Silk Road forums

Discussion => Off topic => Topic started by: morningRain on March 01, 2012, 09:52 am

Title: Documentary film trend(?)
Post by: morningRain on March 01, 2012, 09:52 am
The Secret Birth of the Federal Reserve (1999) - Was there a takeover of the United States by international bankers? You will visit the scene of a crime so perfect that, for thirty years, no one knew it had even taken place.
http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/5977340/The_Secret_Birth_of_the_Federal_Reserve_%28Documentary%29]http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/5977340/The_Secret_Birth_of_the_Federal_Reserve_%28Documentary%29

The Century of the Self (2002) - ...describes how Freudian and post-Freudian ideas about human nature were adopted by corporations and politicians to manipulate society and public values in the 20th Century.
http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/5347452/The_Century_of_the_Self_-_Adam_Curtis_-_2002_-_DVD_to_DivX_rip_f

The Corporation (2003) Legalized, Immortal Sociopaths - Documentary that looks at the concept of the corporation throughout recent history up to its present-day dominance.
http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6718316/The_Corporation_%282003%29_Legalized__Immortal_Sociopaths

The Power of Nightmares (2004) -  American neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists create today's nightmare vision of an organized terror network. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age.
http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/3405101/BBC_-_The_Power_of_Nightmares_-_Part_1_2_3

America From Freedom to Facism (2006) - A documentary that explores the connection between income tax collection and the erosion of civil liberties in America.
http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/3519240/Aaron_Russo_-_America_From_Freedom_to_Facism

Zeitgeist (2007) - Presents a number of conspiracy theories related to Christianity, the attacks of 9/11, and the Federal Reserve Bank.
http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/4009574/Zeitgeist_The_Movie_%282007%29_%5BAVI_-_DivX_-_VERY_GOOD_MOVIE%5D

End of Liberty (2010) - Exposes from a real life perspective how the U.S. is heading towards a complete societal collapse.
http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/5931882/End_of_Liberty_%282010%29_-_Documentary
Title: Re: Documentary film trend(?)
Post by: ShieLdz on March 01, 2012, 11:16 am
damn rain, thats some heavy stuff, yessir...

Not at all related to politics, but my fav doc's are as follows (no particular order:
1. Senna - about F1 racing, it's riviting
2. Exit through the Gift Shop - A banksy film about Banksy; A must watch imo
3. Radiant Child: Jean-Michel Basquiat is a god; hence my sig line
4. Waiting for Superman - about teachers unions; enlightening
5. I like Killing Flies: hilarious story of brilliant, foul-mouthed, underachiever living in New York

sorry no links
Title: Re: Documentary film trend(?)
Post by: pine on March 01, 2012, 06:20 pm
IMHO The Corporation and the Zeitgeist movies are as mad as a box of hot frogs. The makers of those so called documentaries know literally next to nothing about the history of capitalism. They gloss over highly complex topics and pretend that long appreciated market principals are some manner of conspiracy theory.

I won't go on, but specifically, from watching The Corporation you'd imagine a panglossian world of peace, harmony and stability before corporations came into existence. And the idea that Corporations only came into existence via a loophole in the law supposedly dedicated to helping black people is completely insane. "Doh! By golly those sneaky capitalists got through again! By Jove!". I mean, are you serious?

Don't get me wrong. Capitalism is not a perfect system, I don't have rose tinted glasses, but their statements about it are ludicrously ignorant.

If you want the big picture, you're going to have to read some books, because there *are* literally no good documentaries on Capitalism, I've scoured the internet and came up with zero.

 - The Birth of Plenty by William Bernstein

 - The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner

 - Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay

 - The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson

That selection is deliberately chosen to be non-biased as possible, if anything it's biased in the other direction, since only 1 of those authors is actually pro-capitalist (N.F). The others lean(ed) to the Left of the political spectrum.

Also they are fantastically well written books besides being as accurate as it's reasonable to expect from any one individual.

People like Naomi Klein and Chomsky are the worst source of information about the System, they are entirely caught up in a paradigm which is completely politically USA-centric and centered around the perceived 'issues of the day'. If you check out the references Chomsky uses, you'll quickly find that although he sounds smart, he is ridiculously blinkered, some of the most gregarious examples of intellectual cherry picking I've ever seen. He is not an economist, nor an historian, he's a linguist. Smarts from one field of science don't translate to the next.

