Robert Fisk and Noam Chomsky: War, Geopolitics, and History - Conflict in Middle East

Apr 2007


(1 hr 42 min)

Robert Fisk (correspondent of the Independent) with an introduction of Noam Chomsky (professor, linguistics, MIT) presents:

Robert Fisk of the UK-based publication, The Independent, recounts his experiences traveling around the world and living in the Middle East, Fisk speaks on history and geopolitics in the Middle East.

His focus is on the problems with journalism in the United States, which include an over-reliance on what government authorities say and the common mode of reporting 'from Baghdad' but entirely within the confines of a hotel room. Using newspaper articles and speeches from politicians, Fisk illustrates the lack of concern for Iraqis as human beings. Fisk's talk also looks at the Armenian genocide, which was downplayed in Western media. After the talk, Fisk fields questions ranging from the rumors of civil war in Iraq to the situation in Lebanon.

The timeline:

2:20 Chomsky's intro
18:55 Fisk's presentation
1:13:00 Q&A

Authors@Google: Noam Chomsky

Apr 2008


(53 min)

About the speaker:

For the past forty years Noam Chomsky's writings on politics and language have established him as a preeminent public intellectual and as one of the most original and wide-ranging political and social critics of our time. Among the seminal figures in linguistic theory over the past century, since the 1960s Chomsky has also secured a place as perhaps the leading dissident voice in the United States.

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor emeritus of linguistics at MIT and the author of numerous books including Chomsky vs. Foucault: A Debate on Human Nature, On Language, Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship, and Towards a New Cold War (all published by The New Press). He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Q&A time from the 1st min:

01:00 About universal grammar
17:00 about young generation
27:50 internet as media to manufacture consent
37:30 application of some terms and their meanings in mass media
50:00 language in email writing

How Ant Colonies Get Things Done

Apr 2008


(66 min)

Dr. Deborah Gordon, the biological science professor, presents:

Ant colonies operate without central control; there is no one in charge and no ant directs the behavior of others.

Colonies perform many tasks including foraging, nest construction, and care of the young. Task allocation is the process that adjusts the numbers of workers performing each task, according to the current situation. How do colonies get ants to show up at a picnic, and what determines which ants go?

Experiments with harvester ants show that task allocation arises from a dynamical network of brief interactions. Which task an ant performs, and whether it performs it actively at that moment, depends on its recent rate of encounter with other ants. The dynamics of task allocation changes as colonies grow older and larger: larger colonies are more stable than younger, smaller ones, although since ant turnover is high, older colonies do not contain older ants.

Ant colony organization provides an interesting model for investigating network behavior and the function of network size.

Walter Russell Mead: US foreign policy and the American political tradition

Feb 2003


(58 min)

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes historian Walter Russell Mead for a discussion of the economic and social forces shaping the new directions of U.S. foreign policy.

Walter Russell Mead: Britain and America and the making of the modern world

Oct 2007


(58 min)

Conversations with History host Harry Kreisler welcomes Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations for a discussion of

the Anglo American maritime system—its origins, development, and impact on the world. The conversation touches on the unique synergy between Protestant religion and capitalism, the consolidation of Anglo American power in the process of transforming the international system, the importance of culture in international politics, and the need for a dialogue of civilizations in the 21st century.

Samantha Power: America and the Age of Genocide

Oct 2003


(59 min)

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power examines how the United States responded to incidents of genocide in the 20th Century.

Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price

(1 hr 40 min)

The documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price raises the question: What are the low prices of Walmart costing not only America, but the entire world?

Joel Bakan: The Corporation

(3 hr)

The Documentary The Corporation

explores the nature and spectacular rise of the dominant institution of our time. Footage from pop culture, advertising, TV news, and corporate propaganda, illuminates the corporation's grip on our lives.

Taking its legal status as a "person" to its logical conclusion, the film puts the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask "What kind of person is it?" Provoking, witty, sweepingly informative, The Corporation includes forty interviews with corporate insiders and critics - including Milton Friedman, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Michael Moore - plus true confessions, case studies and strategies for change.

Winner of 24 INTERNATIONAL AWARDS, 10 of them AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS including the AUDIENCE AWARD for DOCUMENTARY in WORLD CINEMA at the 2004 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL.

The film is based on the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan.

