VIDEO

AUDIO

Atomic bomb explosion

IN TWO DAYS IN AUGUST OF 1945, THE UNITED STATES EMERGED AS THE WORLD’S LEADING POWER.

(music, dark piano stuff)

(Senator Stennis) It is a fact of life that following World War II was a new beginning—a new beginning for the United States in world affairs, in foreign policy, in foreign affairs.

Animation: atomic bomb grows into giant atomic man,

HOW WOULD THIS POWER BE USED?

Slow motion flag superimposes, atomic man fades underneath to full shot of waving flag.

56 YEARS LATER, AS ALL OF US WERE SEARCHING IN SOME WAY AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, MY OWN SEARCH BEGAN WITH A SIMPLE QUESTION: WHY WOULD IF HAPPEN? IN THE VENOMOUS WAKE OF THE ATTACKS, THE QUESTION WAS OBSCURED BY AN UNWAVERING PATRIOTISM—A SEA OF RED, WHITE, AND BLUE.

National anthem footage, marching soldiers, sun through clouds

Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light.

AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, I WONDERED IF OUR NATIONAL INTEREST CONFLICTS WITH THE INTERESTS OF OTHERS.

Kissinger (upper left)

Self-interest

Map of Central America (upper right)

Vital interest

Deak Rusk (lower left)

National interest

Kissinger (lower right)

Vital American interest

National anthem footage continues, flags, war

WHAT’S DRIVEN OUR NATIONAL INTEREST? IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD, IS PUTTING NATIONAL INTEREST OVER A BROADER HUMAN INTEREST ACTUALLY IN OUR INTEREST?

Quick moving (1/2 sec each) clips of government and media.

IS WHAT THE MEDIA AND GOVERNMENT TELLING US ACTUALLY THE REALITIES OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY?

President Truman (zoom in from nothing, upper right)

Throughout the world, our name stands for international

President Reagan (lower right)

Justice.

President Nixon

We must complete a structure of

President Ford (lower left)

peace.

President Ford (upper right)

I pledge an uninterrupted and sincere search for

President Nixon (lower left)

peace.

President Reagan (upper left)

For the sake of peace and

President Truman (lower right)

justice,

President Reagan, zoom in to big.

let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.

Soldiers marching, bombs bursting in air

I’VE HEARD THAT SPEECH A THOUSAND TIMES, TO THIS VERY DAY, BUT WHEN WE LOOK AT U.S. ACTIONS, DOES IT REALLY RING TRUE?

Kennan book, zoom out

PHOTO: George Kennan, zoom from close

IN FACT, PLANNING DOCUMENTS SHOW US THAT ABOVE ALL, U.S. ACTIONS ARE AIMED AT MAINTAINING A HUGE ECONOMIC ADVANTAGE.

GEORGE KENNAN, HEAD OF THE STATE DEPARTMENT POLICY PLANNING STAFF IN 1948, IS CONSIDERED BY MANY TO BE THE ARCHITECT OF POST WORLD WAR II US FOREIGN POLICY. HIS WORDS WERE CLEAR.

TITLE CARD:

“We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its’ population...Our real task in the coming period is to... maintain this position of disparity.”

TITLE CARD:

“...We should cease to talk about such vague and unreal objectives as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization.”[1]

24 February 1948

Document PPS23

Country names pop up in sync with naration. Then the screen fills with other country names.

U.S. map with U.S. flag zoom in.

THE UNITED STATES HAS HAD ITS HANDS IN A LOT OF PLACES SINCE WORLD WAR II: GUATEMALA, VIETNAM, EAST TIMOR, EL SALVADOR, PALESTINE/ISRAEL.

U.S. map with U.S. flag zoom in freeze.

IN WHOSE INTEREST WERE THESE INTERVENTIONS?

Rotating globe & title: IN WHOSE INTEREST?

Map zoom in from world to Guatemala, title: GUATEMALA: 1954 – 1990.

