Lt. Gen. William Caldwell ordered the use of “psychological operations” against Members of the United States Congress in order to secure more funding and troops for the war in Afghanistan and advance his own career. Lt. Col. Michael Holmes, head of an information operations unit in Afghanistan, told Rolling Stone, that his job is "to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave." Lt. Gen. Caldwell ordered his unit to replace al-Qaeda and the Taliban as his enemy and instead set their sights on the U.S. Congress.
This is a direct attack on the civilian leadership and oversight of our armed forces and there need to be immediate consequences for all of those involved.
ACT NOW: Tell President Obama to order Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to fire and court-martial Lt. Gen. Caldwell for his illegal actions.
General Caldwell’s Chief of Staff made it clear they intended to run a propaganda campaign against their own government when he issued – in writing – the order that “directly tasked” Lt. Col. Holmes with conducting an information operation campaign against all distinguished visitors. The order: “How do we get these guys to give us more people? What do I have to plant inside their heads?”
Investigations will be needed to root out the full extent of Caldwell’s actions, but the first step to ensuring civilian control over the military is to enforce the strictest consequences possible for this shameful episode.
Tell President Obama to defend civilian control of the military by ordering the Secretary of Defense to fire and court-martial Lt. Gen. Caldwell and hold him accountable for his crimes.
Thank you for working for peace,
Ryan, Tom, Daniel and the Win Without War team
Friday, February 25, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Unconstitutional
Unconstitutional is the new, hour-long documentary from Robert Greenwald -- one of the most prolific and progressive producers in Hollywood -- in conjunction with the ACLU. This new film written, directed and produced by Nonny de la Pena, details the shocking way that the civil liberties of American citizens and immigrants alike have been infringed upon, curtailed and rolled back since 9/11 and the USA Patriot Act.
The war on our Civil Liberties. The real story behind the USA PATRIOT Act and other administration policies and the gut wrenching stories behind those affected--from law-abiding store clerks to United States Olympians unable to travel. It'll remind you of what America used to stand for and what it seems we're falling for now. In short, this one-hour film will affirm why you're angry and give you a tool to help others join your ranks.
Swiss Banker Exposes International Corruption - Reported on NPR
"I am against the system. I know how the system works and I know the day-to-day business. From that point of view, I wanted to let society know what I know. It is damaging our society," Elmer said.Former Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer said during a news conference Monday at the Frontline Club in London that the data supplied to WikiLeaks details financial abuses involving thousands of holders of offshore accounts.
A former Swiss banker said Monday that he has handed over to WikiLeaks two discs containing what he claims is information on 2,000 offshore bank account holders.
Rudolf Elmer, an ex-employee of Swiss-based bank Julius Baer, said the documents reveal case after case of tax evasion and involve 40 politicians as well as entertainers and multinationals from the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere. He refused to name the account holders, but said the data span a period of at least 19 years and involve three banks.
Elmer, who is scheduled to go on trial this week for breaking bank secrecy laws, said he believes he has the right to take a stand against a system that permits secret and often illegal activity.
"I do think as a banker I have the right to stand up if something is wrong," said Elmer, who addressed reporters at London's Frontline Club alongside WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream...to Go to War?!"
Why is it that Citizen Activists from Robert Greenwald's BRAVE NEW FILMS are the only people making media against the Afghanistan War? (pissst ... DO SOMETHING!)
Each Citizen Activists has the ability to:
- Challenge corporate media with TRUTH.
- Share the latest videos from Brave New Films.
- Give input on projects that are in development.
- MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
Please "LIKE" them on FaceBook
Friday, November 26, 2010
See FAIR GAME
Get an incredible insider’s view of what happened when Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame stood up to the Bush Administration and declared that there was no evidence of WMD in Iraq. The couple also speaks about the new movie based on their lives, 'Fair Game', the movie of their struggle, exposes the evil that took control of our government and the corruption and hypocrisy at its core.
Every American should see this film, and recognize that when the President and his men turn traitor and expose the American people to risk and harm for their own benefit, impeachment and imprisonment is the only solution. We need to hold those evildoers accountable.
SEE FAIR GAME - In theaters Now!
As I often do, I'll pay for any registered Republican to see this movie. Simply send me a copy of your current voter registration card along with a ticket stub receipt to FAIR GAME, P.O. Box 91062, San Diego, CA 92169.
It is vital to the future of the USA that Republicans recognize their mistakes and become enlightened to their sins against our national security.
Every American should see this film, and recognize that when the President and his men turn traitor and expose the American people to risk and harm for their own benefit, impeachment and imprisonment is the only solution. We need to hold those evildoers accountable.
SEE FAIR GAME - In theaters Now!
