Vietnam Crucible

Vietnam Crucible is a documentary out from the US Army, totally censored I reckon as a response to the social despair and dis-conform felt in the american streets during this 10.000 days indo china conflict.

The real jewel of this piece of filmography relays on the rich footage of a powerful entity like the us army produced for the Office of  the Chief of Information by the Army Pictorial Center, in a documentary called “The Big picture”. During my many tours through the Vietnam War films and documentaries, I found it hard to find in one piece a really one of a kind wide angle on many of the US Army activities in South Vietnam.

Hueys in Vietnam

The millitary here pulls its best archive images to try to convince the antagonist US public on the necessity of this war and of the wide range of helping missions of US personnel for the benefit of vietnamese army and civilians alike.

This doc will take you through the training centers in the US prior sending the kids to the jungle, what kind of training rookies would go through and the tactics they exercised = no one was prepared to fight in the jungle (like the song says “the real prison is the jungle”), the real enemy of this war together with the booby traps.

GIs in Vietnam War

10.000 days were the days expended in the first war for the US to loose, after the three main victories of WWI, WWII and Korea. From the time the first penny reached french army pockets in colonial Indochina, followed by the delivery of advisors, military trainners and finally red blooded american soldiers as well.

Touching the void

Touching the Void is a 2003 documentary based on the book with the same title (1989 NCR Book Award) written by Joe Simpson.
Both book and documentary narrates the real tribulations of three Brits, two of them mountaineers: Joe Simpson and Simon Yate, and Richard Hawking, during their 1985 attempt on the conquering of an untouched mountain so far then: Peruvian Siula Grande (20,813 ft/ 6344 m.) by its West side.

Big mountain mama - Siula Grande

This peak was attempted by others in the past with no success and was The doc,was actually reconstructing the events by 3 actors representing the protagonists of the real voyage together with the
interviews of the mountaineers. Both Joe and Simon really came back to the famous mountain chain in order to do the documentary.

The Glacier Hell

And this is what really happened:
Joe Simpson, Simon Yate and Richard Hawking parted on 1985 on a climbing journey into the heart of the Huayhuash mountain range. Donkeys take them 5 miles from the base of the mountain and Simon and Joe leave Richard at base camp and the two began climbing the pick, first the rocky slopes, then passing by the lake, geting into the glacier and finally hitting the vertical icy walls of this beauty of nature. Joe leades, Simon folows, as in the old days: one rope connecting both and no staring back. They actually did fairly well on their ascent, though they were surprised of the dimension of the mountain and its peculiar shapes created by the icy snow.

Joe Simpson descending

The ascend took, due to the bad weather, more than the expected and they run out of gas for their stove = they couldn’t melt snow and in order to drink water. Finally the two of them made it into the top, where they could see the other neighbor peaks composing the Cordillera (mountain range) Huayhuash of the Peruvian Andes:
the tallest Yerupaja of 6617 m., Sarapo, Carnicero, etc,…

Joe Simpson during the slow descending

The weather wouldn’t let a lot of space for mistakes for it was very foggy and there was a snow storm while they began to descend the top. Joe was leading the way and on a decisive instant, committed the mistake of stepping forward without actually seeing what was before him and he felt and in consequent broke his leg. In a situation like that, the low temperatures could make your body freeze under the absent of movement.

Siula Grande area map

Mountaineering history was filled with cases of one partner leaving the injury climber behind so the fit one could get some help and go back to the mountain but Simon decided to take Joe on his descend by using a 300 m rope to let Joe slowly slip down hill. During this process, Simon let accidentally Joe slip to fast into the mouth of a deep cliff without knowing it.

Into the frozen cave

There there was Joe, holding with his whole body weight from the rope, watching the cliff and the 60 m of free falling and could not let Simon know what was happening. Simon, on the other hand, was anchored with his feet into a snow hole made with his feet and feeling the stress of the rope fruit of his partner whole wait pending on air, but Simon didn’t know it; what he knew was that his strength to keep the situation as it will soon reach to an end in which he would be left with only two options: either joining Joe in the free falling into the high cliff or cutting the rope so at least one mountaineer could make it and tell the story.

The base of the mountain

Simon made up his mind and extracted his Swiss knife from his pocket and used it. Here is where Joe’s adventure started with the free falling of tens of meters that must have killed him already, during his several days of solo descending though frozen caves, snowy slopes, rocky areas and all without water and a broken leg, very little odds to make it alive.