Music

Animated map of Guatemala

Our trip began in Guatemala.

Newsreel: Revolt in Gauatemala

Music

Newspapers fall from sky into frame

Father Stephen Privett: The Story of Guatemala is a really sad, awful story.

Father Stephen Privett (with title)

And in large part, it’s a story that was financed by the US—we have a major responsibility for what happened in Guatemala. And I don’t know that most people even know about it.

Photos: Jacobo Arbenz

SO IN 1951, JACOBO ARBENZ WAS DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED PRESIDENT BY A WIDE MARGIN.

Footage of people and land in Guatemala

Journey to Bananaland title card

HE STARTED A PROGRAM OF SOCIAL REFORMS, DISTRIBUTING LAND TO HALF A MILLION PEASANTS.[2]

Banana plantation workers

Journey to Bananland

United Fruit title card.

Documents highlighting “United Fruit”[3]

Telephone lines

Harbor

Bananas on belts

Train

NOW ONE MAJOR US CORPORATION, UNITED FRUIT, HAD OWNED A LOT OF THAT LAND.

UNITED FRUIT WIELDED A LOT OF POWER IN GUATEMALA, OWNING OR CONTROLLING ITS TELEPHONE SYSTEM, ITS MAJOR ATLANTIC HARBOR, ITS BANANA EXPORTS, AND ITS RAILWAY SYSTEM.[4]

Documents

“United Fruit gives Arbenz ultimatum.”[5]

“CIA plan to overthrow the government of Guatmala.”[6]

VEHEMENTLY AGAINST ARBENZ’S GOVERNMENT, UNITED FRUIT USED ITS INFLUENCE WITHIN THE UNITED STATES TO PUSH FOR A COUP, WHICH TOOK PLACE IN 1954.[7]

Shots of Guatemalan people.

ARBENZ’S PROGRAM BENEFITTED THE PEOPLE OF GUATEMALA AND HAD THEIR OVERWHELMING SUPPORT, AND ALTHOUGH WE’RE ALWAYS TOLD THAT THE UNITED STATES STANDS FOR DEMOCRACY—BUT MAYBE NOT WHEN DEMOCRACY THREATENS U.S. ECONOMIC INTERESTS.

Noam Chomsky (title: Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT)

Document: “National Security Council authorizes covert operations in Guatemala.”[8]

[INSERT HI-PASS FILTER]

The United States intervened in Guatemala precisely because it was democratic. They wanted to prevent the democratic revolution. We have rich internal records on this. The concern was that the social reforms undertaken by the first democratically elected government in Guatemala—ever— had the overwhelming support of the population, represented the interests and concerns of most of the people of Guatemala, and worst of all, were being looked at by others in the region as a kind of a model that they might want to follow themselves, and therefore it had to be aborted.

TITLE CARD over Guatemalan military photo:

AFTER A CIA-SPONSORED COUP IN 1954, THE GUATEMALAN MILITARY BEGAN A CAMPAIGN OF REPRESSION.

Faint bells

TITLE CARD over gravesite of one of the massacres in Guatemala: BETWEEN 1954 AND 1990, SUCESSIVE U.S.-BACKED MILITARY REGIMES KILLED MORE THAN 200,000 CIVILIANS, MOSTLY INDIGINOUS MAYANS.[9]

Faint bells

USIA tape showing Guatemalan hospital, military storming a building.

Guatemala. ominous music, dogs barking

Solider, pan to burning bus

SUBTITLE: They said we were Mayans and students,

SUBTITLE: which was a crime to them.

SUBTITLE: They began to follow us.

SUBTITLE: They killed many of the group.

SUBTITLE: In the towns, they killed entire families.

Spanish voice.

