Original subtitles

Every day we turn on the TV and there's more bad news--

another environmental catastrophe

somewhere or more starving refugees or innocent victims

in war zones.

And most of us are busy trying to make ends meet

in our own lives, and we see these images

and feel helpless to do anything about it.

I think the deep shame we feel about that is paralyzing,

and certainly one of the reasons that we turn away.

The object of this documentary is

to look at the flaws in our systems

that allow these things to happen

and the mechanisms that actually work against us,

and to show you a very simple but powerful

way that we can actually change the world we live in.

The material for this film is taken

from facts available to the public

and from interviews with some of today's leading thinkers.

However, we do live in a world full of conspiracy theories.

And all I ask is that you keep an open mind,

but question everything.

Because people have got to know whether or not

their president's a crook.

Well, I'm not a crook.

I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

Indeed I did have a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky.

I think that gay marriage should be allowed.

I do not believe that gay marriages should be legal.

I am honored to be here with Barack Obama.

So shame on you, Barack Obama.

Iran, Cuba, Venezuela-- these countries

are tiny compared to the Soviet Union.

They don't pose a serious threat to us.

Iran is a great threat.

We can end illegal immigration.

We're never ever going to be able to totally

control immigration.

You have said in the past that it was,

quote, pretty well confirmed.

-No, I never said that. -OK.

I never said that.

REPORTER (ON TV): I think that is--

Absolutely not. What I said was--

Uh, it's been pretty well confirmed.

There are no knowns.

There are things we know that we know.

There are known unknowns.

That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know.

But there are also unknown unknowns.

There are things we do know we don't know.

One of the most important beliefs that people have

about politicians is that politicians do

whatever polls tell them to do.

We hear a lot of complaint about the lack of strong leadership--

that politicians find out what the public wants and then

they pander to it, or at least they say they'll pander to it.

Now, what this idea of the poll-driven politician creates

is the impression that the political system

may have all kinds of problems.

But on the whole, it's responsive and accountable

to the public.

So, how do we explain this contradiction between the myth

that politicians reflect the public and the reality

that, on most economic issues, they

actually ignore public opinion?

Media influence on public opinion

has been studied from many years now.

We know, for example, that the media often play what's called

an "agenda-setting role."

Public concern about issues tends

to follow media coverage of those issues

rather than any changes in the real world.

The media create the impression that the American public

has a real choice.

You can choose Bush or you can choose

Gore-- the implication being that they're

both very different.

But on substantive budgetary or economic issues,

the differences between them are really on the margins.

But is leading Democrats and Republicans

support a privatized health care system.

They support corporate-backed global trade agreements,

they support maintaining a Cold War defense budget,

and they generally favor the interests of big business.

But the media give the impression

that Democrats and Republicans represent a broad range

of opinion by focusing on civil liberty, non-monetary issues,

like gay rights or abortion, where Democrats and Republicans

really do differ.

And this masks the degree of elite consensus.

There's a couple of completely logical reasons

why our politicians are so similar.

The end game for politicians is to get elected.

The people who vote are, for the most part, quite moderate

in their views.

Both parties try to occupy that middle, moderate ground.

They are simply responding to that majority in order

to get elected.

The second reason our politicians are so similar

is much more sinister.

They answer increasingly to the same master.

Thank you so much for your time.

We're looking easily at the first billion-dollar

presidential election.

It's much bigger money than we've ever seen

in a presidential election.

We define a candidate as being serious or not

by how much money they can raise, not by what

ideas they have, what their record in public service

might have been.

It's all about money.

We really don't have an election anymore.

We have an auction.

And what's for sale?

I mean, these are interesting questions to ask.

Every incoming president rewards big donors

with ambassadorships and other honorary appointments

like that.

There are all kinds of policy issues.

Is a big donor rewarded with a place

on a federal advisory panel that might have something

to do with, say, approving new drugs

or environmental regulations?

All of these questions about what's for sale-- you know?

Is government for sale?

Is the White House for sale?

I think a lot of Americans suspect that it is.

The money flows in for a reason, and the reason

is not good government.

It is completely unrealistic to expect democracy

to deliver representatives who serve the people's interests

when so much money is involved.

Having so much money in politics gives all

the power to those with money.

Yes, we are all still allowed to vote.

But how free is our choice?

The media in the hands of big business

will only present us with politicians that

will serve their interests.

It would be completely illogical for them to do otherwise.

It would also be illogical to expect

politicians to change a system that puts them in power.

But it certainly begs the question-- just what

kind of democracy do we have?

Do you want to live in a democratic society,

or do you want to live in the society we have--

which, remember, is not a democratic society,

and is not intended to be.

If you take a course in political theory here,

I'm sure they'll teach you that the United

States is not a democracy.

It's what's called, in the technical literature,

a polyarchy.

A polyarchy is a system in which power resides

in the hands of those who Madison

called the "wealth of the nation,"

the responsible class of men.

And the rest of the population is fragmented.

But that's the way the country was founded.

TONY BENN: Throughout the history of the world,

the rich and powerful have dominated it.

And very few people have had any control

of their own governments.

But most real power in the world is still exercised

by those we do not elect.

We are still far from governing ourselves.

The basis of democracy is the belief

that we were all born equal, and that that equality must

be accepted by those in power.

But in the attempts to win those rights,

many people have been imprisoned and tortured

by those who have power and were determined to retain it.

No one in power really wants democracy,

because democracy would challenge their power

structures and their authority.

So anyone who comes out with a democratic idea

is dismissed as unrepresentative or a troublemaker

or an extremists or something.

And in this way, the full throw of a public debate

about alternatives is being extinguished.

Big business is about making money.

That's what big business does well.

Governments, however, have to balance the needs

of the whole society, including big business,

based on ethics and social and moral responsibility.

