Reviews (DVD Only) – Page 20 – Public Intelligence Blog

Truly Extraordinary, Absolutely Worth Buying and Absorbing,

July 1, 2005

Marlee Matlin

EDIT of 20 Dec 07 to add links and one line at end.

This DVD is truly extraordinary. I have nine note cards on it. Here is my very positive summary of key points in this very serious DVD that pulls together credible useful thoughts from some real professionals. This movie held my counter-culture teen-agers attention for a full 45 minutes, which is quite extraordinary in and of itself.

1) Multiple realities exist side by side across time and space.

2) You can move outside “your” reality to see yourself from outside or from another reality.

3) Major problem in our culture today is that children are not learning to think or imagine broadly.

4) Much of what we are taught to think is not true.

5) Modern materialism and most religions have stripped individuals of their ability to see that they are both responsible, and capable, for affecting their environment.

5) Quantum physics opens new ways for individuals to grab responsibility and *live* life to its fullest.

6) New model says that internal reality is more important that external reality, and it does impact on the environment.

7) Brains do not know difference between what one sees and what one imagines.

8) Natives upon Columbus' arrival could not “see” the ships–one cannot see what one has not learned to imagine.

9) Sub-atomic world is beyond current physics–it is not about the matter, but rather about the empty space between the matter. It is not matter that is a live but rather the empty space (as in a basketball) that is full of information.

10) Nothing material exists without interaction with a thinking being. Material is NOT independent, on the contrary, it is totally dependent on perception. Perception is about possibilities, not absolutes.

11) Consciousness drives material reality; perception activates signatures.

12) 4000+ meditators dropped crime in Washington DC by 25%. The Chief of Police was a skeptic, and then a believer. People, and their thoughts, DO affect reality.

13) Water is responsive to thinking, more so than other materials. Photographs of water crystallization after good thinking (e.g. thank you written on side of water bottle) are quite amazing.

14) If thoughts can crystallize water, imagine what the collective intelligence and good will of all mankind could do?

15) There are different levels of truth but the deepest level of truth is that we are all one. We are at one with the larger whole that is God (community) and with one another, but religions have become corrupt and prescriptive rather than enlightened and inclusive. Control of God's image is the height of arrogance.

16) Emotion is a memory enhanced by chemical addition (internal). Problem for most is that they are operating as if today were yesterday, applying old mindsets, rather than working as a part of a larger integrated whole.

17) Mind DOES influence the body. Emotional toxins and habits are as powerful as heroin.

18) We must learn to dream better, and to dream bigger dreams.

19) Definitions of beauty and valor (like definitions of crime and insanity) are illusory, false, and have no authority. There is more to life than the definitions, you simply need to seek it and see it.

20) Change your choices, change your life. Be ready for a chemical withdrawal as you abandon bad old habits.

21) It's not about good or evil, black or white. Life is nuances, to be *experienced*. You are you own pilot, you are your own priest.

22) You co-create your future by your thinking, imagination, wanting, your choices. PAY ATTENTION and you will get what you wish.

23) You can influence your body, others, the environment, and the future.

24) We are all one; we are not alone; we are connected; we are collective intelligence; we are, in the whole, both God and Heaven on Earth.

I buy into this. This is serious good stuff.

I used to turn off when people talked about the paranormal, even through CIA spent a lot of money on “remote viewing” and I have two books in line waiting to be read; here are a few links:
Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution
Integral Psychology : Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace

2005/06/012009/12/04

Review DVD: Control Room

5 Star, Information Operations, Media, Misinformation & Propaganda, Reviews (DVD Only)

Al Jazeera 5, CENTCOM 1, Western Journalists 0,

June 1, 2005

Samir Khader

This is a very worthy and serious documentary. As one who spends a lot of time thinking about “strategic communication” and public diplomacy and public perception, I cannot think of a more important reference point for any US official interested in understanding where we are going wrong in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Bottom line up front: Al Jazerra gets 5 points from me, in comparison with CENTCOM 1 (for naive earnestness), and Western journalists 0 (just generally stupid).

There are some spectacular flashes of insight in this documentary. My favorite is when one of the Al Jazeera editors says that the US cannot have it both ways–it cannot be the most powerful nation in the world, exercising that power (implicitly, capriciously and dangerously and harmfully) and at the same time expect the world to love it for doing so.

Over-all–and I am perhaps not the norm, having lived overseas most of my life as the son of an oilman, as a Marine Corps infantry officer, and as a clandestine case officer–I have to say that in the real world, Al Jazerra is wiping the deck with our ass. You may not like my opinion, but there are a couple of billion people that probably agree with that opinion, and most of them, right now, are not very respectful of the old USA.