Slow motion soldiers walking through village

Other soldiers

AM’IT KOX, AN ARTIST AND A STUDENT IN THE 80S, WAS TARGETED BY THE MILITARY. NOT A HARDCORE ACTIVIST, HE DESCRIBED HIMSELF AS SIMPLY NOT LIKING WHAT WAS GOING ON. BUT ANY DISSENT WAS DANGEROUS IN THOSE YEARS, AND AM’IT KOX WAS FOLLOWED, CAPTURED, AND BROUGHT TO PRISON.

Am’it Kox

SUBTITLE: They punished me—someone came in and took my clothes.

SUBTITLE: Then they tied my penis—with something in Guatemala we call a pita.

SUBTITLE: and every once in a while they pulled it up.

SUBTITLE: They tied my hands.

SUBTITLE: I felt—I even told them to kill me, I asked them “please kill me”

SUBTITLE: Because it was cruel what they were doing to me.

SUBTITLE: Afterwards, I closed my eyes since I had lost so much blood.

SUBTITLE: I couldn’t do anything and I lost consciousness (fade to black).

Spanish voice.

Massacre gravesite, slow fade to black

HOW IS IT THAT MASSACRES AND TORTURE WERE BEING CARRIED OUT BY A MILITARY BACKED BY MY GOVERNMENT AND WITH THE SUPPORT OF OUR TAX DOLLARS? AND HOW IS IT THAT A LOT OF THE TIME, WE DON’T EVEN KNOW ABOUT IT?

Map zoom in from world to Vietnam, title: VIETNAM: 1964 – 1973.

MUSIC

Footage, Vietnam.

Music, “The goddess of peace turned her face to Southeast Asia and wept. For man was at war again.”

Footage, burning villages, soldiers

WHY DO WE KEEP COMING BACK TO VIETNAM? IT SEEMS TO BE ONE OF THOSE PLACES THAT WE TALK ABOUT AGAIN AND AGAIN. AT SOME POINT, IT DAWNED ON ME THOUGH, THAT THIS WAS A LONG WAR, AND THAT THOSE THAT MADE IT BACK ARE STILL TELLING THEIR STORIES.

George Johnson Title: Vietnam War Veteran, 1965-1966

Photo: close, Vietnamese woman and child in fear, zoom out to full photo, group of Vietnamese

We fired some, uh, barrages into this village, and the guy told me, uh, “good shot, you got the chicken coop, the clothes line, and you should see granny and the kids run.” (music fades up) And I still dream about that because that was the first time I realized that we weren’t just, you know, shooting soldiers, we weren’t bombarding military targets, we were actually bombing villages where ordinary people lived and worked.

TITLE CARD: THE UNITED STATES DROPPED THE EXPLOSIVE EQUIVALENT OF ONE NAGASAKI BOMB PER WEEK FOR SEVEN AND A HALF YEARS ON AND AROUND VIETNAM[10]. (Over colorized freeze frame of bomber)

Bomber drops lots of bombs.

pan down to ground where explosions are taking place.

Harlow Williams, TITLE: Vietnam War Veteran, 1967-1968

Footage: b&w dead Vietnamese

Harlow Williams

VO: those who fought the air war, or were on ships at sea—they never heard the screams, saw the blood, saw the body parts. I saw the blood. I had clothing that I had to literally peel off my body it was so encrusted and covered with blood after battles. That I saw the body parts of my fellow marines, and I certainly saw the enemy’s body parts. But what happened to me was, I had a job to do, and if I survived, and if I was doing my job well, that’s all that really would count.

Photo: Older Vietnamese on ground holding child, zoom out to US soldiers with guns hovering over.

Harlow Williams

It was always—the enemy that we were fighting. And that’s a very important psychological realization to have, because if you really feel you’re killing fellow human beings who are living, breathing parents or children of other living human beings, it’s a very different thing than if you feel there’s an enemy to kill. So I went over and I killed an enemy.

Close up of machine gun firing

Machine gun.

US military in Vietnam footage

Prisoners

What would the world look like if we hadn’t fought against Communism at the time of Vietnam? I think I may have been sold a bill of goods and I think maybe this culture was sold a bill of goods, posing the Communists as a great enemy.