Through the glacier

In hindsight however, Simon, after descending till the place where Joe felt, he would even looked into it and search for his partner for he it was clear to him Joe could never have made it from that fall and continued towards the camp.

The three Britons + Joe way back on donkeys and rehabilitating

Finally a 2/3 less of body weight Joe will make it into the base camp after three days and five miles, delusional, thirsty to death and cold as hell to joing his two other partners that were preparing to leave the camp after several days of waiting for Joe, convinced Joe died.

Siula Grande + the lake

The film director, Kevin MacDonald, actually took the two mountaineers during the filming days in the mountain and Joe
experienced post traumatic stress syndrome.The film was release on 2004 and made during its first week 96 k usd and a global total of 13 mil usd to date. Touching the void won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the 2003 BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Awards and was featured at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.

Siula Grande map

After news arrived to England of the happenings in the mountain, the climbing community was furious with Simon but these news were not accurate and the real story was cleared out by Joe and Simon and both continue to this day, Joe after 6 surgical interventions, to climb worldwide. Joe always supported Simon on the decision he took at all moments.

Joe Simpson

In 1999, Carlos Buhler (US) and Mark Price climbed the Siula Grande by the west face and made it into the top, returning to the bottom by rappeling. Not many other climbers actually made it into this mountain due, among other factors, to the political dangerous situation created by the Sendero Luminoso (Maoist guerrilla terrorist movement).

“…3 guys will slide into your cell, wrap your ass into that blanket, and I don’t care how tough you think you are or how strong you might be, they are gonna kick your ass over the side of that bed and do bounty of your asshole by sticking a dick in it. So what do you do? I am gonna give you five options you can take: One, you go to the cop, you tell the officer three guys just ripped me off and you come back with the cop and say: that white guy, that black guy, that black guy…these three guys are going to the hole for 30-60 days and then the’ll be back in population, but the administration won’t let you into population for one of these guys associates will cut your ass from A to Z, so they gotta do something to protect you. Right up there on floor 2, there is a place called P.C., Protected Custody, we call it punk city, and there is were you are going to be all your time, and when you are in PC, you are locked 23 of the 24 hrs a day, you got 1 hr for exercise, and that’s it.But I can see a lot of tough guys right here, and when you are ripped off, the first thing you wanna do is to get even and after you cut one of them and you kill him, you are getting life in prison. Number three is deciding to shut up and keeping that to yourself, but these 3 guys have associates and these will also want to rip you off, and the associates of these associates also. Number four is the one that you all are gonna take, in the 10 years I’ve been here, I’ve seen it a thousand times: you are gonna walk around this joint or any joint you may be in, and you’re gonna find the guys that is real quite nobody bothers him and he don’t bothers nobody, he’s got all the respect in the world, you are gonna approach this guy and say hey my man, I got a very serious problem, Can you help me?

And after you …he is gonna tell you yeah, and you’ll see that five minutes after he said yeah,  after he said yeah, like somebody got in the P.A. system and told 1300 wild maniacs not to bother you. And now you’re telling you something, hey, this guy was alright, he got all this pressure off from you, and now he only did nothing, the only thing this guy did was to tell the whole population that you are his property, you are his kid, and when you become somebody’s kid in one of these joints, there are some things you will do: you gotta get up in the morning and get his coffee, you gotta clean his cell, you are gonna wash his drawers and sucks, and if he want some head, you are gonna give it to him, and if he wanna fuck you in your ass, you’ll let him, and if he wanna sell you to another prisoner, he’ll do that too…and he is here over a week, and became somebody’s kid, and did it for over a year,and the pressure of day to day living in one of these stinking joints crushed in it, makes him get into his cell, took his sheet and one around the pipe and another around his dumb mother fucker neck and he hangs himself, so now he is even, he ain’t gotta do that life beat, he ain’t gotta deal with this police and he ain’t gotta put up with his pimp…”

Scared Straight is a documentary from the seventies directed by A. Shapiro and narrated by Peter Falk.
This documentary takes place in the Rahway, New Jersey’s maximum security prison, a well known penitentiary establishment due to its dome on top of the building, visible from many places around.