But if our corporations have become

more powerful than our governments,

then we have to understand the effect that is

going to have on our systems.

HOWARD INN: Corporations are artificial creations.

You might say they are monsters trying

to devour as much profit as possible, at anyone's expense.

The 14th Amendment was passed at the end of the Civil War

to give equal rights to black people.

And what happens is the corporations come into court,

and corporation lawyers are very clever.

And they say, oh, you can't deprive a person

of life, liberty, or property.

We are a person.

A corporation is a person.

These are a special kind of persons, which are designed,

by law, to be concerned only for their stockholders,

and not say what are sometimes called

their stakeholders, like the community or the workforce

or whatever.

I believe the mistake that a lot of people

make when they think about corporations is they

think corporations are like us.

They have feelings.

They have politics.

They have belief systems.

They really only have one thing-- the bottom line.

NARRATOR: All publicly traded corporations

have been structured through a series of legal decisions

to have a very disturbing characteristic.

They are required, by law, to place the financial interests

of their owners above everything else, even the public good.

That's not a law of nature.

That's a very specific decision--

in fact, a judicial decision.

So they're concerned only for the short-term profit

of their stockholders, who are very highly concentrated.

So the pressure's on the corporation to deliver results

now, and to externalize any costs

that this unwary or uncaring public

will allow it to externalize.

Towards the end of 1989, a great box of documents

arrived at my office without any indication

where they came from.

And I opened them and found in it a complete set of Monsanto

files-- particularly a set of files

dealing with toxicological testing of cows

who had been given rBGH.

REPORTER (ON RECORDING): BST, trade name Posilac,

is being used in more than a quarter of the dairy herds

in the United States, according to Monsanto.

The milk is being drunk by a large portion

of the American population since the Food and Drug

Administration declared it safe for both cows and humans

four years ago.

And at that time, Monsanto was saying

there's no evidence whatsoever of any adverse effects.

We don't use antibiotics.

And this clearly showed that they

had lied through their teeth.

The files described areas of chronic inflammation

in the heart, lung, kidneys, spleen,

also reproductive effects, also a whole series

of other problems.

There's a cost to the cows.

The cows get sicker when they're injected with rBGH.

They're injected with antibiotics.

We know that people are consuming

antibiotics through their food.

And we know that that's contributing

to antibiotic-resistant bacteria and diseases.

And we know we're at a crisis when somebody can

go into a hospital and get a staph infection

and it can't be cured and they die.

That's a crisis.

Again and again, we have the problem

that whether you obey the law or not

is a matter of whether it's cost-effective.

If the chance of getting caught and the penalty are less

than a cost to comply, people think of it as being

just a business decision.

Every living system of earth is in decline.

Every life support system of earth is in decline.

And these together constitute the biosphere--

the biosphere that supports and nurtures all of life.

And not just our life, but perhaps

30 million other species.

The typical company of the 20th century-- extractive,

wasteful, abusive, linear in all of its processes,

taking from the earth, making, wasting.

We're leaving that terrible legacy.

Corporations have gone global.

Regardless of whether the corporation can be trusted

or cannot be trusted, governments today do not have

over the corporations the power that

they had and the leverage that they had 50 or 60 years ago.

And that's a major change.

So governments have become powerless compared

to what they were before.

Capitalism today commands the towering heights

and has displaced politics and politicians

as the new high priests.

Corporations, by law, must increase their bottom line.

In order to expand, they have to sell more products.

To sell more products, they must consume more resources.

Even going back 50 years, we could see the effect that this

was having on our environment.

Today, the effects of pollution and industrialization

have multiplied 10-fold, and the damage is terrifying.

And yet, these same corporations still want

to drill for oil in the Arctic.

And that's not just morally blind.

That's morally bankrupt.

Also corporate expansion into other countries

to get those resources is the cause

of so much war and conflict, as you will see in this film.

We need our corporations to bring us the technologies--

many of which already exist-- that can help

us address the issues we face.

And yet the system encourages a thirst for short-term profit.

I know many of us have heard stories about powerful groups

of businessmen who pull the strings of governments

from behind closed doors.

And so many rumors have sprung up around organizations,

like the Bilderbergs and the Council

on Foreign Relations, that it's really difficult

to know what to believe.

However, it is an interesting fact-- the Federal Reserve

Bank of the United States is not actually

owned by the government.

It is owned by a private banking cartel.

Now, whoever these men are that can loan money to governments

have to be some of the most influential men in the world.

And yet, we don't know who they are.

Not all conspiracy theories are just theories,

and the research for this film pulled up

some interesting quotes.

NARRATOR: Gold is valuable because it is relatively rare.

Like gold, the value of money is determined by how

much money is in circulation.

One would think the power to regulate the money supply that

controls our economy and affects our lives in every way

would be in the hands of the government of the people.

But surprisingly, it is not.

The power to control the money supply

is in the hands of the Federal Reserve Bank.

It is important to note the Federal Reserve is

not a government organization.

It is a private banking cartel.

The Federal Reserve System is a banking cartel.

It's no different than a banana cartel or an oil

cartel or the sugar cartel.

It just happens to be a banking cartel.

Congress, in essence, has seated

total control of the value of our money to a secret

to a central bank.

It's a group of very large and powerful

private banking interests.

Congress knows nothing of the conversations,

the plans, and the action taken in concert

with other central banks.

The government has given it a monopoly,

a virtual monopoly, to create the nation's money supply.

But all these actions directed by the Federal Reserve

alter the purchasing power of our money.

This has significant consequences on our economy

and our political stability.

Wages never keep up with profits on Wall Street and the banks,

thus sowing the seeds of class and discontent.

NARRATOR: It is bewildering to think that we allow

an unelected and unregulated group of private bankers

to wield such incredible influence over our society.

The truth is that most of us will live from paycheck

to paycheck in a continued state of struggle,

unable to question a system of finance that keeps

us on a constant treadmill.