As I often do, I'll pay for any registered Republican to see this movie. Simply send me a copy of your current voter registration card along with a ticket stub receipt to FAIR GAME, P.O. Box 91062, San Diego, CA 92169.
It is vital to the future of the USA that Republicans recognize their mistakes and become enlightened to their sins against our national security.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
INSIDE JOB - The Documentary
WEBSITE
SYNOPSIS
From Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson (“No End In Sight”), comes INSIDE JOB, the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, INSIDE JOB traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
This film attempts to provide a comprehensive portrayal of an extremely important and timely subject: the worst financial crisis since the Depression, which continues to haunt us via Europe’s debt problems and global financial instability. It was a completely avoidable crisis; indeed for 40 years after the reforms following the Great Depression, the United States did not have a single financial crisis. However, the progressive deregulation of the financial sector since the 1980s gave rise to an increasingly criminal industry, whose “innovations” have produced a succession of financial crises. Each crisis has been worse than the last; and yet, due to the industry’s increasing wealth and power, each crisis has seen few people go to prison. In the case of this crisis, nobody has gone to prison, despite fraud that caused trillions of dollars in losses. I hope that the film, in less than two hours, will enable everyone to understand the fundamental nature and causes of this problem. It is also my hope that, whatever political opinions individual viewers may have, that after seeing this film we can all agree on the importance of restoring honesty and stability to our financial system, and of holding accountable those to destroyed it.
TIMELINE
How Deregulation and the Evolution of Wall Street Culture Led to the Financial Crisis
A chronological re-ordering of the events and arguments of INSIDE JOB
1930s (post-Great Depression)-1979: Traditional American finance
1933-35: Motivated by financial abuses that contributed to the Great Depression, new laws such as the Glass-Steagall Act and the Securities and Exchange Act place limits on financial risk-taking and require extensive disclosure of financial information
• Bankers/traders earned salaries in line with other professionals; tightly regulated financial sector
1980s: The Reagan Era: laissez-faire and trickle-down economics
• Substantial deregulation, especially the Garn-St. Germain Act which deregulates Savings and Loan companies, leading to the later S&L crisis
• Oliver Stone’s Wall Street immortalized financial sector greed and immorality
• S&L scandal: loose regulations, lax enforcement lead to massive fraud; hundreds of S&Ls fail lax enforcement lead to massive fraud; hundreds of S&Ls fail; $124 billion taxpayer-funded bailout
• Neil Bush approves $100 million of bad loans to business partners through Silverado S&L, which subsequently fails
• 1989: Keating Five: Four senators and CEO Charles Keating accused of improper influence in advocating against investigating Lincoln S&L, which collapses and Keating is convicted of fraud
• 1987-1990: Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky and other Wall Street executives convicted of fraud and insider trading
1990s: Clinton era: increasing revolving door between Washington and Wall Street
• 1999: Clinton administration members with Wall Street backgrounds help pass the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, aka the “Citigroup Relief Act,” repealing Glass-Steagall and allowing mergers that create Citigroup
• 1994: A new law gives the Federal Reserve power to regulate the mortgage industry, but Alan Greenspan refuses to enact any regulations, on the grounds that regulation was unnecessary
• 2000: Clinton Administration, particularly Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan and key Congress members including Senator Phil Gramm help enact the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which bans all regulation of financial derivatives and exempts them from anti-gambling laws
• 2000: Dot-com bubble bursts
• 2000-2002: Eliot Spitzer sues 8 investment banks for conflict of interest and recommending dot-com stocks they thought were junk; reaches settlements totaling $1.4 billion in fines
2000s: George Bush pushes for further deregulation and relaxed enforcement
• 2000-2005: Investigations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reveal massive accounting fraud
• 2002: Arthur Andersen, auditor, convicted of obstruction of justice for shredding Enron documents
• 2003: Worldcom revealed to have inflated assets by $11 billion
• 2000s: new crops of highly complex financial innovations flourish: securitization of mortgages, credit default swaps, synthetic CDOs
• 2000-2007: Fed by the investment banking industry, a massive housing and mortgage credit bubble sweeps the United States; mortgage lending quadruples, housing prices double
• 2004: After intense lobbying by investment banks, the SEC lifts the leverage limits on the investment banking industry, allowing them to borrow more
• 2005: IMF chief economist Raghuram Rajan warns of dangerous incentives and risks in the financial system; Larry Summers dismisses him as a “Luddite”
• 2005-2008: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and other investment banks begin using credit default swaps to bet against the same mortgage securities that they are selling as extremely safe
• 2006: Hank Paulson, CEO of Goldman Sachs, becomes Treasury Secretary
• 2007: The housing bubble bursts, as the financial sector runs out of people willing to borrow and purchase more housing; home ownership reaches an all-time high, while savings rates are at historic lows
2008: Great Recession begins
• Collapse of Bear Stearns (March) and then Lehman Brothers (September)
• AIG rescued with $85 billion one day after Lehman declares bankruptcy
• Housing prices drop by 32 percent over three-year period
• Record foreclosures
• Unemployment rises from 5% to 10% in one year
• Tens of billions in bailout money go to AIG and Goldman Sachs
• $700 billion emergency bailout for the financial industry
2010s: The Obama era: Business as usual?
