A world without nuclear weapons, what a thought. 'Countdown to Zero' Producer Lawrence Bender explains the START Treaty will keep our country safer. This documentary calls for absolutely no nuclear weapons. He describes President Obama's leadership and effort. But the question still remains, how long it will take before all nuclear weapons will be eliminated.
Deepak Chopra hosts "The Road to Global Nuclear Disarmament: The Origin, the Evolution and the Future," a special edition of his weekly SIRIUS XM show on which Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan, former CIA Covert Operations Officer Valerie Plame Wilson, Academy Award-winning producer Lawrence Bender and Jonathan Granoff, President of the Global Security Institute. On the special, panelists offer extraordinary personal and professional insight and perspective on nuclear warfare, weapons, threats disarmament and related issues explored in the new documentary, "Countdown to Zero."
On July 16, 1945, the U.S. government tested their first nuclear bomb, led by J. Robert Oppenheimer. As the blast went off, Oppenheimer became aware not only the terrifying power of the nuclear bomb but also our inability to entirely comprehend the implications of this invention. His attempts to warn the public were silenced and ridiculed, though today, over 65 years later, his voice is a haunting reminder of our very real nuclear threat.
Featuring interviews from the documentary film "Countdown to Zero," this short is a look into the man who created the bomb...and a frightening new world. Find out more about the movie, and how you can demand a world without nuclear weapons, at TakePart.com/zero.
Produced by TakePart with Participant Media
Directed by Mariana Blanco at Hoodablah
Score by Austin Wintory
Featuring Grizelda by Yeasayer
Special Thanks to Lisa Remington, Susan Ricketts
Footage provided by:
Arnold Newman Collection/Getty Images, AP Image Source, BBC Motion Gallery, Corbis, Fish Films, Harvard University Archives, J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Committee, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Library of Congress, National Archives Records Administration, NBC News Archives , Paul Popper/Popperfoto/Getty Images, Streamline Films, Trinity and Beyond, VCE, Inc., World Security Institute
As the documentary "Countdown to Zero" on non-proliferation is screened at the Cannes Film Festival, RT talked to the consultant behind the movie on the global will to stop the spread of nuclear arms. Valerie Plame was a CIA agent whose mission was to fight the spread of nuclear arms. After her identity was exposed in a White House Scandal, she turned to film-making, yet retained the same ideals.
Title: Countdown to Zero
Release Date: May 2010
Genre: Documentary
Cast: Graham Allison, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev, Ahmed Rashid
Director: Lucy Walker
Studio: Magnolia Pictures
Plot: A documentary about the escalating nuclear arms race.
"The AMERICAN DREAM is a 30 minute animated film that shows you how you've been scammed by the most basic elements of our government system." That's how this movie is billed on YouTube (linked below). The movie intends to wake up the viewer to truths about the Federal Reserve that supposedly are secret, and that it's part of an evil global banking elite that's sucking the money out of countries around the world. The movie has some good points to it, but misses one aspect to it. We're not automatically the victim of the banks, we can make choices so that we are free of the banks. Further, the system could work if regulations were in place to keep greedy tendencies in check, but those regulations were dismantled over the last few decades.
The movie seems to come from the Tea Party movement. Clue? It has a long section focused on one of the U.S. Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, and especially gives a rendition of his statement that occasionally the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants. That phrase has recently come back to the surface in a way that's advocating for a new civil war or revolution. As if fighting in the streets will result in anything useful.
The movie shows the life of a financially ignorant everyman who wakes up one morning to undergo foreclosure. As his house is being taken away he's whining about being behind in his payments, but next month he'll have more money just have mercy. The movie goes from there through a tour of the history of money and banking, slanting the presentation towards bankers being evil villains and us normal folk being victimized every time money stops being "real money"
"Real money" appears to be defined as being backed by gold held in a vault.
The story does have a lot of good information in it, and is probably factually correct. But it's highly slanted towards keeping the viewer thinking they're a victim of the system.
One crucial piece it misses is the depression of the 1870-1880's. The movie shows Pres. Andrew Jackson "killing the banks" and fast forwards to 1913, claiming that everything in-between was hunky-dory. It wasn't, that depression in the late 1800's was supposedly extremely severe, and occurred while the U.S. was not under the influence of any form of false money.
The main thing ignored by the movie however is our power of personal choice.
Individual people have two choices about their financial health. They can live above their means, spending willy nilly, maxing out the credit cards, etc. Or they can live beneath their means, keeping borrowing to a minimum, instead saving and investing their money in a way that creates personal financial resiliency.