If you want some insightful critiques of capitalism, then you should watch Adam Curtis's documentaries (two of which are mentioned in the OP's post, namely the Century of the Self and the Power of Nightmares). I don't entirely agree with him either, but at least he's making a valiant attempt to figure out the System.

Protip: if you want a good & proper mind-fuck, then do this:

Watch a documentary called "Collapse", then immediately afterwards watch a documentary called "Transcendent Man". They are complete opposites, both are quite reasonable intellectually, and bring home that there is no one person with an answer to the future as you'll have ever before experienced.


 
Title: Re: Documentary film trend(?)
Post by: bananatinpots on March 01, 2012, 06:30 pm
I am really glad that you mentioned The Century of Self ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhxfArTAcfM ) and Power of Nightmares, both are docs made by the brilliant Adam Curtis of the BBC.  Check out his blog at www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/ to see some great essays with videos, some great stuff on Murdoch and the media, why occupy protesters may be so afraid of making demands andd plenty of other stuff, great archive material permeates his work.

AC's other great series is Pandora's Box about technology and rationality leading to some pretty fucked up results.  First one has some great interviews.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8312897319201458250

And The Trap, The Living Dead and The Mayfair Set are all well worth watching, just googling them + Adam curtis to find them.

John Pilger is a bit preachy for some but check out The War on Democracy @ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3739500579629840148 if you're interested in U.S. hypocrisy and it's relations in Latin Amercia.

It's not a doc but if you want a good read you should try and find the Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia by Alfred W. McCoy, a history professor who traveled to Vietnam, investigated the French-Indo-Chinese heroin ops that financed French Secret Service ops in Indo-China before then transferring those heroin ops onto U.S. services and the continuation of the drug trade up to and during the Vietnam War.   Truly an incredible story.

A later work of McCoy looks at the the Nicaraguan civil war and it's financing by the CIA smuggling cocaine in 80s.

McCoy's work leads to the inevitable conclusion that the CIA is against legalization of drugs because it would loose so much money for it's many illegal and secret operations.

Title: Re: Documentary film trend(?)
Post by: aciddeath on March 01, 2012, 10:07 pm
++1 on "The Century of Self"
amazing documentary series

Adam Curtis released another documentary series shortly after that one called "The Trap — What Happened to our Dream of Freedom" that is equally as mind boggling as The Century of Self
Title: Re: Documentary film trend(?)
Post by: pine on March 02, 2012, 02:25 am
I forgot to add, The Ascent of Money is also an excellent documentary series.  :)
Title: Re: Documentary film trend(?)
Post by: ShieLdz on March 02, 2012, 02:58 am
IMHO The Corporation and the Zeitgeist movies are as mad as a box of hot frogs. The makers of those so called documentaries know literally next to nothing about the history of capitalism. They gloss over highly complex topics and pretend that long appreciated market principals are some manner of conspiracy theory.

I won't go on, but specifically, from watching The Corporation you'd imagine a panglossian world of peace, harmony and stability before corporations came into existence. And the idea that Corporations only came into existence via a loophole in the law supposedly dedicated to helping black people is completely insane. "Doh! By golly those sneaky capitalists got through again! By Jove!". I mean, are you serious?

Don't get me wrong. Capitalism is not a perfect system, I don't have rose tinted glasses, but their statements about it are ludicrously ignorant.

If you want the big picture, you're going to have to read some books, because there *are* literally no good documentaries on Capitalism, I've scoured the internet and came up with zero.

 - The Birth of Plenty by William Bernstein

 - The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner

 - Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay

 - The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson

That selection is deliberately chosen to be non-biased as possible, if anything it's biased in the other direction, since only 1 of those authors is actually pro-capitalist (N.F). The others lean(ed) to the Left of the political spectrum.

Also they are fantastically well written books besides being as accurate as it's reasonable to expect from any one individual.

People like Naomi Klein and Chomsky are the worst source of information about the System, they are entirely caught up in a paradigm which is completely politically USA-centric and centered around the perceived 'issues of the day'. If you check out the references Chomsky uses, you'll quickly find that although he sounds smart, he is ridiculously blinkered, some of the most gregarious examples of intellectual cherry picking I've ever seen. He is not an economist, nor an historian, he's a linguist. Smarts from one field of science don't translate to the next.

If you want some insightful critiques of capitalism, then you should watch Adam Curtis's documentaries (two of which are mentioned in the OP's post, namely the Century of the Self and the Power of Nightmares). I don't entirely agree with him either, but at least he's making a valiant attempt to figure out the System.