• Timothy Geithner becomes Treasury Secretary
• Larry Summers becomes director of the National Economic Council
• President Obama re-appoints Ben Bernanke
• Obama appoints many Wall Street executives to senior regulatory and economic policy positions
CHARLES FERGUSON (Director)
Charles Ferguson, the founder of Representational Pictures and the director of Inside Job, is a filmmaker, writer, and political scientist. A native of San Francisco, California, Ferguson obtained a B.A. in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1978 and a Ph.D. in political science from M.I.T. in 1989. Following his Ph.D., Ferguson was a postdoctoral researcher at M.I.T. for three years, focusing on interactions between high technology, globalization, and government policy, and frequently consulting to U.S. government agencies including the White House staff, the Defense Department, and the U.S. Trade Representative. Then from 1992 to 1994 Ferguson was an independent consultant to high technology companies including Apple, Xerox, Motorola, Intel, and Texas Instruments. In 1994 Ferguson founded Vermeer Technologies, a software company which developed FrontPage, the first end-user Web site development tool, which he sold to Microsoft in 1996. Subsequently he spent several years as a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a visiting scholar at M.I.T. and U.C., Berkeley.
In mid-2005, Ferguson formed Representational Pictures and began production of his first film, No End In Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq, which premiered at the Sundance Festival in 2007. No End In Sight won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance, the Best Documentary prizes of the New York and Los Angeles Film Critics circles, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. Ferguson has authored several books including High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner’s Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars, and Computer Wars: The Post-IBM World (co-authored with Charles Morris).
AUDREY MARRS (Producer)
Audrey Marrs is the producer of Inside Job, a documentary about the global financial crisis and No End In Sight, a documentary about U.S. policy in Iraq, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award along with director Charles Ferguson. Marrs obtained her master's degree in curatorial practice from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. After completing her graduate degree, she worked as a freelance curator prior to becoming a film producer. Marrs is the C.O.O. of Representational Pictures and divides her time between Berkeley, California and New York City.
SYNOPSIS
From Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson (“No End In Sight”), comes INSIDE JOB, the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, INSIDE JOB traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
This film attempts to provide a comprehensive portrayal of an extremely important and timely subject: the worst financial crisis since the Depression, which continues to haunt us via Europe’s debt problems and global financial instability. It was a completely avoidable crisis; indeed for 40 years after the reforms following the Great Depression, the United States did not have a single financial crisis. However, the progressive deregulation of the financial sector since the 1980s gave rise to an increasingly criminal industry, whose “innovations” have produced a succession of financial crises. Each crisis has been worse than the last; and yet, due to the industry’s increasing wealth and power, each crisis has seen few people go to prison. In the case of this crisis, nobody has gone to prison, despite fraud that caused trillions of dollars in losses. I hope that the film, in less than two hours, will enable everyone to understand the fundamental nature and causes of this problem. It is also my hope that, whatever political opinions individual viewers may have, that after seeing this film we can all agree on the importance of restoring honesty and stability to our financial system, and of holding accountable those to destroyed it.