And while most of us struggle to stay ahead,

billions of dollars in profits flow

into the hands of private bankers at our expense.

For this is how the system works.

Whenever the government needs money,

it requests it from the Federal Reserve.

But the Fed doesn't just give the money to the government.

It loans the money at interest.

Every dollar the government loans

from the Federal Reserve Bank has

to be paid back with interest.

This keeps the government, and, as such,

the people, in a continual state of debt.

All of our income taxes are paid back to the Federal Reserve

to pay off the debt that the government

incurs when it borrows money from the Federal Reserve Bank.

This is all a matter of public record,

and easily verifiable should you care to look.

The Founding Fathers of America were

well aware of the perils of central banks,

and sought to prevent them.

Several central banks were set up but then removed.

But the ruthless and powerful bankers-- the Rockefellers,

the Morgans, the Walburgs, the Rothschilds--

were determined to set up a central banking

system in America at any cost.

In the early 1920s, JP Morgan, one of the most influential

bankers of his day, caused massive panic in the markets

by spreading rumors that many private banks

were about to go bankrupt.

This caused widespread panic.

Everyone started withdrawing their deposits en masse,

and the banks had to call in all of their loans

to try and survive.

The hysteria destroyed the markets,

and the banking elites, having caused the panic,

used it to influence politicians and the public

that a central bank would bring stability to the system.

At a secret meeting in 1910 at the estate of JP

Morgan on Jekyll Island, the bankers

wrote the Federal Reserve Act.

They then gave their considerable financial and

political support to Woodrow Wilson on the condition

he would support the bill if elected.

In 1913, Woodrow Wilson signed the bill into law.

He later wrote, in regret.

The bankers made immediate moves to increase

and consolidate their power.

From 1921 to 1929, the banks drastically

increased the money supply, making millions of loans.

Then, in October, 1929, having quietly exited the markets,

they started calling in those loans en masse.

The hysteria that followed led to the Great Depression.

The conspiring bankers bought out

rival banks and massive corporations

for pennies on the dollar.

Their position of power and influence had become absolute.

We get almost all of our information from the media.

If we base our opinions on bad or biased information,

then everything we believe is suspect.

Political debate today is kept within very narrow boundaries

so the media can present both sides of these narrow positions

and give the impression we have a free press.

However, to talk about a left or right wing press

is to miss a very important point.

Whatever message big business wants carried

with whatever slant, the media will

carry that story unfailingly.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, the title is actually borrowed from a book

by Walter Lippmann written back around 1921 in which he

described what he called "the manufacture of consent"

as "a revolution" in the "practice of democracy."

What it amounts to is a technique of control.

And he said this was useful and necessary because "the common

interests"-- the general concerns of all people--

"elude the public.

The public just isn't up to dealing with them.

And they have to be the domain of what he

called "a specialized class."

Notice that that's the opposite of the standard view

about democracy.

There's a version of this expressed

by the highly respected moralist and theologian Reinhold

Niebuhr, who was very influential

on contemporary policymakers.

His view was that rationality belongs to the cool observer.

But because of the stupidity of the average man,

he follows not reason, but faith.

And this naive faith requires necessary illusion.

The point is that in a military state or a feudal state,

or what you would nowadays call a totalitarian state,

it doesn't much matter what people think because you've

got a bludgeon over their head and you

can control what they do.

But when the state loses the bludgeon, when you can't

control by force, and when the voice of the people

can be heard, you have this problem.

It may make people so curious and so arrogant

that they don't have the humility

to submit to a civil rule.

And therefore, you have to control what people think.

NARRATOR: 100 years ago, Sigmund Freud, famous for giving us

the science of psychological analysis,

suggested that's the ideal of individual freedom,

central to the idea of democracy, was impossible.

He said our hidden desires were too dangerous.

Human beings could never be allowed to fully express

themselves, that we must always be controlled and would,

thus, always be discontent.

Sigmund Freud's American nephew was Edward Bernays.

Beryans is almost completely unknown today,

but his influence on society is possibly

much greater than Freud.

Bernays took the new science developed by his famous uncle

and used it to manipulate the masses.

Bernays is the man who invented the profession

the term "public relations."

He worked for most of the major corporations,

and advised politicians on how to win favor with the public.

Like Freud, Bernays was convinced that humans were

driven by irrational forces.

But by stimulating our inner desires

and then sating them with consumer products,

he created a new way to manage the irrational behavior

of the masses.

What Eddie got from Freud was indeed this idea

that there is a lot more going on in human decision-making--

now only among individuals, but even more importantly

among groups-- than this idea that information

drives behavior.

And so Eddie began to formulate this idea that you had too

look at things that would play to people's

irrational emotions.

And, you see, that moved Eddie immediately

into a different category from other people in his field

and most government officials and managers of the day who

thought, if you just hit people with all

of this factual information, they would look at that

and say, oh, of course.

There's a psychology of dress.

Have you ever thought about it?

How it can express your character?

You all have interesting characters, but some of them

are all hidden.

I wonder why you all want to dress always the same,

with the same hats and the same coats.

I'm sure all of you are interesting and have

wonderful things about you.

But looking at you in the street,

you all look so much the same.

And that's why I'm talking to you

about the psychology of dress.

Try and express yourselves better in your dress.

He had a home in the corner suite

of the Sherry Netherland Hotel.

And here's this wonderful suite with all these windows looking

out on the Central Park and across at the Plaza

and on the square.

And he would use this place to hold a soiree.

The mayor would come.

All the media leaders would come--

the political leaders, the business leaders,

the people in the arts.

I mean, it was a who's who.

People wanted to know Eddie Bernays, because, you know, he

himself became sort of a famous man, sort of a magician who

could make these things happen.

