Independent Media In a Time of War and Elections

Part scathing critique, part call to action, Independent Media In A Time Of War is a hard-hitting new documentary by the Hudson Mohawk Independent Media Center. This film is composed of a speech given by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! illustrated by clips of mainstream media juxtaposed with rare footage from independent reporters in Iraq. The documentary argues that dialogue is vital to a healthy democracy.

Independent media has a crucial responsibility to go to where the silence is, says Amy Goodman, to represent the diverse voices of people engaged in dissent. She makes a compelling argument that the commercial news media have failed to represent the true face of war.

Ancient Aliens S03 E01 Aliens and the old west VOSTFR

Ancient Astronaut theorists believe aliens have been visiting earth for thousands of years. If so, might we find evidence of this even in the stories of America’s Old West? In Aurora, Texas, the local cemetery claims to hold the body of an alien whose ship crashed there in 1897.

In Utah, petroglyphs depict strange beings wearing what look like space suits. In southern California, 19th century ranchers reported seeing an otherworldly creature emerge from Elizabeth Lake.

And even in Tombstone, Arizona, the home of Wyatt Earp and the site of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, cowboys claimed to have shot at a giant, metallic bird Are these simply campfire tales, or did the cowboys and native people of America’s Wild West actually come in contact with alien beings from another – much more distant – frontier?

Hindu scripture describes an enormous flying creature called a Garuda that shook the ground when it landed on Earth. Is it possible that this monster was actually a misinterpreted alien craft? Are hybrids like the Centaur, the Minotaur and Medusa just mythical creatures of fantasy – or could these ancient depictions of terrifying monsters have been the result of advanced extraterrestrial transplantation procedures?

Are sacred places the product of man’s reverence for God – or the result of contact with ancient space travelers? Jerusalem’s Temple Mount has been called a heavenly gateway. Islam’s shrine at Mecca displays a Black Stone believed to have fallen from heaven. And the temple at Baalbek, Lebanon was built on a massive stone structure resembling a landing pad. Did man encounter divine beings at these holy places, or might they have met ancient extraterrestrials?

The playlist bellow includes 8 episodes from the series: 1. Aliens and the Old West, 2. Aliens and Monsters, 3. Aliens and Sacred Places, 4. Aliens and Temples of Gold, 5. Aliens and Mysterious Rituals, 6. Aliens and Ancient Engineers, 7. Aliens, Plagues and Epidemics, and 8. Aliens and Lost Worlds. Here you can watch Ancient Aliens: Season 1and Ancient Aliens: Season 2.

Beyond 2012 - Evolving Perspectives On the Next Age - Full Length Feature

Never before has a time in history been so significant to so many cultures, religions, scientists and governments.

Beyond 2012 looks past the apocalyptic world view of 2012 and presents a wide variety of evolving perspectives on the next age of global consciousness and techniques for social and ecological transformation.

Topics include Shamanism, Sustainability, Ecological Design, Green Technologies, Alternative Energy Systems, the Mayan Calendar, Psychic Evolution, Synchronicity, and a host of other subjects that deal with the mysteries, wonders and challenges facing all of humankind during this unprecedented age of transformation.

LHC - Six Billion Dollar Experiment (playlist)

The Large Hadron Collider promises to recreate the conditions right after the Big Bang. By revisiting the beginning of time, scientists hope to unravel some of the deepest secrets of our Universe.

Within these first few moments the building blocks of the Universe were created. The search for these fundamental particles has occupied scientists for decades but there remains one particle that has stubbornly refused to appear in any experiment.

The Higgs Boson is so crucial to our understanding of the Universe that it has been dubbed the God particle. It explains how fundamental particles acquire mass, or as one scientist plainly states: It is what makes stuff stuff…

Discovery.Next World 2 of 6 - Future Intelligence

Catch a first-time glimpse at smart technology that will put android helpers in the home, network commuters and entire cities to the Web, and bring us entertainment systems that can virtually make dreams come true.