It is not possible to be effective as a strategic communicator, or to practice public diplomacy, without first understanding what your target audience is seeing, hearing, and thinking. This DVD is a superb starting point and I have total respect for what has been presented here.

2005/01/292009/12/04

Review DVD: Bush’s Brain (2004)

4 Star, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Politics, Reviews (DVD Only)

Explains McCain's Loss,

January 29, 2005

Lee Atwater

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add link to the others books on what Rove did to us.

This is quite a chilling movie, and it makes even more sense to me now that I have finished reading Lee Harris' “Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History.” Never mind John Kerry, a world-class loser with a wife to match–what this movie explains is how and why John McCain lost the South Carolina primary to Karl Rove's dirty tricks.

What really chilled me is not that Rove plays dirty against Democrats, but that he plays dirty against Republicans.

The movie begins with an early look at Karl Rove's start with Lee Atwater teaching young Republicans, including “dirty tricks” that the movie takes pains to point out are questionable but not illegal.

Included in the middle year's are stories with on the record interviews and replays of old media stories that make it quite clear that Rove is not above planting a “bug” in his own office (one with a six hour battery life, only 15 minutes of which have expired by the time it is “found”), nor of co-opting a single rogue FBI special agent to “coincidentally” have opponents under supeona just when it matters most.

Over the course of the movie, one learns that Rove is a master of playing the politcal “game” (only his version actually kills people) at three levels:

1) Disciplined overt politics–staying on message
2) Underlying messages that are legal but misdirecting
3) Underlying dirty tricks that are out and out unethical

This is where I was able to see the connection between Rove's playbook from Texas, and how John McCain was done in after a roaring victory in New Hampshire, when the South Carolina primary suddenly produced carefully orchestrated whisper campaigns about McCain's mental abilities, his black “love child” (actually an adopted orphan), and his family member's drug addition (an open issue being dealt with but made to sound terrible). In all this John Weaver, McCain's political director, shines as a voice of reason and honor when discussing the details.

Over-all the movie suggests that Rove has brought politics to a new low in ethics, and a new high in efficiency. Rove is a killing machine. He turned 9-11, and the war on Iraq, into political devices, and suggests that Rove, who has never served in uniform or in combat (nor have Cheney, Rice, or Wolfowitz), is essentially sacrificing American lives to keep his candidate in power.

The movie comes to closure with more than one commentator from Texas, where they all know Karl Rove *real well,* saying, “There's no rule he won't break.”

Well, as a moderate Republican, I find this troubling. What was done to John McCain in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary, and to Max Cleland of South Carolina in his Senate race, strike me as so reprehensible as to call into question the future of the Republican Party.

I recommend this movie to every American, but especially to Republicans, in whose name some things are being done that should shame us all.

2005/01/152009/12/04

Review DVD: Tibet – Cry of the Snow Lion (2003)

6 Star Top 10%, Atrocities & Genocide, Consciousness & Social IQ, Crime (Government), Culture, Research, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Philosophy, Religion & Politics of Religion, Reviews (DVD Only), Truth & Reconciliation, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Liberation through Knowledge: Absorbing,

January 15, 2005

Shirley Knight

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add other significant DVDs.

Halfway through this probing, sensitive, sharp, spiritual documentary film I thought to myself, “wow, this is what CIA covert propaganda *should* be able to produce” and then instantly corrected myself: David Ignatius of the Washington Post has it right: overt action is vastly superior to covert action, and in this instance, a loose coalition of kindred spirits have come together in time and focus to produce something remarkable, something much more threatening to Chinese behavior in Tibet than any military armada: a collage of truth-telling.

This is a world-class documentary, full of vivid images, well-blended historical and modern footage, and extremely good production planning and voice over editing. Early on I was struck by the similarity between the Tibetans, the Native Americans, and the Guatemalan Indians, all of whom share some basic moral precepts.

The portrait painted of Tibet as a nation committed to the concept of spiritual education, is a compelling one. One analogy offered up by one of those interviewed I found especially compelling: Tibet was spending 85% of its budget on spiritual development, with 10% of its population in monasteries–this being the equivalent of America redirecting its entire defense budget toward education.

The documentary will clearly infuriate the Chinese, for it carefully itemizes the many ways in which Tibet is uniquely Tibetan, including in its language, greatly distant from Chinese. Shown are Chinese torture instruments, including electrical cattle prods used in the vaginas of nuns and the mouths and throats of monks. The photographs are graphic.