Eddie Bernays saw the way to sell product

was not to sell it to your intellect-- that you ought

to buy an automobile-- but that you will feel better about it

if you have this automobile.

I think he originated that idea-- that they weren't just

purchasing something, but they were

engaging themselves emotionally or personally

in the product or service.

So it's not you think you need a new piece of clothing,

but you'll feel better with the piece of clothing.

That was his contribution in a very real sense.

We see it all over the place today,

but I think he originated the idea of the emotional connect

to a product or service.

Democracy to my father was a wonderful concept.

But I don't think he felt that of those

publics out there had reliable judgment.

And that they very easily might vote for the wrong man

or want the wrong thing, so that they

had to be guided from above.

You appeal to their desires and their unrecognized longings--

that sort of thing.

You can tap into their deepest desires or their deepest fears

and use that to your own purposes.

NARRATOR: Many influential thinkers

came to believe that the public were incapable of making

rational decisions, and that, as such,

democracy could never work.

Walter Lippmann, one of the most influential political writers

at that time, argued that if people were, in reality,

motivated by irrational forces, then what was needed

was control by the elites to manage what he

called "the bewildered herd."

And this could be accomplished by using

psychological techniques to control the unconscious

desires of the masses.

And so here you have Walter Lippmann, probably

the most influential political thinker in the United States,

who is essentially saying that the basic mechanism

of the mass mind is unreason, is irrationality, is anomality.

He believes that the mob in the street-- which is how he sees

ordinary people-- are people who are driven not by their minds,

but by their spinal cords.

The notion of animal drives, unconscious instinctual

drives lurking beneath the surface of civilization.

And so they started looking towards psychological science

as a way of understanding the mechanisms by which

the popular mind works, specifically

with the goal of figuring out how to understand

how to apply those mechanisms to strategies for social control.

Democracy at its heart was about changing

the relations of power that had governed the world for so long.

And Bernays' concept of democracy

was one of maintaining the relations of power,

even if it meant that one needed to sort

of stimulate the psychological lives of the public.

So democracy is reduced from something which assumes

an active citizenry to the idea of the public

as passive consumers--

Ohh.

---driven primarily by instinctual or unconscious

desires, and that, if you can, in fact,

trigger those needs and desires, you can

get what you want from them.

NARRATOR: The corporations understood

that to change our consumer culture

from needs-based to desire-based purchasing,

people must be trained to want new things even before the old

had been consumed.

Bernays really is the guy within the United States,

more than anybody else, who sort of brings to the table

psychological theory as something that

is an essential part of how-- from the corporate side--

of how we are going to appeal to the masses.

He showed the corporations how they could make people want

things they did not mean by linking products

to their unconscious desires, and the mass media

would be the key.

The media and marketing men spend billions

of dollars in research.

They have developed an entire science

based on the very best psychology that knows exactly

which one of our buttons to press to make us swallow

an idea or buy a product.

And they are not just selling us laundry detergent.

They sell us everything from plastic gadgets to warfare.

If we are to make decisions about the future

of our society, the single most important thing

we need it's the truth.

So I would like us to imagine a nightmare scenario--

a powerful group of businessmen with access to the White House,

who control the media and who make obscene amounts of money

whenever there is war.

In the councils of government, we

must guard against the acquisition

of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought,

by the military industrial complex.

President Eisenhower's concern about

the military industrial complex-- his words have,

unfortunately, come true.

He was worried that priorities are

set by what benefits corporations as opposed to what

benefits the country.

MAN: Lockheed Martin and McDonnell Douglas

and Boeing-- throughout America, there are factories,

there are corporations that are involved on a daily basis.

We have a snapshot in time after September 11

where at least 71 companies that we were able to identify

are starting to get contracts to go in Afghanistan and Iraq.

All of the top 10 companies had former US officials

who had worked in the Pentagon or other parts of the US

Government on the boards of directors.

The Carlyle Group plays in industries

and in an area that are heavily influenced by politics.

My understanding is they are now the 11th or 12th largest

defense contractor-- a multi-billion dollar

annual enterprise with an almost obscenely high profit margin.

They hire defense experts like Frank

Carlucci are Frank Finelli.

They hire politicians like George

Bush Senior or James Baker III.

And the iron triangle is, in some ways,

a uniquely American phenomenon.

It's the confluence of the military, big business,

and politics.

I will name, as the next Secretary of Defense,

the best-qualified man in America

to carry on Cap's work, Frank Carlucci.

When Frank Carlucci came on board,

he was coming straight from the Pentagon

as Secretary of Defense.

A year, two years later, the Gulf War hit.

And everybody knows that wartime is

boom time for the defense industry,

and Carlyle made a ton of money.

They did very, very well.

They really cleaned up.

After that, Carlyle said, hey.

You know, having these politicians on board

is pretty great.

I mean, they know things that nobody else knows.

They are able to predict trends in global markets, predict

trends in political shifts, and, in some ways-- and this

is sort of most insidious part.

And if you want to be cynical about the Carlyle Group,

you have to be concerned about their ability

to influence these trends and actually affect change

in government policy which would positively

affect their investments.

If you have an organization that

is able to operate behind the scenes

without real accountability, and that same organization has

the ability to ruin political careers for people who are

a little bit too inquisitive or a little bit too honest,

or to shape public thinking, then we

have the means for a kind of control globally

that is probably unprecedented.

So we have this problem here.

This is a mysterious, immensely powerful company

with virtually no scrutiny.

ROBERT BYRD: On this February day,

as this nation stands at the brink of battle,

every American, on some level, must be contemplating

the horrors of war.

And yet, this chamber is, for the most part,

dreadfully SILENT.

We have a Congress that failed, in every way,

to ask the right questions, to hold the President to account.

Our Congress failed us miserably.

And that's because many in Congress

are beholden to the military industrial complex.

When we're speaking of the United States of America

and the concept of democratic representation,

I think one of the more important aspects

is the concept of informed consent of the people.