Protip: if you want a good & proper mind-fuck, then do this:

Watch a documentary called "Collapse", then immediately afterwards watch a documentary called "Transcendent Man". They are complete opposites, both are quite reasonable intellectually, and bring home that there is no one person with an answer to the future as you'll have ever before experienced.
I think I'm in luv...
Title: Re: Documentary film trend(?)
Post by: morningRain on March 02, 2012, 07:36 am
..."are as mad as a box of hot frogs"...They gloss over highly complex topics and..." ... "you'd imagine a panglossian world of peace, harmony and stability before..." ... "...but their statements about it are ludicrously ignorant."

As an exercise, it might be interesting to try to identify the logical fallacies, distortions and omissions of fact, emotional manipulation, rhetorical spin, etc. It might also be interesting to observe that this is what this society/culture produces/consumes as documentary.

Also they are fantastically well written books besides being as accurate as it's reasonable to expect from any one individual.

Interesting.

More Adam Curtis:
All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace
http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6457676/BBC_All_Watched_Over_By_Machines_Of_Loving_Grace
Title: Re: Documentary film trend(?)
Post by: morningRain on March 02, 2012, 09:06 am
Probably better classified as inspired or inspirational than documentary but interesting nonetheless:

Terence McKenna - Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines
http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/5389526/Terence_McKenna_-_Shamans_Among_the_Machines_%28DivX%29

Those with a sufficiently juvenile or flexible demeanor might enjoy seeing old Bob in action:

Maybe Logic - The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson
http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/4284650/Maybe_Logic_-_The_Lives_and_Ideas_of_Robert_Anton_Wilson_MP4
Title: Re: Documentary film trend(?)
Post by: lefthandspinner on March 02, 2012, 10:46 pm
I am really glad that you mentioned The Century of Self ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhxfArTAcfM ) and Power of Nightmares, both are docs made by the brilliant Adam Curtis of the BBC.  Check out his blog at www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/ to see some great essays with videos, some great stuff on Murdoch and the media, why occupy protesters may be so afraid of making demands andd plenty of other stuff, great archive material permeates his work.

AC's other great series is Pandora's Box about technology and rationality leading to some pretty fucked up results.  First one has some great interviews.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8312897319201458250

And The Trap, The Living Dead and The Mayfair Set are all well worth watching, just googling them + Adam curtis to find them.

John Pilger is a bit preachy for some but check out The War on Democracy @ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3739500579629840148 if you're interested in U.S. hypocrisy and it's relations in Latin Amercia.

It's not a doc but if you want a good read you should try and find the Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia by Alfred W. McCoy, a history professor who traveled to Vietnam, investigated the French-Indo-Chinese heroin ops that financed French Secret Service ops in Indo-China before then transferring those heroin ops onto U.S. services and the continuation of the drug trade up to and during the Vietnam War.   Truly an incredible story.

A later work of McCoy looks at the the Nicaraguan civil war and it's financing by the CIA smuggling cocaine in 80s.

McCoy's work leads to the inevitable conclusion that the CIA is against legalization of drugs because it would loose so much money for it's many illegal and secret operations.

do any of u guys do h and are u in USA,i said for years that i think europeans h supply must be goin elsewhere and thats why price doubled for keys and street stuff is worth less shit, u wont get a nod if u smoke an oz(uk).
In US did u have afghan no4 before the occupation as i thought afghans only produced no3 which is for europe and ours is so poor and it seems all the best stuff on here is afghan no4 from us/can ,now have the cia taught the afghans to refine there gear for  the US market and there shipping it all there, i also seen a report that they think the US are shipping 85% of all drugs produced there,we all know goverments are involved in the drugs trade so anyone think this the case with afghan gear.
no doubt military people will be doin it but has the US got so much afghan stuff that it has to be gov shit,do u also think they allowed the abuseble oxy on the market to get people hooked then banned them knowing they were  taking over the h trade in afghan maybe thats why  they arrested the kandahar drug baron who grassed his talib mates up to cozy up to the US and carry on his trade only to be fucked over by them and given life now they have his drug empire
Title: Re: Documentary film trend(?)
Post by: DigitalAlch on March 03, 2012, 11:50 am
Crazy Good Post Pine, looks like I have some reading to do.

~Digi
Title: Re: Documentary film trend(?)
Post by: pine on March 03, 2012, 05:42 pm
Crazy Good Post Pine, looks like I have some reading to do.