Advances in artificial intelligence are creating machines with near human-like mental agility. Intelligence will be embedded everywhere – even in our clothing, thanks to smaller, more powerful computers.

Soon, we will be able to build computers with artificial intelligence and processing power that rivals the human brain.

Intelligence will be everywhere, in our clothing, our vehicles and homes. Intelligent robots will serve us – until they don’t feel like doing so anymore. And what happens then…?

Tetris: From Russia with Love (playlist)

This is the story behind the fiendishly addictive game, a tale of high stakes, intimidation and legal feuds set against the backdrop of Cold War tensions between East and West.

Blocks of different sizes fall from the top of the screen. At the bottom of the screen they settle and, if you can make a whole line then they vanish – of course if you don’t then they keep building up until you run out of room and the game ends. It is incredibly simple but fiendishly addictive and once you played it, you were pretty much owned by Tetris.

This documentary takes us back to the origins of the game in Russia as systems at the Moscow Computing School were being developed and pushed as to what they could do and one programme starts experimenting with falling shapes based on a famous jigsaw puzzle.

Computer games are made every week in the world and although Tetris was a phenomenon, a documentary that looks at the business dealings and negotiations that took it from a Moscow computer into homes and hands around the world.

However the story behind the business moves, political complications and such is a fascinating one that is delivered in an accessible and succinct manner in this documentary. The talking heads approach works really well because the contributions are focused and interesting – presenting the history while also managing to bring their characters out well.

The presentation is professional and respectful while the whole thing is very easy to follow and understand. Overall an enjoyable and interesting documentary that despite sounding a bit dull and corporate, will easily engage those who are familiar with the game.

Tetris: From Russia with Love (playlist)

This is the story behind the fiendishly addictive game, a tale of high stakes, intimidation and legal feuds set against the backdrop of Cold War tensions between East and West.

Blocks of different sizes fall from the top of the screen. At the bottom of the screen they settle and, if you can make a whole line then they vanish – of course if you don’t then they keep building up until you run out of room and the game ends. It is incredibly simple but fiendishly addictive and once you played it, you were pretty much owned by Tetris.

This documentary takes us back to the origins of the game in Russia as systems at the Moscow Computing School were being developed and pushed as to what they could do and one programme starts experimenting with falling shapes based on a famous jigsaw puzzle.

Computer games are made every week in the world and although Tetris was a phenomenon, a documentary that looks at the business dealings and negotiations that took it from a Moscow computer into homes and hands around the world.

However the story behind the business moves, political complications and such is a fascinating one that is delivered in an accessible and succinct manner in this documentary. The talking heads approach works really well because the contributions are focused and interesting – presenting the history while also managing to bring their characters out well.

The presentation is professional and respectful while the whole thing is very easy to follow and understand. Overall an enjoyable and interesting documentary that despite sounding a bit dull and corporate, will easily engage those who are familiar with the game.

Around The World in 90 minutes 720p

At midnight, travel to the tiny country of Monaco and watch residents riding on a gondola on a beautiful summer night.

By 12:05 a.m. you are transported to Canada to watch a gaggle of geese forage for food on a grassy knoll. Seem impossible? Not when the photographs are provided by the International Space Station as it orbits the Earth.

Around the World in 90 Minutes tells the spectacular story of what happens around the globe during one 90-minute voyage through a series of high definition images broadcast from thousands of miles away.

internet Rising: documentary film { edu-info-tainment }

Internet Rising is a labor of love comprising a rapid fire mashup stream of live webcam interviews all conducted within the web sphere.

Internet Rising is a digi-documentary investigating the evolving relationships between the Internet and collective consciousness of humanity.

It provokes many questions about ancient and modern paradoxes of life, its pleasures and pains… and the gray area contrasts in between – but most of all it is meant to be an inspiring conversation starter.