If you're going to go to war, you lay out the reasons

for the war, the justifications for the war,

and then you subject it to debate, dialogue, discussion

amongst the elected representatives of the people,

and, indeed, the people themselves.

The defense budget is 3/4 of a trillion dollars.

Profits went up last year well over 25%.

I guarantee you when war becomes that profitable,

you're going to see more of it.

We have a process that has a seamlessness where

the corporate interests that stand to benefit

are so intertwined and interwoven

with the political forces that the financial elites

and the political elites have become the same people.

The attack came without warning.

And according to a US Government source,

told CBS News that it has Middle East

terrorism written all over it.

REPORTER (ON TV): The attack in Oklahoma City appears

to have a familiar mark.

This was done with the attempt to inflict

as many casualties as possible.

And that is a Middle Eastern trait.

REPORTER (ON TV): The fact that it was such a powerful bomb

in Oklahoma City immediately drew investigators

to consider deadly parallels that all

have roots in the Middle East.

ABC News has learned that the FBI has asked the US Military

to provide up to 10 Arabic speakers

to help in the investigation.

The so-called independent media, in a liberal society

like this, in effect, are so lazy

and are controlled by interests that

are commercial and political at the same time

that there is no investigative reporting.

It's just basically repeating the line of the government--

Only eight day ago, I concluded a broadcast on the World Trade

Center bombing by telling you what senior US law enforcement

officials were telling us-- that the threat of Muslim extremists

operating within the United States

is an ongoing danger, something we'll

have to live with from now on.

---and repeating the lines of the people who have the most

influence, for whom Islam is a useful foreign demon to turn

attention away from the inequities and problems

in our own society.

So as a result, the human side of the Islamic

and especially Arabic world, are rarely to be found.

And the net result is this vacancy, on the one hand,

and these easy, almost automatic images of terror and violence.

The situation in the popular media

is basically that Muslims are really two things-- one,

they are villains of one sort, villains and fanatics.

And B, many films end up with huge numbers of bodies,

Muslim bodies, strewn all over the place-- the result

of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Demi Moore-- Chuck Norris.

Lots of films about guerrillas going in

to kill Muslim terrorists.

So the idea of Islam is something to be stamped out

it's easy to attract attention, and certainly the media's

attention, for some of the political reasons

that are obvious.

I mean, to discredit the Arabs, to make them seem like a threat

to the West, to keep the idea around

at the end of the Cold War that there are foreign devils.

Otherwise, what are we doing with this gigantic military?

The war with Iraq gives us a snapshot in time

where we can see the effects of all

of these powerful influences coming together.

They have weapons of mass destruction.

That is what this war was about.

And Saddam Hussein possesses biological and chemical

weapons.

It's a fact that there are weapons there.

You've heard the President say it

repeatedly-- that he has chemical

and biological weapons.

REPORTER (ON TV): With the drumbeat for an attack on Iraq

increasing, the Bush Administration

may finally have the ammunition they've been looking for.

September 11.

September 11.

September 11.

September 11.

September 11.

Dangerous world.

A grave new threat.

There is no doubt that he is amassing

them to use against our friends, against our allies.

A Hollywood set designer was brought in

to create a $200,000 backdrop for official war briefings.

In USA Today and in the major network coverage and so forth,

you have this very elaborate computer-generated graphic sort

of coverage of the different US Air Force and Army planes

and gun ships and helicopters, and a very snazzy weapons

of all descriptions.

MAN (ON TV): Well, it's quite amazing.

I've fallen almost in love with the F-18 Super Hornet,

because it's quite a versatile plane.

It's not enough for us to be told to accept this war we're

really encouraged to gain some kind of vicarious pleasure

from it.

The Pentagon, for many years now, since Vietnam,

has worked extremely hard at shaping news and how

the media reports that news.

We train people to say certain things in a certain way.

Well, a militia group linked to terror being backed by Iran

and setting up camp on America's doorstep?

NARRATOR: The propaganda campaign

waged by the media was so successful that by 2003,

opinion polls showed that vast majority of Americans

believed Saddam Hussein was linked to 9/11.

This claim was false.

The majority believed he possessed stockpiles

of weapons of mass destruction.

This claim, too, was false.

These claims allowed the corporate interests

and the administration to frame the attack on Iraq

as a justifiable act of self-defense.

Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski

worked at the Pentagon.

She saw firsthand how the intelligence was distorted

to win support for the attack.

The information in there are drawn from fact-- you could

find bits and pieces of fact throughout--

but framed, articulated, crafted to convince someone of what?

Well, of things that weren't true.

Things that weren't true.

9/11, al-Qaeda related to Saddam Hussein,

possibly some involvement there-- the very things

that, a year later, President Bush himself

denies and feigns his surprise.

"I don't know why everybody thinks that."

We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved

with the September the 11th.

Well, I worked in a place where they concentrated on preparing

this storyline and selling it.

What they're trying to do is have

an Iraq that is a friend to us, not an Iraq that is liberated.

This is total bogus.

We never intended to liberate the Iraqi people.

We intended to liberate Iraq from Sadaam,

and have a footprint, a military footprint, there.

And we've done that now.

We have Kuwait.

We have Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, we have a nice base in Qatar,

but it's a little too far south.

And what do we have?

We have four bases in Iraq-- beautiful bases.

We can hit Syria.

We can hit Iran.

We can keep tabs on Afghanistan.

There's all kinds of things we can do from those bases.

The larger picture is being driven by the fact

that we're about to hit peak oil worldwide,

that there's this sort of emerging global competition

between US and China.

There's the ongoing economic rivalries

between us and Europe.

And so southwest Asia becomes geopolitically a linchpin.

The idea that any of the motives that brought us in

would have sufficed to get us in if there was no oil in Iran

does not persuade me.

