“These three stories—the anthrax evidence, the McCain/POW revelations, and the Sibel Edmonds charges—are the sort of major exposés that would surely be dominating the headlines of any country with a properly-functioning media. But almost no American has ever heard of them.” I encourage you to read this article b
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear...” ~ H.P. Lovecraft Our interest for self-preservation needs no introduction or explanation. Without mankind’s propensity and efficiency for self-preservation, we would be yet one more fossil set for some future intelligent species to chip their shovels upon. Yet, like so many aspects of life, too much of a good...
In most state legislatures today, "off the wall" has become the political center, and bizarre bills are no longer unusual. Still, it seems strange that legislators in so many states — including Arkansas, California, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio and Vermont — have simultaneously been pushing "ag-gag" bills that are not merely outrageous, but downright...
Over the last 7 years, Films For Action has been cataloging an online library of the best social change films that can be watched free online. Opting for quality over quantity, the site has grown slowly to include 500 documentaries and 900 short films, trailers and presentations indexed into 40 subjects to make it easy to discover content about specific slices of the social change pie...
Dear Mark, I hope this letter reaches you, and finds you well. First of all, allow me to congratulate you on your well-recognized achievements. Not everyone creates a telecommunications platform that redefines the way in which we all connect. I became a big fan of Facebook after incorporating it to my transmedia project Beware of Images . The project is aimed at generating media literacy...
Reporters who witness the worst of human suffering and return to newsrooms angry see their compassion washed out or severely muted by the layers of editors who stand between the reporter and the reader. The creed of objectivity and balance, formulated at the beginning of the 19th century by newspaper owners to generate greater profits from advertisers, disarms and cripples the press.
The Sandy Hook conspiracy can no longer claim censorship by the mainstream media as one of its articles of evidence. Sandy Hook 'truthers' can now find their claims mentioned and addressed in dozens of articles online, and in some TV coverage. The best written response I've found so far addressing the claims can be read here and watched here. Yet rather predictably, the...
Open democracy advocate and internet pioneer Aaron Swartz was found dead Friday in an apparent suicide, flooding the digital spectrum with an outpouring of grief. He was 26 years old. Swartz spent the last two years fighting federal hacking charges. In July 2011, prosecutor Scott Garland working under U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, a politician with her eye on the governor's mansion...
"What is keeping us from thriving?" asks the new movie, Thrive . The answer it gives is "the global elite," the people who control the financial system that in turn controls everything else. Operating through the power institutions of our society, this elite pursues a conscious agenda of total world dominance, purposely suppressing anything that would disrupt their power: from clean energy...
2012 was another big year for break-out films in the social change genre. With most of the bases covered for all of the major problems we're facing, more and more films this year focused on the solutions side of the equation, giving a voice to the uplifting stories of people working to realize their dreams of a thriving, sustainable world. For the films that focused on the...
Our Most Recommended Independent Media Links: Adbusters Aljazeera AlterNet Black Agenda Report Boiling Frogs Post Common Dreams Consortium News Counter Punch Democracy Now!
Y ou’ve seen the scenario before: some talented, young filmmaker releases his latest short film on Vimeo… and BOOM… practically overnight it goes viral. A few million views and a couple hundred thousand comments later, they garner industry attention, eventually cinching a movie deal with Hollywood. Welcome to the new American dream! Scratch that… the new global...
If indigenous and modern world views are going to inform each other to shift the trajectory of humankind toward a just, thriving, and sustainable future , an important step in this direction is for the modern world to better understand indigenous peoples’ stories, perceptions, and values. In the past, indigenous peoples’ perspectives have too frequently been told by outsiders...
We know that television's numbing effect is an unhealthy side-effect of our modern world, however Jenny Nazak argues that we individually have the power to incite people to goodness using the bounty of multimedia platforms available to each and every one of us
Every year Project Censored puts together a list of the top 25 stories censored and ignored by the mainstream media. The recently published Censored 2013 covers the period between 2011-2012. How many of these stories were you aware of? Even regular consumers of alternative, independent media may be surprised to learn about some of these stories, but by and large, turning off the TV and...
We wanted a Tahrir moment , an American Spring, a new vision of the future, and they attacked us in Zuccotti Park on November 15, 2011 in the dead of the night with military precision. The surprise raid began with a media blackout. Our movement's founding encampment was surrounded by riot police, credentialed mainstream journalists who tried to enter were pushed back or arrested, and the...
Here in the United States, whether we look to the language used amongst ourselves, in the media, or by politicians, we may find that our standard method of communication is based on rhetoric – a style of argument that relies on a set of distinctly isolated viewpoints, with each view-holder applying a range of persuasive techniques in an effort to prevail over a perceived opponent. As...