The producers of Scared Straight gathered several youngsters from bad neighborhoods of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and took them to pay a visit to the well known prison. The purpose of the visit was to sit the juvenile delinquents in front of some of the most dangerous inmates and try to straighten them so they won’t end up in a cell block.

The youngsters were interviewed right before their visit to the penitentiary in order to tell a thing or two about themselves . They would introduced themselves and explain about their past felonies and what their expectations and plans for the future were. All of the teenagers seemed very amused with breaking the law and getting on with it, were self secure and had low expectations from the future.

The inmates to be, at the time they were conducted into the prison’s strolls and were placed for several seconds inside of a real cell, after they had been eyed raped and verbally molested (“gimme that one over there, I wanna do that one real nasty”) by the real inmates. Now you could tell they were not that comfortable with it, but this was just the beginning of their experience at Rahway.

The real lesson came when the young offenders were placed in a hall filled with high risk, high profile crime offenders: a drug dealer from Westchester County by the name of Mikie C., an arsonist and bomb builder from Bridgeport (Jon Shipiro), a gang member from Jersey City (Jerome Watts) and car thief from the Bronx (Jesus Rodriguez), among others, and life and death were the price they would pay for it. These inmates were the “lifers”, a group of hard core delinquents who made themselves into a program which goal was to deter potentially high risk youngsters to become themselves.

Once in the hall, the lifers would tell their horrific stories and their insides about hell in prison, waving their hands and shouting in order to scare the hell out of the kids, but this was nothing but the real thing, this was not acting, that was the scary part of it, these lifers were telling truths one again the other, no theater. The would explain about their stupid decisions who took them to dead roads and ultimately into the prison they are in, the real crime and hatred school were you don’t want to step. The real punishment are not the walls, the wardens or the conditions, the real hell is: the other humans, filled with depression, anger, hatred and in such high levels, that they need to share it with you, their victim.

After the visit the kids were really scared and were again asked about making that turn in life 180 degrees from that jail: all of them acknowledged to do so so they don’t have to see neither that dreaded place again nor their grotesque tenants.

At the second part of the documentary, after 20 years of lapse, again the cameras visit the once youngster in order to check on their whereabouts, whether the effect of the program was still vivid in their minds and more importantly, whether the program has preventing them from breaking the law. The results were still quite amazing: most of the youngsters then had no families of their own, were law abiding citizens and still kept a solid residue of the first part of the shooting. And I said most, for some were to become long term prison visitors and even find there his old “lifer”. Both teacher and student had failed.

This doc was released in 1978 uncensored, causing a big impact in viewers, the academy (this piece got its ward from the academy in 1979 for best documentary and 1 Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement – Informational Program to the film editor, Bob Niemack and another one for Outstanding Informational Program to the producer A. Shapiro) and even the law enforcement community, for many states introduced the scared straight program to many other high risk areas.

Scared Straight was only one of the many juvenile awareness programs for preventing juvenile delinquency and it was hardly criticized by A. Petrosino by gathering data in his study to prove that Scared Straight’s effects on youngsters were just the opposite of what it intended to be: it was in fact attracting the teenagers to commit more crimes.

People, this is the “real” hurricane that Bob Dylan talked about in his song of the same title, John Arthur Johnson (March 31, 1878 – June 10, 1946) or better known as Jack Johnson or nicknamed the “Galveston Giant”.
This African American fighter, born in Texas, lived during some troubled times where America was ruled and leaded by an all white regime, for which the “free negroes” where to be kept still apart, totally segregated from the white folks, even in the northern cities. Those northern cities, where the white folks have not even cohabited with the African Americans, where extremely anti black. But, hey, congressmen and even the president of the united states, in fact where quoted using prejudice comments, and the papers were not exception. Looks like Lincoln and the fathers of this nation meant “you are free to live where the white folk tells you to”; liberty under today’s understanding was not existent for an African american during the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

Jack started his career in a world where you couldn’t fight a Caucasian boxer, he had to make himself into the boxing scenario by fighting other African Americans pugilists, which they were actually tougher that their white colleagues. He reached the point where he had no opponent to fight, he won them all.

The white public worked extra hours trying to figure out how no member of the “supreme” white race was as strong, agile and smart in the ring as Jack was. Nevertheless, what really irritated the whites was not only the fact that Jack was becoming rich, and for a black person that wasn’t very common in those days, but it was the fact that Jack Johnson had a taste for white women. Jack commented many times that he is not to tell whom he can be with or not, he is no slave.