Huge explosions working their way through dense forest land in Vietnam.

Noam Chomsky

It was the same concern as Guatemala. Namely, success, successful independent development in some area might stimulate others to try to do the same, and then the dominoes start to fall, maybe it spreads as far as Indonesia or Japan, and then the US would lose its dominant role in the region.

Rockets fired from underside of bomber, reverse angle, seeing the rockets fired into the mountains.

Rockets fired

Explosions from above,

bombs dropped.

Soldier with gun in boat

VO: WWII vets could always talk about how they liberated, uh Europe

George Johnson

Photo: Solider setting fire to thatched house

Photo: Ships at sea

Photo: group of dead Vietnamese at My Lai

Photo: child and mother? dead at My Lai

Photo: child and mother? dead at My Lai

George Johnson

And stopped the Nazi slaughter of innocents in the death camps and stuff like that. We don’t have those stories. We have stories of burning down peoples’ villages, of shore bombarding fishing villages, of laying people in the ditch at My Lai, and over 400 old men women and children. That’s our stories, and that’s what we have to live with.

Map zoom in from world to East Timor, title: EAST TIMOR: 1975 – 1999.

Music

Joseph Nevins,  TITLE: Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, University of California at Berkeley

East Timor in and of itself never mattered to the United States. The U.S. couldn’t have cared less if East Timor became independent or not. What mattered, and what had long mattered was Indonesia.

Document highlighted—“Indonesia, the fifth most populous nation in the world.” [11]

Photo, zoom out from close Istiqlatl Mosque, Jakarta, Indonesia.

Document higjlighted—“The Indonesians,” “moderate role at OPEC”[12]

Document highlighted—“The United States accounts for the bulk of Indonesia’s oil investment (86%)”[13]

Document highlighted—“geographic location”[14]

Document highlighted—“Indonesia controls the passages between the Pacific and Indian oceans.”[15]

Document highlighted—“Major strategic importance in the region.”[16]

V.O.: Indonesia was the fifth most populous country in the world.

It was the most populous Muslim country,

it was a leading member, and a moderate one at that, of OPEC, the oil cartel.

It was also a very lucrative center for multinational corporate activity, and at the same time

geopolitically,

Indonesia sits astride very key sea lanes.

Remember, this is 1975 in Southeast Asia.

Joseph Nevins

The US had just quote un quote lost Vietnam, it had just lost Cambodia, and what the United States wanted to see was the maintenance of a whole series of pro-American regimes in the area.  And in terms of this type of geopolitical, political-economic calculations, Indonesia was perhaps the most important country. And because Indonesia wanted to annex East Timor, the United States was more than willing to go along.

Village shot

Invasion footage

VO: ON DECEMBER 7, 1975, THE INDONESIAN MILITARY INVADED THE NEARBY ISLAND OF EAST TIMOR.

Radio report: …(fades up) a senior member of the left-wing Freitelin movement said in his first message, “we need help, paratroopers are dropping everywhere.” At times, nearly hysterical, he said that women and children were being fired on, and the Indonesians was killing indiscriminately.

Torture photo

TITLE CARD FADE UP: 60,000 EAST TIMORESE DIED IN THE FIRST FEW MONTHS OF THE INVASION.[17]

Strange audio loop fades up and grows.

PHOTO: Holding the dead and wounded

East Timor Landscape photo:

TITLE CARD: IN THE 24 YEARS FOLLOWING THE INVASION, 200,000 EAST TIMORESE LOST THEIR LIVES, ONE-THIRD OF THE POPULATION.[18]

Document panning right to left: “To: The President, From: Henry Kissinger, Re: Your visit to Indonesia”[19]

Document, starts wide, zooms in to highlighted text: “KISSINGER: YOU APPRECIATE THAT THE USE OF US-MADE ARMS COULD CREATE PROBLEMS.”[20]