The Smartest Guys in the Room

(1 hr 50 min)

The documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room:

features Jeff Skilling in a skit mocking company accounting methods that were used to hide debt off the books. "We're going to move from mark-to-market accounting to something I call HFV, or hypothetical future value accounting," Skilling says. "If we can do that, we can add a kazillion dollars to the bottom line."

Enron commissioned hundreds of videotapes, some of which were used in the documentary. Others have been used in the Enron Broadband Services trial, which is in progress. Still others may provide incriminating evidence at the January 2006 accounting fraud trial of Skilling, Ken Lay and Rick Causey.

"There's a lot that hasn't surfaced yet," said Alex Gibney, the documentary's director. "Some of the stuff that is still out there is apparently not to be believed."

Eric Schmidt@American Association of Advertising Agencies

Apr 2008


(25 min)

Eric Schmidt speaks at the American Association of Advertising Agencies 2008 Leadership Conference on April 29, 2008 in Laguna Niguel, CA.

Britain BC (Channel 4)

Episode 1 of 2

(47 min)

Episode 2 of 2

(47 min)

In the Channel 4 documentary:

best-selling writer and archaeologist Francis Pryor offers an inspiring new view of Britain before the Roman invasion. He shatters the received wisdom that we were a relatively uncivilised bog people inhabiting a misty island, just waiting to be taught how to live by the invaders.

Travelling from North Wales to the Orkneys, the cliffs of Dover to the Western Isles of Scotland, Stonehenge to Maiden Castle, Pryor lifts the lid on what really made the ancient Britons tick and how what we were informs what we are today. Traveling more than a thousand miles north to Orkney and the Western Isles, he explores an amazing array of stone circles, henges and round tombs, revealing that how the ancient Britons worshipped their ancestors and brought death into their homes.

Moving down to the big daddy of ancient British sites, Stonehenge, Pryor and other leading archaeologists reinterpret the whole spiritual landscape of pre-Roman Britain - as a passage of a whole community from life to death, expressed in an array of foreboding, impressive wood and stone monuments. By the end of his quest, Pryor convinces Britains to cast aside the national denial of their own ancestors, to embrace them as the remarkable people they were.

Britain AD (Channel 4)

Episode 1 of 3
King Arthur's Britain

(50 min)

Episode 2 of 3
The invasion that never was

(48 min)

Episode 3 of 3
The Not So Dark Ages

(49 min)

The Channel 4 documentary:

A series of three one hour programmes, presented by leading archaeologist and sheep-farmer Francis Pryo, re-examine Britain A.D, the Arthurian myth, the British national character and the mysterious period of British history known as 'The Dark Ages'.

In the series:

Finding new and previously unexplained evidence Francis Pryor overturns the idea that Britain was crushed under Roman rule, then reverted to a state of anarchy and disorder after the Romans left in 410 AD.

Instead of doom and gloom Francis discovers a continuous culture that assimilated influences from as far a field as the Middle East and Constantinople. Francis is confronted by evidence that confounds traditional views of Britain as a powerless bunch or warring barbarian tribes. Nor was there the invasion of bloodthirsty Anglo Saxons, rampaging across the countryside, which our school books have always depicted.

With new archaeological evidence Francis discovers a far more interesting and complex story, one that puts the continuing energy of the Ancient Britons at the core. According to conventional wisdom, native British culture was suppressed by 400 years of Roman rule, and the withdrawal of the mighty imperial army in 410AD threw the country into a state of primitive barbarism, which only came to an end with the invasion of the more advanced Anglo Saxons.

With detailed archaeology, cutting-edge academic research and his own brand of iconoclasm, writer and broadcaster, and presenter of Britain AD, Francis Pryor argues that we've got this version of British history wrong. Francis shows how archaeologists are beginning to reveal that the early history of Britain was in fact a vibrant period in which the population thrived from a series of foreign influences from as far afield as the Middle East and Constantinople without losing its own cultural identity.

In the first episode

Francis tells the story of Roman Britain from the perspective of the native Britons rather than the conquering army, and reveals that the invasion was not a brutal suppression of indigenous culture, but a mutually beneficial experience which the Britons may have actually instigated.

In the second episode of this series,

Francis Pryor sheds light on the so-called 'Dark Ages'. He shows that far from a 'Dark Age', archaeologists have discovered evidence of a resurgence of native culture. The classic image of the Romans departing and 'turning out the lights' is shown to be completely false.