Several years ago, like so many others, we got tired of the most influential news outlets failing to inform the public about so many critical issues. But rather than wait for these media conglomerates to reform, we decided: better to just become the media ourselves. We don't need to wait on anything; each one of us can become a micro distribution network for the news that matters. It...
With excellent independent media sites like Adbusters, Truth Out and Common Dreams providing progressive news and perspective in written form, Films For Action has dedicated itself to filling in the progressive video niche. "It's probably the most comprehensive collection of videos dedicated to social change online," says Tim Hjersted, co-founder and director for the project. "With the...
Stand in solidarity with the people of Syria calling and dying for their freedom and right to choose their leaders. The idea is very simple, but potentially very powerful: Imagine if a million people spoke the words "I Support The Syrian Revolution"? Our aim is to collect as many videos as possible of people from all over the world declaring their support for the Syrian...
Film offers us a powerful tool to shift awareness and inspire action. By hosting community film screenings and sharing them online, they offer a method to break our dependence on the mainstream media and become the media ourselves. We don't need to wait for anyone or anything. Just imagine what could become possible if an entire city had seen just one of the documentaries below. Just imagine...
by Mitchell Dahlhoff January 23, 2012 Minnesota's political image has been a bit tarnished as of late, what with Michele \"Crazy Eyes\" Bachmann and Tim \"Hockey Fight Blood Lust\" Pawlenty crashing and burning spectacularly in the County Fair Demo Derby that is the current Republican primary races. Except they went and done screwed up, too, considering both Franken and Klobuchar have been...
WikiLeaks has released the first 200 of a cache of 5m emails obtained from the servers of Stratfor, a US-based intelligence firm. The emails originated not from a whistleblower, but instead from a series of hacking attacks against Stratfor in December 2011, carried out by the online activist collective Anonymous . Anonymous apparently passed the emails to WikiLeaks in the weeks...
Films For Action recently released a Facebook App that features a top-100 compendium of documentaries made to change the world... Direct link: http://apps.facebook.com/ ffachallenge/ Think you're a documentary buff? See how many you've seen and then challenge your friends to see how many they've seen! The list includes many well known docs as well as many lesser-known gems that you'd...
January 25, 2012 - We've launched our new mobile site today, bringing the site's library of over 900 films, independent news and actions to the small screen inside your pocket. To check it out, simply go to www.filmsforaction.org like normal and you'll automatically be redirected to the mobile version. As you'll immediately see, we've remixed, loved, and simplified the site for full...
2011 will likely be remembered in America as the year that the nation's youth finally started to wake up - all that bubbling knowledge of the world's problems, all the discontent and disillusion with our broken system finally burst into a flurry of creative action. Our understandings of the deep, structural flaws in our economy, politics and culture reached new heights of collective awareness...
It's been five years since the Films For Action project began in Lawrence, Kansas. It started with one simple idea: we can't depend on the mainstream media to inform us, so let's become the media ourselves by hosting documentaries on issues that the corporate media ignores. Over the years we 've hosted over 30 film screenings, launched a website that has attracted over 380,000...
#ANONYMOUS has issued a warning that governments are ordering Youtube to censor protest videos to stop populist rage from spreading. Statement below http://anoncentral.tumblr.com/post/11697760542/urgent-government... "Forget copyright infringement, YouTube is now complying with removal orders from governments to stop populi
Shifting Power from Corporate Interests Requires us to be Expand Our Media Power We have the power to be the media, to spread the word and tell vast networks of people the truth. Media is being democratized and we can speed that process by recognizing we are the media. When you come to Freedom Plaza in October one of your roles will be to be the media. On Tuesday, October 13 th the...
PHILADELPHIA – On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued its long-awaited verdict in Prometheus Radio Project v. the Federal Communications Commission, rejecting the FCC’s attempt to further deregulate media ownership. The Court threw out FCC rules that would have allowed one company to own a newspaper and broadcast stations in the same market. The Court...
“Change the Media, Change the World” was the theme at the National Conference for Media Reform in Boston last weekend. But if it didn’t sound like a self-help book from the bargain bin, we could have added “Change Yourself.” Because we all walked away a little changed, didn’t we? So much of the work we do to change the media happens online, or in our own...
When NYU art professor David Darts shows people his lunchbox, "a smile just starts creeping up on their face." Painted black with a white skull-and-crossbones, the metal box doesn't hold a pastrami on rye; instead, it's stuffed with networking equipment and batteries, and it hosts a Debian Linux install running a barebones Python-powered Web server. The goal of this "PirateBox": to create...
Many of us believe the Internet to be open and free for us to explore all known information. Indeed, it is true that we currently can surf to any active website with our browser, and we can start a website or blog on any topic we wish to discuss. And it is quite a profound concept that everyone with a smart phone literally has all of the world's knowledge in the palm of their hand. Ben...