DOCUMENT—TEXT HIGHLIGHTED—“HOW WE CONSTRUE IT,” “SELF DEFENSE”[21]

DOCUMENT HIGHLIGHTED—“I AM ONLY SAYING IT WOULD BE BETTER IF IT WERE DONE AFTER WE RETURNED.”[22]

PRESIDENT FORD AND INDONESIAN PRESIDENT SUHARTO CLINKING GLASSES

Demonstration footage “INDEPENDENT IS WHAT WE INSPIRE”

2 DAYS BEFORE THE INVASION, US PRESIDENT GERALD FORD AND SECRETARY OF STATE HENRY KISSINGER HAD VISITED INDONESIA. FORD AND KISSINGER WERE CONCERNED THAT THE USE OF US ARMS IN THE INVASION COULD CREATE PROBLEMS AT HOME.

BUT CONCLUDED THAT THEY WOULD CONSTRUE THE ACTION DEFENSIVE.

THE POWER THE US HELD IN THE SITUATION IS APPARENT—KISSINGER SAID IT WOULD BE BETTER IF THE INVASION STARTED AFTER HE AND FORD RETURNED TO THE UNITED STATES.

14 HOURS AFTER THE US LEFT, THE INDONESIAN MILITARY INVADED.4[23]

THIS WAS THE BEGINNING OF A 24-YEAR STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE IN EAST TIMOR.

Noam Chomsky

Technically they did get independence finally, but that’s only after near genocide.

Santa Cruz Massacre, 1991 Footage

Which was backed by the United States overwhelmingly, the US and Britain were primarily responsible for it. It’s one of the worst crimes of the late twentieth century.

Torture photo

Torture photo

Gravesite photo, dead bodies

VO: We have a lot of painful stories. (Music Indonesian vocal)

200,000 people killed. And more than them disappeared.

Filomena Barros Dos Reis TITLE: Advocacy Director, East Timor NGO Forum

The bodies never come back. A lot of mothers for their son who’s coming.

Noam Chomsky

SANTA CRUZ MASSACRE

Both the US and Britain continued to support it, right to the end. Right through 1999, Britain and the United States knew perfectly well that the Indonesian forces they had armed and trained were carrying out major atrocities.

News report showing 78% figure

Military trucks

Burning buildings,

ON AUGUST 30, 1999, 78% OF THE EAST TIMORESE POPULATION VOTED FOR INDEPENDENCE. JUST AFTER THE VOTE, THE INDONESIAN MILITARY WENT ON A RAMPAGE, DRIVING 75-80% OF THE PEOPLE FROM THEIR HOMES AND DESTROYING MUCH OF THE COUNTRY. US SUPPORT CONTINUED EVEN THEN, UNTIL PRESSURE FROM AUSTRALIA AND FROM WITHIN THS US BECAME TOO STRONG.[24]

Post-election rampage coninues.

Clinton finally told the Indonesian army, “it’s over. Call it off.” And the relations of power are so overwhelming that within 48 hours, the Indonesian army had left—had began to leave. Which tells you what could have been done 25 years earlier, in fact all the time through.

Filomena Barros Dos Reis

They are very cruel. They didn’t consider the people as human beings, but they considered East Timorese people as—mosquitoes. Even the animals.

Joseph Nevins

What happened in East Timor is very quickly falling into what we might call the national forgettery. Most people are well aware that something terrible happened in East Timor. What we don’t know, on a collective level, is what the U.S. role was.

Map zoom in from world to El Salvador, title: El Salvador: 1980 – 1992.

MAP (US INFORMATION AGENCY TAPE):

CHILDREN PLAYING, HAPPY FAMILIES, RICE FARMING, DREAMY MUSIC (US INFORMATION AGENCY TAPE):

For the United States, the biggest role to be played in El Salvador is that of a friend. A friend helping the El Salvadoran people create an atmosphere of peace. An atmosphere in which the democratic system which already exists, can grow and flourish.