He received critics from both whites and blacks. Other African Americans criticized him for being extravagant, not humble,  dressing all those fancy clothes, speeding expensive cars and being all the time surrounded by white women. his own kind thought that this black figure could bring them only harm and tears with the white institutions. And they were not far from what unfolded.

This Ken Burns´s documentary is almost 100% composed of  black and white stills of the time  while some actual and original film footage is also used. Samuel L. Jackson plays Jack Johnson’s voice reading Jack’s diary and other textual sources of the time, mostly papers.  The camera moves around the old black and white pictures of the time to give the documentary a motin effect. Interviews are also part of this feature, where boxing experts and black celebrities comment on the times, Jack and his career.

Mr. Johnson was not a revolutionary, he was simply a man that lived before his time, he was not prejudiced against other races and colors, he just thought to be natural for any individual, to do his will in a free US, especially if you are rich and famous. He would travel the country with his manager and white companions fighting other boxers, most of them black as well and being generously paid for a night fight, what could take weeks to earn to an average colored man.

Jack was a calm, strong and smart fighter and this caught the eyes of the press. This fighter would not storm into the ring aggressively like many Irish boxers; he would take his time to avoid being punished at all time and deceived you, intelligently, to strike you at the right moment. He was undefeated, had a great smile and he was “cool”.
After his all American trip in search for the next contingent ended and he was the all black world champion, he had naturally to face white fighters and this he tried for a long time, being rejected by these, for they were sure they would be defeated and with them, the title would be lost to the “inferior”black race.

In a totally racist white America, by 1902, Jack won at least in 27 occasions, against white and black contingents until, at least, his first real chance to win the world title when he was 24: in L.A., against Jack Jeffries, the younger brother of at the time current World Champion, Jim Jeffries. Five rounds took Johnson to take down Jack Jeffries, at the end of which Jack Johnson said to Jim Jeffries: “I could take you too”. But Jim F. many times admitted that he would never fight J. Johnson for he didn’t want the title to go to a black man. Jeffries would retire to his ranch and hanged the gloves.

Jack ultimately took the World title from Canadian Tommy Burns in Australia in 1908 in front of an almost all white racist stadium. Knowing that the fight will make it to the american theaters, the police  stopped the camera man from continuing filming the fight in the midst of the 14th round, right at he moment were Mr. Johnson was to knock out the whit boxer in order to avoid more white race humiliation. At the age of 30, Jack Johnson was the heavyweight champion of the world. But the white supremacists will not accept his victory arguing that Burns had never held the title and that Jim Jeffries still was undefeated World champion.

Johnson moved to Chicago and started a new period in his live participating in shows in theaters where he would perform doing physical tricks showing his athletic capabilities. Later on, he would find himself other fighters to be defeated until Jim Jeffries agreed to come back to the ring for a $101.000 price and 2/3 of the filmographic rights. The chosen city to hold the fight would be Reno, Nevada, one of the cities where still boxing was legal. Jeffries had to get himself fit to the fight and managed to loose 25 pounds gained during the retirement years at his farm. In return, Johnson made big Jeffrie hit the ground in the 15th round, and later on Jeffrei would declare to his friends: “I could never win Jack Johnson at my best”.

Riots would follow all over the US, started by bitter white folks, taken the lives of many black people. A white fellow would try to assassinate Johnson at his house in Chicago.

The white public and authorities couldn’t digest interracial marriage and passed a bill prohibiting white women slavery and prostitution. The fact that Johnson had some prostitutes as personal companions, drove the FBI to open a case against Johnson, sent teams to look for someone to stand against the champion in a court of law and since they couldn’t defeat him in the ring, the did it in the court: an all white jury agreed (like Bob dylan would put it) and gave him 1 year in prison. Johnson scape and spent some time in foreign countries till he voluntarily accepted to spend the year in an american jail.

I will leave the rest for you to see.

