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Unreported World – Turkey

Unreported World travels to eastern Turkey, where Europe and Asia meet, to report on the rekindling of a largely forgotten and ignored war that threatens the stability of the region and the European Union’s expansion plans.

Reporter Matthew McAllester journeys from Diyarbakir, the centre of the Kurdish heartland, deep into Kurdish Turkey and on to the border with Iran, home to thousands of Kurdish PKK fighters, before meeting one of the group’s leaders in Iraq.

The Prize – Empires of Oil

“Witness capitalism on a grand scale: how Shell Oil and Royal Dutch merged, then challenged the supremacy of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. A compelling tale of how oil transformed everyday life in the farthest corners of the globe, made Russia a great oil power, and helped the Allies win World War I.”

Commanding Heights Part 1 – The Battle of Ideas

“A global economy, energized by technological change and unprecedented flows of people and money, collapses in the wake of a terrorist attack …. The year is 1914.

Worldwide war results, exhausting the resources of the great powers and convincing many that the economic system itself is to blame. From the ashes of the catastrophe, an intellectual and political struggle ignites between the powers of government and the forces of the marketplace, each determined to reinvent the world’s economic order.

Two individuals emerge whose ideas, shaped by very different experiences, will inform this debate and carry it forward. One is a brilliant, unconventional Englishman named John Maynard Keynes. The other is an outspoken émigré from ravaged Austria, Friedrich von Hayek.

But a worldwide depression holds the capitalist nations in its grip. In opposition to both Keynes and Hayek stand not only Hitler’s Third Reich but Stalin’s Soviet Union, schooled in the communist ideologies of Marx and Lenin and bent on obliterating the capitalist system altogether.

For more than half a century the battle of ideas will rage. From the totalitarian socialist systems to the fascist states, from the independent nations of the developing world to the mixed economies of Europe and the regulated capitalism of the United States, government planning will gradually take over the commanding heights.

But in the 1970s, with Keynesian theory at its height and communism fully entrenched, economic stagnation sets in on all sides. When a British grocer’s daughter and a former Hollywood actor become heads of state, they join forces around the ideas of Hayek, and new political and economic policies begin to transform the world.”

Surplus – Terrorized Into Being Consumers

A great, very Swedish documentary about consumerism and globalization based on the ideas of John Zerzan. Zerzan is an interesting fellow, on the one-hand arguing for property damage, but on the other, nearly admitting that his ideas are nearly impossible to implement. From the description:

Surplus: Terrorized Into Being Consumers is a 2003 Swedish documentary film on consumerism and globalization, created by director Erik Gandini and editor Johan Söderberg. It opens with footage of the protests at the 27th G8 summit in Genoa and prominently features the views of anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan.

Pakistan – Politics for Peace

From FRANCE24 comes a debate discussing Musharraf, the Seige of Red Mosque, and in general peace in Pakistan.

Conversations – Economic Theory: Robert Ashford and Dr. Edward Wolff

From 2000, well after Bill Clinton declared the end of the Old Left. From the description:

The Guests talk about economic theory in a Paradigm sense. The raise the idea that it ultimatly is the basic source which informs all National & International Political decison making at a policy leval. They (particurly Ashford) strongly question the “Labor Theory of Value” which informs in a fundemental sense virutlaly all Economic Theory from from the far Left to the far Right as outdated in an era when economic production (and the trends therein) is increasingly the result of capital assets which are overwhelmingly owned by a very narrow owership class.

Tony Smith – A Pact with the Devil

Tony Smith at the New America Foundation, discussing some large changes in the way policy is made. The sound quality is pretty bad, you’d think the NAF could get it right. From the description:

Many liberals as well as conservatives supported the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. In his provocative new book A Pact with the Devil: Washington’s Bid for World Supremacy, Tony Smith, professor of political science at Tufts University, criticizes liberal hawks as well as neocons for sharing a common project of American world supremacy.

How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

Peak oil is an interesting and often-ignored fact that will occur in our lifetimes, it’s interesting how the day-to-day politiking usually loses sights of these large challenges. This documentary explores Cuba in 1991 after the “peak-oil crisis” that occured because of the breakup of the Soviet Union. From the description:

In 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba experienced an ‘energy famine.’ Transportation and agriculture virtually came to a stop due to lack of diesel fuel and fertilizer shortages. This film explores what changes were put in place. The makers of the film “The End Of Suburbia” went to Cuba to explore it as a test case for what the conditions after Peak Oil would look like. This is that story.