IMAGES OF WAR, OMINOUS MUSIC AND SOUND EFFECTS (US INFORMATION AGENCY TAPE):

El Salvador. [Screams, bodies being carried away. Burning tires on street.]

REAGAN SPEECH:

A determined propaganda campaign has sought to mislead many in Europe, and certainly many in the United States, about the true nature of the conflict in El Salvador.

SOLDIERS FIRING

SOLDIERS FIRING

LARGE GROUP OF SOLDIERS RUNNING AWAY:

V.O. How do you define the price?

DEAD BODIES

I mean if you want to talk about 75,000 innocent people killed[25],

FATHER STEPHEN PRIVETT, PRESIDENT, USF

and paid for by our tax dollars, then no I don’t think intervention was worth it—I think it was a horrible mistake.

El Salvador people scenes: farming, village, farming, village

SO BY NOW IT SEEMS TO BE A FAMILIAR STORY—THE POPULATION OF EL SALVADOR WANTED TO PURSUE A PATH THAT DEVIATED FROM THE US MODEL. SO THE US PUMPED $1 MILLION A DAY[26] INTO THE WAR TO PREVENT THAT PATH, WHILE TELLING US OTHERWISE.

REAGAN

Our principles are rooted in self-government and non-intervention.

JOSE ARTIGA, DIRECTOR SHARE FOUNDATION

They wanted to impose a model. And we Salvadorans were rejecting that model, and we were very loud. So it was the tiny little, uh, country going against the will of the giant.

Document highlighted–“THE UNITED STATES HAS TRADITIONALLY CALLED THE TUNE IN EL SALVADOR”[27]

Document highlighted—“CONTAGION OF SOCIAL CHANGE”[28]

Document highlighted—“CRUCIAL IMPACT,” “NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES”[29]

SO WHAT WAS THAT WILL? IT’S CLEAR THAT THE UNITED STATES CALLED THE TUNE IN EL SALVADOR⁷, BUT TO WHAT END?

THE MAJOR CONCERN WAS THAT SOCIAL CHANGE COULD BECOME CONTAGIOUS

AND IMPACT NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES⁸.

Noam Chomsky

The US instituted a military coup, the usual reaction. Called it a democracy, it was in fact a military regime.

El Salvador people scenes: farming, village, farming, village

THAT MILITARY REGIME WAS FIGHTING A GROUP OF GUERILLAS THAT IS GENERALLY TO HAVE BEEN REPRESENTED MOST OF EL SALVADOR’S PEOPLE.[30] THE TACTICS USED TO FIGHT THE GUERILLAS HAD A DIRECT IMPACT ON THOSE PEOPLE.

ARTIGA:

The people were the water, and the guerillas were the fish. So the government said in order to kill the fish, we need to take all the water away so the fish will die.

PRIVETT:

There were no holds barred. I remember talking to a lieutenant at a roadblock, and a person from one of the villages where I was working had been tortured by the army—been filled up with water, forced water and then jammed out of his stomach. And I said to the guy, what is this? How do you do this to people? And he said, “well he’s a communist.”

ARTIGA:

AS I would be waiting for the bus, in the porch of the mayor’s office, there would be one, two, three bodies, dismembered, every day. And that was sort of normal, uh, during those years.

MOTHER CRYING, ZOOM OUT TO DEAD BODY

VO (artiga): The 80s was the years when the most people were killed during the period of the war.

PRIVETT:

They simply defined an area as the enemy and obliterated it—slaughtered livestock, poisoned water. I mean it was this incredibly brutal and non-strategic approach to, to war.

ARTIGA:

PHOTO: Close-up of Rufina, slow zoom out

The one survivor of the massacre at El Mozote, this woman, her name is Rufina—she said that it’s good that the U.S. government and the Salvadoran government have come to help rebuild the town that they destroyed. She said, I am still waiting for one of them to come and apologize. For what they did.