~Digi

np :)
Title: Re: Documentary film trend(?)
Post by: markwest on March 03, 2012, 06:08 pm
dont know if its been mentioned in this thread yet but enron: the smartest guys in the room is compulsory viewing imho. particularly if you want to get into a seething rage and give serious thought to joining a militia. particularly the taped calls where the traders are laughing about grandma being unable to afford her electricity bill
Title: Re: Documentary film trend(?)
Post by: bananatinpots on March 03, 2012, 08:03 pm
I am really glad that you mentioned The Century of Self ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhxfArTAcfM ) and Power of Nightmares, both are docs made by the brilliant Adam Curtis of the BBC.  Check out his blog at www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/ to see some great essays with videos, some great stuff on Murdoch and the media, why occupy protesters may be so afraid of making demands andd plenty of other stuff, great archive material permeates his work.

AC's other great series is Pandora's Box about technology and rationality leading to some pretty fucked up results.  First one has some great interviews.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8312897319201458250

And The Trap, The Living Dead and The Mayfair Set are all well worth watching, just googling them + Adam curtis to find them.

John Pilger is a bit preachy for some but check out The War on Democracy @ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3739500579629840148 if you're interested in U.S. hypocrisy and it's relations in Latin Amercia.

It's not a doc but if you want a good read you should try and find the Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia by Alfred W. McCoy, a history professor who traveled to Vietnam, investigated the French-Indo-Chinese heroin ops that financed French Secret Service ops in Indo-China before then transferring those heroin ops onto U.S. services and the continuation of the drug trade up to and during the Vietnam War.   Truly an incredible story.

A later work of McCoy looks at the the Nicaraguan civil war and it's financing by the CIA smuggling cocaine in 80s.

McCoy's work leads to the inevitable conclusion that the CIA is against legalization of drugs because it would loose so much money for it's many illegal and secret operations.

do any of u guys do h and are u in USA,i said for years that i think europeans h supply must be goin elsewhere and thats why price doubled for keys and street stuff is worth less shit, u wont get a nod if u smoke an oz(uk).
In US did u have afghan no4 before the occupation as i thought afghans only produced no3 which is for europe and ours is so poor and it seems all the best stuff on here is afghan no4 from us/can ,now have the cia taught the afghans to refine there gear for  the US market and there shipping it all there, i also seen a report that they think the US are shipping 85% of all drugs produced there,we all know goverments are involved in the drugs trade so anyone think this the case with afghan gear.
no doubt military people will be doin it but has the US got so much afghan stuff that it has to be gov shit,do u also think they allowed the abuseble oxy on the market to get people hooked then banned them knowing they were  taking over the h trade in afghan maybe thats why  they arrested the kandahar drug baron who grassed his talib mates up to cozy up to the US and carry on his trade only to be fucked over by them and given life now they have his drug empire

Your reasoning makes sense, no way to prove or disprove it yet but it can't be discounted easily.

I don't do H or know anyone that does, but I am very interested in your suggestion that prices and quality are drifting apart in such an unexpected way when afghan H production has only increased over the last ten years.

Can people confirm EU H prices going up and quality going down and provide a timescale for the last 11 years? 

Has U.S. H got better and cheaper since the Afghan occupation?

Have any other countries with forces in Afghanistan experienced significant changes in H P & Q ?

What does any one know about changes in distribution networks in the golden triangle?

However, as interesting it all is, it's quite possible that other factors are at play which could explain anything, we just don't know.

If SR becomes truly international and built a real intelligence section we could decrease the asymmetry of information that causes substances to have such insane profit margins.

Title: Re: Documentary film trend(?)
Post by: lefthandspinner on March 04, 2012, 03:34 pm
http://www.unodc.org/pdf/research/Bulletin07/bulletin_on_narcotics_2007_Zerell.pdf


heres a link regarding h process in afghan and its after 2000 and for no4 its for german police and h datebase great read
Title: Re: Documentary film trend(?)
Post by: jpisbetterthanme on March 04, 2012, 06:46 pm
If Anyone Cares (stfu Shredhead nobody gives a shit!) - I heard Michael Moore on NPR a few weeks ago (...... am I one of THOSE people now?? Shit . . .) and he was talking about how the rules concerning Academy Award nominations for independent documentaries are going to be changing up so that they need to be in X number of theaters to even be eligible. So that.