. It’s hard to communicate to some people how important listening can be, and how valuable and powerful a tool for change it can be. People tend to think of listening as too soft – not strong enough really to change things. People say: “We want change now! We don’t want to just listen; we want action!” I’m not knocking demonstration and civil disobedience as means of achieving change. I think they are valuable forms of action. But I do believe they are overused and abused methods of working for social change. There is also great strength in gentleness and great transforming power in reconciling with our opponents rather than just defeating them. We’ve had several opportunities to do Listening Projects internationally. The most recent was in Palau. When I first heard from the Catholic Commission on Justice and Development in Palau, they said there was an issue that had completely divided the whole country. Palau is a group of islands in the Pacific near the Philippines. The issue was the Compact of Free Association which had to do with the degree of independence Palau would have from the United States. It also involved the fact that they are a nuclear-free zone and the United States wanted a relationship with them that would give the United States government access to land for military bases and nuclear weapons. The Compact was a very complex issue, and it had completely polarized the country into those for and against it. The Catholic Commission wanted a Listening Project to help them break through the polarization. When I arrived in Palau, I was informed that the Commission had decided not to do a Listening Project on the Compact because it was too explosive. They had decided that it would be better to focus on development issues and talk about the Compact indirectly. The Compact had divided families. There had been a bombing and there had been a house burned down. It was thought that the matter should not be addressed directly. I respected their decision – but at the same time I felt they would be passing up an opportunity to use the Listening Project on this important issue. So I talked to them more about the Listening Project. They finally decided to focus on development but to have several questions focus directly on the Compact. What happened is what often happens. The Palauan activists’ images and stereotypes of people – how they thought people would react to the issues  – were not accurate. Many thought that people were so divided on the Compact that they could not even talk about it. They thought there would be angry responses if the issue were raised. In fact, because we came as listeners, people were eager to talk about the Compact. We designed a questionnaire that asked people if they wanted to learn more about the Compact from unbiased sources. Virtually every single person said yes. They were actually very hungry for information. They wanted to know more and they wanted information from someone not promoting one side or another. So through listening, the Commission was able to work on this issue in a way that responded to people’s needs. They were also able to identify other key development issues and find new people interested in working on those issues. Activists have lots of stereotypes of the general public. One is that many people are apathetic. We have found through Listening Projects that most people really do care, but they also feel powerless to change things. They feel overwhelmed, powerless and confused about what to do. So they shut down and sometimes take on attitudes and beliefs that protect them from their confusion and pain. Quick easy answers such as, “Build a stronger military” or “Those blacks are causing all the problems” can take hold in this fertile ground. But underneath it all, within each of us, there’s still a person who cares and who believes in peace and equality. Many people don’t turn toward joining a social change group because they too have negative stereotypes – of the activists. Listening Projects can help reduce stereotyping and prejudices coming from people on both sides of an issue. In a Listening Project we focus on our common humanity rather than our differences and prejudices. We build trust with people so they can wrestle with their beliefs and ideas and get in contact with their positive human values. It doesn’t always work but it’s remarkable how often it does work. I was interested in the sharing we did earlier in the day on listening – in the context of different spiritual traditions. The woman who spoke about her Christian beliefs, and the co-creation speaker and others were all excellent. I was thinking that each had much to offer us. I thought about the symbol from Christianity of the death and the resurrection of Jesus, and I related that, at one point, to listening. When you really listen, what you’re doing is actually going through that death and resurrection process. What happens when we are truly listening is that we need to let go of ourselves fully, let our egos die. This enables us to be completely open to the moment and to what’s happening to that person who is across from us. You let your own ego die and you become fully open to the light that’s in that other person. You are being open to mystery and the beauty of life and the potential of that other person. In that sense, listening can be a deep spiritual process that’s like a resurrection. A resurrection into the blessing of each moment. Listening is a way of empowering people. It’s a way of saying to people, “What you think, what you feel and what you believe really counts and is important, and you can make a difference.” In Palau most of the people with whom we talked said they wanted more information and they wanted to get involved. In Southern communities and areas that are probably some of the most conservative areas in the country, we’ve gone in using a Listening Project and a large percentage of the people have said: “We do care. We want to get involved.” We’ve used projects to talk about social problems and military spending and we’ve found that people have never had the opportunity before to really explore their feelings and explore what they think and what might make a positive difference. One very important aspect of a Listening Project is that the group conducting the project is committed to following up with people who express an interest in getting involved. Listening Project participants are committed to acting on some of the input and ideas that come from people. So even after the active act of listening has concluded, a process of empowerment continues. To end these comments, I’d like to say that listening is both a spiritual and a social change process. It is a process of opening to the potential and the goodness of other people. It’s a process of understanding the basic differences that separate us and the common human values that connect us. Thus we can appreciate and care about other people. We can learn to love, not because we think we should be loving, but because we experience empathy – the ability to truly understand the other person. Understanding and listening are the seeds and water of compassion. That’s something that we as Friends can strive for in all areas of our lives. I am very grateful for the opportunities I have to use listening in my work and I am continually challenged by my need to incorporate listening into my personal life. Dialog This talk was concluded with an opportunity for the audience to ask questions. These and the answers follow. Q: How can I get more information and get involved with something like this? I’ve never heard of it before. Herb: There are Newsletters available and will send further information to people here tonight. Unfortunately, the Listening Project is pretty complex. It’s not something that happens easily. It involves quite a period of training and orientation. Thus we’re not able to do a lot of projects, but we are working in many different communities. Probably the next one that will happen will be down in North Carolina around environmental issues. We are also beginning to be able to offer projects outside the Southeast. So the main way to get involved is to stay in touch and find out when projects are happening and then come, take part in one, or find a need in your own community and request a project there. We’re trying to train trainers as well, but it’s a slow process. Q: How do you move into the community? By invitation or sponsorship by a group that’s in the community? Herb: It’s only by working with a group already in the community. Sometimes we’re just asked to come. Sometimes when we set a situation, we let the people involved know what we can do to help. Next we have to go through the process of helping them understand how the Listening Project can help them and their situation. Q: Would you mind saying how you got involved- – how that worked in Keysville? Herb: Keysville is close to where I grew up. I met with residents there to explain how we could work together. The mayor of Keysville is a wonderful woman who was very open and interested. Q: Before you can listen, you have to have thought through what is a suitable question and how you can ask it in a suitable way? Herb: Right. The questions happen in two ways. One way is by our working out, in advance, about a dozen survey questions that provide a structured way of entering into the listening. The first questions are always easy opening questions: “How long have you lived here in this community?” for example. In St. Mary’s, one of the first questions was: “What are the positive effects of the Kings Bay naval base here?” And then, “What are the negative effects?” The second way builds on the initial questions. Our program enables our trainees to ask both clarifying questions as well as others which draw out people. As this is done we find these people expressing more and going deeper into their thoughts and feelings. So it’s a combination of questions you already have plus using questioning and communication skills learned in the training. Q: Short of going down to North Carolina, how can one get some training? Do you have any printed material on this, or does there have to be a class? How do you work that? Herb: I have printed material, but, as you know, this can be used in all areas of life and it’s really basic. It’s active listening that people understand from counseling and psychology. The Listening Project has taken that whole approach and tried to break it down, tried to put it in terms that were easier to understand, so that a common person could understand how to use them. Then we built a structured way of using them for political outreach and organizing. That’s where it gets a bit complex. Q: Do you have any plans to try to have other kinds of outreach? Because so few people can go down and get into a project. Herb: Well, there are going to be projects in other parts of the country. We’ve just received some money to help us expand staff. One of the problems is that we’re a small, grass roots organization. To date I’ve been the only field staff person. But we train new trainers wherever we go. Thus we encourage growth, but it’s a slow process. It’s frustrating, because as you know there are a lot of people who say, as you do, that they’d like to get involved. I can’t give a quick, easy way for people to get involved other than to say if you can’t come to where our project is, it’s possible there will be one up in this area within the next year. We could use a staff of twenty and then we could work all over the place. But now we don’t have that kind of financial ability. Let me close by sharing our address and phone number so that anyone who is interested in this work can get in touch with us. It is: Rural Southern Voice for Peace  –  Listening Project, 1898 Hannah Branch Road, BurnsviIle, NC, 28714. Phone (704) 675-5933.