Francis finds a world inhabited by Christianised, literate Britons engaging in trade and diplomacy with the Byzantine Empire. So far reaching are the implications of these discoveries that the 'dark age' period in Britain has been renamed Late Antiquity

In the last episode of the series

Francis focuses his attention on the Anglo-Saxon invasion. He argues that the huge political changes that took place in Britain at the time were caused by a shifting of allegiances within the country rather than a violent invasion from elsewhere.

The Bible Revolution (Channel 4)

(1 hr 42 min)

In the Channel 4 documentary, presented by Rod Liddle,

explores the life and times of the visionaries who fought a powerful and violent church establishment to publish the Bible in English. Their vocation, tenacity and sacrifice left a lasting impression on the language and literature in the centuries that followed.

The Protestant Revolution (BBC)

Episode 1 of 4
The Politics of Belief

(59 min)

Episode 2 of 4
The Godly Family

(60 min)

Episode 3 of 4
A Reformation Of The Mind

(59 min)

Episode 4 of 4
No Rest For The Wicked

(59 min)

In the documentary:

Historian Tristram Hunt looks at how Protestantism has affected people's lives in The Protestant Revolution, a new, four-part series for BBC Four.

Clash of the Worlds (BBC) (Part 3)

Episode 3 of 3
Palestine

(60 min)

In the series of BBC documentary exploring the history of Muslim-Western relations. The episode tells:

Decisions made by the British rulers of Palestine ninety years ago have wreaked damage that continues today.

Clash of the Worlds (BBC) (Part 2)

Episode 2 of 3
Sudan

(59 min)


In the BBC documentary exploring the history of Muslim-Western relations. This week’s programme tells

the story of the Mahdi, a self-proclaimed Muslim redeemer in the Sudan who took on the might of the British empire and its Christian hero, General Charles Gordon. The British went to great lengths to destroy him and his followers, but his story continues to inspire modern day militants.

Clash of the Worlds (BBC)

Episode 1 of 3
Mutiny

(59 min)

In the documentary:

October 28, 2007 on BBC 2 Exploring how past conflicts between a Christian West and Islam can help explain more recent violence.

In the next three weeks this series looks at three great clashes between a Christian British Empire and Islam: the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the Mahdi uprising in 1880s Sudan and the creation of the state of Israel in the first half of the twentieth century.

The first programme tells

the story of the Indian uprising in which both sides committed atrocities in the name of their faiths.

Michael Wood: The Story of India (BBC) (Part 3)

Episode 3
Spice Routes and Silk Roads

(59 min)

The part 3 of the BBC documentary The Story of India.

On Our Watch

A documentary about genocide in Darfur


(11 min)

Authors@Google: Simon Schama

Apr 2006

(60 min)

May 2006

(37 min)

Simon Schama discusses his book, Rough Crossings:

Rough Crossings is the astonishing story of the struggle to freedom by thousands of African-American slaves who fled the plantations to fight behind British lines in the American War of Independence.

With gripping, powerfully vivid story-telling, Simon Schama follows the escaped blacks into the fires of the war, and into freezing, inhospitable Nova Scotia where many who had served the Crown were betrayed in their promises to receive land at the war's end. Their fate became entwined with British abolitionists: inspirational figures such as Granville Sharp, the flute-playing father-figure of slave freedom, and John Clarkson, the 'Moses' of this great exodus, who accompanied the blacks on their final rough crossing to Africa, wher they hoped that freedom would finally greet them.

'This brilliant book by the leading historian of our times about a subject of great significance will delight professional historians and entrance the reading public. "Rough Crossings" succeeds in all respects. It is a 'tour de force' and a landmark in historical scholarship.' - Trevor Burnard, "Times Higher Education Supplement". '...Schama's gift for plunging us into the very centre of the action, whether ' - Ellen Gibson Wilson "Daily Telegraph".

Charlie Rose: An hour with Henry Kissinger

Dec 2006


(57 min)

Michael Wood: The Story of India (BBC) (Part 1 & 2)

Episode 1
Beginnings

(59 min)

Episode 2
The Power of Ideas

(59 min)

Wood presents in the documentary (DVD) The Stroy of India:

For over two millennia, India has been at the centre of world history. But how did India come to be? What is India? These are the big questions behind this intrepid journey around the contemporary subcontinent.