The pretext-- that is, the excuse

for going in-- in Afghanistan was about terrorism

and Osama bin Ladin.

In Iraq, it's about weapons of mass destruction

and Saddam Hussein.

But, in the end, neither one of those wars

was really about those people or those regimes.

It was about securing and solidifying

American control over these incredibly

important regions of the world.

In this case, I was saying we've been

lied into this as blatantly as we were lied into Vietnam.

And I was saying that a year ago-- that

is, in the fall of 2002-- at a time when we did not

know how much they were hyping the evidence

or exaggerating the evidence for WMDs,

for weapons of mass destruction.

To say that, in that world, that Saddam Hussein, after 10 years

of sanctions in the Gulf War, was any threat at all

was basically absurd.

What you're saying is Democracy doesn't matter in America,

that, this nation, the principles and values

upon which we were built, simply is irrelevant--

that the president is a dictator who

can do anything he or she wants to do,

regardless of the will of the people.

No.

Informed consent of the people is a mandatory-- not optional,

not mandatory-- requirement on how we are governed

and how those whom we elect to higher office

operate in our name.

They not only want to repeal, revoke virtually all

of the progressive reforms of the New Deal

and ever since, and really bring us back

into an essentially unregulated, non-unionized country that

existed before the deal, I think they

want openly to see the president given the power

that he was delegated.

And it's virtually an open, an undated blank check by Congress

that simply yields to the president.

They clearly are trying to repeal that aspect

of our Constitution, which gives Congress that authority, which

the Founders wrote in order-- as a result of debate--

in order to limit our going to war,

to make it harder to go to war, to put

that in the hands of hundreds of people instead of one man.

They saw the alternative as the attribute of monarchy

they most wanted to avoid.

I don't think they take seriously any merits

or advantages to a country of a Bill of Rights,

unless it's the right to bear arms.

But free speech, free assembly, I

don't think they respect that at all.

Freedom does not simply mean rallying

oneself behind the flag, here.

This is a great flag.

But freedom means allowing the kind of dissent

and vigorous debate and tolerance of onerous points

of view that people regard as obnoxious and hateful because

we understand that once you say, I don't want

to hear that point of view.

You can't say that.

You begin to stifle all kinds of points of view.

You begin to create a mindset.

Freedom is a very delicate thing.

It's a very delicate thing between limiting people's

intellectual growth or not.

And that's why we have to be vigorous and extremely proud.

This flag means the Constitution of the United States.

We as Americans should be very, very proud of that,

and we should do everything that we

can to fight those people who, for political reasons,

are trying to limit basic freedom in America.

It is this kind of ideology that has grown up

in the wake of the Cold War, propounded quite openly

by what we are calling neoconservatives in America

that identifies the United States as a colossus athwart

the world, a new Rome, beyond good and evil.

We no longer need friends.

We don't need international law.

Like the old Roman phrase, "it doesn't

matter whether they love us or not, so long as they fear us."

Been a born New Yorker all my life.

I've lived here all my life.

So for me, it was a powerful personal event.

What I remember, what I think it taught-- of course

my first reaction was fear, anger, rage, vengeance.

I think all of us, if we're human, had that reaction.

The question for all of us is what we remember

and what we do with the memories.

What is the lesson?

What does it tell?

What does it teach?

For the President, it teaches the lesson of the Axis of Evil.

States like these and their terrorist allies

constitute an Axis of Evil.

It teaches a lesson that America

has enemies, secret dangerous enemies

who have to be taken out.

Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists

and every government that supports them.

It teaches the lesson that we can never be weak.

We have to flex our muscles at every turn.

We will fight with the full force

and might of the United States Military.

That's one kind of lesson.

It creates a politics of fear.

The politics of fear that this administration has deployed

in trying to respond to terrorism

has itself, in some ways, been much more

dangers than terrorism itself.

And this administration has been,

I think, responsible for inciting

the very terror that it was the terrorists'

purpose to incite in America.

REPORTER (ON TV): They're calling it Code Orange Plus.

The Fed's decision to raise the terror alert to high.

REPORTER (ON TV): America on high alert,

from biggest cities to smallest towns.

Red, yellow, orange. We're afraid.

Be afraid. What level of fear?

The government can program that without any justification.

You know?

We have an intelligence report that terrorists

are about to attack. Who?

We don't know. Where?

We don't know. What?

We don't know.

But you tell us, so now we're afraid.

A Connecticut man wrapping his family's

19th century farmhouse with plastic,

sealing it in duct tape.

States response to terrorism.

We're too great a nation to allow the evildoers

to affect our soul.

The decision was made within the administration

to take this event, to take the struggle against al-Qaeda,

and make it into a full-fledged struggle against good and evil.

Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.

The important thing to remember here

is one didn't have to put it in these terms.

One didn't have to say, if you're not for us, on our side,

you're on the side of the terrorists.

That was not a necessary response.

That was a chosen response.

The more we're afraid, the more you ask us to give.

Patriot Act II, enhancements to the Patriot Act.

Now the budget's starting to be bankrupted,

billions flowing out of this country into a war on terror.

More defense expenditures.

And therefore, I've asked Congress

for a one-year increase of more than $48 million dollars

for national defense-- the largest increase

in a generation.

Perpetual war, the loss of civil liberties,

uh, the lack of trust in government

because they don't tell the truth-- these are

outrageous and unpleasant political developments,

but they don't necessarily spell the end of the United States.

Financial bankruptcy does.

Things that can't go on forever don't.

What we're talking about right now

is the rigged American economy can't go on forever,

and it's not rocket science to say say.

One war after another after another,

we become a warfare state.

That is, the system is set up to go to war.

We're going to find wars.

We've already had wars-- two major wars,

Iraq and Afghanistan.

I think the people most without fear on September 12 in America

were those working at Ground Zero.