LA Quaker: Best free anti-war films and documentaries available online

LA Quaker: Best free anti-war films and documentaries available online

Best free anti-war films and documentaries available online

This listing of on-line anti-war films is provided by Frank Dorrel, one of the best anti-war advocates I know--his cartoon booklet "Addicted to War" is a classic and is now updated and available in Spanish as well as English  (seewww.addictedtowar.com ). If we want to end our addiction to war, we need to educate people and circulate the truth about the war pushers and profiteers as broadly as possible. Please share this with your friends, esp. those in the social media.

Dear Anti-War Friends,

In my opinion, this is the most important email I will ever send to you!
Yes, I have sent it to my list a couple of times before over the years. The
links to these anti-war films that you can watch on-line sometimes are taken down. So I have included two or three links when possible. I realize that I have listed many films here. There is no need to try to watch all of these films in a short period of time. But the films listed below basically spell
out what I like to call: “The True Nature of U.S. Foreign Policy”. These
films are the proof that the United States has killed as many as 20 million
or more innocent people since the end of World War II - with many millions
more being injured, losing their homes and having their way of life ruined.
This list is the best way I can think of to help educate yourself and others
who might be interested in knowing about this. Today is Memorial Day, a day
reserved to honor those who have served this country in the military and
those who have died in combat. I believe that the Americans who have died in
these wars, have died for lies coming from our government and our mainstream
media, which are both owned by the same people who profit from these wars.
It is what I call: “The Big Lie”.   It is Orwellian and like The Matrix. I
do not know what is actually going on now in Syria or Libya or The Ukraine,
but one thing I do know is that we cannot trust that the United States will
ever do the right thing when it comes to foreign policy. Whatever action
this country takes is to benefit the corporations, the oil companies, the
bankers and the war machine: also known as: The Military Industrial Complex.
The United States is ADDICTED To WAR. It is up to us to try to stop this
horrible situation. There are more people now who do understand this to some
degree than ever before in history. The films listed below and many books
that have been written on this subject are a big reason why this is so. Not
to mention the many anti-war/peace groups there are in this country. And the
Internet is another big reason there is more awareness about this. I know
some of you will want to send me some links to films I haven’t included.
That’s OK. And sometime in the near future I will be sending out another
list of talks by well known peace activists on this same subject. I also
have a list of many 9-11 Truth films you can watch on-line which show that
9-11 was an inside job. I have sent that list out before and will send it to
anyone requesting it.  I have seen a lot of fighting on the internet among
anti-war activists, who I believe, for the most part, will agree with the
message these films deliver about the role the United States has had in the
endless wars and the needless deaths resulting from them. Please stop
fighting and arguing with each other. The anti-war movement needs to work
together if we are ever to make a difference. To everyone reading this
message, thank you for your involvement, whatever it has been in all of
this. And a big thank you to all of the filmmakers listed below, who have
taken the time & effort to make these very important films that tell us the
truth about what the United States has been doing to the people of the
world.

In Peace,

Frank Dorrel
Publisher
Addicted To War
P.O. Box 3261
Culver City, CA 90231-3261
fdorrel@addictedtowar.com
fdorrel@sbcglobal.net  
www.addictedtowar.com



Important Anti-War Films You Can Watch On-Line

WAR MADE EASY: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death - Narrated
by Sean Penn – By The Media Education Foundation:www.mediaed.org  -
Based on Book by Norman Solomon titled: WAR MADE EASY –
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/war-made-easy  -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9DjSg6l9Vs  -www.warmadeeasythemovie.org 
War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year
pattern of government deception & media spin that has dragged the United
States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. This film exhumes
remarkable archival footage of official distortion & exaggeration from LBJ
to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media
have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive
presidential administrations. War Made Easy gives special attention to
parallels between the Vietnam war and the war in Iraq. Guided by media
critic Norman Solomon’s meticulous research and tough-minded analysis, the
film presents disturbing examples of propaganda and media complicity from
the present alongside rare footage of political leaders and leading
journalists from the past, including Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Defense
Secretary Robert McNamara, dissident Senator Wayne Morse and news
correspondents Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer. 

Bill Moyer’s The Secret Government: The Constitution In Crisis – PBS - 1987
This is the full length 90 minute version of Bill Moyer's 1987 scathing
critique of the criminal subterfuge carried out by the Executive Branch of
the United States Government to carry out operations which are clearly
contrary to the wishes and values of the American people. The ability to
exercise this power with impunity is facilitated by the National Security
Act of 1947. The thrust of the exposé is the Iran-Contra arms and
drug-running operations which flooded the streets of our nation with crack
cocaine. -  www.youtube.com/watch?v=28K2CO-khdY  -
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-secret-government -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJldun440Sk

The Panama Deception – Won Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1992 -
Narrated by Elizabeth Montgomery – Directed by Barbara Trent - Produced by
The Empowerment Project 
This Academy Award Winning film documents the untold story of the December
1989 U.S. invasion of Panama; the events which led to it; the excessive
force used; the enormity of the death and destruction; and the devastating
aftermath. The Panama Deception uncovers the real reasons for this
internationally condemned attack, presenting a view of the invasion which
widely differs from that portrayed by the U.S. media and exposes how the
U.S. government and the mainstream media suppressed information about this
foreign policy disaster. -  www.documentarystorm.com/the-panama-deception  -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-p4cPoVcIo
www.empowermentproject.org/films.html

Hearts and Minds - Academy Award Winning Documentary about The Vietnam War -
Directed by Peter Davis – 1975 -
www.criterion.com/films/711-hearts-and-minds
This film recounts the history and attitudes of the opposing sides of the
Vietnam War using archival news footage as well as its own film and
interviews. A key theme is how attitudes of American racism and
self-righteous militarism helped create and prolong this bloody conflict.
The film also endeavors to give voice to the Vietnamese people themselves as
to how the war has affected them and their reasons why they fight the United
States and other western powers while showing the basic humanity of the
people that US propaganda tried to dismiss. -
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/hearts-and-minds  -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d2ml82lc7s - www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC-PXLS4BQ4

  
Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky & The Media - Produced & Directed by
Mark Achbar – Directed by Peter Wintonick - www.zeitgeistfilms.com
<http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/film.php?directoryname=manufacturingconsent>
This film showcases Noam Chomsky, one of America's leading linguists &
political dissidents. It also illustrates his message of how government and
big media businesses cooperate to produce an effective propaganda machine in
order to manipulate the opinions of the United States populous. -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AnB8MuQ6DU -www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzufDdQ6uKg -

