NPR remembers the anti Vietnam war protest that took place 40 years ago. On March 17th, 1968, in Catonsville, MD, nine members of the Catholic Church stole hundreds of draft records and set them on fire with homemade napalm. The group came to be known as the Catonsville Nine and later that year was prosecuted and convicted.

INVESTIGATION OF A FLAME is an intimate look at this unlikely, disparate band of resisters who broke the law in a poetic act of civil disobedience.

Labels: law, politics, protest, Sixties, vietnam war

The article "The New Geopolitics of Energy" in The Nation highlights how the struggle over energy resources, rather than ideology or politics, has come to dominate the martial landscape and is now the world leaders' main concern.

The film ENERGY WAR reveals precisely how the economic importance of fossil fuels affects international politics and becomes a powerful tool of foreign policy.

Labels: energy, environment, politics, war

As US Congress debates a revised farm bill, poor, hungry farmers in Africa who were promised food for work on an irrigation project are awaiting payment that may never come. The New York Times reports that the Bush administration is advocating allowing purchase of food in foreign countries, to deliver aid quickly and give a boost to local economies. But opposition from agricultural states is firm to the current policy of only shipping US food, which benefits American farmers and shipping interests. The impasse leaves hundreds of thousands hungry and dying.

THE PRICE OF AID goes in depth to the bureaucratic process of US food aid policy.

Labels: Africa, food aid, Kenya, politics

The NY Times reports that the militarization of Japan is continuing with recent practice bombing of a tiny island in the Pacific. Japan's pacifist constitution bans offensive military action but slowly the country's leadership has turned the tides of public opinion. JAPAN'S PEACE CONSTITUTION explores in depth the political maneuvering that continues.

The article also notes that while the rearming of the country might be understandable given current potential threats, it is "causing anxieties in a region where distrust of Japan has deepened in direct proportion to Japanese tendencies to revise the past," including the massacre of China's capital, Nanjing in 1937, and its wartime sexual slavery. SENSO DAUGHTERS is made by a Japanese filmmaker who reveals this history through eyewitness testimony, which stands in stark contrast to the Japanese denial.

Labels: Article 9, Asia, comfort women, Japan, politics, Shinzo Abe

As reported in a recent NY Times article, Even as Africa Hungers, Policy Slows Delivery of U.S. Food Aid by Celia W. Dugger, the delivery of food to starving people can take 4 to 6 weeks because government policy requires that all donated food be grown in the U.S. and shipped to where it is needed. This stimulates American agribusiness and shipping, but there are no provisions for emergencies like the current situation in Zambia where the UN's World Food Program that delivers the food to the needy is dangerously low in supplies. Those who are starving may die before the aid reaches them.

THE PRICE OF AID explores the relationships and policies that make up current United States food aid program. With interviews from Zambian officials, nonprofit aid workers and U.S. government officials, the film is an in-depth exploration of this continuing problem.

Labels: Africa, articles, food aid, politics, Zambia

The acclaimed recent release JAPAN'S PEACE CONSTITUTION is a timely, hard-hitting documentary places the ongoing debate over the constitution in an international context: What will revision mean to Japan's neighbors, Korea and China? How is the unprecedented involvement of Japan's Self-Defense Force in the occupation of Iraq perceived in the Middle East?

Labels: Article 9, international relations, Japan, politics, Shinzo Abe

As reported by Reuters (via Yahoo News), after being carried to re-election by his popularity with the poor, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is striving to reassure the business community he will not abandon market-friendly policies to create jobs and boost income.

Lula's balancing act between his political base and the economic and political elite is aptly captured in the documentary LULA'S BRAZIL, which as it tells of his rise to power also examines the achievements as well as the failures of his presidency compared to his campaign promises, revealing how his ambitious plans have been frustrated by a clash with national and international economic interests.

Labels: Brazil, elections, Latin America, Lula, politics

Labels: articles, India, international relations, politics

Japan's Constitution and Tension with China in the News

Are China and Japan on a collision course? An article by Wieland Wagner in der Spiegel discusses the recent increase in age-old distrust between the two countries . In the near future, the governing Liberal Democrats in Japan want to change the pacifist post-War constitution - and they have the backing of the opposition.

Through interviews conducted with leading thinkers around the world our New Release JAPAN'S PEACE CONSTITUTION explores the origins of the Constitution in the ashes of war, and the significance of its peace clauses in the conflicted times of the early 21st century.

In an online piece from the AP via Yahoo! News, the film's Oscar-nominated director warns of Japan military resurgence. Japan's plans to change its pacifist constitution could rekindle historical animosities in Asia and lead to another war in the region. JAPAN'S PEACE CONSTITUTION is thus also a reminder of the mistrust that still runs deep in much of Asia over Tokyo's militaristic past, and the potential backlash against any resurgence of that militarism.

Labels: Article 9, Japan, politics, Shinzo Abe