They were in the greatest danger, actually.

But because they were active, they

were engaged-- the firemen and the medical officials

and the cops who were working there first to find victims,

then to find remains and clear the site.

They had a civic task.

They were engaged, and they weren't afraid of anything.

American citizens after 9/11 said to the President,

what can we do?

What can we do to become engaged and take some responsibility?

President Bush unfortunately said, go shopping.

Go back to the mall.

Go back to your normal lives.

We'll take care of it.

Spectatorship is an invitation to fear.

Citizenship is how we fight the politics of fear.

The politics of citizenship, the politics of engagement,

taking responsibility is a much better way

to deal with terrorism than hunkering down being spectators

and allowing the government to rob us of our liberties,

to rob us of our multiculturalism

in the name of protecting us.

I think the history of the United States,

as a work in progress, and our attempt at democracy

here is a constant struggle between capitalism

and democracy.

And there have been ebbs and flows where democracy

looks like it's winning.

You reign in those powerful forces.

But the fundamental reality is that most of the Government's

decisions today are substantially

dictated by powerful corporate interests.

Clearly, capitalism is winning.

For anyone who doesn't yet know,

our corporations have been in the Middle East

trampling on their beliefs and customs

since they discovered oil.

Our corporations would tell us they

are just getting us the things we need,

and there is truth in that.

But we have to decide what price we are willing to pay.

We as individuals drive the demand for these resources.

As long as we are all aware of the fact

there is blood in this oil, and that is the decision

that we make, then so be it.

It's completely understandable that people

bury their heads in the sand.

And if we don't look too closely,

life doesn't seem too bad in many areas of the world.

But that is going to change.

And there are some logical outcomes

to the way this system works that will

affect every one of us.

I was invited to Washington DC to attend this meeting that

was being put together by the National

Security Agency called the Critical Thinking Consortium.

I remember standing there in this room

and looking over on one side of the room.

And we had CIA, NSA, DIA, FBI, Customs, Secret Service.

And then on the other side of the room,

we had Coca Cola, Mobil Oil, GTE, and Kodak.

And I remember thinking, I am, like,

in the epicenter of the intelligence

industry right now.

I mean, the line is not just blurring.

It's just not there anymore.

And to me, it spoke volumes as to how industry and government

were consulting with each other and working with each other.

An initial news report in the Army Times newspaper last month

noted, in addition to urgent emergency response,

the force, quote, "may be called upon to help with civil unrest

and crowd control."

Did this surprise you? -It did.

It surprised me also that NORTHCOM itself was involved

in intelligence sharing with local police

officers in Saint Paul.

I mean, what in the world is NORTHCOM

doing looking at what some of the protesters are involved in?

And you had infiltration up there, too.

But what we have going on in this country

is we have infiltration and spying that goes on

not only at the-- well, all the way from the campus police,

practically, aiming up to the Pentagon and the National

Security Agency.

We're becoming a police state, here.

Right now, as we talk, the Fourth

and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution

to the Bill of Rights are dead letters.

Both of these bills were written into the Constitution

by the Founding Fathers in order to protect

the people of America from the government of America.

Right now, the right to freedom of speech,

the right to free assembly, and the right to a fair trial

are no longer protected by law.

NARRATOR: The result of the Patriot Act, the Military

Tribunal Act, and many other bills written in the name

of Homeland Security is that almost any action, speech,

or protest against the Government

can be construed legally as terrorism.

Your home can be searched secretly, without a warrant.

You can could be arrested with no charges revealed to you.

You can be detained indefinitely,

and tortured without any protection under the law.

In 2005, Congress passed the Real ID Act.

Soon, we will be required to carry ID cards by law.

There are plans to equip these cards

with RFID tracking chips that will be

able to track your every move.

These tracking chips are already in all new passports.

Many believe this will eventually

lead to the implanted chip, which is already being used

in many places in our society.

We have a Florida family who are really

pioneers in a brave new world.

They have volunteered to be the first ever

to have microchip identification devices

implanted into their body.

After 9/11, I was really concerned

with the security of my family.

I wouldn't mind having something

planted permanently in my arm that would identify me.

NARRATOR: It is not difficult to see a future where we are all

locked in to a monitored control grid, where

every move and all transactions will be tracked,

monitored, and recorded.

And if anyone gets out of line, they

can just turn off their chip.

Could the sense of fear and isolation

prevalent in our society allow us to accept totalitarian

measures of this nature?

And if we become scared enough, might not even demand them?

Has our sense of fear and division

detached us from reality?

It is not too difficult to imagine that many of our fears

are manufactured for us.

History shows us that many in power

have used fear to manipulate societies.

And there are those who would benefit from a totalitarian

world government.

This is Aaron Russo, a formal politician.

Next to him is Nicholas Rockefeller, of the Rockefeller

banking family.

After a long friendship, Aaron Russo eventually

ended their relationship, appalled

at what he had learned of the Rockefellers and their plans.

AARON RUSSO (ON RECORDING): So he said to me one night--

he said that there's going to be an event there.

And out of that event, you're going

to see we're going to go into Afghanistan so we can run

pipelines from the Caspian Sea.

We're going to go into Iraq to take the oil

and establish a base in the Middle East.

And we're going to go into Venezuela

and try and get rid of Chavez.

And the first two they've accomplished.

Chavez, they didn't accomplish.

And, uh, he said you're going to guys going into caves looking

for-- [LAUGH] looking for people that they're

never going to find.

He was laughing about the fact that you

have this war on terrorism.

There's no real enemy.

He's talking about how, by having this war on terror,

you can never win it. Because it's an eternal war.

And so you can always keep taking people's liberties away.

And I said, how are you going to convince

people that this war is real?

He said, but the media.

The media can convince everybody it's real.

I mean, it's just that you keep talking about things.

You keep saying it over and over and over again,

and eventually people believe it.