Paying The Price: Killing The Children of Iraq by John Pilger – 2000 -
www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/pay.html - In this hard-hitting special
report, award-winning journalist and filmmaker John Pilger investigates the
effects of sanctions on the people of Iraq and finds that ten years of
extraordinary isolation, imposed by the UN and enforced by the US and
Britain, have killed more people than the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan.
The UN Security Council imposed the sanctions and demanded the destruction
of Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons under the supervision of
a UN Special Commission (UNSCOM). Iraq is permitted to sell a limited amount
of oil in exchange for some food and medicine. -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHn3kKySuVo  -
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/paying-the-price  -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OLPWlMmV7s


Hijacking Catastrophe: 911, Fear & The Selling of the American Empire -
Narrated by Julian Bond - The Media Education Foundation – 2004 -
www.mediaed.org
The 9/11 terror attacks continue to send shock waves through the American
political system. Continuing fears about American vulnerability alternate
with images of American military prowess and patriotic bravado in a
transformed media landscape charged with emotion and starved for
information. The result is that we have had little detailed debate about the
radical turn US policy has taken since 9/11. Hijacking Catastrophe places
the Bush Administration's original justifications for war in Iraq within the
larger context of a two-decade struggle by neo-conservatives to dramatically
increase military spending while projecting American power and influence
globally by means of force.
www.hijackingcatastrophe.org –
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/hijacking-catastrophe -www.vimeo.com/14429811
Cover-Up: Behind The Iran-Contra Affair - Narrated by Elizabeth Montgomery –
Directed by Barbara Trent - Produced by The Empowerment Project - 1988
COVER-UP is the only film which presents a comprehensive overview of the
most important stories suppressed during the Iran Contra hearings. It is the
only film that puts the entire Iran Contra affair into a meaningful
political and historical context. The shadow government of assassins, arms
dealers, drug smugglers, former CIA operatives and top US military personnel
who were running foreign policy unaccountable to the public, revealing the
Reagan/Bush administration's plan to use FEMA to institute martial law and
ultimately suspend the Constitution. Strikingly relevant to current events.
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXZRRRU2VRI -www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOlMo9dAATw
www.empowermentproject.org/films.html


Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority – Directed By Sufyan &
Abdallah Omeish -2006 - Best Film I’ve Seen about the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict –
A thought-provoking and powerful documentary film on the current and
historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike any other
film ever produced on the conflict -- 'Occupation 101' presents a
comprehensive analysis of the facts and hidden truths surrounding the never
ending controversy and dispels many of its long-perceived myths and
misconceptions. The film also details life under Israeli military rule, the
role of the United States in the conflict, and the major obstacles that
stand in the way of a lasting and viable peace. The roots of the conflict
are explained through first-hand on-the-ground experiences from leading
Middle East scholars, peace activists, journalists, religious leaders and
humanitarian workers whose voices have too often been suppressed in American
media outlets. - www.occupation101.com - www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuI5GP2LJAs
- www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ycqATLDRow -www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwpvI8rX72o


Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: US Media & the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict - The Media Education Foundation - www.mediaed.org 
Peace, Propaganda & The Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S.
and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing
in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false
perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This pivotal documentary
exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites--oil,
and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others--work
in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a
powerful influence over how news from the region is reported. -
www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=117 -
www.vimeo.com/14309419   -  www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAN5GjJKAac   


“What I’ve Learned About US Foreign Policy: The War Against The Third World"
– by Frank Dorrel – 2000 -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8POmJ46jqk - www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSmBhj8tmoU 
This is a 2-hour video compilation featuring the following 10 segments:
1. Martin Luther King Jr., Civil rights leader speaking out against the
U.S. war in Vietnam.
2. John Stockwell, CIA Station Chief in Angola -1975, under CIA Director,
George Bush Sr.
3. Coverup: Behind the Iran-Contra Affair U.S. support of the Contras in
Nicaragua.
4. School of Assassins, Our own terrorist training school at Fort Benning,
Georgia. 
5. Genocide by Sanctions, 5,000 Iraqi children die every month due to the
U.S. sanctions.
6. Philip Agee, Former CIA official who spent 13 years in the agency, wrote
CIA Diary
7. Amy Goodman, Host of Democracy Now, Pacifica Radio NY, on the CIA and
East Timor. 
8. The Panama Deception  Academy award for best documentary on U.S.
invasion of Panama
9. Ramsey Clark, Former Attorney General, talking on U.S. militarism and
foreign policy.
10. S. Brian Willson, Vietnam Veteran -Wages Unconditional Peace against
U.S. imperialism
www.addictedtowar.com/dorrel.html