Two links to nowadays issues on the topic of the documentary
1.- At this time congressman McCain presses Obama to pardon black boxer? and right this wrong made in the past.
2.- Judge refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple.
See this extracted from usatoday Posted by Doug Stanglin October 17, 2009:

Louisiana JP has no regrets over denying marriage license

Baton Rouge’s WAFB-TV reports that state Rep. Regina Barrow of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus has has signed off on a formal complaint requesting that the judiciary commission review the actions of the justice of the peace.
The justice of the peace at the center of the controversy tells WAFB TV in an exlcusive interview that he has no regrets over his actions and would do it again.
“It’s kind of hard to apologize for something that really and truly down in your heart you don’t feel you’ve done wrong,” Keith Bardwell told WAFB’s David Spunt on Saturday.
“I don’t regret what I did and if it ever came up again, I’d have to do the same thing,” Bardwell tells WAFB.
U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said in a statement Bardwell’s practices and comments were deeply disturbing.
Not only does his decision directly contradict Supreme Court rulings, it is an example of the ugly bigotry that divided our country for too long,” she said.
Louisiana’s governor and a U.S. senator today have called for the ouster of the justice of the peace who refused to marry an interracial couple, saying his actions clearly broke the law, the Associated Press reports.
The state’s Legislative Black Caucus and constitutional rights groups have also called for an investigation of Bardwell or his resignation.
Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal said in a statement a nine-member commission that reviews lawyers and judges in the state should investigate, the AP reports.
“Disciplinary action should be taken immediately — including the revoking of his license,” Jindal said.

Original post:
A Louisiana justice of the peace who refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple last week says he’s no racist but has drawn a sharp rebuke from civil rights organizations in the state, The Daily Star reports.
The couple say they plan to consult the U.S. Justice Department about filing a discrimination complaint.
Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, defends his actions by saying that it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long, The Star says.
“I’m not a racist,” Bardwell says. “I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house. My main concern is for the children.”
Beth Humphrey, 30, and her boyfriend, Terence McKay, 32, both of Hammond, said they tried to get a marriage license last week but were told the JP will not sign licenses for interracial marriages.
“I simply can’t believe he can do that. That’s blatant discrimination,” Humphrey says, according to the newspaper.
Louisiana ACLU Executive Director Marjorie R. Esman called Bardwell’s move both “tragic and illegal,” the newspaper says.
Pat Morris, local NAACP president, says she was shocked to hear that the choice of a spouse is still an issue in the parish.
Bardwell, who has been a JP for 34 years, says the state attorney general told him years ago that he would eventually get into trouble for not performing interracial marriages, The Star says.
“I told him if I do, I’ll resign,” Bardwell says. “I have rights too. I’m not obligated to do that just because I’m a justice of the peace.”

Ralph Nader, this is the name we are dealing here at this doc. To be sincere, he was a complete unknown to me, as a non US citizen, I knew of the existence of presidential candidates and public figures like Pat Buchanan or who run as independent candidates to the presidency of the United States several time but not Ralph.

Ralph Nader strikes me as the quintessential american, the kind of person that truly believes in the american values, dream, myths and democracy.
Coming from a unknown family of well educated with Cristian Lebanese origin, Ralph must be the most influential person in the US that has caused so much benefit to the little american man. He is a fighter for justice, for your rights, he was responsible to implement the security belts in cars, something that huge corporations like general motors were totally against, but they finally had to give in to Mr. Nader because Ralph was actually right in his arguments, no security belt = you raise the probability of not making it after the road accident.

Well, security belts is something we take for granted
today, it is by default a part of nowadays vehicles, well it wasn’t in the fifties, and there had to be a man who fought so we can actually live, that man was Ralph Nader.
He was also the person behind the implementation of regulations sucha as the obligation to print in cigarettes packages a label warning you that you are increasing your risk to develop illnesses like lung cancer.

He was as well the person pushing work place rights such as being the right to be told in advance by your boss whether a task or work position could harm your health by any specific reason such as gas inhalation, radiation exposure, etc,..
This guy expended his whole life to fight for the little men category, the one that 99.9 % of the people belong to and against the ones that by buying our politicians and later making pass laws more beneficial to their stocks, obviously in detriment to all citizens rights.

During his life of service to the public he organized, established and founded many organizations and institutions with the sole purpose of defending our environment, fighting for medic care, high taxes for the corporations and lower those of the less wealthy, the kind of things that many people leave behind for they are too scared or lack of energies to keep fighting all your life. Well Ralph has gained already a place in Paradise no doubts, for he is not corrupted, for he is not evil, for he is not egoist.