In this landmark series, historian and acclaimed writer Michael Wood embarks on a dazzling and exciting expedition through today's India, looking to the present for clues to her past, and to the past for clues to her future. The journey takes the viewer through majestic landscapes and reveals some of the greatest monuments and artistic treasures on Earth. From Buddhism to Bollywood, from mathematics to outsourcing, Michael Wood discovers India's impact on history - and on us.

For over two millennia, India has been at the centre of world history. But how did India come to be?

Simon Schama: A History of Britain (BBC)

Part 1 to 7

The Past, Present, and Future of Digital Memories

(1)
"像阿童木那樣的世界級機械人," 天馬博士說, "他們的程式雖然複雜, 但不過是已知的而已. 那時候, 知道我想嘗試甚麼麼?"

茶水博士沒有回應.

"編制出可以將全世界六十億人口的全數的人格分析出來的程式."

Pluto, 第38話

(2)
Apr 2008


(68 min)

Steve Whittaker, the information researcher in Sheffield University, presents

Recent technical developments have inspired an interest in 'digital memories': repositories for capturing our entire personal history of personal and work related information that will substitute for our fragile organic memories.

I will first review the Digital Memories vision, briefly present various studies that challenge that vision, moving on to suggest an alternative approach to the topic that is informed by cognitive science, suggesting that instead of focusing on exhaustive capture we should be designing prosthetic memory devices that are

(a) synergistic with our organic memories
(b) have mechanisms for selecting and abstracting critical events from the memory record.

People & Power -The Iranian Campaign

23 Apr 2008

Part 1

(12 min)

Part 2

(12 min)

About 2008 Parliamentary elections in Iran.

The Trial Of Henry Kissinger

(1 hr 20 min)

The film was inspired by Christopher Hitchens's book The Trial of Henry Kissinger.

The BBC documentary:

"Henry Kissinger is a war criminal," says firebrand journalist Christopher Hitchens. "He's a liar. And he's personally responsible for murder, for kidnapping, for torture." What is Hitchens on about? He could be talking about the lawsuit currently under way in Washington DC, in which Kissinger is charged with having authorised the assassination of a Chilean general in 1970. Or he could be referring to the secret bombing of Cambodia which, arguably, Kissinger engineered without the knowledge of the US Congress in 1969. Or perhaps Kissinger's involvement in the sale of U.S. weapons to Indonesian President Suharto for use in the massacre of 1/3 of the population of East Timor in 1975.

These and several other recent charges have cast a haunting shadow on the reputation of a man long seen as the most famous diplomat of his age, the Nobel Laureate who secured peace in Vietnam, who secretly opened relations between the US and China, and who now, more than a quarter-century out of office, remains a central player on the world stage, only recently voted the number one public intellectual of the 20th century.

Featuring previously unseen footage, newly declassified US government documents, and revealing interviews with key insiders to the events in question, The Trials of Henry Kissinger examines the charges facing him, shedding light on a career long shrouded in secrecy. In part, it explores how a young boy who fled Nazi Germany grew up to become one of the most powerful men in US history and now, in the autumn of his life, one of its most disputed figures.

It is at once an unauthorised biography and a look at the sparks that fly when an honoured American statesman is charged with war crimes. The film tackles the question of whether principles of international law applied by Americans to their enemies are applicable to Americans, or whether these laws are only written for the losers of conflicts.

The Trials of Henry Kissinger in the courts of law and public opinion will begin to answer this question.

Can the west save the rest?

Apr 2006


(65 min)

In the meeting of World Affairs Council of Northern California, William Easterly presents:

Can the West Save the Rest? A Meet the Author Program William Easterly's The White Man's Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good is about what its author calls the twin tragedies of global poverty.

The first, of course, is that so many are seemingly fated to live horribly stunted, miserable lives and die such early deaths. The second is that after fifty years and more than $2.3 trillion in aid from the West to address the first tragedy, it has shockingly little to show for it.

We'll never solve the first tragedy, Easterly argues, unless we figure out the second. He contrasts two approaches: the ineffective top-down planners' approach and a more-constructive, focused, and pragmatic searchers' approach. Easterly argues that if we in "the West" can shift power and money from planners to searchers, there's much we can do to improve the lot of "the rest", the world’s poor, in the realms of public health, sanitation, education, roads, and nutrition initiatives.