"UNMANNED: AMERICA'S DRONE WARS" – Directed by Robert Greenwald of Brave New
Films -  www.bravenewfilms.org  – 2013 -
The eighth full-length feature documentary from Brave New Foundation and
director Robert Greenwald, investigates the impact of U.S. drone strikes at
home and abroad through more than 70 separate interviews, including a former
American drone operator who shares what he has witnessed in his own words,
Pakistani families mourning loved ones and seeking legal redress,
investigative journalists pursuing the truth, and top military officials
warning against blowback from the loss of innocent life. -
www.knowdrones.com/2013/10/two-essential-films.html

Collateral Murder In Iraq - Bradley Manning Sent this Video to Wikileaks -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0 - www.collateralmurder.com-
www.bradleymanning.org   
Wikileaks obtained this video from Bradley Manning and decrypted this
previously unreleased video footage from a US Apache helicopter in 2007. It
shows Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several
others as the Apache shoots and kills them in a public square in Eastern
Baghdad. They are apparently assumed to be insurgents. After the initial
shooting, an unarmed group of adults and children in a minivan arrives on
the scene and attempts to transport the wounded. They are fired upon as
well. The official statement on this incident initially listed all adults as
insurgents and claimed the US military did not know how the deaths occurred.
Wikileaks released this video with transcripts and a package of supporting
documents on April 5th 2010. 


Breaking The Silence: Truth and Lies in The War On Terror - A Special Report
by John Pilger – 2003 - www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/break.html 
The documentary investigates George W Bush's "war on terror". In "liberated"
Afghanistan, America has its military base & pipeline access, while the
people have the warlords who are, says one women, "in many ways worse than
the Taliban". In Washington, a series of remarkable interviews includes
senior Bush officials & former intelligence officers. A former senior CIA
official tells Pilger that the whole issue of weapons of mass destruction
was "95 per cent charade".  www.youtube.com/watch?v=phehfVeJ-wk  -
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/breaking-the-silence  -www.johnpilger.com 
                         
The War On Democracy - by John Pilger - 2007 -
www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/wdem.html  - www.johnpilger.com
This film shows how US intervention, overt and covert, has toppled a series
of legitimate governments in the Latin American region since the 1950s. The
democratically elected Chilean government of Salvador Allende, for example,
was ousted by a US backed coup in 1973 and replaced by the military
dictatorship of General Pinochet. Guatemala, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras and
El Salvador have all been invaded by the United States. Pilger interviews
several ex-CIA agents who took part in secret campaigns against democratic
countries in the region. He investigates the School of the Americas in the
US state of Georgia, where Pinochet’s torture squads were trained along with
tyrants and death squad leaders in Haiti, El Salvador, Brazil and Argentina.
The film unearths the real story behind the attempted overthrow of
Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez in 2002 and how the people of the barrios
of Caracas rose up to force his return to power.
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-war-on-democracy -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeHzc1h8k7o  -
www.johnpilger.com/videos/the-war-on-democracy 

The Oil Factor: Behind The War On Terror - By Gerard Ungerman & Audrey Brohy
of Free-Will Productions – Narrated by Ed Asner -www.freewillprod.com  
Today, 6.5 billion humans depend entirely on oil for food, energy, plastics
& chemicals. Population growth is on a collision course with the inevitable
decline in oil production. George Bush's "war on terror" happens where 3/4
of the world's remaining oil and natural gas is located. -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGakDrosLuA  

Plan Colombia: Cashing-In On The Drug War Failure - By Gerard Ungerman &
Audrey Brohy of Free-Will Productions – Narrated by Ed Asner -
www.freewillprod.com    20 years of US war-on-drugs in Colombia paid for by
U.S. tax-payers. Still, more and more drugs and narco-dollars are entering
the US every year. Is it a failure or a smokescreen by Washington to secure
Colombia's oil & natural resources instead? Now that the U.S. State
Department officially shifted its priority in Colombia from
counter-narcotics to counter-insurgency conveniently dubbed anti-terrorism,
what is left today of the alleged anti-drug purpose of the U.S. "Plan
Colombia"? While cocaine trafficking and money-laundering are skyrocketing
to unseen proportions, is the current U.S. oil administration even concerned
with fighting drugs in Colombia, another top oil supplier to the U.S., when
its U.S.-friendly regime is being threatened by powerful leftist guerrilla
groups? - www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EE8scPbxAI  -
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/plan-colombia

NO MORE VICTIMS – Videos of 4 War-Injured Iraqi Children NMV Brought to the
US for Medical Treatments: www.nomorevictims.org
What American Missiles Did to 9-Year Old Salee Allawi in Iraq -
www.nomorevictims.org/?page_id=95  
In this video, Salee Allawi & her father tell the harrowing story of the
American air strike that blew off her legs while she was playing outside her
home in Iraq. Her brother & best friend were killed.