TITLE CARD, over El Mozote photo fading to black underneath:

U.S. military support during the war:

$365 million / year

U.S. aid for post-war reconstruction:

$30 million / year[31]

Music, dark piano stuff

PRIVETT:

The fundamental flaw of foreign policy at that time was not telling people the truth. And I have no doubts that if people knew the truth, it would have stopped. But we were really fed a steady diet of untruths. About what was going on, what we were doing—and what was being done in our name.

Map zoom in from world to Palestine/Israel, title: Palestine/Israel: 1967 – present.

MUSIC

UN file footage on the creation of the state of Israel.

The state of Israel had been proclaimed, and the people rejoiced in their new nation, a haven of refuge for the displaced and persecuted members of the Jewish faith from all over the world.

Rabbi Elmer Berger

There is first of all what one dissident Israeli has called Israel’s Original Sin. This is the realization that Zionism could not establish a Zionist state, in a Palestine already inhabited by a majority of Arabs, without seriously impairing the rights of the Palestinians. The reluctance, if not the refusal of the Israelis and their sponsors among the great powers to make this confession is one obstruction in the way of a just peace.

TITLE CARD (over image of F-16s)

The United States provides Israel between $3 and $4 billion per year in military assistance[32]:

More aid than any country gives to any other country[33]

More aid than the United States gives to the entire continent of Africa[34]

Slow pan and zoom out of Palestinian refugee camp.

(String music) WHILE THE U.S. HAS PRESENTED ITSELF AS AN HONEST MEDIATOR IN THE DISPUTE BETWEEN ISRAEL AND PALESTINE, IN FACT THE U.S. HAS SUPPORTED ONE SIDE COMPLETELY WHILE ESSENTIALLY IGNORING THE OTHER. WHY IS THIS?

Noam Chomsky

Because, and not out of any particular hatred for the Palestinians, it’s just that they have essentially nothing to offer to the United States. They have no wealth, they have no power. In contrast, Israel since 1967 has been almost an offshore US military base. It’s a rich, advanced industrial society, military-based economy, tightly linked to the US, based for projection of US power in the region—has a lot to offer. So therefore they ought to control the region, therefore no right for the Palestinians.

I.L. Kenan, at meeting, large table

We must make certain that Israel does get all the planes and other sophisticated equipment that she must have.

Hanan Rashid

TITLE: National Executive Secretary, Palestinian-American Congress

Images of Apache helicopters and F-16s

We’re sending all these ammunitions and weapons, yearly over $3 billion of weapons, the latest most sophisticated weapons that America can produces, is what’s killing the Palestinian children. How would that make people feel? What kind of message are we, as Americans, sending the Palestinian people? (music fades up)

Images of rubble and people in the occupied territories

EARLY ISRAELI STATE PLANNING DOCUMENTS STATE THAT PALESTINIAN REFUGEES WOULD EITHER ASSIMILATE ELSEWHERE, OR WOULD BE CRUSHED. THE DOCUMENTS CONTINUE, STATING THAT SOME OF THEM WOULD DIE AND MOST OF THEM WOULD TURN INTO HUMAN DUST AND THE WASTE OF SOCIETY, AND JOIN THE MOST IMPOVERISHED CLASSES IN THE ARAB COUNTRIES.[35] IN THE EARLY ‘70S, ISRAELI LEADER MOSHE DYAN ADVISED HIS LABOR PARTY TO TELL THE PALESTINIANS THAT “YOU SHALL CONTINUE TO LIVE LIKE DOGS, AND WHOEVER WISHES MAY LEAVE.” [36]

WITH STATEMENTS LIKE THESE AT ISRAEL’S CORE AND WITH BACKING FROM THE WORLD’S LEADING POWER, THE SITUATION FOR PALESTINIANS SEEMS DESPERATE.

Hanan Rashid

They see no hope and they see no future. And that’s where all the violence I believe is coming to.

Rabbi Elmer Berger

There are wide disparities In Israel between Jewish schools, Jewish housing, Jewish agriculture, Jewish labor on the one hand, and similar categories of the good things or the necessities of life, available to those citizens who do not qualify as Jewish people nationals on the other.