TIMELINE
How Deregulation and the Evolution of Wall Street Culture Led to the Financial Crisis
A chronological re-ordering of the events and arguments of INSIDE JOB
1930s (post-Great Depression)-1979: Traditional American finance
1933-35: Motivated by financial abuses that contributed to the Great Depression, new laws such as the Glass-Steagall Act and the Securities and Exchange Act place limits on financial risk-taking and require extensive disclosure of financial information
• Bankers/traders earned salaries in line with other professionals; tightly regulated financial sector
1980s: The Reagan Era: laissez-faire and trickle-down economics
• Substantial deregulation, especially the Garn-St. Germain Act which deregulates Savings and Loan companies, leading to the later S&L crisis
• Oliver Stone’s Wall Street immortalized financial sector greed and immorality
• S&L scandal: loose regulations, lax enforcement lead to massive fraud; hundreds of S&Ls fail lax enforcement lead to massive fraud; hundreds of S&Ls fail; $124 billion taxpayer-funded bailout
• Neil Bush approves $100 million of bad loans to business partners through Silverado S&L, which subsequently fails
• 1989: Keating Five: Four senators and CEO Charles Keating accused of improper influence in advocating against investigating Lincoln S&L, which collapses and Keating is convicted of fraud
• 1987-1990: Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky and other Wall Street executives convicted of fraud and insider trading
1990s: Clinton era: increasing revolving door between Washington and Wall Street
• 1999: Clinton administration members with Wall Street backgrounds help pass the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, aka the “Citigroup Relief Act,” repealing Glass-Steagall and allowing mergers that create Citigroup
• 1994: A new law gives the Federal Reserve power to regulate the mortgage industry, but Alan Greenspan refuses to enact any regulations, on the grounds that regulation was unnecessary
• 2000: Clinton Administration, particularly Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan and key Congress members including Senator Phil Gramm help enact the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which bans all regulation of financial derivatives and exempts them from anti-gambling laws
• 2000: Dot-com bubble bursts
• 2000-2002: Eliot Spitzer sues 8 investment banks for conflict of interest and recommending dot-com stocks they thought were junk; reaches settlements totaling $1.4 billion in fines
2000s: George Bush pushes for further deregulation and relaxed enforcement
• 2000-2005: Investigations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reveal massive accounting fraud
• 2002: Arthur Andersen, auditor, convicted of obstruction of justice for shredding Enron documents
• 2003: Worldcom revealed to have inflated assets by $11 billion
• 2000s: new crops of highly complex financial innovations flourish: securitization of mortgages, credit default swaps, synthetic CDOs
• 2000-2007: Fed by the investment banking industry, a massive housing and mortgage credit bubble sweeps the United States; mortgage lending quadruples, housing prices double
• 2004: After intense lobbying by investment banks, the SEC lifts the leverage limits on the investment banking industry, allowing them to borrow more
• 2005: IMF chief economist Raghuram Rajan warns of dangerous incentives and risks in the financial system; Larry Summers dismisses him as a “Luddite”
• 2005-2008: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and other investment banks begin using credit default swaps to bet against the same mortgage securities that they are selling as extremely safe
• 2006: Hank Paulson, CEO of Goldman Sachs, becomes Treasury Secretary
• 2007: The housing bubble bursts, as the financial sector runs out of people willing to borrow and purchase more housing; home ownership reaches an all-time high, while savings rates are at historic lows
2008: Great Recession begins
• Collapse of Bear Stearns (March) and then Lehman Brothers (September)
• AIG rescued with $85 billion one day after Lehman declares bankruptcy
• Housing prices drop by 32 percent over three-year period
• Record foreclosures
• Unemployment rises from 5% to 10% in one year
• Tens of billions in bailout money go to AIG and Goldman Sachs
• $700 billion emergency bailout for the financial industry
2010s: The Obama era: Business as usual?
• Timothy Geithner becomes Treasury Secretary
• Larry Summers becomes director of the National Economic Council
• President Obama re-appoints Ben Bernanke
• Obama appoints many Wall Street executives to senior regulatory and economic policy positions
CHARLES FERGUSON (Director)
Charles Ferguson, the founder of Representational Pictures and the director of Inside Job, is a filmmaker, writer, and political scientist. A native of San Francisco, California, Ferguson obtained a B.A. in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1978 and a Ph.D. in political science from M.I.T. in 1989. Following his Ph.D., Ferguson was a postdoctoral researcher at M.I.T. for three years, focusing on interactions between high technology, globalization, and government policy, and frequently consulting to U.S. government agencies including the White House staff, the Defense Department, and the U.S. Trade Representative. Then from 1992 to 1994 Ferguson was an independent consultant to high technology companies including Apple, Xerox, Motorola, Intel, and Texas Instruments. In 1994 Ferguson founded Vermeer Technologies, a software company which developed FrontPage, the first end-user Web site development tool, which he sold to Microsoft in 1996. Subsequently he spent several years as a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a visiting scholar at M.I.T. and U.C., Berkeley.
In mid-2005, Ferguson formed Representational Pictures and began production of his first film, No End In Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq, which premiered at the Sundance Festival in 2007. No End In Sight won the Special Jury Prize at Sundance, the Best Documentary prizes of the New York and Los Angeles Film Critics circles, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary. Ferguson has authored several books including High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner’s Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars, and Computer Wars: The Post-IBM World (co-authored with Charles Morris).
AUDREY MARRS (Producer)
Audrey Marrs is the producer of Inside Job, a documentary about the global financial crisis and No End In Sight, a documentary about U.S. policy in Iraq, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award along with director Charles Ferguson. Marrs obtained her master's degree in curatorial practice from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. After completing her graduate degree, she worked as a freelance curator prior to becoming a film producer. Marrs is the C.O.O. of Representational Pictures and divides her time between Berkeley, California and New York City.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
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