Nora, A 5-Year Old Iraqi Girl: Who Was Shot in the Head by a US Sniper  -
www.nomorevictims.org/children-2/noora -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft49-zlQ1V4
As her father writes, “On October 23, 2006 at 4:00 in the afternoon,
American snipers positioned on a rooftop in my neighborhood started firing
toward my car. My daughter Nora, a five-year-old child, was hit in the head.
Since 2003 No More Victims has secured treatment for children injured by US
forces.

Abdul Hakeem’s Story – Narrated by Peter Coyote –
www.nomorevictims.org/?page_id=107  - On April 9, 2004 at 11:00 PM, during
the First Siege of Fallujah, Abdul Hakeem & his family were asleep at home
when mortar rounds fired by US forces rained down on their home, destroying
one side of his face. His mother suffered abdominal & chest injuries & has
undergone 5 major operations. His older brother & sister were injured and
his unborn sister killed. US forces did not permit ambulances to transport
civilian casualties to the hospital. In fact, they fired on ambulances, one
of many violations of international law committed by US forces in the April
assault. A neighbor volunteered to take the family to the hospital, where
doctors assessed Hakeem’s chances of survival at five percent. They laid his
limp body aside & treated other civilian casualties whose chances of
survival appeared higher.
Alaa’ Khalid Hamdan - Narrated by Peter Coyote - On May 5th, 2005, 2-year
old Alaa’ Khalid Hamdan was severely injured when a U.S. tank round slammed
into her family’s home in Al Qaim, Iraq. It was around three in the
afternoon, and the children were having a tea party. Two of Alaa’s brothers
and three of her cousins were killed, all children under ten years of age.
Fourteen women and children were killed or injured in the attack, which
occurred while the men were at work. Alaa’ was peppered with shrapnel in her
legs, abdomen and chest, and urgently needed an operation to save her
eyesight. Micro-shrapnel from the US tank round was embedded in both eyes,
her retinas detached. If the fragments were not removed soon, she faced a
lifetime of blindness. We received her medical reports in June of 2005. No
medical services were provided by the US military for Alaa’ or her injured
mother. Alaa’s impending blindness was of no consequence to occupation
authorities. - www.nomorevictims.org/children-2/alaa-khalid-2

Agustin Aguayo: A Man of Conscience - A Short Film by Peter Dudar & Sally
Marr - www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAFH6QGPxQk  
Iraq War Veteran Agustin Aguayo served his country for four years in the
Army but was repeatedly denied Conscientious Objector status. His Press
Conference never made the NEWS!

Jesus...A Soldier Without A Country - A Short Film by Peter Dudar & Sally
Marr - www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYeNyJFJOf4  
Fernando Suarez, whose only son Jesus was the first Marine from Mexico to be
killed in the Iraq War, marches for Peace from Tijuana to San Francisco.


Vietnam: American Holocaust - Narrated by Martin Sheen – Written, Produced &
Directed by Clay Claiborne –
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/vietnam-american-holocaust 
This film exposes one of the worst cases of sustained mass slaughter in
history, carefully planned & executed by presidents of both parties. Our
dedicated generals & foot soldiers, knowingly or unknowingly, killed nearly
5 million  people, on an almost unimaginable scale, mostly using incendiary
bombs. Vietnam has never left our national consciousness & now, in this
time, it has more relevance than ever.  www.vietnam.linuxbeach.net


KILL THEM ALL
This BBC Documentary reveals atrocities committed by the U.S. in Korea
during the war. - www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pws_qyQnCcU

Arsenal of Hypocrisy: The Space Program & The Military Industrial Complex -
With Bruce Gagnon & Noam Chomsky - www.space4peace.org 
Today the Military Industrial Complex is marching towards world dominance
through Space technology on behalf of global corporate interest. To
understand how and why the space program will be used to fight all future
wars on earth from space, it's important to understand how the public has
been misled about the origins and true purpose of the Space Program. Arsenal
of Hypocrisy features Bruce Gagnon: Coordinator: Global Network Against
Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Noam Chomsky and Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar
Mitchell talking about the dangers of moving the arms race into space. The
one-hour production features archival footage, Pentagon documents, and
clearly outlines the U.S. plan to "control and dominate" space and the Earth
below. - www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf7apNEASPk 


Beyond Treason – Written & Narrated by Joyce Riley - Directed by William
Lewis - 2005 - www.beyondtreason.com 
Is the United States knowingly using a dangerous battlefield weapon banned
by the United Nations because of its long-term effects on the local
inhabitants and the environment? Explore the illegal worldwide sale and use
of one of the deadliest weapons ever invented. Beyond the disclosure of
black-ops projects spanning the past 6 decades, Beyond Treason also
addresses the complex subject of Gulf War Illness. It includes interviews
with experts, both civilian and military, who say that the government is
hiding the truth from the public and they can prove it. UNMASKING SECRET
MILITARY PROJECTS: Chemical & Biological Exposures, Radioactive Poisoning,
Mind Control Projects, Experimental Vaccines, Gulf War Illness & Depleted
Uranium (DU). www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRG8nUDbVXU  -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViUtjA1ImQc