Hanan Rashid

You have the Palestinian children, there’s a picture that’s always in my mind—they’re sitting on the fence, looking through the barbed wire fence to the settler’s children who are swimming in the swimming pools. Where the Palestinian children don’t have a drop of water to drink.

Chistopher Mayhew TITLE: 1970, Former member, British Parliament

People think, you see, that the Arabs, or the Palestinians are some peculiarly fanatical and militant people. As though the American people, or the British people, undergoing the same experience as the Palestinians  wouldn’t react in exactly the same manner, or more militant still.

Chistopher Mayhew

Suppose we, like the Palestinians, who after all were 93% of the population of Palestine in 1917, suppose we had to accept immigration on a Palestinian scale—30 million say, or 40 million. And suppose these immigrants had come not to share our society with us, but _____ to build their own in Britian. To raise their own flag over London, and the Southeast, and Windsor Castle, and St. Paul’s Cathedral.  How would the British react? Are you telling me that there wouldn’t even be a small minority of our more unstable young men who would not react just as brutally as the PFLP have reacted? The British would react in such a way as to make the Palestinians look like flower children.

Hanan Rashid

I mean when you have 50 people in one of the refugee camps taken out in the middle of the night, sit on their knees, had their hands tied behind their shoulders, behind their backs, blindfolded and executed, I mean I think this country should have got up and screamed bloody murder. We didn’t. We even know that the Israeli armed forces put numbers on the foreheads of these people and their arms. And that’s, that’s a Nazi move.  And we didn’t say anything. And that’s why people back in Palestine lost hope in us as Americans.

Christopher Mayhew

No country in the world—which occupies tens of thousands of square miles of its neighbor’s territory and rules over more than a million of their people with an increasingly heavy hand—no country deserves to live in peace, like that. And of course Israel has no hope of living in peace while she does that.

MAP: THE WORLD

Noam Chomsky

In each one of the countries you mentioned, 5 countries, there were independent forces that were seeking a way out of this system of domination, and they therefore had to be crushed. And they were crushed in different ways.

Reagan

Historians looking back at our time will note the consistent restraint and peaceful intentions of the West.

Kissinger

Americans have every reason to take pride of what their country has achieved in foreign policy.

HELICOPTERS LANDING IN VIETNAM

WITH THE GUIDING FACTOR IN US FOREIGN POLICY BEING THE MAINTENANCE OF THE US’S DOMINANT ROLE, IN WHOSE INTEREST IS OUR INVOLVEMENT AROUND THE GLOBE?

Noam Chomsky

Well it’s not in the interest of the population. The population of the United States gains nothing from uh, fighting a war in Southeast Asia or crushing a democracy in Guatemala. In fact it harms them. But it’s in the interest of those who dominate decisions internal to the United States.

Corporate building after corporate building

Economic power is very narrowly concentrated in a small corporate sector, tightly linked to the state, controls both political parties, owns the media. Yeah, they naturally makes decisions in their own interest, even if the population strongly opposes them.  (Corporate march underneath)

Father Privett

Mother washing child in Vietnam

Mother & child in El Salvador

Woman washing clothes in El Salvador, train passing

City scene in Guatemala

I think the hope lies in the people—not in apolitical theory, not in smart US foreign policy, but in these people who are becoming more and more aware of their inherent human dignity and an increasing determination to live in a way and to create a system and a place that will respect that and honor that and allow that to unfold.

George Johnson

Koran

Quotes from Koran

Quote from bible

The Koran says that, uh, if you take one life it’s as if you’re kill the whole world. If you save one life, it’s as if you save the whole world. And the Bible says they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. So, it seems to me, both those ideas are pretty good ideas and if we could—Moslem, Christian, and other folks could come together around those kind of ideas we’d be a lot better off than around the ideas of trying to kill each other.

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