On the other side of the sphere, we have, as the doc depicts, not only the corporations who wouldn’t doubt it to play dirty against this exemplary citizen, but their best allies, the republican party. For when some “third party” agent, pays a visit to the right congressman, senator or even president, and places a certain amount of “zeros” in a certain account, the person behind the 3rd person is definitely getting something in return: help to make a law pass in congress, help to make a law fail,…in either case all is numerable and can be sum up in how many dollars I get from it.

Hey, do not forget, the republicans are not there along, they run, pass, push the same actions all together, the send troops to protect corporations oil in middle east, they don’t give a fuck for the middle american man, they care less for the soldiers who bravely fight for what their government tell them to.
The same republicans and democrats, the two truly representatives of corporations, they go side by side an stand behind the Commission of Presidential Debates, what? didn’t you  know who these guys are? Well they are one democrat and one republican deciding who can and cannot show up in televised election candidates debates, and guess who these two guys are going to let you view in the screen? Only their 2 candidates, other are not invited, very democratic…indeed.

After 2000 elections in the states, after the looser democrats lost it in Florida with Al Gore, lacking all minimal decency and self respect, they go and accused another candidate of their lose, very mature, very manipulating, very evil, what? you thought that only republicans use these shitty techniques? They are as power greedy as their republicans brothers, but they all attack the “bad example” given by Ralph Nader, because they dont want to have anybody ethical enough to fight for those that cannot, to speak for those that would never be heard, to spend his private time for “the others” without expecting in return.

As I said, after the 2000 campaign, democrats accused Nader of their own lose, pathetic! Nevertheless this extraordinary human being stays focused even at his 75 against those who curse them and would like him to step aside from the social consciousness, well fellas, if you democrats are afraid of this individual it’s because he reminds you of how you should be and behave, and
that is a menace to you. The fact is that Ralph Nader was the only candidate of the 2000 that was capable of filling the Madison Square Garden of people that actually paid to see him, no stripers, no band, no monkey jingle jangle like the huge 2 parties are used to, after they pay their “followers” to come to their rallies.
Everybody knows how democracies treat ethical and straight mind that speak what they think and mean what they say, they kill these, like any dictatorship, either physically or socially.

http://www.nader.org/

This is the story of a noble people, the Navajo, native Americans, and how time and again they were deceived by greed and evil, personalized by the White man, as usual. The documentary will examine the events surrounding the pass of the law PL 93-531 in 1974 that had in mind to relocate some 10.000 Dine (Navajo) native Americans from the land they lived in peace at with their Hopi neighbours. This is an Oscar winning Award documentary related by Martin Sheen and beautifully dressed by the music of Laura Nyro. The story comes way before the seventies, it actually did begin when Europeans came into the land and conquered by the sword every peace of it, with no sensitivity about its resources and peoples in it cohabiting. Ever since then till these days the white man, its governments and corporations gain control of these lands through deception and lies, dishonor and treason, for exploitation and greed for any transcendent things is all that the white cares about, and if in the process he has to starve to death woman, children and elders he will do, and in this process he will kill himself also and every drop of humanity and decency that could have been existed in him. And then, after he gathered the courage to kill himself as an ethical human being, he will show no mercy when he has to take with him as many other humans as he can, for nothing will cause him more pain than the one he has already inflicted in himself.

At first the white man came in and took the fertile lands for himself leaving the arid ones for the Indians, killing in the process as much Indians as he could, mixed with the thrill of a legal carnage, for there is nothing the white man likes the most than killing with a license. Then obliged the Indians to drop their weapons and promise never to fight and so they did the natives, for unlike the white man, they do believe in honor, truth and the power of your word.

Later on the white man inducted the natives to take the tomahawk and fight, when it served the interest of Washington, for they wanted them to be the code people in WWII and latter Vietnam.
But when they came back, the white man again discovered an interest in the lands of the Indians, now for what lied beneath it: gas, uranium, coal and oil. As in the way Washington acts, they sold the right to exploit these sacred land for low prices, Interior Secretary James Watt gave the order in 1983, bought the rights of exploiting the resources, giving the owners a mere 2-3 % of its value, and in exchange they left a polluted environment filled with toxic substances and wastes to totally destroy the land from its roots, to show others that there where the white man passes no root will ever thrive.