Also covered are the genocide, the torture, imposed by the Chinese, as well as the loss of morality–625 brothels to serve the Chinese garrison.

The documentary carefully covered the death of 30 million Chinese and half the Tibetan population that resulted from Mao Tse Tung's order that Tibet grow wheat instead of barley–shades of the Soviet Union and its failed socialist agriculture.

6,200 monasteries destroyed–as one Tibetan government official in exile notes, this is not just places of worship, but places of scholarship and cradles of a specific civilization.

A section of the documentary focuses on CIA training of the Tibetan resistance, the conclusion of the Tibetans themselves that CIA was not serious, only providing enough support to enable harassment but not victory, and then the coup de grace–Henry Kissinger selling Tibet out for the sake of engagement.

A very powerful section points out that the US, with its 89 billion dollar a year trade imbalance with China, is in fact subsidizing Chinese repression and genocide, not only against Tibet, but against Muslims in China and other separatists elements. US business, according to this documentary, has sold democracy out in favor of profit.

As the documentary drew to an end, I found myself asking again: is this CIA propaganda, as the Chinese would have us believe? Or is the Dalai Lama is fact the representative of a group that may well be the soul of the world, a kernel of hope for non-violent resolution to all that ails us? I found myself wishing that we did indeed have a more effective People's Intelligence Agency (PIA), one that I could trust, one that we could all trust, to actually get the facts right, without political, economic, or cultural manipulation and distortion.

I was educated by this documentary. I had never really thought about Tibet as other than a spiritual oddity. This documentary very effectively points out that it can and should be a zone of peace, not least because it is situated between China and India, two of the most populous nations on earth, between them holding one half of the earth's population, and both of them nuclear *and* poor.

The documentary ends on a high note. It explicitly calls for liberation through knowledge and compassion, and one educator is very effective in pointing out that no one expected apartheid to end in South Africa, or the Berlin Wall to fall, yet both came to pass. Tibet, by this telling, is next.

This is an eye-opening, intelligent, visually-stimulating, and spiritually unnerving documentary. These people–both the observers and the observed–have served us all well.

2004/11/192009/12/04

Review DVD: Bonhoeffer (2003)

6 Star Top 10%, Consciousness & Social IQ, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Philosophy, Religion & Politics of Religion, Reviews (DVD Only)

Beyond 5 Stars–Gripping Good Stuff,

November 19, 2004

Eberhard Bethge

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links.

My short notes on this incredible film:

* Possible for 1 man to detect evil early on, and to resist evil

* Bonhoeffer excelled at pointing out that for any man or nation to presume that God takes sides or endorses any particular position is very pretentious

* God is *community* — God is present to the extent that community of man thrives

* If the working poor turn away from the church, it is failing; if the petty bourgeoisie flock to the church it is failing and pretentious

* In times of economic crisis, fascism can be attractive to BOTH the industrial leaders AND the forlorn working poor

* New York fellowship focused him on social ethics, energized him with exposure to writing by black authors, pious singing within black churches

* Purpose of ethics and theology is to change the world for the better

* Adam Clayton Powell Senior made the black church in New York into a political and social force

* Black Christ has rapturous passion, contrasts sharply with white didactic Christ

* Friendships with pacifists taught him that “nothing in scripture permits man to destroy the body of Christ” (the community)

* For every person that is unemployed, 2-5 go hungry

* Hitler called on God, claimed God, Quoted God. For Hitler, God was a “completely ideological God” according to Bishop Wolfgang Huber, one of those interviewed

* Church in Germany was guilty of preparing the way for Hitler, setting the stage for an authoritarian or “acceptance” state

* At 27, Bonhoeffer addressed nation via radio, suggested that the leader as “idol” was sacrilegious. His broadcast was cut off.

* Bonhoeffer brought the Bible alive–taught his student to read the Bible as if God were *here and now* speaking to *you* personally.

* Hitler called on God, but he was actually in competition with God for the role of SAVIOR of the German people.

* Hitler legalized church prejudices against Jews going back to Martin Luther

* Must distinguish between anti-Judaism (conflict of faiths) and anti-Semitism (racism)

* According to Bonhoeffer, Church has three options in times of crisis and state abuse:

1) Ask the State if its actions are legitimate

2) Support the victims (Bonhoeffer is specific in saying Church must support all victims, even if not part of the Church)

3) Oppose the State

His work focused on the ease with which false loyalty (e.g. to a President rather than a Constitution), false Church is a easy path for most.