You know, you created the Federal

Reserve in 1913 through lies.

You create 9/11, which is another lie.

Through 9/11, then you're fighting a war on terror.

And now all of a sudden, you're going

to Iraq, which was another lie.

And now they're going to do Iran.

You know?

And so it's one thing leading to another, leading to another,

leading to another.

Now, I would say, what are you doing this for?

What's the point of this thing?

You have all the money in the world you ever want.

You have all the power.

I said, you know, you're hurting people.

It's not a good thing.

And he would say, what do you care about the people for?

Take care of yourself and you take care of your family.

And then I said to him, what's the-- what

are the ultimate goals here?

He said, the ultimate goal is to get everybody

in this world chipped with a [INAUDIBLE] ID chip,

and have all money be on those chips

and everything on those chips.

And if anybody wants to protest what we do

or violate what we want, we just turn off their chip.

There are some very troubling possible futures

for our society.

Climate change will displace millions of people,

and we'll hit peak oil in 2015.

Thereafter, the price of oil will skyrocket.

So we'll see supply decrease, and we'll

see prices of basic foods and every basic commodity spiral

upwards.

Our current world population is just under 7 billion,

and that figure will double approximately every 35 years.

So take a look at where you live.

Try to imagine double the amount of people,

twice the demand for resources, and double

the amount of pollution.

Massive changes are coming, whether we like it or not.

I'm not a politician.

I'm not looking for your vote, so I

can give it to you straight.

This system cannot continue.

So who will make the decisions about who gets food to eat,

or who goes hungry, or who gets water to drink

and who goes without?

Because the idea of allowing mindless corporations

or wealthy elites to make decisions about population

control is terrifying.

NARRATOR: The great heroes of our times-- people like Gandhi

and Martin Luther King-- incredible though they were,

could not create change on their own.

Only the will of the people can do that.

And together, we can accomplish anything.

Interestingly, the way to win back democracy, end the wars,

and save our environment has just one cure.

And it's simple.

We live in a capitalist system.

Everything we do is based on the exchange of money.

The media and the advertising web

have turned us into obedient little consumers,

trying to buy ourselves to happiness

in a throw-away society.

This creates such a demand on our resources

that our corporations invade other countries to get more,

causing untold war and conflict.

Then, using the wealth and power that we give them,

corporations undermine democracy and justice.

However, the unlikely and ironic outcome of consumerism

is that it makes you, the consumer, all powerful.

The way we use money has more influence in our society

than anything else.

And the way we choose to spend our money

can change everything.

No company will continue a practice or product that you,

the consumer, will not buy.

It's vitally important that you understand this,

because this gives you ultimate power to change

the world you live in.

Companies are extremely sensitive

about you buying their products because if you

don't buy their stuff, they go out of business.

That's not something any company is willing to consider.

And by choosing to spend your money wisely,

you can promote those companies that do business

in a socially responsible way.

NARRATOR: Without saying a word, you

will have a sent a clear message that they simply can't ignore.

It will be heard, headed, and acted upon, guaranteed.

This is real power.

For example, if a company pollutes the environment

or uses bad business practices, if you don't buy their stuff,

they will change.

If you don't want food with chemicals or GMOs in it,

then don't buy it.

NARRATOR: Basic foods and cleaning products make

up 70% of our weekly purchases.

This drives the agricultural and chemical industries

that have a massive effect on our environment.

If we can start making the right choices

about these simple, everyday purchases,

we can save our environment.

We've got into the habit of buying junk fast foods

that have no actual food in them.

We by gallons of poisonous household cleaners

when one degradable soft soap will do.

We are poisoning our homes and wasting our hard-earned money

for no good reason.

Why?

Because the advertising industry tells us to.

They just want you to buy stuff.

The car is the single biggest strain

on the Earth's resources.

Just about every mineral, every chemical, and every metal

known to man goes into the manufacture of our cars.

The gasoline engine is inefficient

and poisons our environment.

The car, as it is today, cannot be sustained.

It is up to us to drive the demand

for clean, efficient vehicles.

Do not underestimate the power of that dollar bill

in your pocket.

The way you spend that dollar already affects economies

and lives around the world.

Spent wisely, it can fix every problem known to man.

The minute we start taking responsibility and spending

our money wisely, every politician, every corporation

and leader around the world is going

to know that we have woken up.

And that is the most important point in this film.

All of the abuse in our system happens because we

just roll over and take it.

But when we get involved and start

making the right decisions, everything changes.

Our consumer choices are the easiest

way for us to get involved in a very

meaningful and powerful way.

But the issue is our involvement--

you and I taking responsibility, you and I demanding the truth,

learning the facts, and making our decisions accordingly.

NARRATOR: There are serious decisions

to be made about the future of our society.

Because there are so many of us and population levels

are rising all the time, we have to drastically reduce

our demand for every consumer product.

Breaking the habits of a lifetime won't be easy.

Retooling industry and maintaining

balance in our markets and economies

is a massive undertaking.

But we can address all of these questions.

You have the power to deny profits

to offending corporations, and support those

who maintain good practices.

You can express the concerns you hold dear

and herald a new beginning at every level of our society.

This is the 21st century.

If we use our resources wisely, there is no reason why anyone

shouldn't have what they need.

There's no reason whatsoever why people are still starving

to death on our planet.

And the common man or woman, whether they

are Israli or Palestinian, Protestant or Catholic,

or Iraqi or American-- the common man just

wants to live in peace and justice in a clean environment.

When we look around the world and we see that that is not

the case, we know that the will of the majority

is not being listened to.

That's the first sign that our system is broken.

Government won't make these changes for us.

Yet again, it is down to the common man.

Please don't just watch this movie and turn away.

We can fix this system.

Go to the website.

Take that first step towards an incredible future

for all of us.

Thank you for watching.