Most of the labor in the tribes had to finally work for the mines, like the Peabody Coal, and would end their days with lung cancer and raise their children raise of malformation to twice the US average due to all the toxic agents left behind.
This is only one of the examples where the white man in order to raise his children and send them to the best universities, he has to buy the politicians and journalists silence so they close their eyes when the white men annihilates all the good and gentleness. Peter La Farge, a native american songwriter, put in words and Johnny Cash and latter Bob Dylan put it in accords with “The Ballad of Ira Hayes”, where the war hero comes back to meet his slow death in the land dried by the white man.

Down the ditches for a thousand years
The water grew Ira’s peoples’ crops
‘Till the white man stole the water rights
And the sparklin’ water stopped.

Mars Underground tells the tale of a group of people – in this particular case – of scientists, that isn’t accepted by the mainstream decision-makers of their institutional (in this case, scientific) community.  This is the story of the quest for Mars and of the plan’s forefather, Dr. Robert Zubrin. After the Apollo mission to the moon, it was clear to Zubrin that NASA works better if it is entrusted with a mission that has only one, clear, objective – as was the case when they had to master a plan to conquer the moon. Unfortunately for Zubrin, there are politics involved in the NASA budgeting and high position egos are also at stake. How will someone come up with the plan, then?

The main idea is easy: Wasting money on pending space stations or on a second tour to the moon should be halted – and instead, a tour to the only known planet that
has the required resources for humanity to thrive, Mars – should be expedited.

Zubrin’s plan was already given a chance during the Bush senior administration, when NASA asked for $450 billions in expenses in order to finance a second visit to the moon and a first visit to Mars. As expected, the plan was not approved by the US Congress. Zubrin then stepped in and recalculated the whole visit to Mars and concluded that only $25 billions would actually be necessary. He tried to harness support for this plan in NASA and other scientific institutions was actually successful in doing so, until some high positioned NASA big-shots rejected his plan again.

The plan’s key, stated briefly, is to spend more time 0n researching Mars instead of 0n the combustibles to get there. Sticking a flag in the planet’s surface, as was done with the moon, will not suffice or be satisfactory this time around. The first cargo would wait until the orbits of Mars and Earth orbits are closest to each other and would then enter Mar’s atmosphere, saving astronomic sums in combustibles. The first cargo would also include only one space shuttle, that will produce – using a small nuclear  reactor – the sufficient amount of combustible needed for trip back from Mars to planet earth, from the moment it lands on Mars. In the meantime, a second space shuttle will take off from earth, with cosmonauts aboard, who will be expected to stay in Mars for 6 months – thus, dividing the space cargo into 2 parts, which will rotate and be connected to one another and allowing for the needed gravity to be created, with all of its beneficial implications.

The expedition of scientists would eventually set a record for staying in Mars for 1 year,   and will have sufficient time to conduct all warranted researches. Among them, is to try to recover any proof of earlier life that supposedly existed on Mars, another test would be to pollute the planet atmosphere so as to bring about a rise in temperature that will lead the iced waters to melt and water the soil. However, some in NASA still object to the whole idea and claim that staying on Mars will expose the astronauts to great danger emanating from radiation and raise the probability that they will be afflicted with cancer.
In response to this matter, Zubrin suggested that a centered area inside the spaceship will be built, in order to protect the passengers from the extreme radiation caused either by the Sun or other particles traveling in space. Zubrin also pointed out that  “These  cancer odds are greater for smokers, only a 1% increase in the chances of developing cancer would grow for those members of the crew.

Planet B-Boy is an excellent documentary about Hip-Hop dancing, music, the hip-hop protagonists and their life style. The guys in the doc are, no doubt, completely sporty, dedicated youngsters, that burn long hours every day on rehearsing movements, jingle jangling and choreography which originated in athletics, breakdance, martial arts and disco.

People from all over the planet gather in Germany and push themselves to get the title of Best Hip Hop group in the world, as representatives of their home countries. The prize is not monetary, the drive is purely honor – to go back to their countries of origin, and let the world know who is simply the best at this field. Many may think that this is a western “thing”, but it is amazing to see how this culture impregnated many young kids of Japan and Korea. It is also astonishing to see the amounts of adrenaline and energy that the dancers convey to the spectators, how esthetically they perform, with rhythm being primordial and acrobatics crucial. Be ready to feel the thrill.

Africa Addio (En: “Africa Blood and Guts”) is an Italian documentary prepared in 1966 by Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi, about the transition that African States made, from colonial provinces to free countries. This piece is indistinguishably a part of a time when certain norms of film shooting were acceptable, such as editing voices without restraint, adding effects unmercifully as well as other sounds, but the peculiar aspect of this doc lies in the veracity of its images.

