A new documentary about the democratization of the money supply. This one’s focused on the UK, and it’s great to see campaigners like Ben Dyson and nef’s Sargon Nissan get the feature doc attention their arguments deserve.
On the other hand, how many of the top ten documentary cliches can you spot in the trailer? Darnit. No doubt I shall watch it anyway, 1950s cartoon clips notwithstanding. The whole idea of who controls the money supply is desperately overlooked, and anything that gets it onto the agenda is very welcome. Besides, you can watch it for free online.
If you’ve got a minute, visit the films’ Facebook page and share the trailer.
As you know, I’m very interested (though without much knowledge) to hear insightful analysis and critiques of the financial system. I was therefore very interested to see this piece and put it on my “to watch later” list.
However, I was puzzled by one part of this trailer, which to me did not seem to bode well for the production as a whole. At 3:32 is a clip of President Bush Jnr. apparently saying “America has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality”. This struck me as so shockingly galling that I wondered why I’d never heard the quote before. A quick search revealed the quote came from this speech in 2003 when Bush announced the start of the Iraq war. But the original quote is slightly different: “In this conflict America faces an enemy that has no regard for conventions of war or rules of morality.” Going back to the clip, you can see that they have cut away from Bush after he says “I want Americans and all the world to know” (which actually comes after the above quote in the real speech), and show a brief clip from the “Collateral Murder” video released by WikiLeaks, which sets up the resonance of US failure to honour the rules of engagement, and then Bush’s line “I want Americans and all the world to know” is repeated behind the clip and the start of the quote continues behind the clip “America [...]” and then we come back to Bush completing the sentence “has no regard for [...]“.
I had to watch it a few times to follow what was happening, but as a piece of journalism it is shockingly irresponsible. Even if Bush’s actions made the doctored quote seem more or less true at times, the manipulation of his words in this brief section is deeply disappointing in a production that hopes to be taken seriously.
I’m not sure I’m going to be watching it now.
That section stood out for me too, mainly because I don’t see a particularly direct link between the money system and US war crimes. It looked like sensationalism. I didn’t notice the chopped up quote, which is far worse. Thanks for pointing it out. I might drop the filmmakers a line, see if they can explain themselves.
Thanks – Let me know if you get a reply.
I note that on the YouTube video, when one viewer says “I hope the images of war and human deprivation feature less in the final cut. Lets focus on the positive changes that can be made”, the uploader (who presumably has some connexion to the producers) says of the war graphic: “Images you see in the trailer is the entire section like this in the film…Its an academic film with a years worth of research so that makes for a dry trailer.”
I also find their lack of apostrophes disturbing…
feel free to email me at mike at queuepolitely.com as Im the producer….Also feel free to watch the full film here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcGh1Dex4Yo which I hope explains some of the content.
I have to agree with previous comments about the Bush Jr quote. It unfortunately casts doubt on the validity/ objectivity of the rest of the documentary (which I was personally enjoying but had to pause to check this quote). I have no love for Bush but to quote Nietsche, “the most perfidious way to harm a cause is to defend it with faulty arguments”.
Nonetheless, thank you for all the hard work you obviously put into that documentary.
Just watched the full movie. Overall very good, but this misquoting of bush really struck me, so I also checked the quote and was disappointed with the result. It’s enough to stop me sharing this with most friends.
I watched this documentary on http://topdocumentarystream.com/97-owned/. I would say that the first documentary highlighting this issue. Fabulous documentary