The Friendship Village - Directed & Produced by Michelle Mason - 2002-
www.cultureunplugged.com/play/8438/The-Friendship-Village -
www.cypress-park.m-bient.com/projects/distribution.htm
A timely, inspiring film about our ability to transcend war, 'The Friendship
Village' tells the story of George Mizo, a war hero-turned-peace activist
after losing his entire platoon in an opening salvo of the 1968 Tet
Offensive of the Vietnam War. George's journey to heal the wounds of war
leads him back to Vietnam where he befriends the Vietnamese General
responsible for killing his entire platoon. Through their friendship, the
seeds of the Vietnam Friendship Village Project are sewn: a reconciliation
project near Hanoi that treats children with Agent Orange-related illnesses.
One man could build a village; one village could change the world.


Palestine Is Still The Issue By John Pilger – 2002 -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrhJL0DRSRQ   -
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/palestine-is-still-the-issue
John Pilger first made: 'Palestine Is Still The Issue' in 1977. It told how
almost a million Palestinians had been forced off their land in 1948 and
again in 1967. Twenty five years later, John Pilger returns to the West Bank
of Jordan and Gaza, and to Israel, to ask why the Palestinians, whose right
of return was affirmed by the United Nations more than half a century ago,
are still caught in a terrible limbo - refugees in their own land,
controlled by Israel in the longest military occupation in modern times.
www.johnpilger.com - www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/pisihv.html 

Life In Occupied Palestine: Eyewitness Stories & Photos – By Anna Baltzer -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3emLCYB9j8c –www.vimeo.com/6977999 
Life in Occupied Palestine provides an excellent introduction — in a
down-to-earth, non-alienating way — to the occupation in Palestine and the
nonviolent movement for freedom and equality in the Holy Land. The video of
Baltzer’s award-winning presentation—including eyewitness photographs,
original maps, facts, music, and action ideas. -
www.annainthemiddleeast.com

Rachel Corrie: An American Conscience – 2005 -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IatIDytPeQ0  -  www.rachelcorrie.org
The late Rachel Corrie (1979 – 2003) was articulate, straight forward and
resolute. Her castigation of Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian
people and the Israeli Government’s disregard for the safety of Israelis and
Palestinians rang with clarity. Through peace activism she ascertained the
facts on the ground. She called it as she saw it. The documentary, “Rachel
Corrie: An American Conscience,” chronicles her humanitarian work with the
International Solidarity Movement in Rafah, Gaza Strip, just prior to her
murder in March 2003. While Corrie stood in front of a Palestinian home to
prevent its demolition, an Israeli soldier in a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer
crushed her to death.


The Most Dangerous Man In America: Daniel Ellsberg & The Pentagon Papers:
Directed by Judith Ehrlich
<http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=Judith%20Ehrlich&ref=dp_dvd_
bl_dir&search-alias=dvd>  & Rick Goldsmith
<http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=Rick%20Goldsmith&ref=dp_dvd_
bl_dir&search-alias=dvd>  –www.veoh.com/watch/v20946070MKKS8mr2
Henry Kissinger called Daniel Ellsberg the most dangerous man in America.
This is the Oscar-nominated story of what happens when a Pentagon insider
armed with his conscience, steadfast determination and a file cabinet full
of classified documents decides to challenge the US Presidency to help end
the Vietnam War. His actions shook America to its foundations when he
smuggled a top-secret Pentagon study to the New York Times. Facing 115 years
in prison on espionage and conspiracy charges, he fought back, with events
then leading to the Watergate scandal and the downfall of President Richard
Nixon. The story bears startling similarities to the current scandal around
Wikileaks. - www.amazon.com/The-Most-Dangerous-Man-America/dp/B00329PYGQ


Fahrenheit 9-11 (2004 – 122 Minutes)  - www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwLT_8S_Tuo
- www.michaelmoore.com
Michael Moore's view on what happened to the US after September 11 & how the
Bush Administration allegedly used the tragic event to push forward its
agenda for unjust wars in Afghanistan & Iraq.


ROMERO – Starring Raul Julie as Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador –
Directed by John Duigan <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0241090/?ref_=tt_ov_dr>
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hAdhmosepI
Romero is a compelling and deeply moving look at the life of Archbishop
Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who made the ultimate sacrifice in a passionate
stand against social injustice and oppression in his country. This film
chronicles the transformation of Romero from an apolitical, complacent
priest to a committed leader of the Salvadoran people. This man of God
forced by the unspeakable events going on around him to take a stand-a stand
that ultimately leads to his assassination in 1980 at the hands of the
military junta. Archbishop Romero was murdered on March 24, 1980. He had
spoken the disturbing truth. Many chose not to listen. As a result, between
1980 and 1989, more than 60,000 Salvadorans were killed. But the struggle
for peace and freedom, justice and dignity goes on. -
www.catholicvideo.com/detail.taf?_function=detail&a_product_id=34582&kywdlin
kid=34&gclid=CJz8pMzor7wCFat7QgodUnMATA