It describes an important part of the history of Africa and of the countries who made it part of their colonies such as Great Britain, Portugal, Belgium, France or the Boers. In most of the cases, these transitions were bloody and cruel, like only humans can carry out, leaving the weakest link to receive the worst blow. After the departure of the white man, local leaders, tribes and guerrillas started to fill the vacuum of power left behind, even through the commission of what we call today crimes against humanity.

Rape, amputations of body parts and cannibalism were only part of the means used to express the hatred against the white man and against anyone related to them. And so, missionaries, Arabs, Muslims, Indians and others were targeted. Needless to say that wild fauna was the first to be massacred, as dire times arrived.

Although the white man formed an intrinsic part of modern slavery and the exploitation of the African natives, well before the first white man touched this continent, slavery was a common practice conducted between different black tribes. According to some historians, Arabs were also responsible for a major part of this business and for the enslavement of almost 18 million persons along the years, compared with 12 million slaves that were transferred to the Americas. Nevertheless, white people were responsible for the second wave of African exploitation, by appropriating the African continental resources to the benefit of western countries, but let´s not forget – always with the collaboration of local politicians, leaders and chiefs.

All and all, and until the last of the colonies, African black natives were freed for the benefit of a small black elite who keeps enriching itself at the expense of the multitudes.

Narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, this is an eye-opening documentary about human cruelty inflicted upon animals, and about the hypocrisy of humans, who unhealthily, immorally and abusively consume everything  that comes from animals, conduct experiments that aren’t lifesaving on them, use them for entertainment purposes, skin them, etc.,…and all in a mass-production way, so as  “to cut expenses”. For example, “let’s keep skinning the foxes but without the expensive anesthesia”.

We humans are hypocritical because at the same time we involve ourselves in this carnival of the senses, we turn our heads and intentionally ignore others’ suffering, we will eat our foie gras but will comfortably choose not to khow how it was “produced” and will even say “why would they show us these things on tv?”. Well, if we have what it takes to enjoy the foie gras, we better have the stomach to deal with the torments the duck goes through, just to be served on our adorned platter. The next time you eat anything that is made of cows, be aware that it was most probably de-horned without any anesthesia, that it was given antibiotics, and that its excruciating death was as slow and Dantesque as you can imagine any death in a torture chamber to be.

Animals skinned alive for our clothing

We are a global species and are the end consumers of all of these products originating from the animal world. We know very well that animals are helpless when it comes to defending themselves against us, more sophisiticated elevated sense of being. We also know that the indifference and insensitivity we have developed over the years toward the suffering of our fellow-animals, will only lead us to be bound to do the same against under another human, or as Leo Tolstoy put it: “As long as we have slaughtered houses we will have combat fields”; For you cannot be the same individual after you cut a small’s animal testicles with your bare hands, or when you burn an animal alive, or when you skin another animal alive, or when you see animals agonizing from pain after the blows you have inflicted on them. We are what we eat and what we do, and no painful death can go unfelt  in the meat we eat.

slow painful death so we can eat a steak, totally concious in video

Next time you go to a zoo, don’t buy a ticket when they tell you “that it’s educational”, for there is nothing that you can learn from an animal in captivity, it is either a physically or mentally sick animal.

Also, the next time you visit San Fermin or a rodeo, acknowledge the fact that you are  a sadist, or that you don’t mind watching another being’s suffering till death just for you to “have fun”.

The nest time you visit a circus, bear in mind that you are only watching how an animal was taught to perform under physical constraint and fear of physical punishment, only to perform tricks for your eyes. Do not be surprised if the animal eventually retaliates.

The next time you take your usual Bayer aspirin or the product of any other corporation, Colgate or the others, keep in mind the great number of animals that have been systematically tortureed, even when they know that if a testing on an animal had positive results, they will still have to test on humans.

Next time you see someone from Al Qaeda decapitate some journalist’s head, be aware that he probably “practiced” previously with animals, so that you and I can eat them.

It is in our hands to decide whether we should cause so much suffering, torture, agony and slow death during the lives of animals so that they may serve to feed us, dress us and entertain us.  If there is a G-d out there, I definitely do not think that he would ever take all of this that we are committing, for granted.

Score: 10