Category "War"

Jon Snow presents a forensic investigation into the final weeks of the quarter-century-long civil war between the government of Sri Lanka and the secessionist rebels, the Tamil Tigers. With disturbing and distressing descriptions and film of executions, atrocities and the shelling of civilians the programme features devastating new video evidence of war crimes – some of the most horrific footage Channel 4 has ever broadcast. Read more & Watch...

This feature-length documentary focuses on the efforts by troops in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War to oppose the war effort by peaceful demonstration and subversion. It speaks mainly to veterans, but serves as a ready reminder to civilians that soldiers may oppose war as stridently as any civilian, and at greater personal peril. Easily the most timely and resonant film about the soldiers on the front lines of antiwar resistance, the award-winning breakout theatrical hit SIR! NO SIR! Tells an almost entirely forgotten story of the military men and women who helped force the U.S. government to end the Vietnam War. Contrary to the popular image of long-haired hippies spitting on returning soldiers, SIR! NO SIR! vividly demonstrates that GIs were the heart and soul of the anti-war movement. Read more & Watch...

When Baghdad exploded under bombs, television chose to bring us fireworks. But does this distant and spectacular image tell us what is really happening on the ground, how it feels or what it means? Television has the means to take us anywhere and show us anything. It can bring us the physical experience of war with all its’ horrors, like no other medium, and yet the image of American war on television is disembodied, bloodless, and unreal. The invasion of Iraq was the most closely documented war ever fought. Lasting only 800 hours, it produced 20,000 hours of video, but those images were tightly controlled, producing a monolithic view of combat sanitized and controlled by the Pentagon. Read more & Watch...

Loss of Liberty' dramatically proves, beyond any doubt, that the attack by Israel on June 8, 1967 against the US naval intelligence gathering ship USS Liberty, in which 34 Americans were killed and 171 wounded, was deliberate. The video first lets Israeli officers make their totally unconvincing case that the attack was a 'tragic accident' when the Israelis mistook the much larger and differently configured USS Liberty for the totally unlike Egyptian ship El Quseir. Read more & Watch...

The most appalling episode of lawless cruelty in American history is the bombing of Laos. If you want to know what Afghanistan will be like in twenty years, watch Bombies. In a cohesive, well-documented approach, Bombies beautifully captures the history and effects of the U.S. carpet bombing in Laos. Between 1964 and 1973 the United States conducted a secret air war, dropping over 2 million tons of bombs and making tiny Laos the most heavily bombed country in history. Millions of these cluster bombs did not explode when dropped, leaving the country massively contaminated with bombies as dangerous now as when they fell 30 years ago. Read more & Watch...

Is it possible for a photograph to change the world? Photographs taken by soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison changed the war in Iraq and changed Americas image of itself. Yet, a central mystery remains. Did the notorious Abu Ghraib photographs constitute evidence of systematic abuse by the American military, or were they documenting the aberrant behavior of a few bad apples? We set out to examine the context of these photographs. Why were they taken? What was happening outside the frame? We talked directly to the soldiers who took the photographs and who were in the photographs. Who are these people? Read more & Watch...

Years before the US went after Saddam Hussein, the White House had Manuel Noriega, another former ally, in its sights. In their Oscar-winning documentary, director Barbara Trent and writer/editor David Kasper (Cover Up: Behind the Iran Contra Affair) contrast media coverage of the 1989 invasion with expert testimony. Read more & Watch...

Award-winning journalist John Pilger investigates the discrepancies between American and British claims for the 'war on terror' and the facts on the ground as he finds them in Afghanistan and Washington, DC. In 2001, as the bombs began to drop. George W. Bush promised Afghanistan "the generosity of America and its allies". Now, the familiar old warlords are regaining power, religious fundamentalism is renewing its grip and military skirmishes continue routinely. In "liberated" Afghanistan, America has its military base and pipeline access, while the people have the warlords who are, says one woman, "in many ways worse than the Taliban". Read more & Watch...

Part contemporary investigation and part historical inquiry, documentary follows the quest of one journalist in search of justice. The film focuses on Christopher Hitchens’ charges against Henry Kissinger as a war criminal – allegations documented in Hitchens’ book of the same title – based on his role in countries such as Cambodia, Chile, and Indonesia. Kissinger’s story raises profound questions about American foreign policy and highlights a new era of human rights. Read more & Watch...

In 1971 Daniel Ellsberg, a high-level Pentagon official and a war strategist, concludes that the Vietnam war is based on decades of lies and leaks 7,000 pages of top secret documents to The New York Times, making headlines around the world. Hailed as a hero, vilified as a traitor, and ostracized by even his closest colleagues, Ellsberg risks life in prison to stop a war he helped plan. This story of one man’s profound change of heart is also a piercing look at the world of government secrecy as revealed by the ultimate insider. Read more & Watch...

During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945 and the second on August 9, 1945. For six months, the United States had made use of intense strategic fire-bombing of 67 Japanese cities. Together with the United Kingdom, and the Republic of China the United States called for a surrender of Japan in the Potsdam Declaration. Read more & Watch...

638 Ways to Kill Castro is a documentary film which tells the story of some of the numerous attempts to kill Cuba's leader Fidel Castro. The film reveals multiple methods of assassination, from exploding cigars to femme fatales; a radio station rigged with noxious gas to a poison syringe posing as an innocuous ballpoint pen. Fabian Escalante, the former head of Cuban Intelligence, the man who has had the job of protecting Castro for many of the 48 years he has been in power, alleges that there were over 600 plots and conspiracies known to Cuban agents. Read more & Watch...

Exclusive rough-cut of first in-depth documentary on WikiLeaks and the people behind it. From summer 2010 until now, Swedish Television has been following the secretive media network WikiLeaks and its enigmatic Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange. Reporters Jesper Huor and Bosse Lindquist have traveled to key countries where WikiLeaks operates, interviewing top members, such as Assange, new Spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson, as well as people like Daniel Domscheit-Berg who now is starting his own version – Openleaks.org! Read more & Watch...

After the Vietnam War, hundreds of thousands of U.S. veterans suffered toxic reactions, neurological damage, and rare cancers due to exposure to 2,4,5,-D and 2,4,5-T dioxin that was used in the form of the defoliant Agent Orange. Unfortunately, the U.S. military denied the problem and failed to heed any of the lessons of this chemical butchery. Instead, it expanded its harmful legacy to the current generation of soldiers and civilians exposed to new, more deadly chemical toxins in the Persian Gulf. Read more & Watch...

Hailed as “powerful” and “quietly unflinching,” Patricia Foulkrod’s searing documentary feature includes exclusive footage that will stir audiences. The filmmaker’s subjects are patriotic young Americans, ordinary men and women who heeded the call for military service in Iraq, as they experience recruitment and training, combat, homecoming, and the struggle to reintegrate with families and communities. The terrible conflict in Iraq, depicted with ferocious honesty in the film, is a prelude for the even more challenging battles fought by the soldiers returning home,with personal demons, an uncomprehending public, and an indifferent government. Read more & Watch...