When America’s toughest soldiers — the Army Green Berets and Delta Force, and the Navy Seals – need a helping hand, they know they can rely on Air Force Special Operations.
Climb aboard a US Air Force AC-130 Spectre gunship as it delivers an impressive air-to-ground punch. Other Special Operations aircraft, like the MH-53 Pave Low and the MH-60 Pave Hawk, can insert commando teams deep into enemy territory even on the darkest of nights. Ride with these daring pilots on their extremely perilous missions.
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Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
Duration : 0:10:1
Freedom Alliance Foundation provides scholarships to children whose parents have fallen or become permanently disabled from military service. This is the “trailer” for a documentary in production to benefit Freedom Alliance. I thought this production was an opportunity for an in-depth look at how “ordinary people” are doing extraordinary things to support U.S. Troops in Iraq, and how parents and families of U.S. military have been affected by the war in Iraq.
Duration : 0:3:15
The Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation is dedicated to providing college scholarships and educational counseling to the children of military personnel who are killed in the line of duty.
Duration : 0:1:19
‘Human Terrain’ is two stories in one. The first exposes the U.S. effort to enlist the best and the brightest of American universities in a struggle for the hearts and minds of its enemies. Facing long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military adopts a controversial new program, ‘Human Terrain Systems’, to make cultural awareness a key element of its counterinsurgency strategy. Designed to embed social scientists with combat troops, the program swiftly comes under attack by academic critics who consider it misguided and unethical to gather intelligence and target potential enemies for the military. Gaining rare access to wargames in the Mojave Desert and training exercises at Quantico and Fort Leavenworth, ‘Human Terrain’ takes the viewer into the heart of the war machine and the shadowy collaboration between American academics and the armed services.
The other story is about a brilliant young scholar who leaves the university to join a Human Terrain team. After working as a humanitarian activist and winning a Marshall Scholarship to study at Oxford, Michael Bhatia returned to Brown University to conduct research on military cultural awareness. A year later, he left to embed as a Human Terrain member with the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan. On May 7, 2008, en route to mediate an intertribal dispute, his humvee hit a roadside bomb and Bhatia was killed along with two other soldiers.
Asking what happens when war becomes academic and academics go to war, the two stories merge in tragedy.
Duration : 0:2:47
This movie is an unbiased view of the war in Iraq, but rather supporting the troops that are out there fighting for our country. Even though this scholarship contests theme is “inspiring our generation to greatness”, what is more inspiring than the young men and women that put their lives on the line in order to provide the freedom that we have in America today.
Duration : 0:4:32
Voice of the Iraq Veteran #3
Harvey Tharp is a former US Navy Lt. who served in Kirkuk, Iraq from 2003 to 2004. He resigned from the Navy rather than go back. In this episode of “Voice of the Veteran” he explains what turned him around.
“Women Together As One”
“As a filmmaker and sociologist, I work to uncover power relations reflected in discourses of race, gender, class, sexuality and notions of empire to stimulate critical and creative thinking, a sense of agency and a revolution in consciousness.”
Gilda L. Sheppard, Ph.D.
Gilda Sheppard’s documentary film “Women Together as One” was the first ever short film selected for showing by Fest Afrique 360 at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival in France. Gilda generously allowed us to feature it on our show (PepperSpray’s Lila Kitaeff got editing credits on this piece).
“Women Together as One” focuses on work Sheppard did with Liberian women refugees who live at the Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana, West Africa. She worked with the refugees to organize and design classes for economic sustainability (computer literacy, adult literacy, cosmetology, catering, sewing and tie and dye workshops) and school scholarships for their children.
In this piece we see the women, strong and powerful, full of laughter and life, breaking media “victim” stereotypes at the rate of 30 frames per second.
Global Voices: The world is talking. Are you listening?
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org
Indymedia Presents is also available as an RSS feed at:
Blip TV– http://indymediapresents.blip.tv
… or download/subscribe to the Indymedia Presents podcast via the iTunes Store.
BE THE MEDIA!
Pepperspray Productions formed shortly after the WTO protests in Seattle, in response to the Independent Media Center’s call, “don’t hate the media, be the media!”. We believe that the Corporate Media is not telling us the whole story, and that the people must make our own media if we want our voices to be heard.