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised:  (2003 - 74 Minutes)  -
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-revolution-will-not-be-televised -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id--ZFtjR5c
Also known as Chávez: Inside the Coup, is a 2003 documentary focusing on
events in Venezuela <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuela>  leading up to
and during the April 2002 coup d'état attempt
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Venezuelan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt> ,
which saw President Hugo Chávez
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez>  removed from office for two
days. With particular emphasis on the role played by Venezuela's private
media, the film examines several key incidents: the protest march and
subsequent violence that provided the impetus for Chávez's ousting; the
opposition's formation of an interim government headed by business leader
Pedro Carmona <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Carmona> ; and the Carmona
administration's collapse, which paved the way for Chávez's return.


THE CORPORATION  -  Directed by Mark Achbar
<http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1T4GPEA_enUS296US296&q=mark+achbar&stick=H
4sIAAAAAAAAAGOovnz8BQMDAy8HsxKnfq6-gXGKkXnFmvMWATPNpv8ueB20zsC85qE-C8sNABItY
wsqAAAA&sa=X&ei=YA6kUfvxE-GWiAKI6YHwAw&ved=0CKcBEJsTKAIwDQ>  & Jennifer
Abbott
<http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1T4GPEA_enUS296US296&q=jennifer+abbott&sti
ck=H4sIAAAAAAAAAGOovnz8BQMDAy8HsxKnfq6-gXm2aVnOkg0SS1Ksn2btcMtu5Xy46mmyXPMnA
GdQr_cqAAAA&sa=X&ei=YA6kUfvxE-GWiAKI6YHwAw&ved=0CKgBEJsTKAMwDQ>  - 2003 -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6zQO7JytzQ - www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHrhqtY2khc -
www.thecorporation.com 
Provoking, witty, stylish and sweepingly informative, THE CORPORATION
explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our
time. Part film and part movement, The Corporation is transforming audiences
and dazzling critics with its insightful and compelling analysis. Taking its
status as a legal "person" to the logical conclusion, the film puts the
corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask "What kind of person is it?"
The Corporation includes interviews with 40 corporate insiders and critics
<http://www.thecorporation.com/index.cfm?page_id=3>  - including Noam
Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Milton Friedman, Howard Zinn, Vandana Shiva and
Michael Moore - plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for
change.

The New Rulers of The World – Directed by John Pilger -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfrL2DUtmXY - www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxgZZ8Br6cE -
www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/new.html
Who really rules the world now? Is it governments or a handful of huge
companies? The Ford Motor Company alone is bigger than the economy of South
Africa. Enormously rich men, like Bill Gates, have a wealth greater than all
of Africa. Pilger goes behind the hype of the new global economy and reveals
that the divisions between the rich and poor have never been greater — two
thirds of the world’s children live in poverty — and the gulf is widening
like never before. The film looks at the new rulers of the world — the great
multinationals and the governments and institutions that back them — the IMF
and the World Bank. Under IMF rules, millions of people throughout the world
lose their jobs & livelihood. The reality behind much of modern shopping &
the famous brands is a sweatshop economy, which is being duplicated in
country after country:
www.topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-new-rulers-of-the-world 

South Of The Border – Directed by Oliver Stone -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vBlV5TUI64 - www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvjIwVjJsXc -
www.southoftheborderdoc.com 
There’s a revolution underway in South America, but most of the world doesn’
t know it. Oliver Stone sets out on a road trip across five countries to
explore the social and political movements as well as the mainstream media’s
misperception of South America while interviewing seven of its elected
presidents. In casual conversations with Presidents Hugo Chávez (Venezuela),
Evo Morales (Bolivia), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Cristina Kirchner
(Argentina), as well as her husband and ex-President Nėstor Kirchner,
Fernando Lugo (Paraguay), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Raúl Castro (Cuba),
Stone gains unprecedented access and sheds new light upon the exciting
transformations in the region.

Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election by Joan Sekler & Richard Perez
– 2002 - www.unprecedented.org <http://www.unprecedented.org/>  -
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOaoYnofgjQ
Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election is the riveting story about
the battle for the Presidency in Florida and the undermining of democracy in
America. From the moment the polls opened, it was painfully clear that
something was wrong. While the media seized on the controversy surrounding
the poorly designed "Butterfly Ballot", much larger civil rights abuses were
overlooked. Focusing on events leading up to election day and the attempt to
count legally cast votes in the days that followed, Unprecedented examines a
suspicious pattern of irregularities, injustices and voter purges—all in a
state governed by the winning candidate's brother. One of the first
indications that something was wrong came early on election day. Thousands
of African-Americans who had voted in previous elections discovered that
their names were missing from the voter rolls. Investigators later uncovered
irrefutable evidence that exposed an elaborate strategy where thousands of
Democratic voters were purged from the rolls. These voters were
disproportionately African-American.