Catholic Church signed a Concordat with Hitler, agreeing not to resist.

Others did resist–Pastors Emergency League, claimed 7,000 members out of a possible 27,000

Bonhoeffer was so exceptional that he was invited by Gandhi to visit him

“Peace is the opposite of security” (one is actual, the other is enforced)

* Study, service, prayer.

* Oppressed people of color have piety and also have something to teach to all Christians.

* What cost oppression? The cost is the loss of God.

* War, and the persecution of Jews, are injustice incarnate. “One is not true to God when one has a lax conception of war or of justice,” This according to Bishop Albrecht Schonherr

* Bonhoeffer was a double agent, engaged in plot to kill Hitler

* Ethics is situational–will of God has infinite variations. Ethics is less about principles and more about flexibility. Ethics is an act of faith–every minute, every day.

* Hitler dominated Germany for over a decade.

* Bonhoeffer was marched naked to the gallows and hung. His last words, “For me this is the beginning of life.”

* His message: live completely in this world–thus do we throw ourselves into the hands of God–take ALL suffering seriously.

This was a moving DVD. It offers superb organization, superb visuals, and superb choral music in the background. This DVD was so thoughtful I found myself replaying sections 3X to 5X.

This was so good it has focused me on my next book–instead of national security (forced peace)–I am going for INFORMATION PEACEKEEPING: Ethics, Theology, and Collective Intelligence (inherent peace).

If you've gotten this far, you need to see this DVD. Available at Blockbuster and also well worth buying as a recurring reflection piece .

2004/08/252009/12/04

Review DVD: Gandhi (1982)

6 Star Top 10%, Complexity & Resilience, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, DVD - Light, Intelligence (Collective & Quantum), Intelligence (Wealth of Networks), Leadership, Religion & Politics of Religion, Reviews (DVD Only)

Basic Introduction to Achieving World Peace,

August 25, 2004

Ben Kingsley

Edit: The core point below is that clashes of millions of adherents of different religions, i.e. Catholic versus everyone else, Muslim versus Hindu, are not new, and the past does indeed demonstrate that force of arms is an ineffective means–indeed a pathological means that makes it worse–for addressing such schisms. Gandhi, and Gandhi alone, has shown the way with proven success at the level of Nations and Peoples.

9-11 focused some of us, but not enough of us, on the monumental issues of war and peace such as have not occurred since World War II–the Cold War being, as Derek Leebaert documents so well in “The Fifty Year Wound”, a false war, one with enormous costs to all mankind.

I bought this video recently–having seen it many years ago–to refresh my memory on the essence of Gandhi and his proven concept of non-violent resistance. The DVD capped several years of reading in the non-fiction national security arena (see my other 470+ reviews on war and peace), and has proven to be the ultimate primer as well as the ultimate Master's Seminar.

This is the movie to watch if you want to get down to fundamentals; Gandhi's three basic lessons of war and peace as shown so beautifully here are these: 1) the only devils are in our own minds; 2) the separation of Pakistan and India, like the separation of Palestine and Israel, violated the civil order between Muslims and Hindus, and destroyed all that Gandhi had achieved: peaceful coexistence of peoples within a single nation; and 3) in the end, after great pain, truth and love inevitably triumph.

Although I was tempted to fast-forward to the current six-front 100-year war between radicalized Islam and militarized America on the one hand, and between impoverished billions and corporate America on the other, I paused to reflect on the past first. It was the Spanish who first committed genocide against the American Indians, who expelled the Muslims and then the Jews, who sponsored the Inquisition and the Crusades. It was the British who stupidly pitted Muslim against Hindu in their attempts to assert their imperial will–nothing makes them look as stupid as the movie's coverage of how the “Empire” forbade the locals to take salt from their very own sea: the Indian Sea.

Now I fast forward to our current circumstances, with special reference to Jonathan Schell's “Unconquerable World,” perhaps complemented by Clyde Prestowitz' “Rogue Nation” (the US), and Chalmers Johnson “Sorrows of Empire”–and the other 470+ books relevant to war and peace today. Bottom line: boy, have we screwed this up. First off, invading Afghanistan made Al Qaeda stronger, not weaker. Second off, invading Iraq has made America weaker, not stronger, and inflamed the Middle East, Central Asia, Eastern Africa, the Pacific Rim, and the Muslim populations in the Americas.