The film’s participants include many profound personalities and key Internet influencers ranging from professors, corporate academics, futurists, researchers, writers, bloggers, media creators, activists, gamers, educators, scientists, artists, innovators – real humans, all of whom provide amazing insights into how our state of the world is changing and transforming via various forces of economic, social, geographic, political, philosophical development… all centered around technology’s transformative and generative power.

Playing God -- BBC Horizon [COMPLETE IN A SINGLE FILE] [HD]

I LOST MY JOB

I Lost My Job is a documentary film which sets out to explore the phenomenon which is affecting and due to affect many people’s lives – namely, technological unemployment.

The documentary also examines what we can do about it as a society through the analysis of a transitional direction.

Particular questions need to be raised about this subject. What are the social consequences of ongoing technological unemployment within our current economic system?

How do we handle such a situation when this process is inevitable with the ongoing emergence of machine automation and new technologies taking over repetitive jobs?

Philosophy - Bryan Magee (playlist)

Beginning with the death of Socrates in 399 BC, and following the story through the centuries to recent figures such as Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein, Bryan Magee’s conversations with fifteen contemporary writers and philosophers provide an accessible and exciting account of Western philosophy and its greatest thinkers.

The contributors include A.J. Ayer, Bernard Williams, Martha Nussbaum, Peter Singer, and John Searle, so that the documentary is not only an introduction to the philosophers of the past, but gives an invaluable insight into the view and personalities of some of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.

The series are little bit dated but I think they’re real treasure and food for thought.

Return to the source part 1

This documentary goes over many philosophical concepts that inspired, and are presented in, the trilogy. They spend the first half on the original film, and the rest of the time then goes over parts 2 and 3, with a couple of things on the Animatrix shorts.

It consists of clips of aforementioned releases and interviews. It does a good job of informing the audience about the various thoughts, although it would obviously take far longer to go over all the symbolism in them, and one can ask the very appropriate question if something anywhere near that definite and final is even desired, by viewers or the Wachowskis alike.

That does mean that this is limited, but it is likely enough to enlighten and provide food for thought. In line with the series, this may provoke debate, rather than give answers set in stone. Whether one cares for this or not may depend on the extent of their knowledge on the subject, the old ideas, as well as how much they’ve thought about the presence of such in these three silver screen efforts.

Obviously, it also makes a difference if one particularly wants to think about the meanings one could possibly take out of them.

Return to the source part 1

This documentary goes over many philosophical concepts that inspired, and are presented in, the trilogy. They spend the first half on the original film, and the rest of the time then goes over parts 2 and 3, with a couple of things on the Animatrix shorts.

It consists of clips of aforementioned releases and interviews. It does a good job of informing the audience about the various thoughts, although it would obviously take far longer to go over all the symbolism in them, and one can ask the very appropriate question if something anywhere near that definite and final is even desired, by viewers or the Wachowskis alike.

That does mean that this is limited, but it is likely enough to enlighten and provide food for thought. In line with the series, this may provoke debate, rather than give answers set in stone. Whether one cares for this or not may depend on the extent of their knowledge on the subject, the old ideas, as well as how much they’ve thought about the presence of such in these three silver screen efforts.

Obviously, it also makes a difference if one particularly wants to think about the meanings one could possibly take out of them.

Living in the End Times According to Slavoj Zizek

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, akaThe Elvis of cultural theory, is given the floor to show of his polemic style and whirlwind-like performance.

The Giant of Ljubljana is bombarded with clips of popular media images and quotes by modern-day thinkers revolving around four major issues: the economical crisis, environment, Afghanistan and the end of democracy.

Zizek grabs the opportunity to ruthlessly criticize modern capitalism and to give his view on our common future. We communists are back! is the closing remark of Slavoj Zizeks provocative performance.

Our current capitalist system, that everyone believed would be smoothly spread around the globe, is untenable. We find ourselves on the brink of big problems that call for big solutions.

Whatever is left of the left, has been hedged in by western liberal democracy and seems to lack the energy to come up with radical solutions. Not Zizek.