The movie shows the ignorant everyman as having lived above his means. Unable to keep up with his personal greed, the banks simply exercised their rights in the contract he signed when he couldn't keep up payments on the loans that fueled his greedy lifestyle. Living above ones means is just as greedy as the bankers depicted in the movie as evil demons, what's different is the scale.
The fact is that any time you take out a loan you're putting yourself under the control of someone else. Somewhere inside that loan will be provisions of taking back stuff in case loan payments are not made. Any lender who doesn't put those provisions into loan agreements is stupid and will go out of business. The banking business has thousands of years of history behind it, so every bank will understand that principle.
The way to not being controlled by others? Don't take out loans. Instead of living a life based on borrowed money, be frugal and create personal financial resilience.
It's that simple.
We don't have to see ourselves as victims of the great evil banking conglomerates. We can live beneath our means and be free of debt.
An article from today's Morning Edition (an NPR.ORG radio program) discusses troubles the U.S. Postal Service is facing budget problems. It has a deficit of $8.5 billion or more, and that's led to cutbacks across the country. It means local post offices being shut down, deliveries reduced, etc. The NPR article focuses on personal impact it's meant because of jobs lost due to the cutbacks, but what about the other angles not covered by NPR? Do we really need the Post Office in an era where the Internet has taken over communications? And what about the positive environmental impact from shifting communications to the Internet?
Obviously any business facing steep losses would have layoffs and reduction in business operation. The U.S. Post Office is run as a business, but is owned by the government and has different imperatives than normal businesses. Cuts to the specific Post Office they focus on (East Cleveland) will save the Postal Service $200,000, reduce transportation costs, etc. In a way this is no different than a department store chain, like K-Mart who went out of business a few years ago, closing stores and laying off workers. Except that this is one of those vital government services. The impact extends to East Cleveland's city budget, the workers losing their jobs collectively paid $100,000 in taxes, making it harder on East Cleveland to stay afloat.
Post Office spokesman Victor Dubina is quoted saying "The popularity of online bill-paying and email" have cut postal delivery rates back to 1960's levels. Tough choices have to be made and if they don't make tough changes required to keep the organization viable, then the whole of the Postal Service will collapse. Sounds like any business leader facing a revenue collapse and the need to shore up corporate finances.
The move to Internet communications is Progress, in the form of electronic digitization of what used to be done with paper and delivered by humans driving postal trucks. A side effect of the Internet is this effect upon the Postal Service. If we are able to do our communications over the Internet then why does the Postal Service need to continue existing?
This is an example of De-materialization, namely the ability of electrically digitized communication to replace the consumption of physical materials. Using the Internet to send e-mail means you didn't write a letter, put a stamp on it, and send it via the post office. Likewise, online shopping means the mail order catalog retailers don't have to send you a physical book, because their catalog is on-line.
Many resource impacts we used to do using paper delivered manually by humans are now unnecessary because of the Internet. Supposedly this is a good thing, because of the trees that aren't being cut down by the paper that isn't being consumed.
Fox News is about to launch a "newspaper" delivered via iPad. While I have huge concerns because it's Faux News doing this newspaper, it's another example of dematerialization. Rather than get news via a bundle of paper printed every day for manual delivery by humans to our doorstep, it's delivered as bits to a convenient portable electronic device. Many newspapers around the U.S. have shut down despite some of them having 100 years or more corporate history in delivering news to their audience. Why? Advertisers and readers shifted to the Internet, long before Rupert Murdoch and his Faux News organization decided to launch their virtual newspaper.
It's wonderful and very green, these resources not being consumed by these digitized communications. Rather than kill forests to deliver news, it's done electronically. And as the gizmos offer a better user experience we can expect more of this. Why do any of this by printing paper (killing forests) for manual delivery through the postal service (burning fossil oil, polluting the environment, etc)?
However, there are still some things that must be sent via physical mail. The carrot cake your Aunt Bettie makes for your birthday, for example, can't be delivered electronically. More practically many kinds of legal documents have to be done on physical material.
The U.S. Postal Service is in competition with several package delivery services (FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc) and the USPS is not doing much to make itself relevant against those services. Obviously the popularity of FedEx etc indicates there is still value to stuff being sent to distant places. Enough value to keep FedEx/UPS/etc in business. The USPS woes are hence in part their own issue, that they haven't kept themselves relevant in the face of changing times. If the bread-and-butter of delivering bills and letters is dropping off because of "the popularity of online bill-paying and email," then shouldn't the USPS reshape themselves to serve their changing customer needs?
In the meantime - when someone clings to the existing way things are done, is that good or bad? Change has both positive and negative impacts.