Related websites:
Independent Media Center
http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml
Indymedia NewsReal
http://www.newsreal.indymedia.org
Free Speech TV:
http://freespeech.org
Thank You Lt. Watada
http://www.thankyoult.org
Courage To Resist
http://www.couragetoresist.org
Iraq Veterans Against the War
http://www.ivaw.org
Veterans for Peace
http://www.veteransforpeace.org
Military Families Speak Out
http://www.mfso.org
Gold Star Families for Peace
http://www.gsfp.org
“Indymedia Presents” is a 28 minute weekly cable public access program produced on behalf of the Seattle Independent Media Center (IMC) by PepperSpray Productions. In addition to SCAN Channel 77 in Seattle, “Indymedia Presents” also airs on channels in greater King County (Channel 23), Bainbridge Island (Channel 12), Port Townsend, WA (Channel 47 & 48), Olympia, WA (Channel 22), Vancouver, WA (Channel 11), Portland, OR (Channel 22 and a few others), Tucson, AZ (Channel 73), St Paul, MN (Channel 15), Minneapolis, MN (Channel 17), Fort Wayne, IN (Channel 57), and on New York City’s Manhattan Neighborhood Network, (Channel 34).
Duration : 0:27:40
The Corporal Chris Mason Memorial Open Car Show 2008. The car show generated over $2,400.00 dollars for “Homes for Our Troops”
On 2 May 2009 there will be another Cpl Chris Mason Car Show; the funds raised at this show will be given to the “Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund.” The fund is for the purpose of providing educational scholarships to the sons and daughters of Fallen and disabled service members.
Duration : 0:0:46
Dr. Coppola, author of Coppola: A Pediatric Surgeon in Iraq, had reservations as he left behind his wife and three sons for a war he did not understand. But Dr. Coppola would fulfill the promise he made to six years of service in exchange for a military-issued medical scholarship that allowed him to pursue his dream of being a pediatric surgeon. Twice-deployed to the 332 Air Force Theater Hospital in Balad, Dr. Coppola bore witness to some of the most appalling aspects of war, including soldiers and children battered and mutilated in the crossfire. Shaken by what he saw, he passed sleepless nights writing letters to friends and family. Coppola: A Pediatric Surgeon in Iraq draws on the pain of these letters, revealing an uncomfortable side of the war yet to be told.
Duration : 0:2:33
Barack Obama meets with young Iraq war veterans.
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Barack Obama stopped by Walter Reed Army Medical Center Saturday to visit wounded war veterans, a group that he has said endures substandard care under the Bush administration.
The presumed Democratic nominee, who was in Washington to speak to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, spent about two hours inside the facility. On his way in and out, he did not speak to the small group of reporters who follow him, and the visit wasn’t on his public schedule.
Obama has criticized the Bush administration for its treatment of veterans returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and has suggested Republican rival John McCain would continue Bush policies if elected.
The administration was roundly criticized last year after it was revealed that veterans at Walter Reed were housed in rundown accommodations and suffered neglectful care.
Obama has said the country has failed its veterans by allowing such “second-rate conditions,” by not giving troops enough time at home and not doing enough to support military families.
During his remarks later Saturday before the Latino group, Obama said “we have to treat our veterans better.”
“We’re betraying what I think is a solemn pact that we make with our veterans,” he said.
And in a speech at a rally with his former Democratic opponent Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday, Obama said voters have a choice about whether to continue spending billions of dollars every month in Iraq, and leave troops there for 20 years, 50 years or 100 years _ a line that elicited boos from the crowd.
On veterans issues, McCain is seen by his supporters as having the advantage of military experience _ the Arizona senator was a Navy pilot, and spent nearly six years as a Vietnam prisoner of war after he was shot down.
Obama, who serves on the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, often notes that his grandfather served in World War II.
He criticizes McCain for opposing an expansion of the GI bill to guarantee full college scholarships for those who serve in the military for three years. McCain and Pentagon officials say they oppose the bill because they fear it would encourage people to leave after only one enlistment during a war.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/29/barack-obama-quietly-visi_n_109826.html
Duration : 0:4:52
Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2007/10/03/Wesley_Clark_A_Time_to_Lead
Retired four-star general and former Democratic Presidential candidate Wesley Clark criticizes the course of U.S. foreign policy in the wake of September 11, 2001.
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Wesley Clark discusses “A Time to Lead.”
Wesley Clark sought the presidency during the 2004 elections, seeking to bring a less hawkish perspective to the White House. After the campaign, Clark did not end his crusade for what he sees as a better America, one that supports his vision of a responsible foreign policy. He believes that hard work, leadership and determination will ultimately turn the country around. – The Commonwealth Club
Wesley Clark is a retired four-star general of the United States Army. Clark was valedictorian of his class at West Point, was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford where he earned a master’s degree in economics, and later graduated from the Command and General Staff College with a master’s degree in military science. He spent 34 years in the Army and the Department of Defense, receiving many military decorations, several honorary knighthoods, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Duration : 0:8:13