**SPOILERS **
Starting from the beginning, Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech comes across as that much more sinister. As this audio plays over a satellite view of Earth, you sort of get a sense of how small Earth is in the entire universe.
We get to a series of uncut footage of soldiers in WWI, fighting in the trenches, and how soldiers stopped fighting on both sides. Why? To celebrate Christmas. They start dancing around like old friends. The generals saw this, didn’t like the looks of it, so they fired revolvers into the air to start the fighting again, all the while the infantrymen hated them.
Moral of the story to me: Even in WWI, soldiers were pawns in a racket.
How wise, how brave of the quoting of Smedley Butler’s “War is a Racket.” He’s written out of American history, so I suppose that’s brave in America to even mention him. This is starting to bring the questions of very few being rich off war in the early 1900’s, at least.
Bringing up Margret Thatcher proves a very valid point, and a very dangerous one at that. She’s as guilty as the men before, after, and around her. Among other points, a woman can execute white supremacy, class warfare, and corruption, just as well as the men. I do wish they introduced more women in the arms trade, just because it would further the point of women being just as guilty, than women being underestimated.
Seeing this now, and being rather young when Bush II and Blair invaded Iraq together, I see similarities in the Thatcher/Reagan and Bush II/Blair relationships, but that might just be me.
As soon as you hear from Riccardo Privitera that global politics is run at the whims of the arms trade, everything suddenly clicks. I’m glad that his life is shown as somewhat glamorous, because I’m sure it was. You see it everywhere in stories of corruption. But there’s a horrific aspect as well, which is the purpose of this documentary.
You immediately get the impression money is no object in the arms trade, it’s more money than most people can imagine in the working class. The arms trade even benefits politician’s families, an example is mentioned: Margaret Thatcher’s son, Mark.
Privitera mentions a medium sized gun he has in his house is worth 3500 Euros, and shows it to the camera. In USD, it’s $4081.32. He says,” Politicians are very much like prostitutes, only more expensive. Politicians have about as much power as the ranking exec at Lockheed Martin. At the end of the day, they do as their told.”
This is confirming terrifying suspicions and ideas. Politicians are simply puppets.
There’s a following sequence that I equated with a Kubrick film, specifically, Dr. Strangelove. It’s where Margret Thatcher greets the Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, and they parade themselves in front of camera with the crown princes (I assume), then the sequence cuts to BAE advertisements over cheerful music. It sounds like Freddie Mercury, but I could be wrong.
The breaking down of payments via BAE Systems, the distribution, down to the local level, is fascinating. I wish there was more into it.
I am thrilled Jeremy Scahill and Chris Hedges were brought on, MASSIVE kudos to the crew.
The Iran-Contra event is brought to light. It’s almost like Watergate where it’s a historical scandal, but few of us in America understand the significance of such an event. The big picture isn’t there, but the singular event is. “We miss the overall,” as Hal Holbrook says in All the President’s Men (1976).
We also learn from Jeremy Scahill just how Dick Cheney, former American VP, fits into this vast, complex puzzle of the arms trade, and how he got his hooks into the White House. The entire path Dick Cheney took is very indicative of the process, how politics actually works in America, and some places worldwide.
"This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
-Dwight Eisenhower
"It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such."
These sayings are proven time and again, and especially when we learn how Tony Blair furthered the arms trade to South Africa to Nelson Mandela’s successor.
The murder and torture sequences are stomach churning to watch. In a night vision sequence, A man is being taken from (who I assume is) his mom. She’s rightfully grilling the soldiers,” When? When will you let him go?”
I couldn’t imagine this happening to anyone. ANYONE. It's disgusting and terrifying.
Riccardo Privitera talks about how Lockheed Martin operates, like an octopus, and they have their goons everywhere in the government, he says. “They make the mafia look like a bunch of school boys.”
Cut to Cynthia McKinney, ex Congresswoman for the Green Party in America, taking on Donald Rumsfeld, confronting him on human trafficking facilitated /participated in by DynCorps, a defense contractor. She’s talking about how trillions of dollars went missing in the Pentagon, and how the Pentagon is stalling on accountability. “The big boys” as she calls them, issued death threats against her, and she finds out via the FBI. She takes it as part of the job. She knows that bringing them to light makes them afraid. If you don’t call them out, how can they be stopped? This is when you have only a fraction of an understanding of how powerful war contractors are.
Colin Powell was a General in Vietnam. Now, he’s just as guilty as the ones who sent him to war, as we revisit him trying to appeal to the UN so America can invade Iraq in 2003.
I LOVE how Donald Rumsfeld is caught red handed! And among others, Tony Blair is fried too! And it’s BEAUTIFUL!
The end kind of runs through current events. But the point is there: The Military Industrial Complex controls everything the government does.
The documentary ends with the playing of the WWI embrace footage referred to in the beginning. I like it, it’s powerful! If you mentioned this to the average person in America, no one would believe it. ‘They stopped fighting during WWI like this? NO!’
This does leave you feeling stupid to one degree or another. This happened right in front of our faces, these events, meetings, parties, but we didn’t see it.
Did we truly not see it? Or did we simply ignore it?
Out of $13.50 USD AMC Theatres charges for one ticket, it is worth $12.50 USD. This documentary is damn near perfect and eye opening, go see it.