We need a Gandhi. I cannot think of any modern leader who is even close, although the current Pope has certainly tried. This movie depicts, in terms stark and relevant, the opposite of 9-11–the clash of mobs driven by ideology or religion, completely oblivious to the core facts that Gandhi tried to teach: non-violence, love, truth, the Golden Rule. All else is evil.

If you have time for just one serious DVD, this is it.

2004/06/212009/12/04

Review DVD: The Fog of War – Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara

6 Star Top 10%, Biography & Memoirs, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Insurgency & Revolution, Military & Pentagon Power, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Reviews (DVD Only), War & Face of Battle

Every Miltary Person, and Ideally Every Citizen, SHould View,

June 21, 2004

Robert McNamara

This is the only documentary film to make it on to my list of 470+ non-fiction books relevant to national security & global issues. It is superb, and below I summarize the 11 lessons with the intent of documenting how every military person, and ideally every citizen, should view this film.As the U.S. military goes through the motions of “transformation” while beset by the intense demands of being engaged in a 100-year war on six-fronts around the world, all of them against asymmetric threats that we do not understand and are not trained, equipped, nor organized to deal with, this film is startlingly relevant and cautionary.

LESSON 1: EMPHATHIZE WITH YOUR ENEMY. We must see ourselves as they see us, we must see their circumstances as they see them, before we can be effective.

LESSON 2: RATIONALITY WILL NOT SAVE US. Human fallibility combined with weapons of mass destruction will destroy nations. Castro has 162 nuclear warheads already on the island, and was willing to accept annihilation of Cuba as the cost of upholding his independence and honor.

LESSON 3: THERE'S SOMETHING BEYOND ONESELF. History, philosophy, values, responsibility–think beyond your niche.

LESSON 4: MAXIMIZE EFFICIENCY. Although this was McNamara's hallmark, and the fog of war demands redundancy, he has a point: we are not maximizing how we spend $500B a year toward world peace, and are instead spending it toward the enrichment of select corporations, building things that don't work in the real world.

LESSON 5: PROPORTIONALITY SHOULD BE A GUIDELINE IN WAR. McNamara is clearly still grieving over the fact that we firebombed 67 Japanese cities before we ever considered using the atomic bomb, destroying 50% to 90% of those cities.

LESSON 6: GET THE DATA. It is truly appalling to realize that the U.S. Government is operating on 2% of the relevant information, in part because it relies heavily on foreign allies for what they want to tell us, in part because the U.S. Government has turned its back on open sources of information. Marc Sageman, in “Understanding Networks of Terror”, knows more about terrorism today than do the CIA or FBI, because he went after the open source data and found the patterns. There is a quote from a Senator in the 1960's that is also compelling, talking about “an instability of ideas” that are not understood, leading to erroneous decisions in Washington. For want of action, we forsook thought.

LESSON 7: BELIEF & SEEING ARE BOTH OFTEN WRONG. With specific reference to the Gulf of Tonkin, as well as the failure of America to understand that the Vietnamese were fighting for independence from China, not just the French or the corrupt Catholic regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, McNamara blows a big whole in the way the neo-cons “believed” themselves into the Iraq war, and took America's blood, treasure, and spirit with them.

LESSON 8: BE PREPARED TO RE-EXAMINE YOUR REASONING. McNamara is blunt here: if your allies are not willing to go along with you, consider the possibility that your reasoning is flawed.

LESSON 9: IN ORDER TO DO GOOD, YOU MAY HAVE TO ENGAGE IN EVIL. Having said that, he recommends that we try to maximize ethics and minimize evil. He is specifically concerned with what constitutes a war crime under changing circumstances.

LESSON 10: NEVER SAY NEVER. Reality and the future are not predictable. There are no absolutes. We should spend more time thinking back over what might have been, be more flexible about taking alternative courses of action in the future.

LESSON 11: YOU CAN'T CHANGE HUMAN NATURE. There will always be war, and disaster. We can try to understand it, and deal with it, while seeking to calm our own human nature that wants to strike back in ways that are counter-productive.

For those who dismiss this movie because McNamara does not apologize, I say “pay attention.” The entire movie is an apology, both direct from McNamara, and indirect in the manner that the producer and director have peeled away his outer defenses and shown his remorse at key points in the film. I strongly recommend the book by McNamara and James Blight, “WILSON's GHOST.” In my humble opinion, in the context of the 470+ non-fiction books I have reviewed here, McNamara and Bill Colby are the two Viet-Nam era officials that have grown the most since leaving office. He has acquired wisdom since leaving defense, and we ignore this wisdom at our peril.

Category: Reviews (DVD Only)

Review DVD: What the Bleep Do We Know!?