Dear Citizens of the United States of America, It has come to our attention that the brothers, David and Charles Koch--the billionaire owners of Koch Industries--have long attempted to usurp American Democracy. Their actions to undermine the legitimate political process in Wisconsin are the final straw. Starting today we fight back. Koch Industries, and oligarchs like them, have most...
In Manufacturing Consent (1988; and updated in Herman,1996). Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky claim that because media is firmly imbedded in the market system, it reflects the class values and concerns of its owners and advertisers. According to Herman and Chomsky, the media maintains a corporate class bias through five systemic filters: concentrated private ownership; a strict bottom-line profit...
So, I was trying to get my friend to read a recent issue of Adbusters magazine. "You've got to read this!" I said. "There's an article about how the media today is owned by only a handful of corporations, and corporate consolidation is leading to fewer voices getting on the air and stifling the range of debate, which is stifling the health of our democracy. And...
There's been a very strange episode being written about the past couple of days involving numerous parties, including me, that I now want to comment on. The story, first reported by The Tech Herald , has been been written about in numerous places (see Marcy Wheeler , Forbes ,
Arianna Huffington has betrayed us, so let's huff and puff her house down. She built a blog-empire on the backs of thousands of citizen journalists. She exploited our idealism and let us labor under the illusion that that the Huffington Post was different, independent and leftist. Now she's cashed in and three thousand indie bloggers find themselves working for a megacorp. But the...
The purchase of the Huffington Post by AOL left many of the progressive writers and readers that made the site into a powerhouse looking for a new home. Adbusters magazine set out to unite those disaffected former supporters of Arianna Huffington's flagship site by suggesting they use social media to promote alternatives. "Socialite Arianna Huffington built a blog-empire on the backs of...
Lawrence, KS -- After 12 months in development, Films For Action has launched its new website - a head-to-toe redesign that lays the foundation for a vibrant community-powered news site dedicated to inspiring positive social change. At the heart of the new site is a constantly growing learning library of over 200 documentaries and 500 short films that can be watched free online, daily...
One of the most frequent criticisms leveled against the sustainable agriculture movement is that its proponents want to send farmers back to 19th-century hard labor, with hand weeding and harvesting. Here's an incredibly cool group of eco-minded "farmer-scientists" who aren't in the least afraid of technology -- and in fact believe in "creating industrial processes that are fully in harmony...
Confirming what a few have reported this evening: in an action unprecedented in Internet history, the Egyptian government appears to have ordered service providers to shut down all international connections to the Internet. Critical European-Asian fiber-optic routes through Egypt appear to be unaffected for now. But every Egyptian provider, every business, bank, Internet cafe, website...
An American trends analyst told a Russian news service recently that in 2011, young people from industrial societies around the world will unite on the Internet to overthrow increasingly ineffective elements of globalism that have driven their economies into depression. In a wide-ranging interview with Russia Today (RT) on Monday, Gerald Celente made the bold prediction along with a raft of...
The moment the "net neutrality" debate began was the moment the net neutrality debate was lost. For once the fate of a network - its fairness, its rule set, its capacity for social or economic reformation - is in the hands of policymakers and the corporations funding them - that network loses its power to effect change. The mere fact that lawmakers and lobbyists now control the future of the...
“To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us, and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not. Firstly we must understand what aspect of government or neocorporatist behavior we wish...
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” —Frederick Douglass Critics of Project Censored often declare that we are a left-leaning organization. This is an interesting claim...
Yesterday, in the Westminster Magistrates Court in London, the lawyers for WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange presented to the judge a document from me stating that I have put up $20,000 of my own money to help bail Mr. Assange out of jail. Furthermore, I am publicly offering the assistance of my website, my servers, my domain names and anything else I can do to keep WikiLeaks alive and...
Oo-de-lally !! After twelve months in development, the site has finally gone live! What started out as a simple plan a year ago to make a few minor visual tweaks and navigational changes ended up morphing into an over-the-top, head-to-toe redesign of the entire site. It's been an epic adventure of long nights, coffee, and dreams of the day we'll someday be done, but the day has arrived...
The odd thing about Wikileaks is that their success has been assured, not by what they leaked, though there is some important information there, but by their enemies. The massive and indiscriminant overreaction by both government and powerful corporate actors has ensured this, and includes but is not nearly limited to: Shutting down Wikileaks servers, starting with the Amazon server
A group of Internet activists calling themselves Operation Payback have taken credit for shutting down the website of a bank that earlier Monday froze funds belonging to WikiLeaks. Announcing its successful hack on a Twitter account , the group declared, "We will fire at anyone that tries to censor WikiLeaks." Earlier in the day, Swiss bank PostFinance issued a statement announcing that...