Mao’s Revolution – What Remains?

These talks at UCBerkley presented online are great (second place goes to the University of Chicago). From the description:\

China expert and Harvard political scientist Roderick MacFarquhar joins UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism Dean Orville Schell for a lecture and discussion of the lasting impact of Chairman Mao’s Communist Revolution in China

Sartre – The Road to Freedom.

Sartre has had an enormous effect on geopolitics, although as an American I would never know. His theories on revolution influenced revolutionaries in Algeria, Iran and Egypt, where they were merged with Islam in order to fight repressive governments.

Reese Erlich: The US and Iran – The Real Story

Don’t worry, that annoying intro music goes away after about thirty seconds.

From the description:

Foreign correspondent Reese Erlich, author of the soon-to-be-published book, “The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of US Policy and the Middle East Crisis,” speaks about his recent trips to Iran researching his book.

Qing Culturalism and Manchu Identity

A really fascinating lecture on Qing culturalism and Manchu identity by Frederic Wakeman in a series of lectures of China at the turn of the 20th century, entitled “Transitions from Culture to Nation.”

Jared Diamond – How Societies Fail-And Sometimes Succeed – Long Now Foundation

Jared Diamon is a captivating and articulate speaker whose are ideas are a type of common sense that just makes sense, even without the countless hours of research. From the description:

Jared Diamond articulately spelled out how his best-selling book, COLLAPSE, took shape.

Mao’s Bloody Revolution

via popperslist documentaries

From the description:

Revealed Series: Mao’s Bloody Revolution – Section 1 of 4 A documentary offering a portrait of Mao Tse-Tung, one of the 20th century’s most controversial leaders. Author and former BBC correspondent Philip Short looks at Mao’s life from his childhood and rise to power to his death in 1976. The programme examines the legacy of Mao’s rule of China and features exclusive interviews with some of Mao’s inner circle, as well as dramatic unseen footage from the period of the ‘cultural revolution‘.

Disbelief – 1999 Russia Bombings

From the description:

A fatal bomb blast in a Moscow apartment building ignites a fury of questions about terrorism, shadow politics, and post-Soviet intrigue in Disbelief; a film as much about the high art of political deception as it is about violence and human tragedy. The bombing on September 9, 1999, of a nine-story working-class apartment complex in Moscow was quickly blamed on Chechen terrorists. But was it their crime? Or did the Russian secret service deflect its own responsibility for the bombing on the Chechens to heighten national fear and hysteria and justify Russia’s subsequent military attack on the breakaway republic?

Unreported World – Zimbabwe

More from the BBC’s Unreported World series, this time focusing on Mugabe. Of course, I’d be wary watching a show produced in England about Zimbabwe, but the on-the-ground interviews are solid. From the description:

Reporter Evan Williams and Director Siobhan Sinnerton reveal startling claims that the Mugabe Government is using the supply of AIDS drugs and food aid to gerrymander upcoming elections

Parts two and three when you click the video.

The Modern Racist Paradigm

From the description:

The documentary addresses many modern-day internalized racist psychological dispositions (subconscious forms of internalized racism) which are unknowingly passed down from generation to generation due to the globalization and pervasiveness of “Whiteness”; a cultural assimilation process of which, is directly derivative to historical European expansionism, colonialism, and imperialism.

I really like this anecdotal mash-up, although the focus of zionism seems a bit much. The effects that domestic and casual racism have in geopolitics (which is of course perpetuated by the media) is enormous because it lends itself to the views from two or three cultural sources remaining dominant.

Inner Trip – Reiyukai Buddhism

This documentary is an interesting event, especially when contrasted with the gunboat diplomacy of Matthew Perry and the Treaty of Kanagawa which allowed christianity to be spread in Japan, albeit pretty unsuccesfully.

The Marshall Plan

From the description :

The Marshall Plan (from its enactment, officially the European Recovery Program [ERP]) was the primary plan of the United States for rebuilding and creating a stronger foundation for the allied countries of Europe, and repelling communism after World War II. The initiative was named for United States Secretary of State George Marshall and was largely the creation of State Department officials, especially William L. Clayton and George F. Kennan.

More at Google Video.